Time is changing very fast. I see updates in technologies every other week and machines are becoming more intelligent and powerful. In this era of huge transformation in information and technology, you will not be able to survive more in the future. If you keep yourself working in the comfort zone these days, no one knows when anyone will replace you and do that comfort zone thing. Well, maybe a machine will replace you.
Let me tell you a story of a guy who was working in a very reputed firm in India. I cannot write the name of the firm or this guy because such instances happen every then and there. He was sincere enough to come to the office on time and leave late because he used to take his job and given tasks seriously. The whole team was happy with him. He was working on the same project for around 7 years. In this phase of happiness, he jumped into a pool of comfort where he was just doing the routine tasks.
Earlier, when he started with the project, he was busy in learning the things and later on, he was busy with the monotonous and ever-going project work. He was a .NET developer in the starting of his career but the firm did not provide him the development project at that time. He was pushed into a job monitoring task where he used to see if all the applications were working as expected or not.
If any application faced some technical issues, what do you expect this guy used to be doing? If you think his task was to debug the code and correct it, then you are wrong. His task was just to raise a ticket to a different team to fix the issue. The job was very comfortable and easy. But do you think such jobs are surviving now or similar jobs will survive in the future? Definitely not.
One day he reached the office and saw a mailer that this technical team has written some script and it will save the client's $100K a year. The mailer was not descriptive enough. He was also happy with the team. On the same evening, he was called by the manager. Well, now you can imagine what would have happened. The manager appreciated him and told that he had been a good employee for the organization. Then, the manager thanked him and wished good luck for his future. Yes, he was fired.
This was a sad story but this can happen to every other person if they start living in their comfort zone. I do not even think that the company did wrong. Every other organization has stakeholders who will see the company profit reports. It is me who needs to show the leadership for myself and be ready to change the job at any moment. This guy should have learned something side by side and he could be doing what he deserved. But his leadership of inside was not having that insight and courage. He was not prepared to switch job because of having lived in a comfort zone.
Now, take rest. You do not have to resign immediately from your job but you have to keep yourself upgrading, thinking you should always be ready to switch job. We must have a thorough understanding of our job and its future. We should always remain up-to-date with changes in technologies, tools, and machines. Always choose something which is challenging. This will end up in making you a great professional and have that leadership courage to switch job whenever required. The bonus of this comes as you become very important for the organization as you are continuously upgrading yourself. You are building an edge in you over others. You end up getting good increments.
I hope I could justify my subject. Do give your feedback in comments.