Improving my Intuitive/CounterIntuitive skills in Engineering !! -- Sriharsha Pudi

Today I am gonna discuss few practical issues faced in day2day life of working professional which will restrict her/him in developing intuitive abilities in Workplace, this article is targetted mostly for people who have already spent few years working in the VLSI industry and who would be in a dilemma whether the learning curve has come to a halt and is it is going to be just re-do of same routine stuff which we have done in our past. Since I am a Technical Engineer I need to give my readers workable solutions instead of giving quotations like "Hard Work is the key to success", "We need to get out of comfort zone to achieve something in Life" blah blah blah..... I wish life is so easy as reading Motivational quotations and we can easily escape some unavoidable factors which hinder the professional Growth currently faced by the present generation of Young Engineers working in VLSI.

After spending few years of working in VLSI industry I am currently getting chances to work on high-level Architectures and project Specifications which I wished to learn as fresher itself, however, it is practically not possible to invest Time in knowing such kind of Basic/Architectural stuff early in the career, the reason is pretty simple since we will be in kind of probation period ( Survival Mode) where we need to finish the given tasks on time, even though we aren't aware of How the stuff works, basically, it is more of execution based jobs. However slowly we start to learn EDA Tools, Latest Technologies ( 7nm/5nm/3nm), and high-level stuff in the course of our professional journey and suddenly things start to get monotonic. In case we are not willing to go deep in the subject matter or domain knowledge and there occurs a situation ( Breakpoint in Career) where we need to make a trade-off whether to push our limits or spend the rest of the career like an "Average Engineer" who is happy to spend the rest of his professional life having fun activities in the Company.

One thing which I realized in this journey is all the marketing gimmicks used by our Industry experts like Machine Learning/AI/Technology Nodes etc may not be that useful in case I want to build some solid domain knowledge in my engineering field. The deeper I go inside a particular Tool methodology or product features finally I start realizing that these are already thought to me before my Btech may be in my 11th or 12th class by my Math teacher or Physics Teacher. However, we all know our education system mainly focuses on solving problems in a short duration of time else we don't get admissions in Top Engineering colleges. Now that we have "reached a breakpoint" where there is a need to relearn a few fundamental concepts in an intuitive way rather than memorizing formulas to get the problem solved. Basically we need to start questioning things like what is the formula saying us ?, What do we infer from Visual Data being displayed?, Can the hypothesis statement be accepted or rejected or Can we apply the fundamental principles in real-world applications? etc.

"Job oriented Learning is not sufficient to excel in any engineering field !!"

For example, Some of the few high school subjects which will haunt me throughout my career in VLSI for instance will be topics like Algebra, Geometry, Statistics, Probability, etc.

Coming back to the main Agenda, "What factors will help me in rebuilding my fundamental knowledge base and what factors will stop me not to achieve my goals ??"

Let me talk about positives first then we go to Negatives.

Positives:

• Online courses ( Udemy/Khan_Academy/Coursera/Edx/Brilliant.org etc)

The above-mentioned websites are an excellent way of learning scientifically and will help us to relate to the complex products which are being designed in our respective Organizations and helps to correlate the concepts and helps us in improving our Intuitive abilities and slowly we can close the smaller gaps in our way of understanding the Complex Chips which will power the world all using the Reverse Mapping Technique which I just mentioned.

• Reading Books ( Any book will help fictional/Self-Help/Business/Technical/Non-Technical)

Reading is one of the best ways to open up the creative part of our brain system. This helps greatly in improving the imagination skills and helps to focus on a particular activity. It is good to develop the Habit of Book Reading ASAP to unlock the greatest hidden wisdom to explore the world.

• Finding Good Mentors and asking them Questions which seems to look Naive or Too basic

1. Seniors who are the Star Performers are the Golden Key for us to ask as many questions as possible. I always feel knowing the history of the problem will help us to predict future solutions efficiently. So it is always good to engage yourselves with your supportive seniors and know the backstories to fully understand your products/Designs.
2. Those particular sets of Seniors who are not willing to improve/share knowledge and keep discouraging with sentences like after few years there is nothing to learn and explore, I strongly recommend you stay away from those kinds of people.

• Taking Risk and feeling Accountable

A calculated amount of Risk-Taking and feeling a sense of accountability will help in improving the creative aspects and will help in understanding the Bigger Context.

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Negatives:

• Procrastination ( Laziness to complete the activity which has been started)

This is one of the primary reasons why it is difficult to explore a subject in-depth, every time we enroll in a course and after a day we bookmark it for the future and this will be in the same place even after one year as well, the main reason is "procrastination". This can be controlled by restricting usage of Whatsapp/Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin etc. Unfortunately, all of us have been addicted to digital Screens. In my case, at least for every 30 mins of listening to any course or reading a book, I feel like checking my Facebook/Whatsapp accounts.

• No sense of purpose in life.

If there is no sense of purpose in Life it is highly unlikely to feel self-motivated to finish tasks on time. As an individual it is good to be ambitious, in case that is not possible by you, at least we can do some daydreaming like in case i learn new skills today i will be considered as a domain expert and i can be of some inspiration to the future generations. At least fantasizing about these kinds of things will help us to come back to reality and start focusing on improving existing skills/knowledge.

• Being in a static environment where everything can be predicted

When things go smoothly in life there are high chances the brain will not be interested in trying out new stuff and exploring things in a different way. Maybe that is one reason people say we can learn more in Chaotic environments like Startups rather than Typical Big MNCs which is more structured.

• No sense of urgency

If We don't keep deadlines to complete a course of action we can be rest assured that the particular action will never be completed in a lifetime. Deadlines are the biggest motivators in our day to day Work in our professional Journey.

• Lack of Focus/Consistency/Self Discipline

Reading books on Emotional Intelligence will help in improving Focus/Consistency/Self_Discipline. Maybe it is also good to attend workshops that will help us in ensuring we are serious about things if you have time/Money. Recently I am following one of the X IPS officer @rajanSingh in Linkedin who has a company that is focussed on digital Detox and Habit building.

https://www.conceptowl.com/

https://www.habitstrong.com/

• No Value for our Time

Every scrolling on Facebook Wall or Instagram or TikTok or PubG etc comes at the cost of our Precious Time. Nothing is free in this world. Be careful next time you spend hours of time-wasting on Social Networking platforms.

• Cheating Others and Ourselves

Of course, all the above content is irrelevant to you if you yourself have a "*CYA" mentality and find joy in Cheating your Boss/Company and enjoy shortcuts in Life.

* CYA means “Cover Your Ass”, or in other words the opposite of accountability and ownership

Finally, I want to wrap up the article with a famous quotation from "Albert Einstein"

"Insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results !!"

Regards

Sriharsha Pudi

@STA Engineer, SpicaWorks Pvt Limited