Career advice: How did you succeed in a career in IT? What did it take to make it to a comfortable salary?

A recent online came to me asking me

How did you succeed in a career in IT? What did it take to make it to a comfortable salary?

My response follows 

The career in the dynamic world of global Information Technology (IT) has afforded me a comfortable living while earning in Rupees, Pounds, Euro, SFranks, C$ and US$.

My first job after I finished my masters in technology was in Bengaluru. My employer initially trained me as a MS windows developer and later in mainframe technologies. About 6 months after I joined, my manager asked me if I had a valid passport and if I would be willing to travel to England. Heck yeah! I thus found myself in the U.K. where I spent a couple of years.

From UK, I moved to the U.S for better opportunities. Along the way, I learnt new technologies, systems and processes, and got married. In my quest for the ‘American dream,’ my Permanent Residence (Green Card) application was approved. And along the way my wife and I naturalized as American Citizen, retaining our OCI status.

In 2003 when the Offshoring boom was taking off, I joined Infosys and spent the next decade working with a cross section of clients across geographies - in Canada, Europe and India. Based on my observations, I also wrote “Offshoring IT Services” published by McGraw Hill

While my family and I were comfortably settled in the U.S, we decided to move back to Bengaluru. My aging parents lived alone in Bangalore, and I got the dreaded phone call from my mother asking for help. Initially, I worked remotely for my employer and then switched jobs. This required revisiting my strengths and reviving my network in the local market.

Paraphrasing old adage, my career in the dynamic world of IT has allowed me to “join the Information Systems, and see the world.” Literally.

My career has given me an opportunity to live and work across dozen countries across three continents, and to visit scores more.