Young man's journey to become a CEO and succeed

Back in February of this year I was assigned as the Technical Lead Architect for Manila of a new project, a SharePoint + web services based development for a large utilities company in the U.S.

I got very excited because it was a large project that required hardcore SharePoint development which would push my skills to a number of levels up; but things wasn’t as pretty and excited as I thought to be. The last 7 months was the worst “work life balance” experience I had in a very long time. These past months were packed with intense pressure, countless overnights, long working hours, frustrating environments and all the negative things I wouldn’t want to live on.

Long hours is probably an understatement here, it’s more like insane, inhuman working hours because I am talking about having worked multiple 35 straight working hours, numerous 12 straight hours of conference calls, normal 14-16 chargeable hours in a day, forced to work on weekends, special non-working holidays, etc. To top it all, we don’t get legit overtime pay but some cheap premium and food/transpo allowance that is just enough for your expenses.

I have previously written a post on Work Life Balance and for the past two years I have been a big fan of this concept.

Perspectives change over time, and now I am beginning to feel how overrated Work Life Balance is. How can you beat someone who spends at least 14 hours a day 7 days a week honing his craft?

I had a lot of fun in Seattle and the picture above was taken in the Whisky Bar with US SharePoint Architects and Project Managers on-shore. We partied a lot during the week long conference and worked hard during the day.

I remember one of the stories of a colleague a few years back about one of their top executives who saw employees who can party and drink a lot of booze until the wee hours of the night and get to the office the following day by 8 am as those that has the “it” factor to climb on top of the corporate ladder.

I go to a video games center at least once a week and try to play one of the physically challenging games like—snowboarding, soccer, and shooting; I would get my share of perspiration, and once I saw this kid perspiring as he was playing for almost an hour in the dance revolution machine. Upon seeing the kid I quickly gasp and hoped video games would be created that would serve as gaming and fitness medium.

I would like to apologize that posting these days have been slow; it’s the Holiday Season.

Anyways, I would like to greet all of you a Happy and Blessed New Year