Reflections for the young – 20

For those of us who were witness to the breathtaking cricket match between Australia and South Africa on Sunday, It will be one that will remain etched in our memories for a long, long time. It was not so much about the amount of runs being scored or the sublime batsmen ship displayed but the sheer intensity and the level at which the teams competed with each other. From an era where scoring two hundred runs in fifty overs was considered a magnificent feat to witnessing four hundred odd runs in the same time frame and more so chasing it with aplomb – the game has come a long way. The bars have been raised to a very high level and it seems as though it will go up even higher.
As I was watching that match, a curious thought occurred to me. Isn’t it true of any sport or for that matter any profession that the bars of achievement in the respective fields have constantly been raised and those of us who cannot keep up with the pace of it are invariably left out in the race. In fact, Stephen Jay Gould – a famous evolutionary biologist argues that organisms evolve because of intense specialization and competition. Every profession gets more and more specialized as time passes by with increasing knowledge, innovation and more number of people joining the workforce. Refinements in the artifacts and ways of doing things differently invariably bring about a tremendous growth in efficiency and productivity in the task involved. Software – the sunrise industry illustrates this fact. If one were to look back twenty years into its history, we would find profound changes in the nature, quality and type of work in software development. The laid back attitude of the earlier years has now given place to a fiercely competitive environment with systems and processes in place. Deadlines have become stringent and the average productivity per individual has risen beyond imagination. Every day new workforce is being pumped with better skill sets and creativity spiraling Information technology into wider horizons. Earlier software was more of passion but today it is the one of the most demanding professions requiring more character and attitude and the willingness to break new barriers each day. When I saw Herschele gibbs bat, I could not but think of those thousands of software developers toiling away hour after hour trying to surmount near impossible boundaries with passion and fire in their eyes. This is true of all other occupations too.
There is no place for mediocrity in the work place today. We should keep changing and adapting to the needs of the profession. Today excellence is measured not by how well one is doing his job, but how better are you doing it. Perhaps the finals at the Wandererer’s is a grim reminder that today chasing four hundred and thirty four runs is not good enough, but the challenge is to get those runs with a ball to spare. That is the class act demanded out of every professional.