Sumathi Mohan

The best career advice I received is to try to learn as much as possible and stay accurate with the technology changing. That's the only thing I would suggest. If you are busy on one thing and you don't find time to do additional things, you are running out of time there. Time flies, and you are out of sync. Every day, you have to monitor what is current in the market, and at least try to take up some additional courses during your current job so you stay in sync with the current technology.

I think women entering the IT industry have to learn how to balance their family life and work life, because IT is such a field where they demand many hours of your personal life. Initially, people are more focused on making money and getting their jobs stabilized, so they don't care about anything. They just spend many, many hours sitting at their desks because they are under so much pressure with projects getting delivered. That's where they have to watch out and balance their life, so that no one in the family suffers. Kids need attention from mom, and both are very much dependent on love and affection from mom to the kids. If women are entangled with IT jobs and working 14 hours a day instead of 8 hours because there is a crucial delivery, it's very challenging. They have to communicate from the beginning that they can only work 8 hours, and only during critical periods can they do some extra hours. Every woman has to learn how to balance their life. Also, try to learn as much as possible and stay current with technology changing, because if you don't find time to learn additional things, time flies and you are out of sync.

The biggest challenge in IT right now is the work-life balance. No matter if a person is sick, has high blood pressure, is having family issues, or is going to the emergency room, companies don't care - they just have to deliver things. I've seen people working 16 hours per day for one and a half years straight. There's no family life when you're working 10 to 12 hours on weekdays plus weekends. Recently, one of my cousins' daughters, a junior who just graduated from computer engineering in California, was so busy at work that she didn't have time to eat lunch or dinner. She got dizzy and fell, and had to be admitted to the hospital for 3 days. She stays alone and can't cook because once she gets on conference calls, they pull her in to fix issues and don't allow her to leave. If you try to talk back, you're scared because of visa constraints and potentially losing status in the U.S. After 30 years, I'm realizing, is it really worth it? Once you cross 50 years, you are let go anyway because they need younger people in the IT industry to be more productive. For opportunities, I would say that women are more organized and know what they're doing at the workplace. I've noticed that women are very organized in getting things done, and most of the time, they also guide men. So that's actually an opportunity for women getting into this field. There are not many challenges if women are able to study well and get a spot - everywhere there are opportunities.

The most critical value in personal life is spending time with family. That is the most important thing. In work life, you can still deliver a quality product to customers, but you have to put a lot of effort within the specified time. The value I see as important is that when committing to work, companies should think about everything, not just the benefit of the company. They need to consider all factors - what if an employee gets sick, will they be more productive? Before they commit to a project, they have to think about everything, not just company profit. I recall one project where a person went to the emergency room because the pressure increased from working 16 hours, and the boss who was in charge was calling him to the hospital while he was admitted, telling him to come back to work. I don't know how you define value in the IT industry when things like that happen. Value should be considering all factors.