So I’ve been busy and that’s what most of my friends had to say. What has kept me busy was a Marathon on Information Absorbtion.

I’ve been busy reading and studying. I usually used to invest a few hours learning and innovating at home but lately I’ve geared up for a few certifications and working on creative ideas at home helps me implement new technologies. Now this satisfies two things; the urge for doing something different apart from the daily mundane and monotonous work, and yes ofcourse the main objective; learning new technologies. My experience with technology has taught me that it changes every second; literally; and if we dont keep up ourselves, we’re outrun by new competition. I ensure that in a day I spend an hour reading about latest trends in technology and give about 2-3 hours at night working on creative projects. I love experimenting with new and different technologies, tools, frameworks, methodologies, etc which gives me an edge over my colleagues and helps me adapt easily.

I learnt the importance of doing this at an early stage in my career; when I observed that one of my senior colleague was told to leave only because he couldn’t adapt to a new technology (implement a solution using Java while he was a Perl guy). In this global economically weak era, companies and management are clear about reducing cost, that is by adapting cost-effective and easy-to-implement technologies but ensuring that they do not comprimise on security, efficiency, adaptability, scalability and robustness. Therefore there is always a time in one’s career, when companies move from old to new technologies and if resources aren’t able to adapt to them, then they’re replaced. In this particular case, either the people move away from the company to a new one or start to learn new stuff. There is an opinion that moving to a new company helps as we’re a master in one technology and therefore leaving their niche is a bad decision. But in the long run, they’ve realised that learning new trends is the right way in.

Another example is when I work with a few managers who are compelled to use Excel for Project Management while there are plenty better Project Management tools (eg : I use MS Project or IBM RTC) and better Project Management methodologies (Agile using SCRUM) available that provide timelines, work breakdown structures, estimations, delay in deliveries, assigned work, status of tasks and plenty other features that help avoid human error and delay in work submission and follow-up. If managers do not evolve in technology, the associates loose faith in their management and results of depleting productivity can be observed throughout the team.

On the contrary, yes there also exists a risk in adapting new technologies and therefore moving to something new immediately has its bad consequences. Therefore making a smart change is something that is required; probably a technological evaluation is necessary before moving across technologies and methodologies.

What do you think about this kind of Evolution?