Take the Challenging Route

A friend of mine had moved where I had worked to another recently citing that the work load at where he was at was too demanding. I can't say for sure if it was the right decision or not but for one thing for sure, he seems a lot happier now compared to where he was at before.

I've had calls to join other firms compared where I am at now. I work in a challenging environment in the sense that the technologies are used and "enterprise driven" usually means out dated workflows and arduous levels of justification to make change. There are times where it is a must to use an archaic system which costs $100k to develop where I could replace in a month. I've probably mentioned that many, many times before.

Going back to my friend that had left, things seems to be a lot easier in that the work days are shorter and tasks are a lot simpler. Somehow, knowing what I know and going into an environment that was too easy would leave me not as intellectually challenged and possibly bored.

Given the choice of 2 routes, between the one that seemingly looked like the easy route vs the possible but challenging route, I'd generally take the more challenging one. Doing things the easy way was never in my genes and the mysteries of trying to solve a challenge has always been in my blood. The more right way of putting it would be the satisfaction of going through the challenge.

Taking challenges seems like an unnatural thing, because for most people why take the harder route when an easy one exists? And for the ones that to take the harder routes, little do they realize later one, they are the ones to grow the most. There are to obvious reasons that a person would accept a challenge, either 1) by necessity or 2) for the satisfaction of taking on the challenge.

Anthropologically, cultures whom have have lived in climates of scarcity have appeared to be the ones that have best evolved or have become technologically advanced. Perhaps it is a generalization, but take for existence of cultures that existing around the earth's equator where food is plentiful and you'll find the life styles to be more bohemian, compared to those that have lived through somewhat more scarce climates. I should qualify that this isn't a necessary and sufficient condition for advanced cultures to evolve, taking for example of say people living in barren and cold areas near the poles of the earth.

Compare those cultures of Northern Europe or Asia where more advanced cultures have evolved (note that I do not necessarily mean "modern", but relative to the time period) and we would see that the most advanced cultures have generally have been the ones that have had to struggle through environments of scarcity and some hostility. But I would say that it is the necessity of the challenge that forces people to develop.

I for one would say that I am in a challenging circumstance, perhaps not in an ideal way but it has forced me to grow and develop skills in ways that I've not expected. Though I work in sort of a support function to ensure that systems run, I've taken on roles that would land me as a hybrid developer, business analyst and client relationship manager between the technology departments and business users simply because of the isolation of our office from our global centers.

The irony of it is, despite the number of people being smaller in a subsidiary office, we are forced to run the entire business chain with less people compared to our other locations which allows me to oversee much more of the activities than most people would in HQ. This has the interesting impact that I do a better job of coordinating the different teams in HQ from afar that what some people are able to do locally and I know for sure that I'll be able to leverage these skills in the future should I go up or outside the current organization where as I would probably would learn less if I was somewhere else.