Many business owners reach out to me on LinkedIn for offering me jobs. It’s great. Except that they think of me as a good Indian engineer.
Nothing is wrong with it.
But Indian engineer implies that you are a good software engineer living in India. India here is a subset of the world.
So, being a good Indian software engineer < being a good software engineer.
Many people might be furious by the above statement so let me clarify by using an example.
Suppose I ask you to name 3 good React developers. You might go -
Notice we have no Indian here. If I now ask you, name a good Indian React developer. Then you will name that Indian developer who is good at React.
You see the problem here. This should not be the end goal if you are in a career like software engineering where nationality, race, religion, and gender doesn’t matter.
I know I can do better. In fact, I should do better. Same for you, and everyone else in the software engineering industry. There’s no reason why people can’t know you for being a great, world-level, engineer.
Speaking at global conferences, developing widely-used open-source projects and doing key work in a field helps with that. Also, doing something groundbreaking like leading the tech of a billion-dollar business. There are plenty of ways.
So going forward in my career, I will try to become a good ‘global’ software engineer. And make sure recruiters and clients know of that.
If you are a remote employee or freelancer, you should do it too.