If you are passionate about something, make everything else secondary says Ashim Prasad

As I mentioned in the last blog, apart from expressing my own views I would also like to present views of some of technical leaders in the industry. It is a pleasure to present one such conversation with a friend and ex-colleague of mine, Ashim Prasad who is currently working as Principal Systems Engineer at Aricent, Bangalore. Ashim is deeply passionate about building new stuff, concrete stuff and prototyping is his second nature. Hope you enjoy the conversation.

Brief bio:
May 2007 – present, Principal Systems Engineer, Aricent
2005-2006, Senior VP, Textual Analytics Solutions,
1998-2005, Technical Manager, Sasken Communication Technologies Limited
1996-1998, Engineer, Verifone
1994-1996, Engineer, ICIM
1994 B.Tech. IIT Bombay

Vinay: What is your current role?
Ashim: Current role has 4 parts: (1) Architecting products – This involves looking at architecture for new products as well as re-looking at existing products. You may have 2-3 different products architected differently at different point of time. I look at convergence points across these multiple products. (2) Technology tracking – It involves primarily standards tracking. Identify common trends. This becomes an input to Product Line Management (PLM). (3) Prototyping – new product ideas (4) Expertise building – This involves mentoring and training people.

Vinay: How will you describe your journey to this point?
Ashim: It was vague. It just happened. Started working from 94. Passion towards certain things started developing from 1999-2000. Before that it was like doing a job, earning money, whichever company gives better salary, join that. Work did not matter. Rather there was no passion.

Vinay: How did you discover your passion?
Ashim: I think passion was there. But it was not out. Self-realization was not there that this is what I like. Hence, for 6 years I was doing whatever came across. And suddenly, I realized that this is not what I want to do and I want to do product development. The feeling was “Have I crated anything?”, “No”, “Do I want to create something?”, “Yes”, “Do I want to create something which people want to use?” “Yes” “How do I do that?” so answer came clear and loud that I can’t do what I want in my existing role. So there was a need to change. Finally I came to a realization that I enjoy “creating”. Initially I was confident of this realization only 20-30% that this is really what I want to do. But I went ahead with that. Then it crystallized after 3 to 4 years.

Vinay: How did the passion manifest?
Ashim: I don’t remember the details. But it was during that time that various ideas started getting fixed in my mind that this is what I should be doing. Ideas with respect to domain that I like to work in, the kind of work I want to do.

Vinay: What kind of idea did you form at that time?
Ashim: Precisely the kind of work I am doing right now. i.e. playing an architect’s role.

Vinay: Then what happened?
Ashim: Then I took a change in my career. I was working in a services group in the organization. I decided to move to a products group within the organization. This was in 2000. I went there when there was no position left. The group head was still willing to take me but at a lower salary. So I took a 20% salary hit. So the career change came at a cost. But it helped me in the long run.
Initially there was not much responsibility assigned to me. But still I was in a company of people who shared similar passions. And soon an opportunity came as one person resigned in the group. This new opportunity was a mix of tech and delivery. This involved delivering entire software on a device. At the same time technically responsible for delivery.

Vinay: What do you mean “technically responsible”?
Ashim: It was more like a sub-system design. There was an architect who was responsible for system level architecture. I was responsible for the architecture of a sub-system.

Vinay: What happened next?
Ashim: I continued at sub-system level for about 4 years and then I started moving towards system level architecture. Again, I don’t think I planned it that way. It happened.

Vinay: What did moving from sub-system to system meant?
Ashim: You take into account the entire system and start looking at how it will be deployed. You start taking the resource view (e.g. memory/MIPS) for the entire system.

Vinay: What was the next move in your career?
Ashim: I got into a startup and subsequently started my own business and I did that for one and a half year. Roles in this phase involved doing system level design like in the earlier roles. However, it had an additional component of business attached.

Vinay: What was your learning in this phase?
Ashim: Biggest learning in the phase was this: When I used to do architecture or system design earlier, the business inputs were not considered important. In this phase I learnt that these inputs are the most critical ones.

Vinay: Can you give one example of such a technical decision?
Ashim: We were thinking of a couple of options for a solution which was targeted for retail automation. The 2 main options were (1) build you own device (2) use mobile phone. Building your own device would have meant clean architecture; and making the existing phone work means non-clean architecture and it also meant taking deviations from the specification of the solution. But we went ahead with the second option. Because that made more business sense rather than making your own device.

Vinay: What happened next?
Ashim: This phase lasted for one and half year. After that I decided to focus on technology (rather than business) for some more time. Of course, not loosing the learning that business understanding is critical. But having a primary responsibility for technical leadership.

Vinay: What were some of the exciting moments throughout your career?
Ashim: First one occurred after I shifted from services to products. It was the first launch of the product. This was internal launch (within the organization). However, seeing the entire thing working with plastic and everything integrated was an exciting experience. Second one was the plunge I took of doing my own business. There wasn’t any end result that was achieved. However, the journey was certainly enjoyable.

Vinay: What do you see as challenges in the current role?
Ashim: One challenge still remains is to get a buy-in from everyone for some of the technical decisions you take.

Vinay: What kind of approaches you take to overcome this challenge?
Ashim: One thing which I try to do is try to interact more with people who are really going to implement. Many points I am able to convey off the meeting rooms than in the meeting room (informally than formally). Till now, I have found convincing senior management easier.

Second challenge which I see is keeping track of multiple threads. When you are doing a system design, there are several threads running. For example, for building a phone, you need to take various decisions related to hardware, firmware, RTOS, JVM. These decisions are interdependent. You solve the interdependency between two of them, the third one conks off. Keeping track of all of them simultaneously is a challenge. I haven’t still figured out a better way. I go in an incremental manner. I am not able to handle more than 4 or 5 such threads at a time while in reality there may 10+ threads existing.

Vinay: What kind of advice you will give to people who are aspiring to be technical leaders?
Ashim: This is more of a general suggestion, not only for technical leaders. If you are passionate about something, go for it and make everything else secondary like salary, organization, which people you work with. If your primary goal is organization, then make it primary and make everything else secondary.

Disclaimer: Views expressed here are Ashim's personal and may not be representative of Aricent.