An unsolicited career advice…

28-02-2013

Bangalore

Dear friends,

I’m writing this open letter to communicate some thoughts that came to my mind during my recent visit to Delhi. I’ve always felt that travelling has played a significant role in refining my thinking and communicating my thoughts with you has helped me broaden my perspective further. This letter is one such effort. Like always, I hope you share your thoughts on this as well.

Last week I  had been to Delhi to speak at a conference organized as part of three day expo by a major electronics magazine. I was suppose to speak on two consecutive days on two different topics. The first one was about “Low Power Electronics design” to a gathering of design engineers in electronics field and the second one was to a gathering of engineering students and teachers (basically academia). I was certainly glad to speak at the event for many reasons. My pursuit to electronics started way back in 90’s when I was a teenager . My father had got me an electronics kit to play around during my school days and later I took electronics as an optional subject in 11th and 12th. I indulged my self in electronics more seriously when I did my engineering and in fact I had subscribed for the same magazine during that time. My father was more glad because he had been reading that magazine since 1969. I was also felt honored as one of the speaker was a visiting faculty at IISc when I was a student there. Anyway I’ve bragged enough about myself, let me address the intent of my post in next few paragraphs.

Before my talk on the second day, there was a panel discussion addressing students interest in electronics. The discussion lead to career guidance and stuff. I was more of a passive participant just stuck to my seat as an audience and when I was called on to address the gathering after the panel discussion, I did mention various career avenues in energy sector as it was expected of me to enlighten them though my presentation. I guess I did my job fairly well. I said good bye to the expo and also thanked the organizers for giving me an opportunity to speak. Meanwhile my friend Somesh, who had come with me to Delhi, was waiting  for me to finish my talk so that we could see places in Delhi. We had also got a car from an other friend in Delhi to roam around but it so happened that we didn’t actually use it much to see places in Delhi but instead we used the public rail transport called as “Metro” to see most of the places in Delhi. Metro had connectivity to most places in Delhi and we figured that it was easily the preferred mode of transport for all classes of society. The cost was very reasonable for the kind of service a passenger could get, that too in a place like Delhi. We never waited for more than five minutes in any terminal to catch a metro train. We also figured that the New Delhi Railway Station, the New Delhi Airport and Bus stand were also connected to the Metro network which in a way bridged all form of transportation. There are metro links to outskirts of Delhi which is called by the name National Capital Region – they are the major economic zones for Industries in North India. In short metro is the back bone of Delhi transport system. Somesh and me were blown by the level of design put in Delhi metro while my mind was faintly pre-occupied with what had happened in the panel discussion. When I came back to Bangalore I read more about Delhi metro and I knew what would be my career advice if I ever have to give some one.

Delhi metro construction started in the year 1995 under the leadership of an experienced railway engineer by name E Sreedharan. The Delhi Metro construction was completed ahead of time and Sreedharan served as the Managing Director for 16 years before he retired at the age of 80. On further research on him I came to know that he played a major role in Culcutta metro and also headed the Konkan railway project. He served Indian railways for 56 consecutive years. I also happen to read an article which gave greater depth about his contribution to the railways (1).  This story of E Sreedharan reminded me of a quote from a novel I had read recently which says  “This isn’t just an epigram – life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.” I’ve come across many intelligent people who have had the creative energy to do anything under the sun but I have also seen them not pursuing on one particular field for a reasonably long time. I see that they have very short span of interest towards one field and get disenchanted and jump to something new, which they will eventually get disinterested. Especially people who graduate as engineers don’t pursue engineering for various reasons and people who take up engineering jobs end up getting into management roles or not so engineering roles in very less time. Sreedharan wasn’t educated more than engineering and his job didn’t require any further qualification. Present day role models are mostly Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and not many would know about Sreedharan. I’m not saying Steve or Bill aren’t great people to look up after, in fact they are the pioneers of modern computing which has pretty much revolutionized the way we live but students thoughts are driven by the affluence that they got after making break through in computers. From the kind of questions that were asked in the panel discussion I could figure out that present generation engineers are more interested in doing a high tech jobs or become entrepreneurs with out any kind sense towards problem statement in mind. Many don’t see a point in seeing the difference between the first world countries problems and third world countries problems.

I’d like to elaborate on time aspect in career. I happen to attend a convocation function at IISc as some of my close friends were graduating that year . The degrees were handed over to the students by Prof. V.Ramanarayanan who has more than thirty years of research experience in Power Electronics. In his commencement speech he talked about a sanskrit verse on learning , it roughly translates as “you learn one fourth from your teachers, one fourth from your own efforts, one fourth from your peers, one fourth with the passage of time.” He gave a lot of impetus on the last one fourth which is the learning that happens with time. I could connect those words of his at different level over the years and I feel current graduates should give due importance to time in shaping their career. In some discussion a friend mentioned that if pursuit for affluence wasn’t a current day phenomena, people would have valued the importance of patience. I see many of my friends talking about increment, bonus and career prospect mostly in terms financially not really keen on how their work is solving the problems world is facing. I also feel sad that the more evolved ones aren’t thinking in that direction but they are more interested in working on ultracool technology which will not address the issues that their countrymen are facing but merely interested advancement in technology.  The need is forgotten, instead sophistication, comfort and better life style has replaced it.  I really don’t see a point in an intelligent engineer working on technology that can enable voice commands to operate a television when he has got the education to work on technologies that can help millions of people get better drinking water, especially if he comes from a country like India where you face more of third world problems.  Again Sreedharan’s work can be taken as an inspiration. His work has been an enabler for people in doing their work more efficiently, it was at the infrastructure level. May be I sound like a cynic who is against the advancement of technology, but my interest here is to encourage engineers to become proactive on bridging their skills and capability that could cater to the fundamental needs of their country men.

Works of Sreedharan has greatly inspired me to an extent that I’d not divert my attention from working on energy systems problems (mostly in India) at my capacity for at least next 10- 15 years. While I see that many things that may come my way could be intellectually tempting and lucrative as well, however I’m convinced that a career which is driven by focus for a reasonably long time  is lot more successful than otherwise.

cheers,

Ganesh

(1) Dr. E Sreedharan – The Bharat Ratna no one talks about:  http://kaipullai.com/2012/02/24/dr-elattuvalapil-sreedharan-the-bharat-ratna-no-one-talks-about/