Career Q&A on Enterprise Architecture

Career Questions from an online forum: 

Q1: How can I transition from enterprise architecture to business consulting?

My response:  

Interesting question; I say interesting since many people from consulting move to corporate EA.

For this response, I will assume you are a corporate EA with some consulting background. While moving to Business consulting you will need to

• Highlight expertise in functional domain - This could be expertise in domains like Finance, Supply Chain, HR or others that you may have worked on
• Emphasize your consulting background - e.g consulting with projects and programs in your organization.
• Demonstrate flexibility to learn and think on your feet

Message me if you need further inputs.

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Q2: What positions can being a Java technical architect lead to?

My response:

Sorry to sound clichéd but it really depends on where you want it to lead. Let us look at two main kinds of jobs:

• Consulting firms - A Java Technical Architect could grow into a senior Architect, Senior consultant or relationship manager, engagement leader etc. Along the way, you could pick up other technical skills in Big Data, AI etc etc
• IT Shop at an organization - Let us assume, you join as a Java Technical Architect at a large bank. You could continue to grow in the technical track (towards Enterprise Architecture) and expand into other technologies being used in the organization, or grow in the management track

As I said earlier, it really depends on where you want your job to lead to.

Q&A: Even when Indians are killed in racial attacks by Americans, why are they still mad to settle in the USA?

The recent incident in Kansas involving two Indians, when one American fired seven bullets at them after yelling “get out of my country,” is raising a lot of question among digerati.

Following on an earlier question - "What are your thoughts on the shooting of Indians in the Kansas pub?" - my response to another question that came up online:

Even when Indians are killed in racial attacks by Americans, why are they still mad to settle in the USA?

Let us take a balanced view here.

Yes, there are ethnic and racial undercurrents in America. One might also encounter sporadic incidents of violence and hate-crime, like the recent “Kansas shooting,” that can be extremely jarring. However, these incidents are too few and far between to significantly impact daily lives of residents and Citizen.

I have lived in over a dozen countries across three continents and have heard of and read accounts of racism or xenophobia in most places. This said, I haven’t personally encountered - knock on wood - racism or xenophobia in my travels.

Even taking into account the few of its problems, America continues to be the strongest and most vibrant economy in the world. It is still the land of opportunities. It is not surprising to see people waiting for years in the immigration queue to migrate to America.