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-   -   The plight of IT professionals in their 40s (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/198522-plight-professionals-their-40s-33.html)

In the IT industry, quite frankly, nobody cares about titles because there is so much variation in what you are called at every designation. Consequently, the Indian social scene is virtually oblivious to this. Those who are in the C suite are also " officers". The average person on the street understands " chief " more than "principal".

Golden words indeed.
While Indians do run many of the world's biggest tech companies, they did not create them, and they do so in the West.

I remember in the late 1990s and early 2000s when some of my friends would look down their noses at China as a maker of low cost junk, and crow about how India was doing higher end work like software, never mind that it was all services driven.
Fast forward to today, and China has a massive high tech system spanning everything from chip making, networking gear to AI and world renowned software companies. We are yet to build a single company that is known outside India.

Hopefully the newer generation of entrepreneurs will break through, if only the government can get out of the way.

I think the much-maligned (including by me!) Indian IT services industry was very much a product of the time they were created and provided (still do) a lot of employment. While I've never actually worked for a pure services company, the truth is that a lot of Indian offices of brand-name IT product companies I've worked at, operate like lower-cost service providers to the US parent company.

And that's ok! For the majority of people like me, IT is certainly not a "passion". Given the chance (the retirement money mainly!), there are a dozen things I'd rather be doing in my mid-40s (most of them involve a beach! :)) But I'm very grateful that the industry provided what it did- a steady job, above average salaries, and certainly much above average working conditions. I'm just past the mid-career point, but still looking back, I remember having conversations at engineering college about what our job prospects were back then. Without the IT industry at the time, they did look pretty bleak, and that's even after graduating from a pretty decent college.

And just because everyone is not passionate about core programming or building a world-beating product, doesn't mean the industry doesn't function and can't continue to be viable. In fact, what we're seeing now, with the startup scene the cross-functional product development for the Indian market and the general willingness to take risks and try something, all have their origins/foundation in the IT services sector and the kind of work people did there. Whether the over-reliance on services delayed this core product development/startup scene is certainly a question. But it is what it is.

And I believe things will keep changing. As older IT folk, we'll have to get used to changing our competencies, taking on tasks we didn't think would be part of our jobs before, perhaps getting comfortable with the 'gig-economy'. Who knows. Over the past 2 years, I've found myself doing things I didn't think would ever be a part of my job, 10 years ago. At that point it had seemed pretty linear. But not anymore, and while there has been at least one day a week where it's been frustrating with the lack of structure, it's been fun!

I think you misunderstood what I am saying. There is no question about the caliber of Indians. And there is no shame in doing low end services either. But India should also move up the IT value chain and a company of the caliber and global impact of a Google or Microsoft should also come from India.

Why should we bother about what Canadians think? I frequently interact with folks in Silicon Valley. Believe me India has much higher clout/mindshare in global tech than Canada has.