Where are our heroes?
| Intel has been running this ad, about how their heros are different. The ad featuring Ajay Bhatt, (actually an actor portraying him) co-inventor of the USB, while largely intended to position the Intel brand in India raises some interesting questions. (Incidentally Intel runs exactly the same ad with a Chinese actor, targeting China) |
Where indeed are our engineering heroes in India? When I talk to engineers working in India, names like Bob Pease (till recently of National), analog engineer and character extraordinaire, Jim Williams (now of Linear Tech, via National) pop up. In embedded systems folks talk of Jack Ganssle and software development again features folks like Steve McConnell (formerly of Microsoft). I hear of Joel Spolksy and more recently David Hansson, creater of Ruby on Rails. All the folks who were named are extremely articulate, write frequently and are US based. They have also gotten a fair share of exposure in tech and mainstream media.
It seems to me that if the Indian engineering community has heroes, it is entrepreneurs such as Narayana Murthy or Rajesh Jain. It’s for their entrepreneurial not engineering contributions that we admire them. Even a Mashelkar (formerly of CSIR) or the few heroes we know or celebrate from the Defense Labs, be it Kalam (can we name anyone else?) are celebrated for their leadership than their engineering skills. So who are the individual contributors, the engineers, we admir? Why do we not know them, hear of them or talk and celebrate them?
I am hoping many of you will tell me I am wrong, and name folks who have inspired you, or continue to do so. I speak of practicing and active engineers in our lives, working out of India, who are a source of inspiration to you and others. I know a few and hope to feature them in the coming weeks as guests at this blog. In the meantime, write to us to tell us about who your engineering heroes are.
Yes indeed… The unsung “engineering” heroes of (can we call it this) VLSI evolution (if not revolution) here in India deserve their piece of sunshine in the web-world. There are two people who have impressed me, and have been of immense influence -
1) K.S.Raghunathan – He was my manager for a year (1988-89) that I was at ITI microelectronics division. Whereas Dr.Prabhakar was the motive factor behind the nascent VLSI activities at ITI, Raghu-sir (as I would call him and still do) was the inspirational technical leader for us. He single-handedly lead both EDA development and design development activities in the small IC design group that existed in ITI. We did not have a Design-Rule-Checker, and had lots of standard-cell designs that we used to cross-check for design-rule errors by human inspection. He saw our predicament and coded a DRC tool inside 1 week! It was incredible to see his creativity. Raghu has kind of retired from active VLSI industry, but is doing some kick-ass research in the Quantum-Mechanics/Physics arena at IISc. He could not officially register for a PHD (thanks to the bureaucratic rules of our institutions), but is doing stellar work in a field he loves.
2) Rajat Gupta – He was a manager at Arcus Technology – Bangalore, in the years I worked there (1994-97). He came from SCL-Punjab and brought a very talented team along with him to Arcus. He was another IC design “guru” that touched my life. Unfortunately, I never directly reported to him, and my learnings from his vast knowledge was limited to a few interactions. But I did learn a lot about what he stood for, from the umpteen interactions that I had with his wards that he brought along (Somnath Paul, Atul Wokhlu, Bira to mention a few). Rajat is a leader in Beceem (WiMax startup) to my current knowledge.
I thank these leaders for being inspiration to so many of us to increase our desire to learn and learn well.
We keeping looking everywhere. Where are the olympic medal prospects? Where are the engineers? Where is the next Bhagat Singh.
If you want to make this world a better place to live in take a look at yourself and make that change– Michael Jackson