During the summer of 2016, I had received an admit to my undergrad university and was faced with the choice of choosing between electronics or computer science.

 

I had no prior experience in either of the domains but had a vague idea from my interests in arts and crafts that I wanted to build something tangible. My only source of motivation at the time was to know how technology inherently works. Hence, I decided that pursuing a Bachelors of Technology in Electronics and Communication would be a better bet and my pursuit to understand the marriage between hardware and software would help me parallelize my learnings from both domains. 

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In hindsight, pursuing electronics kinda worked out for the better, it had its ups and downs though, a bit more research into the department's offerings and program outcomes might have helped me place my career goals in perspective earlier. It wasn't until my second year of engineering when I realized the disjoint between the industry and the course catalog. Students are still learning about the 8051 microcontroller, developed by Intel 40 years ago! I understand its appeal for academia, the architecture is simple to understand , to learn machine code and develop drivers. However after classes I was left to bridge the gap between academia and industry expectations. This meant countless extra hours in projects and research groups to stay competitive in a saturated market of experienced techies.

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I decided to pursue a minor degree in Computer Science during 2017 and in summer of 2018 I joined the Microsoft Innovation Lab where I was part of a 3 person team specializing in Wireless Sensor Networks(WSNs). We worked on developing a routing algorithm for secure hierarchical wireless sensor networks(WSNs) for improved lifetime and reduced latency. If you're into networking and communication, you can read more about it here!

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I decided to stay with the lab as a mentor for IoT and Wireless Communications at the lab, and mentored a group of students in developing a real world application of WSNs over the course of the summer. I was with the lab over the next 2 years till I graduated in 2020. The most valuable takeaways from the lab are my experiences and the connections which I retain and value to this day.

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During the summer of 2019, I took on an internship with Yulu which is an electric vehicle based shared mobility platform where I was assigned to an IoT team of four individuals at the time, and was involved in the research and development of the company's charging infrastructure. I share my experiences from my time at the company here!

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My final year of engineering consisted of balancing a full time job and attending classes. My days were spent attending classes in the morning and subsequently driving to my job. Spending extra hours was worth it, as I was gaining relevant skills, traveling for work, deploying products which I had built in multiple cities. I loved every minute of it.

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Enter - COVID 19! The pandemic restructured the way we do things even in 2022 , three years after the first reported case. Work got slow, everyone was working from home, not ideal for a person who works with hardware. I didn't miss the long travel to work in traffic, but I did miss sitting in a room full of engineers discussing.

 

I got to meet a ton of talented individuals, from all over the country, founders turned developers, developers turned founders, and spent hours listening to their stories. I was the youngest in the company at the time, everyone had accomplished so much. I realized it would take a significant time at my current position to reach the skill level I wanted. I decided to pursue my masters and applied to roughly 12 universities(a bit excessive and expensive). My top admits were from University of Pennsylvania , Columbia University and Cornell.

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Cornell Tech's program was unique it offered the opportunity for me to attain a Dual Master of Science Degree in Information Science and Information Systems in a span of 2 years. The cohort was small roughly 200 students , 19 of which were part of the same Urban Tech concentration as I. Its curriculum consisted of skill development to launch a startup of your own , something I hope to do so in the near future.

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To any students reading this blog, I will leave you with my 2 cents,

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Be proactive in your "Learning" to complement your "Education"

Find a group of friends, who share your values and drive you to compete and grow.

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Thank you so much for reading, more updates coming soon!

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