The definition of Professional Success
What is a success professionally? I have been struggling with this conundrum for an extensive time, adding on little-by-little ideas by brainstorming and experiences. But the exact meaning of success has been elusive to me. When I was in college, with limited perspective, not much complex philosophy on the subject, had a very short-sighted idea of success, getting placed in the best company providing the highest package among the campus placement.
And it was not like that I didn’t use to think about success, I consistently considered it important for me to be successful but that was in comparison among my peers from college, from school, neighbors, and family. So after landing in this highest paying job, I contentedly believe I had been successful. All the ideas of a larger career role like being a CEO was a vague distant idea I didn’t need myself to be dealt with now. But soon things started to change. Sometimes later I became bothered with this question again when a senior of mine joined IIT Kharagpur and landed a job in a Japanese private company as a Data Scientist. He soon shared an Instagram post of all his close friends bagging in offers from all the huge private companies like FAANG, but all foreign companies, captioning “Success”. It immediately strikes a nerve in me and I started wondering “Is this what success is? Working in private huge monopolies”. After much thought on this, I came up with the following dimensions whose presence in a profession can be called a success in broad terms:
- Patriotism: Jobs related directly to national service and which have huge honor and respect like becoming an officer in defense, Police, IB, Administrative services. Getting into these professions is indeed an immediate success.
2. Autonomy: Creating something of our own working and be in charge of it is a success. Rather than working so hard over the years in studies, being remarkable in their field, and ended up working 9 to 9 job for someone else.
3. Contribution: Any field of work that an individual can contribute to the world in a tangible way like working in NGOs, UN, Social entrepreneurship. These people are successful or are on the path to success.
4. Scholarly: So many students of prestigious universities like IITs went on to do jobs in foreign countries for high-paying jobs. But if such great minds of our country stay put and research, have patents on their name, innovate, discover new technologies, in-short become scientist, it's an achievement and success.
5. Recognition: People posting on Social media about getting a job at FAANG company as #success is misguiding as thousands of people are working in these companies, nameless and faceless. It is indeed, without doubt, a successful step to be in a famous company, but no one knew who is Sunder Pichai until he became the CEO. Recognition in any field of work: science, engineering, entertainment, news, and politics is a dimension of success.
It is worth mentioning that being successful is a journey and it takes many years for some to shine. Most of the people who have recently entered the workforce may be at the right place in their career and on the path to success, it’s probably too soon to judge their success on the above criteria. Give yourself and others some time. Also, being happy and peaceful in life is the biggest success possible.
