I usually drag myself out of bed around 10:00 and treat myself to a cup of black coffee on my way in to office. Although I have never really been a morning person, over the last few years, I have tried (and increasingly succeeded) to strive for a consistent schedule, and have largely recovered from a messy chaotic lifestyle rampant with frequent late night caffeine-powered coding relays.
I am fortunate to work in a reputed investment management firm with some cool perks (great office location, free transportation, amazing on-premise breakfast/lunch etc.) and in parallel I get to work on relatively modern web technologies as a part of an infrastructure group that supports common application concerns of various other domain specific teams.
Alongside (a lot of) actual programming, my role requires a lot of collaboration with a team spread across continents and auxiliary support work, so my current work is not exactly the kind of hacker-in-a-dark-room picture that you might see in the movies.
I have been juggling responsibilities between startups and corporate roles over the last few years in different domains including a brief stint with the PL research team at IBM, a relatively longer gig with a marketing agency in bangalore (my first professional web-dev role) and a really amazing stint building backend infrastructure for a range of mathematics focussed apps for primary school kids.
I have pursued programming as a hobby for a long time - starting out with VB apps and eventually ending up very deeply fascinated with the web as a platform. I also happen to have an engineering degree from one of the most reputed colleges of the country, which has most certainly helped in the progression.
I also tend to find a lot of (so-called un-sexy) integration work very interesting, so I have found myself increasingly gravitating towards lower level infrastructure focussed roles.
What's the tech scene like where you live, and do you participate in tech-related events?
Tech scene in hyderabad is pretty good, though maybe not as vibrant as Bangalore. I don't actively participate in a lot of tech events - preferring to stay involved online as much as possible. I don't find them as engaging or useful as mainstream media would lead you to believe. YMMV.
Most of my free time is spent on reading fiction (almost all variants), or discussing it with fellow enthusiasts and occasional sketching.
Do you have advice for people following your footsteps in their career?
Yes, don't follow in anyone's footsteps :)
The entropy of the universe is perpetually exploding, and the industry itself changes with every day that passes by. Any recommendations you might get from a seasoned "expert" are already obsolete.