Ambition and Growing Up

I was an ambitious person growing up.

When I was 15 years old, I used to be excited about train rides. Not because of the journey or the destination. But because every time I was at a railway station, my father would agree – more readily than usual – to buying me stuff to read. Usually, it meant a couple of popular novels more easily available at the stations, but sometimes, I would also sneak in a car magazine or two.

I prided myself in knowing the prices of each models, as much as I did in remembering how many 5-wicket hauls Anil Kumble or Wasim Akram had to their name, where Sachin or Dravid scored their last test century, and other trivial details that made for great quizzing material.

I talk about this because I think this is the earliest I can think of myself as an ambitious person. I loved seeing convertible cars in movies, and as all innocent kids might be taken with fancy cars in movies, I wondered why we didn’t see convertible cars in India. I always presumed it would be money. I associated open-top cars with the Mercs and the BMWs of the world. (Audis were much rarer then.) But it was not just those three.

Apart from the luxury open-tops, there was also a car called San Storm. Powered by a Renault engine, costing about 6 lakh rupees. Luxurious to us even then, but I concluded that the car was unsuccessful because it was likely low quality. I was sure, as a 15 year old kid, that there was room for a car that would be priced between 6L and 35L rupees, of sufficient quality, to be built at sufficient scale, that could turn around a profit.

Silly me. But that was the first dregs of ambition I remember having.

Since then, my entrepreneurial bent of mind (no doubt influenced by my father) took various shapes and forms – largely software, and keeping more in times than the 15-year-old me.

So when I graduated from college, I made it a point to tell all my managers that I wanted to start up my own company some day. And mentally noted to myself that I will accelerate my learning – by putting in more hours, by trying out more roles, by talking to people outside my bubble – so that when the time comes, I could start and have a better shot at success than someone less ‘experienced’.

My dreams of starting up was linked to two outcomes. One, I wanted to earn enough money that my income could match the rate or trajectory or whatever of the generational jump my family income saw because of my father being the first engineer (and only one in his generation) in the family. Two, I also saw how my father’s daily routine differed from others. He had freedom to schedule his day, more than most salaried people. He could work remotely before remote was a word. And he always had a much broader (and richer) perspective to add to any conversation in the family. I wanted those things for myself too.

Anyway, cut to today, and I have managed and been managed by many ambitious people. And there’s always a variation of “I want to start up” / “I want to be a CXO by age X” when we talk about ambitions. I was also one of them.

But lately, I have changed. My ambitions have changed.

In April 2020, I joined back at my previous company after having failed at a startup (attempt). I found myself with a predictable, decent salary money coming in every month, but little freedom in when I could work. I was tied to the timezones of the west. I had little influence in being able to set meetings during my morning. On top of that, the pandemic eliminated all lines of separation between work and life.

It was then that I realised that what I craved for more was freedom with my time, with enough money to subsist comfortably.

My ambitions also changed because of another reason. Upon reflecting back on all my previous roles, and trying to find common threads between what I enjoyed doing in them, I realised that my calling will be product marketing. And so for the first time in my life, I want to be a specialist instead of a generalist. A functional expert instead of trying to go for diversity of projects. (That product marketing is itself so diverse in its role probably helps keep this in check for now.)

So when I now speak to some of my younger teammates, and I hear this ambition, I have very conflicted thoughts. Part of me feels good about having grown up. (I am not saying one ambition is better than the other, just that I feel this ambition is more suited to the type of person I am.)

I having found something other than work to anchor my life on (guitar). I realised the value of time over money in the bank account or influence in your peer group.

But there is a part of me can’t help but make me question if I ‘lowered’ my bar. Did I give up too soon?

Actually more than my end-state goal, or my professional outcomes over a longer period of time, I wonder if this ‘giving up’ has also changed my day-to-day productivity. Am I being too lax? Am I delivering enough? I guess only time will tell.