Create Opportunities

This is excerpt from an email to a group of engineers. The email was response to another email in which a person raised an objection i.e. Its unfair to the fresh graduates that the Telecom companies post job requirements of over-experienced resources where even a fresh graduate can easily learn that role in a short span of time. Why not give fresh graduates a chance. The point was valid in itself but I felt it raises a more important point.

I think we are seeing the problem from a wrong angle. Whether the requirements in job description are reasonable or not is an important question on its own but more important questions are

1. Why does it suite the company to hire an overqualified person for a job? It should cost more, and a competitor should be able to offer same services at a lesser cost.

2. Why does it suite a person to do a job that demanded less than his qualification? Are the opportunities suiting qualification/experience lesser lucrative?

I think the reason of 1 is 2 itself. If an experienced person is available in the market and one can afford his salary easily then he should be hired.

To me, more important question is 2.

Telecom sector is hiring over-qualified (For many jobs a GPA 3.5+ and Electrical/Computer Engineering is over-qualification) because people are willing to join them.

People are willing to join them because they are paying better.

They are paying better because there are fewer opportunities in the market.

There are fewer opportunities in the market because there are fewer opportunity creators.

There are fewer opportunity creators because people want to do a job instead of innovating and starting companies.

It’s sort of a circular argument but I think Americans have more options because Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and founders of Google, Ebay etc instead of trying to get a Job in whatever sector was offering the best salary worked on new innovative products. Pakistan with its huge population has such a potential for ideas. From online shopping, Surveillance Systems, Tracking systems, Database management systems, Control products for our textile and fan industry, Pakistani Ebay, Smart energy meters to Designing a Solar generator and starting service for utility bill payments,.. The list goes on and on.. everything needs to be improved here which means that there is a huge window of opportunity. But just like the telecom sector, some foreign companies will come, start these services and our engineers will die for getting a job with them.

We should not allow telecom sector companies to be in a position to get free talent by identifying our own worth. By saying no, and taking some risks. Specially the people who have more than three years of development experience having an idea of ins and outs of industry. Many success stories that I can recall started from losing a job not from getting one. I think we need more of people who are willing to “stay hungry and stay foolish” as said in this inspirational speech of Steve Jobs (Most of people might already have read it) at commencement address at Stanford.

Text: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/grad-061505.html

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

Among a 1000 engineers on this Alumni there are very few who took risks.

For fresh jobless people,

Being jobless is the ideal time for you to groom yourself as once you are in a job you will never get enough time. You can try different things at this time.. May be get your hands dirty with Linux kernel programming, Or try to design a new computer architecture, Try to Model a communication system in Matlab, Or just create a website on any innovative idea ( e.g. buying/selling like ebay in Pakistan, or may be for live updated scores of cricket matches like Cricinfo) and use Google Adsense or your own ads later on to earn money (Many recent success stories starting from Hotmail, Google, Ebay and now youtube and Facebook etc have been exploiting huge potential of cyberspace.. With increasing internet speeds the innovations have just begun).. Or you can use this time to improve/learn the subjects you want to learn from world top universities.. You are born in a fortunate time when you can be taught by the best teachers at your desk.. Here are links to MIT, Berkeley and now many other lectures on youtube.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/

http://www.youtube.com/edu

I have seen a few and those have been excellent e.g. Linear Algebra by Gilbert Strang at MIT.. Linear Algebra is generally not taught well in Pakistan but is required in most of research work.

I can talk about R&D sector better than Telecom Operators. The situation in R&D sector is that if you are good at a skill (e.g. Algorithms, Hardware Design, Board Design, RTOS and Embedded programming, Software Development etc.) you almost always have job opportunities available. And to improve a skill does not require a job, you can improve your skills on your home PC. Just believe in yourself, and start improving the skill you like the most.