When I was 23, after completing my masters from IIT, I worked at a tech company. I learnt about GIS Data, Software and macro languages to automate data production and did miscellaneous work. I knew that I wanted to be a programmer. Every time I saw one of them I thought to myself: there goes a genius. The programmers. That’s where the geniuses are. Tha is what I want to get to.
Shortly after that I got a project with the same company as a basic programmer. I worked on a small team of two. Myself and another programmer. He had almost two years of experience. He was so skilled and so smart. He knew all the things I didn’t know. And I realized that programmers like myself were not the geniuses as I had thought before. It was the full fledged programmers. That’s where the geniuses are.
Then I got a second job, I programmed for a couple of years, and started meeting more and more programmers. I became a mid level programmer. And then I realized, mid level programmers weren’t geniuses. They were no smarter than I was. It was the senior level programmers. They had it going on. That is where the geniuses are.
That’s what I wanted to be. So I worked hard, I worked extra hours, I worked at home. And at some point a few years later I came to the slow realization that I was a senior level programmer. I now worked on a big team and we had a couple architects. I discovered that senior level programmers weren’t the geniuses I thought they were. I was one, and there was so much I didn’t know, so much I couldn’t do. But the architects, that’s where the geniuses are.
Fast forward seventeen years, after finishing MBA program from IIM, I am running a tech business. I have met a lot of business leaders who run companies bigger than Agilytics. That is where the geniuses are I think to myself.
But are they really? If every time you get to a new achievement level, you find out the geniuses aren’t where you thought they are then where are they?
Let me suggest something shocking. Maybe YOU are the genius. All those people who look up to you, who think you have made it, who think you are the genius...maybe they’re right...
Where do you think the geniuses are?