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A techie’s dilemma

There comes this time of the year when the need to rethink my career path. 2.5 years as a working salaryman is not that long in any measures. Sometimes I envy people who have a lot more experience, yet aged the same or younger. Having the extra preparatory years before university starts to take its toll; rushing me to achieve something that is bigger.

I have some developer experiences, but cannot consider myself as a hardcore developer, nor claiming to have the knowledge of one. I did a couple of one-offs on PHP, maintained code in Java/JSP for a shortwhile and did a project on Rails a while back, and that’s just about it. Reading programming practices and open source code helps on understanding, but still, it won’t show up in the resume. Now I wrestle with application configurations, product documentations, and of course, customers.

Being the geek I am, I still command a will to strive on the technical side. Yet I realize, I am still far from having that in-depth opinion on code, and the breadth of exposure to real-world applications. And I am 27. “27 still?” .. “27 already?” is how I feel today. Given the local market (Malaysia) for enterprise applications, even if I go deeper, I will struggle to get a place elsewhere. But I hate ironed shirts and tie. Can I go the managerial way? Will I?

I certainly want to break off from the norms of a techie, do something big. Yeah, it sounds childish, but it is true. It’s getting harder to just walk when friends starts to run past by you.

Oh well, thank you for the audience.

This site here reminded me of something I laughed upon before. I would laugh on it today, only that it will be just a bitter smile.

Dilbert’s Salary Theorem

Dilbert’s “Salary Theorem” states that “Engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives and sales people.”

This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following two postulates:

As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time

Since:
Knowledge = Power
Time = Money
Knowledge = Work/Money.

Solving for Money, we get:
Money = Work / Knowledge.

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done.

Conclusion:
The less you know, the more you make.