In Challenging Times, the Tide Changes

Geeks are So In

In the early 1960s when he was choosing a career, Professor Chamberlin recalled, technical people were respected and well paid. Money, he said, was part of the equation. “But the bigger part of the motivation for me,” he said, “was that I would be doing exciting and important work and that my contributions would be appreciated.”

--With Finance Disgraced, Which Career Will Be King? [nytimes.com]

The universities in Singapore have release information regarding the grade profile of students entering each course of study. [NTU] [NUS] [SMU]

A comparison between common courses at the various universities at the 10th percentile (letter grades are for GCE A-Level grade combinations, and floating point numbers are the polytechnic diploma GPAs):

Course	NTU(H2/H1, GPA)	NUS	SMU
Accountancy	AAB/B, 3.71	AAA/B, 3.64	ABB/A, 3.60
Business	AAB/B, 3.63	AAB/B, 3.50	ABB/B, 3.49
Economics	ABB/B, 3.48	BBC/C, 3.39	BBB/B, 3.30
Law	-	AAA/A	AAA/B
Information Systems, NTU Comp Eng, Computing (IS)	BCC/C, 3.38	BCC/B, 3.54	BCC/B, 3.16
Social Sciences, Psy, Socio	BCC/B, 3.39	BBC/C, 3.39	BBC/B, 3.28

Reproduced from [Jay Lim's Blog]

Some observations: Computer Science/Engineering has the one of the lowest admission cut-offs, except when considering polytechnic diploma GPA for NUS (at which point, CS actually has a more stringent requirement than even Business).

It is true - we simply do not get the best and the brightest in Computer Science. And while I imagine it would be very difficult for an entrepreneur with solely non-technical background to create the next big thing in software and Internet technology. The faculty in NUS routinely relies on foreign students to prop up the quality of the student base - an illustrative example is a fellow Singaporean in Google who had my PhD supervisor as his supervisor for his project. In the first meeting between the professor and the student, the professor simply assumed the student was not Singapore and asked, "so, which part of China are you from?".

Geeks make money - No?

Do not fill young people's heads with too much nonsense like how they have to look cool. Sell the cool ideas they work with. Teach them to see that you can make money and be rich only if you have something worth selling, and that is where engineers come in.

Years ago, engineering was the top school to go to.

Today, everyone wants to be in business and make money and that is why our young flock to anything and everything to do with business, finance and economics.

-- Straits Times Forum Comment - Focus on engineers' 'cool' ideas, not their image [straitstimes.com]

As my colleague (in Google mind you) likes to quip: "If you are in software engineering for money, you are in the wrong business."

If you are the gahmen, hear my plea

Singapore might want smart and hardworking generalists to be to civil servants by enticing them with extraordinary salaries. But if you want a striving science and technology sector, specialists have to be nurtured. And my last rant: uhm, propping up A*Star scholars like trophy dogs is not the way to go, simply due to the overemphasis of look-at-my-scholars-with-their-high-grades, aren't they adorable sense of it all.

Rejected by Harvard? Not a problem. You're in good company.

The list is, well, impressive. Investor Warren Buffet, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass,
Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner, NBC "Today" show host Meredith
Vieira, former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw, New Yorker magazine
editor David Remnick, CNN founder Ted Turner, folk rock legend Art Garfunkel,
Matt Groening, creator of the animated television series "The Simpsons," Sun
Microsystems chairman Scott McNealy, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
president Harold Varmus, and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger
round out the list.

-- Non Ivy League Graduates

Making a career choice

While growing up, many people will give you generic advice that sound like this: “chase your dreams”. This seems to imply that you are looking at the goal-point and deciding what you should do now. This is potentially so disastrous that it should come with a disclaimer - "Chase your dreams* - Terms and conditions may apply".

Dreams

First of all, what is a dream? If your life goal is something transient like “I want to be rich”, or, horrors, “I want to be a PhD”, then what happens after you have attained that objective? You have achieved the purpose of your life. That's a mean feat to beat, but I suppose once you are rich, you are able to pursue other interests and engage in philanthropist activities like funding the cure for cancer, or saving the world. Or once you are conferred a PhD, you can, uhm, well, that's not go there.

The point is that if your satisfaction is achieved only at the endpoints, that means you spend most of your time unsatisfied while you are working. Instead of evaluating your life based on what you have achieved, view life as a journey - enjoy the ride.

I think the solution is to move generally towards your goal. This is in reference to one particular trekking exercise when I was training in the army. I was lost and asked the leader where exactly we were on the map. "Well, I'm not sure where we are too. But the end-point is at the North, so I am moving generally Northwards". I thought he was crazy back then, but in retrospect, I would have been consumed by the inane need to know exactly where we were and would have wasted time by stopping whereas his decision to simply proceed towards the goal was the most sound decision. We got to our destination ahead of schedule.

In other words, you pursue the things which you are interested in. As long as you are not wasting your time, you can worry later about what actual paths you take. However, taking up scholarships in Singapore is particularly noteworthy and there is a specific question students considering to take up scholarships which have bonds (like those in Singapore) need to ask themselves. Are you truly interested in the work that the institution will assign you after graduation? I am not talking about faint interest like "oh yeah, I find health policies to be important and 'interesting'. Working at the Ministry of Health will be a breeze!" I am talking about the fire and the passion to work on something even if you are not going to be paid. Are you as eager to start work as Rambo is to dash into the battlefield? Yes, that's the kind of dedication I am referring to.

Many, in fact, most people have a resigned view on this. Oh, it is impossible to be working on things that you love. Seeing them work is almost like clockwork, start at 9, perform work, end at 5. It does not mean that they are not good at what they do, but it does mean that when things become difficult, they will be the first to leave. Motivation, that's the key. Even the misguided individuals (IMHO) who are working for the pot of gold at the end will persevere longer than unmotivated people. But, only the truly passionate people are deriving any sense of satisfaction from the work.

The Almost Non-Job

Undoubtedly the most amazing fact is that almost everyone knows this, and yet so many choose the daily grind of going to work doing things they do not like. Going to Google is a fantastic opportunity - one that I think few would hesitate to take up. But it almost never came to be because I never actually wanted to apply.

My wife had found out that one of her friends knew someone in Google, so she requested her friend to forward my resume without asking me. And I got angry. I got angry because I did not think I was ready to apply. It's too soon, too early. What if they reject me? That would ruin my chances in the future.

But guess what, what if it's not too soon? Maybe the time is now, and you never know. That's why I am on a crusade to encourage people to venture out of their comfort zone. I openly ask people if they want to apply to Google, and if so, they should get me to refer. Cynical people like to retort and ask, "There must be a catch - There has to be employee referral bonus". And why yes, there is a $2000 referral for each successful referral. But that's not the point. Getting a Google employee to refer you vastly improves your chances of being noticed by recruiters because Google is on track to receive more than two million resumes in 2007.

If you do not dream big, you will not do big things. I hope your life can be shaped by your own dreams and curiosity. Just remember you do not have to wait to start - take the first step now.