Hey Reader! 👋

Continuing my observations from the career clarity calls I'm doing:

Meet A.

A started their career in Infosys, switched to TCS after 3 years with a minor pay bump, and switched to Citi last year with a significant pay bump.

Since the budget in this team was high the team is under pressure to deliver productivity gains for clients using our functionality. We use AI tools extensively to write code, although I try and understand most of the code , there are times when a feature is urgent and I can’t confidently push the code but have to because of constraints, and I am worried that if something breaks due to my code I wouldn’t even know if I have written it.

They were primarily thinking between spending time on 2 things. We discussed the pros and cons of each as follows:

1. Backend/System Design:
   Pros are that it’s lindy! The fundamentals are transferable to any domain and tech stack you pick in future.
   Cons is that it will take some time to see results. All good things do.
2. Go into AI mode?
   Pros If you want to switch immediately, this helps. But they didn’t want to switch rn.
   Cons It's fast-moving. Whatever you learn today might not be relevant when you actually want to switch (unless you're working on AI features at work).

We decided on going ahead with the former and put a concrete plan in place on building an end-to-end system on their own in the next 3-6 months (depending on the work load). On the side, we also touched on pitching for more ownership at work.

When we went deeper into action items, they wanted to pick Golang. I suggested to park it for later (AI has made everyone polyglots!). Concepts are language-agnostic. New shiny things gives us immediate dopamine yes but do they really move the needle on our goals? I'm looking forward to their monthly update and sincerely hope they don't get distracted. 🤞

💚,
Swapnil