By Pragya Jhunjhunwala
A technology job can be understood as any position that works with the scientific, mathematical, and/or computational aspects of engineering. Although we often speak of the high-tech industries as if it were unchanged, it is actually a diverse field with many different professions (such as computer engineering, web design, and game development).
Several tech careers require professionals to be independent and have a problem-solving mindset. All technology professionals must have the ability to work with others and effectively communicate issues and solutions with a system in understandable terms.
We spoke to two individuals in the technology field to understand more about their job.
Suraj Peri is the co-founder of Gradvine Advisors Private Limited, a peer to peer education mentorship service aimed at students in their formative years (www.gradvine.com). He is a Chemical engineer from CBIT in Hyderabad and an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University where he pursued his Masters in Energy Science and Policy with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence. Post completing his Masters, Suraj worked at the University of California, Berkeley, as an Energy Policy analyst working at the intersection of data science and energy policy and consulting for senior Senator's staff and the Governor's office in the state of California. He went onto work at Itron, an energy consulting firm, as a Senior Energy Analyst working on advanced machine learning techniques as applied to the energy industry. Suraj has since moved back to India to take over as Chief Operating Officer at Gradvine(@gradvine).
Why & how did you choose to get into the field you're in?
As an engineering student in India, just going through the grind was a given. It wasn’t until my internship at the UN within the climate change organization that I realized the power of data-driven decision making. Every sector from Energy to Healthcare, from Law to Public Policy, can and has benefitted from data-driven decisions. It was this revelation that furthered my interest in the ability to analyze data to come up with insights to drive impact in my fields of interest.
How impactful has your field been in the past few years?
I have a wide range of fields that interest me. My work transcends the traditional boundaries of “sectors” and I owe this interdisciplinary skillset to my education under the guidance of stalwarts within the field of Artificial Intelligence at Carnegie Mellon University. I’ve had the opportunity to work on interesting projects including optimizing a multi-million dollar logistics operation, working with the Governor’s office in California on a multi-million dollar policy initiative to push renewable energy, building tools to diagnose Pneumonia and other pathologies just based on the image of a chest X-ray, and many more. I’d like to think that the field of AI has had a far-reaching impact on just about every industry you can think of.
What impact (in terms of COVID 19) has your career faced?
The current pandemic has forced me to take a pause to think and to reflect. One of my many reflections on the state of things in AI has me disappointed at the progress made so far, and excited for the things to come as well. For professionals who are passionate about what they do, their field/tools/sector seems the most important amongst everything else. The pandemic has shattered this false image of AI for me. The fact that we were unable to predict, are unable to sustain infrastructure, are unable to come up with a cure, and more importantly unable to come together as a community essentially points to the work that is still left to be done. I’ve taken out some time to think and reflect and thank the pandemic for showing us truly where we are and what is left to be achieved.
Going forward, what are the major milestones that you are looking forward to in your field?
I’m currently working in the energy and education sectors. In the next 5 years, we hope to achieve a few milestones in both these sectors. Within the energy industry, NILM (Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring) or the ability to predict (with high accuracy) what appliances you have within the house without ever entering the house or putting up any monitoring equipment is the holy grail and something we are close to achieving.
If the last couple of decades within the education sector was dedicated to getting everyone to school and ensuring that no child was left behind, the next couple of decades will be dedicated to making sure that everyone learns in their own way. Personalized education, one in which students learn according to their pace, learning methods, and idiosyncrasies. This is the next major milestone in education. Understanding each student’s learning pattern from past data, analyzing it, and personalizing their learning paths will be the next major milestone.
What would you tell a high school student interested in your field?
High school is the best place/time to start figuring out what your interests are. Talk to as many people as possible, have conversations with a diverse group of individuals who are working at the cutting edge of things, and then figure out what you want to do. High school is where students have a no-pressure setting to be as inquisitive as possible and you should take advantage of that. Get your fundamentals right. Specifically, for programming, Computer Science, AI, or other allied fields, make sure to put in a little extra effort in Math (Linear Algebra, Probability, Statistics, Calculus). Look around the world, look at the patterns, consciously observe the way you think and make decisions, and be inquisitive.
(interview by Eesha Gorti)
Shreekanth Sampigethaya is the co-founder and President of Insemi Technology Services, a 400+ member company. He has over 20 years of experience in the semiconductor domain in fields of CPU cache design, IP design, and Design automation development. Has been instrumental in the delivery and management of processor and memory products in companies like AMD and TSMC. Also involved in many Embedded memory products technical specifications, Architecture, and delivery at Virage Logic. He holds 6 US patents in memory circuit design.
Why and how did you choose to get into entrepreneurship in tech?
In everyone’s career, you hit a logical point where you start thinking that your learning has stopped and you cannot get up the management ladder as easily as you could have in early in your career. Most of the organizations have a pyramid structure and positions at the top are limited. This causes a rat race at the bottom and sometimes this starts becoming an irritation to the point that you start thinking out of the box. At the same time if there is a business opportunity you believe has the potential to take off you take that plunge. The same thing happened with me, after about 22years of work experience in MNCs and start-ups I had enough and wanted to try to do something on my own.
Why I chose tech, is rather an easy answer, the only thing I knew was tech. I started off my career in the tech capital of the world in the San Francisco bay area in 1996 been through all the glory of tech. Have also witnessed a few downfalls of the industry too.
How impactful has been the semiconductor industry been in the past few years?
This is a great question, I could probably talk a lot about this. During the mid-2000s it seemed like semiconductors were going to hit a big wall as we came down to 40nm (a single hair is 80000nm), that is how small a single transistor was in ICs those days. Nothing stopped every 1.5 years it went from 40nm to 28nm to 20nm. Then as the manufacturing of these chips started becoming expensive the downward movement slowed down. We then went to 16nm to 7nm to 5nm presently. People are already talking about 3nm transistors, so what has this done, we are now able to put a lot of transistors in a given area which means you can do a lot more things with these chips. This is visible in your handheld devices today they are a beast, minicomputers, and can do so many things. Look at the video game consoles you have and graphics are so natural and out of the world. All this is possible because of tech.
The present talk of the town AI & ML has the same technology at its heart it is so amazing to think of the possibilities that you can do with tech. The scope is limitless.
What impact (in terms of COVID 19) has your career faced?
Like I said earlier, I have seen a couple of epic falls like the dot com crash 2001, and the housing market falls in 2010. Yes, COVID 19 is scary and we don’t know how much impact it is really going to make. There will be an impact for sure, we will wait and watch.
From my career perspective, the impact has been not huge it has slowed us down a little maybe put us off by 6 months in our planning. Overall I still feel there is a lot of positive things to look forward to. From a technology point of view, we were readying ourselves for a full-fledged 5G implementation and IoT boom. A lot of automotive manufacturers were planning on big consumer experience based cars. These things will be on hold for a while and their launches will be pushed out maybe for a while. Nevertheless, they will come out in a roaring fashion.
Going forward what are the major milestones that you are looking forward to in your business?
At Insemi we are into many things, semiconductors, mechatronics, and solutions engineering where we are into end-to-end product services. We are into the niche domains of health and safety and automotive IoT space. We have big plans to take it to the next level. We are an organization of 450+ people, we want to be 2000 people organization in the next 3 years.
What would you tell a high school student interested in starting a tech business?
Do your homework! there is no substitute for hard work. As my father would always tell me to be sincere to yourself. Staying relevant in tech is the most important thing. It is very easy to get carried away by a language, a program, a market opportunity. You have to think through the whole process. Like any other business, the road will have challenges and you have to have the gut to take the pounding.
(interview by Arnav Sampigethaya)
A job in this field is all about skills and information. While applying for a job, a bachelor’s degree is the minimum credential that most employers look for. Some employers also consider associate degrees and a training certificate.
Here are some popular college majors that lead to careers in technology:
1. Computer Engineering:
Students focus on computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics. Graduates of a computer engineering program go on to become software developers, computer programmers, and systems engineers.
2. Computer Science:
Students are introduced to programming along with the science and math of modern computing. Students learn languages such as Java, C++, and Octave. Jobs for graduates include software architect, application software designer, and programmer.
3. Software Engineering:
The course work involves software engineering classes, along with computer science, project management, mathematics, and statistics. Students go on to become software engineers, software developers, and database analysts.
4. Web Design and Development:
Students study how to design, develop, and manage web sites. The course of study involves classes on web-authoring and data processing tools for web development. Jobs for web design majors include web administrators, web designers, and webmasters.
(Source: bestcolleges.com)
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