Observations part 2: Career

 

Career Quick Guide (that I should have done, learned late)

• 1. Always do your schooling, degrees from different places, same with your jobs. Here's an example for guidance for engineering discipline (main idea is switch to expand network and have an open mind):-

     • School - South Point (stay at home Kolkata) - 18 years

     • College - IIT Delhi (stay in country India, different city) ~ 22 years

     • Masters - National University of Singapore (stay in nearby country, close culture) ~ 24 years

     • PhD - MIT (go to East US) - 29 years

     • Postdoc - ETH Zurich (go to Europe - learn cross discipline) - 30 - good time for marriage / child

     • Work in start-ups (Montreal, Canada) - do as many switches before age 35

     • Work in Product Company (say Google Mountain View, West US) - 5 years

     • Set up your own company (Entrepreneur) at home, Kolkata, India - 40 years onwards

       • If constraints or family dependency - join a stable company (say Tata or Reliance)

       • Can enroll for a PGDM (say IIM Calcutta)

     • Example institutes are for reference only, they can be anything. Goal is Diversity and Networking. Institutes don't add much value apart from competition and peer discussions (if you are with smart people - you will become smart). If you study in high rated colleges, you will become good students and followers - not path creators due to lack of solo thinking. As an example, the only remarkable breakthrough in computation AI in last decade is generative adversarial networks - others are delta of old thoughts and hotch potch :-)

     • If studying in a unknown institute, you will have time to focus on real work than competition with peers. Original thoughts emerge from unknown places and diverse or different fields.

     • Family is more important than career - that's the difference between machines and humans. However, best work happens with pure focus. This trade-off none has solution.

     • If your parents are rich or you fulfilled your utility to survive (some money), become an autonomous professor in an institute. You will contribute more with original ideas and serve as advisor to industry / governments than becoming a doer - which are available aplenty (machines).

     • Specific countries - at least do a post-doc or a small time work at Israel and Germany - what you will learn - you will not learn that level of fundamentals from anywhere else.

Started writing in 2020...