"Scope" of your engineering studies

Interestingly, everytime I visit India, I end up meeting someone or the other who talks about the "scope" of engineering studies.  "Is there scope for Mechanical Engineering nowadays? I saw an article in the paper yesterday that the scope for  it is declining!"- asks my dad. But it's not just him. Very notable journalists and career gurus come up with bizarre  statements in newspapers and magazines like- "there is little scope for civil engineering".Sources they look at are - private engineering college admissions.

Let's analyze the validity of such articles. The kids who get into engineering are almost 18 yrs old..so if you base your argument on a teenager's forecast of a job market and economics four years down the line in a world where even Nobel prize winning economists are struggling to predict the economy... Good job guys !!!

So what is this "scope" all about? - a good job with a good salary. Will you get one? The answer is...you will as long as you do your basics well and luck is in your favour. The success rate for such an event cannot be predicted. So instead of speculating on the scope of a field, try to learn whatever best you can ...do the basics right and hope for the best. The world is too big a place, there's space for everyone to fit in...so stop bothering children with all this crap....











 

Leaving Stuttgart....

It's the fifth time I am shifting in the last 3 years. The decision to leave a city like Stuttgart was not indeed an easy one.  I would miss the splendour of a being in one of the automotive capitals of the World. Its always seemed to me that the Swabian people had something very unique about them that created such prosperity in this region. "Schaffe schaffe häusle baue...!" which meant..."work ....work...build a house..." is something which other Germans used to remark about the key motivators for the workforce in this region.

Yesterday, I visited the Mercedes Benz Museum for the third time. This was the first time i took my wife along with me. After seeing a good part of the museum, we came back home. As we came back, she said- " There are certain inventions which served as a tipping point to the history of this world like the car, telephone, light bulb etc. It was as if the world was waiting for a spark and soon it spread like wild fire. Look at the first engine, it was invented in 1886. By early 1900s we had a  good car on the roads...". Stuttgart has been in the centre of activity related to mobility whether it was the invention of the combustion engine or the diesel technology or the air ship and what not.. Even today, migration internally in Germany happens from North to South. Here I am, taking the opposite route by keeping off the greener pastures.

From living in one of the most renowned industrial cities of the world, I will leave to Aachen. A city which rose to its prominence during the Roman empire era. Today, Aachen is a city which revolves around its university and its student population. 
A city where things are much slower, higher unemployment rates, less organized and less safe. On the brighter side,  friendly and informal people, with a huge foreign diaspora.

A new city, new job, more friends and lots of things to do.


Hariharan

 

Down under literally...

Having seen the way in which India is performing nowadays, it's easy to blame the players. Professionalism has become a tricky veil which in a way camouflages the real stress that these guys are going through. Often people say professionals, what really is professional in BCCI anyway ? Is BCCI professional in the way it manages tours? Do players get enough rest between tours? Why should Indian team play a series in England and come back and play a series against England at home? The same with West indies too. Which brilliant professional planner came up with this great idea?

Work pressure, body condition, constant travel, hostile crowds, constant scrutiny, public debates on performance are all to be dealt with by these people. People may rubbish my claim saying...so what they get paid very well...If money was the answer to all these, then what scrutiny does BCCI undergo? They are the richest cricket board in the world...

So a cricket board need not be answerable to providing facilities for the fans in stadiums, no clear questions entertained as to why such poor planning etc. What kind of professionalism is visible here?

In a broader sense , my question is that - Is professionalism a magic word enforced only at the lower levels to hide management inefficiencies?

Connecting the dots

It all started from a Steve jobs speech at Stanford!!! Although I had been doing it for a while, I realized what I was doing was fine and more so an integral part of life. Connecting the dots. Over the years, I have learnt to look at different angles and delve deeper into problems to find out the roots of it.

On a lazy Friday afternoon in a Research center in Switzerland, I started stirring up a discussion with a few friends on topics related to the currency -Euro. It was indeed a wonder for me that Germans, Italians, French and the rest (including Greeks ) could get together and create a European Economic Area where there could be a common currency. Although the reasons for creation of such a currency can be explained by many economists in many ways, I was more interested in how everyone's life got changed after the same. Italian friends told me that the Italian s too had their assets devalued. Even a German colleague of mine told me that with the introduction of Euro, the prices of daily use items increased by a factor of almost 1.5. Well if all these people lost out, who did gain?

We live in times where countries will be overshadowed ''economies'' in the sense that, the term economy would be synonymous to huge corporations. In a book titled ''Confessions of an Economic Hitman '' John Perkins talks about this interesting phenomenon calling it a ''corpratocracy'', a complex looking term which looks at nothing but one simple word, Profit. The more you gain power, the more you can bargain with governments to get your tricky deals to get through. Since these corporations sponsor election campaigns, have politicians as board members with fancy salaries to help them get across political and economic hurdles, it becomes easy for them to get these things approved.

If you read any of the newspapers today, there are news like countries going bankrupt, banks being bailed out, Financial rescue packages, revolts, uprisings and what not. Doomsday, if there is one, seems to be near isnt it ?? I am reminded of the Dilbert cartoon where the world goes back to the stone age due to the complete failure of the Geosynchronous satellites and Power systems. There is no light on the streets, everyone is out of the rat race and enjoying watching a beautiful girl dance , drinking, eating and enjoying themselves. Wow...would it become something like that if the EU collapses?

The answer is NO. Any social system in this world is designed to maintain status quo whether its religion or politics or family . Developments in science, technology and logical reasoning happen inspite of these systems, not because of them. With this kinda economic situations, a few countries might be forced to take a lot of ''shit deals '' home and pass them. But in short, a few companies might go bankrupt making us lose our jobs...so what? we must create value for the billionaire investor...thats why we were sent out from heaven... a few banks might face insolvency.....so what.?? there will be Financial stability packages offered....

Looking at it from that perspective, the success of huge organizations do not lie in their toplines, bottomlines or middle lines...it lies in making them too big to fail .....which in a way says that...if the companies fall...they take a whole lot of people down with them...through job losses, loss of capital and many more. So indeed the governments have to feed these monsters...which was indeed why i was intrigued when i first heard of monster.com....

But on the brighter side, in an inherently sadistic way, it paves way for new technology. Since we dont have money to buy such fancy technology, we can afford to buy them for 8% interest Year on year interest and pay loans till our grandchildren become pensioners . It will still produce brilliant entrepreneurs 1000 times richer than Zuckerberg (finance guys...please bear with me...since i dont know to evaluate assets the way you do....... )