Here I am, on the road again...

So I've resigned again. This time I've left Microsoft for the lure of a management course at IIM. It was a very tough decision for me to take. Since the time I can remember I've been fascinated by technology. I still have disturbed nights, when I feel as if I've lost a loved one close to me. The kind of happiness I got in digging deeper and deeper into logic would probably never be found again. But the learning must go on. If you plan to live a life of learning, it becomes important to not get caught in a niche, to see the big picture, no matter how hazy it appears. Never again would I get the chance to learn about disciplines like finance, marketing and human resources. Never again would my family be so supportive. Never again would I have the kind of financial freedom I have today. Never again would I be this courageous and just let go.
Serving the notice period in Microsoft was tough, because I could see people with much lesser love for computers who've made Microsoft their home. And there was also the lure of a very comfortable present and a bright future. Another realization was that the people who I thought were different, and who had made it to IIMs painted a very sad (or maybe just a practical) picture - "The purpose of coming to IIMs is to get a better job", "I would recommend management to people who are not sure about what they want in life". These kinds of thoughts unnerved me a little. I've often painted a very rosy picture of how things would be in the future, only to see them getting distorted amidst the practicalities like these. But then I thought, though the reality hasn't the way I've pictured, it has been good enough to keep me dreaming and hoping, and that ain't that bad!
In the software industry we always take decisions. This algorithm, this hardware, this technology. Thinking about these made me realize that these are not really decisions you take. These are the decisions you arrive at. Mostly you have enough facts to know which is the better technology, you just call the act of interpreting those facts as decision making. The real decisions one needs to take are the ones in which you don't have the facts, at-least not as many as you'd like. I realized I am quite in-adept at taking such decisions. Something I intend to learn, through trial and error, in the coming two years.
These days I've been reading about Steve Jobs. He is becoming a sort of a hero for me in my adult life. What I like the most about him is that he has had to fight at every step to reach where he has reached today. And he has. You can hear a very fascinating speech delivered by him at the Stanford convocation here. I would just like to re-iterate about what he talks about dots and how you have got to keep making those. And these dots always join in the past, they will never join looking forward. So in order to make a few dots and hoping to connect a few..Here I go, TURN THE PAGE!