February 03, 2006, 4:00 PM — Leslie Jaye Goff recently spoke with Rajesh Setty, author of "Beyond Code: Learn to Distinguish Yourself in 9 Simple Steps!" Following is an edited transcript of that conversation. You may also listen to the original interview here.
Hi. My name is Leslie Goff for ITworld.com Voices. I'm here today with Rajesh Setty, Chairman and Chief Evangelist of CIGNEX Technologies, an open source technology consulting firm that he co-founded in 2000. Raj has recently published a book, Beyond Code, which offers advice on how IT consultants can distinguish themselves in the marketplace. The book takes a decidedly different approach than your usual IT career advice book, and that's what we'll be discussing today on Voices. Welcome Raj, thanks for joining us today.
Rajesh Setty: Thanks, Leslie. It's a pleasure to be here.
Goff: I've been going through your book, Beyond Code, and it's offered as a guide to programmers and IT consultants on how to distinguish yourself in the market, but it really reads like a general primer on building an integrated life and career almost like a philosophical guide to life that could apply to anyone. Why did you elect to aim the book at IT professionals rather than a more general audience?
Setty: I keep getting asked this question time and again. And I have a lot of credibility in the IT world, and I have managed maybe close to a thousand plus technology professionals in five different countries. I understand the lifecycle of IT technology professionals extremely well. I know the concepts here definitely apply to the people in the IT world for sure, but I have not had a chance to work with people in the non-IT world. So I decided I would stick with what I know extremely well.
Goff: Was there a specific need that you identified within the IT professional audience that you wanted to address, and if so, what was that?
Setty: Over the last 15 or so years that I have been managing technology professionals, there was one thing that was common and it kept getting repeated, and that is the tendency for IT professionals to go after the shotgun skills. People want to be in that cutting-edge kind of pick. So, it takes anywhere from three to five years for people to become really good experts in those hot skills. But if it is really hot, there are a lot of people who want to learn the same skills, so there is an old supply or the skills get commoditized, or it's no longer hot, something else becomes very hot. So the technology professionals, they are smart people, so they say, oh, this is not hot anymore, no problem, I can go and learn whatever is hot now. And then the cycle repeats, and it takes anywhere from three to five years again. So, by the third time the cycle repeats, things are very different in the life of a technology professional. The flexibility with which they start their career is very different after 15 years into their career. When they start in their career they are single and then they can go anywhere. If they say you want to go to Boston? They'll say yes. You want to go to Timbuktu? They'll say yes. But, three to four years they'll get married, then they have kids. I'm not saying these are all wrong, it just puts limits on how much flexibility they can have in their life. But, they're not thinking all these things, they just think that, oh, no problem I have so much of experience, I can learn any skill. When they say I can learn any skill, they are just thinking any technical skill they can quickly pick up and learn. And 10, 15 years they will get stuck and they have so many things to blame. They can blame 9-11, they can blame outsourcing, they can blame [the] economy, they can blame so many things in the world. They won't blame themselves, but they'll blame everything else that put them into that stuck position. So, that was the motivation for me to bring accountability and responsibility back to the technology professional and say, you know there are always 10% of the people, irrespectively of the economy, outsourcing, 9-11, or anything, they're just growing. They are doing something beyond code, so that they are immune to all the changes that are happening to this world.
Goff: Right, in fact you talk in the book about developing a personal brand, so that your, not necessarily just your skills, but who you are as a person, as a worker, as an IT professional, etc., is clearly identifiable.
