Silicon Valley Nation
Silicon Valley Nation: The young and the fearless (engineers)
Brian Fuller
2/1/2013 5:32 AM EST
Young engineers today are fearless, energetic and wide open to the possibilities the profession can bring them. They come from engineering families and they don't. Some of their parents are truckers, teachers, accountants. Some are scientists and engineers. Some come from well-to-do backgrounds; some descend from American Indian reservations.
Almost all tinkered at an early age and were often inspired by one person, a teacher or a grandparent who invariably said "can you fix this? Give it a try. There's no wrong answer." Some dream of starting their own companies; others just want to solve tough problems. Others love the life-long learning the profession represents.
Ojas Bapat is one of the young and fearless. He works for Spansion and is finishing his Ph.D in speech recognition algorithms at the same time.
"I decided in 8th grade to be an engineer because I liked fixing things--you know blenders and what not," he says in an interview. "My parents always knew and never questioned my decision to be an engineer, even though they had no idea what it is like to be an engineer."
He also stood back and examined the state of the industry, where he felt "industry trends seemed to be the best at the time and I stuck with it because I liked it."
His colleague in Spansion's R&D department, Pawan Singh, echoes Bapat's sentiments:
"I enjoyed tinkering with things. I was always playing with electronics – robotics, make small things, nothing really fancy. I thought about getting into the pure sciences but was drawn to more applied focus."
Next: Tin Whiskers
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GoBears
2/2/2013 12:50 PM EST
"Bapat said:
"My advice to student engineers is to seek positions in companies that seek to compete with value-added differentiators – in quality, performance, functionality."
That's ironic, coming from someone who works for a company that has barely made a profit this quarter and was in a complete FUBAR 3 years ago...
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daleste
2/2/2013 1:30 PM EST
Fresh outs have big opportunities right now. All the large companies are eager to hire them. My advice is to find a good company with interesting work and keep learning. Don't be afraid to push the envelope and not do things their way just because they always have. If you push hard enough, they will either fire you or promote you. Either way, you grow.
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eewiz
2/5/2013 5:19 AM EST
Working at spansion & doing PhD in speech recognition doesnt make sense!
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chanj
2/5/2013 6:44 PM EST
In general, engineers are able to build. Question is what to build. It takes more than engineering to create a product and this is why founding a company typically takes more than 1 person.
I agree with daleste. Young engineers shall try to pus the envelope because, really, you will learn a lot by +ve confirmation your idea or by making mistake. Fearless is priceless. ;)
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