Professor & HOD, Department of IT, M V G R College of Engineering,Vizianagaram.
Work Experience: 4 years as faculty and 9 ½ years of experience in industry, last worked as Associate Director, BackOffice Application, D. E. Shaw. Also worked in: Hewlett Packard, California, American International Group and Solomon Brothers, New York
Why did you switch from industry to academics? Was it difficult?
In the first six months or so of my career as software engineer, I formed an opinion that quality shelf life of the software engineer cannot exceed 10 years and ever since I have not seen anything to change that opinion. It became more and more clear to me that you reach a kind of saturation point in terms of increase in value addition & active learning around the 10 year mark. I didn't want to linger, if I didn't grow in value or learning, and not just in terms of mere years of experience, salary increase or in designation.
Having decided to quit the industry, I wanted to return back to my home town, pursue agriculture, live away from hectic city life closer to nature and do something that would afford me a better work life balance and not a hefty pay package. The fact that I have always enjoyed sharing my experiences with my colleagues and team members in industry allowed me to fit into the role of a teacher very easily. Due to the broad range of projects and technologies in which I was involved as a hands-on software engineer I knew majority of the things expected to be taught in engineering degree.
How does industry experience impact your teaching?
The most important thing that helped me to be a teacher is the rigor of my learning imparted by my teachers right from high-school days. During my engineering and in my PG too, I had always been a strong proponent of understanding the depth of theory and use practice as a means of consolidating my understanding.
Next, I know how industry works, what are the expectations from young software engineers. I had significant hands-on exposure on a wide range of technologies. Having this experience certainly gives me more authority on the subject matter and helps me seamlessly transition from high level description to low level details that I guess inspires others (students) to have confidence in you.
My take here is industry experience certainly helps to be a better teacher, but that in itself does not guarantee being a better teacher. Rigor of understanding in fundamentals, ability and interest in effectively sharing your knowledge with others and practical exposure through experience are all needed to do a good job as a teacher.
Are there huge gaps in curriculum compared to what industry expects?
No. This seems to be a monstrous myth that is being purported by many very feverishly but I thoroughly disagree. The curriculum of B. Tech course I teach (we follow JNTU Kakinada Syllabus) to me is reasonably good.
I feel the goal of a B. Tech program in make students understand the fundamentals of the engineering discipline and help them develop a strong analytical problem solving approach. I can categorically say the curriculum meets that requirement. Many people feel computer science is all about some tools and some programming languages and feel that the syllabus should have the latest tools, to meet industry needs. The reality is any general purpose B. Tech program can and should only be designed to give students the fundamental understanding of the discipline and lay the platform for him/her to easily adapt to new and myriad tools based on their sound understanding of the fundamentals.
Many short-sighted people also recruit for an immediate need and not for long term human resource, which makes this perception develop. Also, there is a total lack of understanding among majority of the academicians about how to interpret and deliver learning of the curriculum. This frustrates industry people when they come for recruitment and interact with academicians, and then these comments like curriculum has gaps come up. Again, maybe this is coming because many academicians have not had exposure to industry. I say may be, because I do not think one needs exposure to industry to develop an awareness of how a concept might be explained in a relevant manner.
Can better delivery & more effective administration of curriculum enhance student's chances of employment?
For students who are willing to utilize them, absolutely. As mentioned earlier I think the biggest problem and probably the sole reason for students not building the wherewithal needed to meet industry expectations, is lack of good delivery and curriculum administration and not gaps in curriculum itself. Of course, this is only for students who are willing to utilize such delivery and complement it with proactive self learning.
I am more than certain if the above is done, there is a negligible chance that a student would be unemployed in the current situation.
What exactly in employability?
If a job requiring a certain skill is available, are we ready (given that we claim to have been trained in that skill) in terms of ability to take up that job? This to me is employability. Too many students nowadays are worried about whether jobs will be there or not without thinking about what they need to do, if there is a job available. A cumulative effect of this is what we see now. There are a lot more jobs than there are engineers who are ready to take up a job having the requisite skill. It is painful to see students think about whether they would get a job or not and praying for it without first focusing on what they need to do in 4 years of engineering to merit a selection.
People do not realize that a company cannot pay money for degree because they would not get anything from your degree. Company will and can only pay money for the work you can produce and how much they can earn from collective work done by many such people. Giving a job/salary is not charity for company.
I feel every student should find out typical job profile of an engineer, seek to find out what skills would be needed to do the job effectively and focus on acquiring those skills. It is actually quite unnecessary to think of whether job will be there after 2-3 years because no one can guess how the job market will be in 2-3 years time. One thing is certain, there has always been and will always be a need for quality engineers and target for each student is to become a quality engineer. You have to be in that intellectual and skill exclusive zone to give yourself the best possible chance to get a job should it be available.
What is your opinion on the trend of emphasis on soft skills than technical skills? Again, I believe it is a myth. One cannot see technical skills and soft skills in isolation for an engineer. An engineer should by definition analyze the problem of the client and provide a simple yet comprehensive solution making the best use of the tools available at the time at the lowest possible cost. An engineer therefore has to have strong analytical abilities, ability to converse well with the clients, articulate his solution, compare notes with peers and colleagues, learn new tools and solutions as they come and adapt. Technology is changing and an engineer needs to have the aptitude and skill to adapt. If one does not have this, company that hires you merely on current tools and technology might run the risk of having an irrelevant human resource in future.
Given how global the industry has become, the need for communication skills (written & oral) and resourcefulness has only increased because firms can no longer afford to have resources that work in isolation and cannot adapt to cross culture communication. Because the emerging graduates in general are very poor in this (that in itself I think again is a function of bad learning practice because soft skills can and should be cultivated as you learn technical skills, not in isolation), there has been a heightened sense of their importance in comparison with technical skills. I believe all of these skills are important even for any individual. If you are technically good and cannot put it use or articulate your skill enough for the other person to use it, what good is it having technical skills? On the same vein, what good is having good vocabulary and (more jokingly unwarranted accent) when you do not have the thought process and subject understanding to talk or understand anything meaningful.
Another reason for a seeming importance for language skills is short interviews at campus placements. In 5 minute interviews, it is hard to find out whether you are completely good technically or not. We can make out if you are very bad but cannot decide if you are good or not. So naturally, good language skills will tilt the balance on the positive and bad language skills will tilt the balance to the negative.
Do you ever motivate students to become faculty? I do not believe in motivating students to take up a particular type of job. I do certainly believe in and work on letting students know how important it is for both themselves and others to share any knowledge they have. Many people even at job have this stigma that knowledge and not sharing it with other people will help them maintain their edge over others. I always advocate, if you know something that others do not know, share it with them. If you want to be competitive, learn more.
Teaching according to me is just as challenging as any other job. To be able to do it one needs to be good at sharing what he knows and also understanding the level of the audience and modulate his sharing accordingly. I feel a good teacher would automatically inspire others (including students) to be like him/her and if I can reach that goal of being a teacher, I would have automatically motivated at-least a few students to be teachers.
What is the biggest joy you get as a teacher?
The biggest joy for me is to share what I know with students looking for it. Also, the unique challenge and opportunity to influence the thought process of younger generation (this is also a massive responsibility) is something that gives great satisfaction. While teaching something, I have had to draw analogies from nature and general day to day life and human behavior to make students understand things better and that's something that I derive great pleasure in. I did not have to do it earlier and it made me realize how everything fits into how life has evolved and how nature works.
What is the biggest frustration in your current job?
One big frustration is seeing so many students not doing justice to their inherent abilities because of lack of systematic approach and patience to persist with learning. As a teacher, I sometimes cannot but feel that it could have a lot more fruitful to teach if only more students were interested in learning, not merely studying to pass exams and get a degree.
Another frustration is to see how unwelcome people with industry experience are in academics (resistance from academicians) contrary to what people say outside. There are so many bottlenecks which co-academicians starting from university top layer (it is actually shocking) create for people coming from industry. No wonder, not many people from industry are looking to come to teaching profession.
Lastly, it is sad to see reluctance on the part of many teachers to be open to admitting not knowing something and willing to check and get back when students come up with questions and instead dismissing the questions with disdain reducing any scope of positive interaction between teachers and students.
Any memorable moments?
I happened to try, understand and share my experiences with one non-performing student as a part of my counseling efforts. He improved dramatically and after the next academic period results came, he walked to my room and told me his result with a glee on his face. That was my most satisfying moment as a teacher and will be a memorable moment.
