Letter to the "Career Online" show @ Geo-TV

Dear Sir / Madam,

I happened to come across your show on TV today, and watched it out of curiosity. However, I am a bit concerned about the authenticity of some of the content.

During a section, you had one of the show hosts answer email questions from your viewers regarding career decisions.

One particular question today was : “I have a BS in engineering… Should I go for an MBA or MS? …..”

I was VERY concerned when your show host answered “I suggest go for an MBA. It has many benefits…. (etc) “

Sir, please remember that since you are producing a show for a national audience, you have a responsibility to be objective and neutral. The people who ask those questions do not want your personal opinion on the subject matter, they wish to know what is the right thing to do.

You are not doing any industry, or the country, nor even the students, justice by recommending an engineer to pursue a management career.

The right answer, in my view, should have been the following:

“Son, remember to NEVER base your career choices on where ‘job scope’ is. If you wish to pursue an advanced degree, remember that you must be VERY sure of what you are passionate about. If technology is your passion, and you wish that your technical insight is the value you bring to a company, then focus your entire life on the pursuit of engineering. However, if – looking forward 10 years — you see yourself being able to contribute to a company because of your gifted abilities at organization, planning, strategy, or sales or marketing, then you could consider an MBA.

So remember, the most important thing is finding your passions and being sure of how you would like to help a company. Remember, that the future of the world and your country will lie in your hands one day. Choose the area in which you would like to demonstrate leadership and the pursuit of excellence.

Both engineers and MBAs will be invaluable to companies in our industries over the next decade, irrespective of current market trends. However, all industries and all companies require a person to bring to the job the greatest insight and dedication to his or her chosen line of work.”

Regards,

Osama A. Hashmi

Professionalism Series -7: Know your field, not your tools

This is almost a follow-up of part-1 of this series.

Despite what job postings will tell you, engineering, or marketing, or accounts, or anything is not just knowing the tools listed down in the post.

There is a real reason for this. If a company hires you for knowing Java tools, it is quite possible that in 2-3 years the industry will shift and the company would change their entire toolkit to something else, like Ruby.

Does that mean you have to start over again?

As a graphic designer, you are an expert at 3dsmax because you took 20 courses on the software, but the company you join uses Softimage, or uses Modo. What do you do?

It is of the utmost importance to be true to your field first, and the tools second. Even if you do not know a specific tool or technique, as long as you know pre and post-production visualizations, compositing, the physics of lighting and particle effects for ambience etc. you will be able to become a great animation professional.

As long as you know when static variables or templatized objects can help your design, the cost of using multi-threaded programming, interfacing with real-world linear systems, protocol and API design for high-performance or high-security systems, the design philosophy of real-time systems etc etc you will be a great computer engineer.

You can make similar lists for any and all sets of professions.

The reason tools dont matter is that any good company will hire well enough ahead of time that you can undergo training on the specific toolkits and interfaces after you join.

For me, the reason it is so important to find professionals that know their fields is that almost every tool I have used is limited in some certain features. In my teams, I expect the teams to be willing to ‘invent a new tool’ if they must in order to get the job done.

In fact, this is how most professional engineering environments must work! If the output they must create also requires them to first create a new tool, then lets do that instead of living with the limitations of the toolkits we have.

The most important thing is to create the value we need to create for customers and stakeholders. Whehter one tool can create or another is secondary.

Similarly, the most important thing to know for professionals is how to create that value — using one tool over another is secondary.