I turn 4 today....

Today, I complete 4 years of my life as a software professional. Starting my career at Siemens (now Nokia Siemens Networks) in June 2004, moving on to National Instruments (where I currently work) in November 2004, these 4 years have been a smooth sail along Bangalore's software tides...

Looking back, what have I been doing these 4 years? A quarter dozen product releases, a couple of initiatives at work, a couple of visits to our Head Quarters in the US, a couple of awards, half a dozen presentations, a couple of role changes/promotions...these pretty much sum up my work life.

What have I got in these 4 years? Well, almost everything that I had dreamt of in college.
"Financial Independence" is the biggest thing. Gone are the days when we used to shy away from expensive restaurants (we used to call it as the RHS-Right Hand Side rule on the restaurant menus). Also, it just seems like, we have been given a license to access those brands which were best relished when adorned by picture perfect models (be it the dress or shoes or shades). And no more necessity to do car pooling. (Although, I must say the recent oil price hike combined with the environmental concerns are forcing me to consider pooling again.)
"Travel the World" is the next big thing. Thanks to NI, a couple of visits to Austin allowed me to time my other trips and fulfill my travel dreams. So far it has been three days in New York, four days in France, two day trip to Las Vegas/Grand Canyons, a week in London and two weeks in Egypt. Well, add to that a few transit trips like a day in Germany and a day in Bahrain. And how can I forget the five days of North India (too small for the Incredible India! but I plan to go again) What more can I ask for. I just hope to keep this instinct alive and cover more places in the days to come.
In addition to these, the four years of work life has given me a few other things like "identity", "confidence" and a wonderful set of colleagues and friends whom I will cherish for life.

Is that all...what have I learnt/experienced in these 4 years..? Well, this one is definitely more valued than anything else.
"Taste of the real world" is something only those who have gone through it can understand. Life need not be as fast-paced/easy as we might have imagined in the college. I always used to think projects are just about floating a few ideas and taking them to reality. (Like most of our college projects). Only in these 4 years have I realized that a product/project has a lot more to it than just getting things to work. Now, whenever I see the same extreme enthusiasm in the freshers who join, when they talk about new ideas, when they ask - "why dont we do this" , "why dont we support this", "why dont we have a tool to do this", those initial days come back to me. Its defintely not wrong to have the enthusiasm, but its imperative to retain it after you realize the "relatively" slower pace of the real world. ("relatively" because in the real world things can happen slower relative to what me might expect). But as such in absolute terms, the real-world is indeed fast ( from a walkman to an ipod, the real-world has indeed been fast).
"Things dont happen" Barring a few exceptions which you can term as luck or fate or whatever, in most cases we have to work hard to make something happen. Specially, for someone like me, who has for a considerable part of the life (from school to college) followed the herd, it has been an eye opener that once I am thrown into the real world, I have to exercise my choices. Even today I am caught in the dilemma of whats the best choice. It was quite simple until here for I was never really put in a position to choose. But from now on, its only me. I seem to be still at that junction of the cross roads. A few of my friends have taken one road, a few others have taken the second and a few others the third. I still lay at that cross roads for once realizing that I and ONLY I have to make a choice and it better be right.

Looking forward, I hope the take-aways from these 4 years will serve as a very strong foundation and prove to be a launch pad for the rest of my career.