Over the past couple of weeks, I am realizing how much your mindset has to change when you have to move from being one of those engineers who are managed to the one who manages them. As an engineer, your mindset is so much tuned towards a world of your own, where your only bother is that problem in front of you that you have to tackle, solve to make things work. Of course, you work with a team, help each other, talk to client but all that is again centered around the problem to be solved and the technology around it. But, once you are responsible for a team of such engineers, apart from the problem solving, the necessity to be honest and sincere to each one of them, a genuine interest to get to know each one of them is so important. This may seem very straightforward and cliched, but for an introvert like me, who liked achieving things in my own world, having your "achievements" depend on another set of people, these words hold a lot of meaning.
It is so important to go beyond what is normally expected out of you, take initiative and drive things when you go up the responsibility ladder. I am seeing it as part of my day to day activities. There is competition, tough competition when u move up the ladder. You generally find only self starters and those who love starting something on their own up here. So, unless you are one who goes beyond what is obvious, you will find out of sync many a time.
So, when you join a new place, it becomes extremely critical to come up to speed with the reality as soon as you can, judge people as quickly as possible, separate the wheat from the chaff, so that you find yourself a fit in the scheme of things, make that clear to others, establish your domain and start pushing that extra bit that hasnt been happening until then.
Well, looks like I have been extremely abstract... I dont know how much of this makes sense, but these are kind of the summary of what I have seen and experienced in the first two weeks...
When I get my PC at home set right, I hope I will have the time for better posts...
for all those who are taking time off to read this and putting through comments, thanks a lot... :)
