Do you like your job ???

"Oh... Software engineer ... thats nice ... so do you like your job" ..... Then there was a brief silence as I was suddenly taken aback by an unexpected question shot at me. I was never posed this question, not in my 4 yrs as Software professional, not during 4 yrs of my college where I was studying major in Information Technology and for that matter not in last 25 yrs of my life.

But here I was thinking do I really like what I do ? Well... my answer to that question immediately was "Yes, I like my job in parts. There are some things I like some I don't". This I thought was a fair enough answer to that sincere question.

More about my answer later, but the person from whom this question came actually tells me loads about why I was never asked this before. So the person who asked me this was my cousin's Mother In-law. My cousin is Indian-American and his In-laws are Polish-American, in US for last 3 generations. So my inference was straight forward, we Indians do not emphasize enough on our liking or disliking before choosing a career but put all the weight on "Employability" of the option chosen.

How come all the top rankers choose Computer Science as Engineering branch in any competetive exams, be it IIT-JEE or MP PET.

In all these years, all the toppers 'liked' computer science over anything else. Strange.

This confirmed my belief, we Indians go by Employability and pay-checks over our liking for a particular field. Partly I thinks that is because of the Economic history of ours. ( I am not talking about Golden Bird period). But I do hope that things change and we choose our work based on what we like more than what is more likely to be rewarding.

Can we really excel, apply innovative ideas and lead the world if we had to push ourself to get to work every morning ?

After all this... I still wonder, Do I like my job? Do you ?