Graduate / Managerial or Technical? (Admission Essay--Masters in Information Technology) [4]

I know this first draft essay looks a bit fat, it's trimming in progress. Plus it's only 1100 words. They required 1000. Comments appreciated! I myself have some comments on how to improve, but I'll wait for others before sharing them out so as to not influence feedback.

Essay Question: An essay of approximately 1,000 words describing your academic and professional background, your career goals, and how the program will help you achieve your goals.*

Managerial or technical? That is the question, at least for now. As a senior software developer leading a team of juniors into various Web application projects for the past two years, I have now reached another junction which would carve out the next professional path in my nearly 5-year old working career.

In that span of time, I've worked, resigned and was recalled again by my current company iPioneer Inc. Right after earning a BS degree in Computer Science from ABC University in 2005, I was headhunted by fellow alumni to join them in iPioneer, an IT service provider for Indonesia's national oil & gas company, PERTAMINA.

As a project executive I was entrusted with the PERTAMINA Enterprise Network Monitoring System (ENMS) - an NMS that covers the PERTAMINA country-wide Intranet, gas stations and oil platforms. There were no official handovers. The project was delivered half-baked by an external vendor. I was given the administrative password and an urgent request from the CEO to expose ENMS as part of the executive dashboards for the management. Within a month, I pieced together the Siebel's database schema of ENMS, scripted a Perl parser for all the network alerts, redrew a Java Swing drill-down regional map of Indonesia from ENMS proprietary map definition file and meshed them all together in a J2EE web application running on Apache Tomcat. The management was thrilled to have real-time visibility over PERTAMINA network in their daily afternoon meetings.

Lesson No 1 - a college degree may give the initial tools needed for me to start working life, but it was up to me to intelligently use them. Working life does not go by semesters and courses anymore.

Unfortunately, it was downhill from then on. I was relegated as the ENMS system administrator, being the only one capable of mastering the system. Routine work was a terrible demotivator and I yearned for better opportunities. Lesson No 2 hit early - organization sometimes stifles growth. I need to create my own opportunities.

Still young and with very few liabilities, I decided to quit and start my own business.

Only that I wouldn't really call it a proper business, as I wasn't driven by monetary returns. In Indonesia, there is very little exposure to programming in high school. Being a CS undergraduate from ABC university, it was my primary ideal and passion to expose school kids early on to the beauty and potentials of programming rather than to discover it late in college like I did. $30K poorer in savings, I cobbled up a cluster of Pentium III computers in a rented office and started a one-man-show computer training company. I had to apply for my own business license, company registration and bank account. I had to climb light poles to put up promotional posters and toured the neighborhood on foot dropping advertisements in mailboxes. Those were experiences that I can never gain from earning paychecks. It was a refreshing take for life out of the office.

Reality sunk soon after. Rent and bills must be paid, and despite promotions in various high schools very few inquired about programming. People did however, inquire and were willing to pay for Microsoft Office training. I have now learnt my bitter Lesson No 3 - in business, demand, and subsequently money, is king. Ideals alone do not put food on the table. I accepted failure but there was never a sense of regret. The experience was invaluable.

I labored hard to stay afloat. I put on different hats - IT trainer, freelancer and contractor. Training jobs for Microsoft Office, Linux and cheap PHP web application development pulled enough cash to survive for a year, but it was inconsistent. I landed a job as an outsourced contractor for IBM, working on performance reporting software for the telcos. The IBM supervisors were so impressed on how quickly I picked up a proprietary programming language at ease with very little formal training and decided to offer a permanent position.

Former colleagues found out about the IBM offer and they countered by finally giving me a position in a field that I yearned for - software development. I was brought in as a senior software developer with zero knowledge on Microsoft .NET technology. I zoomed along the learning curve and started to go beyond the roles of other senior software developers. I was an asset in interfacing with customers especially the top management, resisting the norm of reclusive developers. I elicited complex requirements and helped customers understand their impact. I scheduled tasks, worked out project plans and estimated the effort needed. I designed reusable modules to lower the costs for future development projects. I coached juniors on the best programming practices I learned from the wise ones. I started the first SaaS-enabled Web-based product for iPioneer, opening up new markets apart from our bread-and-butter turnkey projects. Fueled from my previous lessons, I knew it was all about proactively adding value to the business and ultimately delivering results.

In June 2009, I was reviewed by my superiors and was given an 'Exceed Expectations' rating - the highest in the department. As we discussed my plans, the question became apparent. Should I become technical or managerial? I've observed the two warring sides - project managers and the software architects. One cannot fathom why a manual business process revolving around a simple form takes man-months to complete into a new system, while the other is horrified when unit testing and peer review are nonchalantly slashed from the project plan to accommodate customer's budget and win the job.

Thankful for the experiences in life, I know I have a hand at both. I dream for the day when I will run my own IT company, feeling satisfied from making customers understand how IT can help accelerate their businesses. I am also attracted to the prospect of architecting that elegant, ground-breaking IT application just as any developer does. Like an aspiring author penning the next best-seller.

It is time for a refreshing new perspective on IT career progression. It is time to take a breather from the corporate life and the rat-race and plot the next course. It is time to learn and share from the industry experts, renowned academicians and fellow colleagues. This is how I am confident that the Masters in Information Technology will enlighten me on what IT has to offer down the road. I am passionate at the same time calculative; I seek challenges and lessons in life. I look forward to investing a year of my still relatively young IT career in <MSIT SCHOOL NAME>.