It's time ....

It will be two years in March since I joined my current company. I gave up on a lot of materialistic things, friends and a part of my heart (the part which wanted to avoid all the changes) to get to this job. Somewhere during my Master's degree program I started to love registers, memory and CPU way too much and this love was my sole motivation to take up a job in the field of mobile devices.

Alright on paper I got my dream job, I work with the Camera firmware team for the company's hottest and most important platform. But like most marriages the honeymoon ended in the first two months and by the end of third I was having thoughts of switching jobs. But then I decided to change things around me, try to make it more logical from a scientific and engineering perspective. I discussed issues with my team leader and to a great extent he agreed on my inputs about improving processes and regaining some control over the getting out of hand situations. Anyways after this trying phase of six months I realized corporations are a big machine in themselves, one faulty part leads to a drastic decrease of efficiency in the whole setup and having multiple inefficient parts is a definite disaster. So despite my resolute to do things the logical and stable way I was soon lost in a world of incompetence and technical disgrace. To this day I fight for the right principles and methodologies at work but deep down in my heart I know I am fighting a lost battle, in the end it is only going to hurt me. And more often than not it does.

In all these years what I have learnt about this industry is that genuine science and engineering really don't have a place here, they are just mere side props which big corporations use to play bigger games, the biggest game being "making money". I have worked personally with three of the five biggest (by volume) smartphone companies and all three have had the same ugly practices. Utter disrespect for any and every engineering principle, lazy and selfish employees, deceit to their customers and making money being the sole motivation. I am not against making money but I am definitely against uncontrolled greed for money. If I have to work like an greedy idiot then I may as well work for a bank, at least my paycheck would be fatter.

THE BAD NEWS is I have given up trying to make things better at work, in my current setup I think it is not a gamble I would like to play, I have been trying for the last 1.5 years and things have only got worse so it's time that I try something else. Maybe I am not so good at it or maybe it is not possible for one small guy to change hundred other people around him in a corporate setup.

THE GOOD NEWS is I have decided once and for all to get out of this waste of life lifestyle and pursue science for the rest of my life. Hopefully in the next six-eight months I would be able to realize this dream and feel better about me and my future.

Ciao