You are the trail you left behind: Congratulations Nigel

Here's what matters: The way you approach your work.

What have you built? What have you led? How do you make decisions? What's your reserve of emotional labor like? How do you act when no one is looking?

You are not your resume. You are the trail you've left behind, the people you've influenced, the work you've done.

I was reminded of the above post from Seth Godin when I heard about news of Nigel being promoted to Distinguished Engineer. There are only 4 more Distinguished Engineers and  a couple of Fellows in the entire R&D org of NI gives an idea of how remarkable the promotion of Nigel is. Of course it didn't come as a surprise to a lot of us who are fortunate enough to work closely with Nigel, for the knowledge he possesses, the amount of time he invests, and most importantly his total self-less dedication to NI and its people is something very very rare. Infact, more than Nigel a lot of folks that know him rejoiced at this elevation. In the celebration that was organised the same evening, literally the who's who of NI showed up to congratulate Nigel. It is indeed more special for us at the RF team in NIB as we are the direct beneficiaries of Nigel's largesse and he has patiently groomed a lot of us. He has contributed immensely to the success of the RF team in B'lore and we all continue to look up to him. 

Some anxious folks asked me whether anything would change. Nigel has promised that nothing will change (including his pranks). I'm sure this promotion inspires a lot of us and hope few Distinguished Engineers would come from NIB too in the coming years. In the mean time let us celebrate the man. And remember "you are the trail you've left behind, the people you've influence and the work you've done".

I did ask Nigel what exactly he does that makes him what he is (apart from the fact that he has abundant energies) and where does he gets his information from. He kindly listed a few things. I'll make a formal document sometime soon, but take a look at this list. Notice that anyone can do these, if they have the will. Also notice that almost everything he is talking about is publicly available for those who seek. I find the list inspiring. Hope you too are.

• Read Americas SE trip reports
  • Follow up with SEs to get clarification
  • Determine whether an R&D group should take some action
• Attend R&D + SE Collaboration meeting on Tuesday Mornings (does not happen very frequently)
• Do detailed evaluations of competitors products -  a lot through reading documentation, some through playing with products
• Read competitors manuals - understanding how established competitors do things is useful to understand what customers using other products might expect; it also brings out issues we might not think about because we are relatively new to a lot in RF.  We don't have to do things the way our competitors do but all things being equal there is no point in doing it differently just to annoy our customers
• Use (or look at code for) a lot of our RF Software - Drivers, RFmx, Toolkits, SFPs, RFIC Software, RF STS, etc.
• Read articles in Microwave Journal  - understand trends, challenges, etc.  Plenty of other journals; this just happens to be one I am currently subscribed to.
• Read feature specs for various RF groups.  Reading how other folks are solving problems both gives you ideas and gives you more knowledge of how our various software works.
• Read Chinese SEs project summaries.  I wish I could actually access the more detailed presentations they but don't seem to have access to the network folder they are in.
• Read Marketing and Segment trip reports. Marketing trip reports I usually get through emails.  Semi Segment trip reports are posted at https://nitalk.jiveon.com/groups/semiconductor-segment/content; there is other content there and so you have to ignore non-trip report documents
• Read various competitor and customer white papers.  E.g. Qualcomm presentation on NR 5G technologies.
• Be involved in the design of all our test software and hardware
• Go on customer visits.  A relatively small percentage of my information comes from this; however, it is important from a credibility perspective to say I directly heard it from a customer.  And it is very useful to see it directly as opposed through the interpretation of others who might have specific perspectives.
• Attend technology exchanges Qorvo, ADI, Qualcomm.  Yeah, these are one form of a customer visit.
• Read V2A presentations and associated notes
• Read RFTAG presentations (I try to attend most of them)
• Subscribe to RF PSE Support page on NI-Talk â€“ I am not subscribed anymore because most of the posts are for SDR and the traffic was too high at the time.

Food for thought for the Weekend: (13-Jan-2018): On discipline, mentors, mediocrity

Food for thought for the Weekend: My series where I present assorted collection of interesting blog posts, TED talks, podcast and articles I read/listened this week, some quotes that resonated with me, excerpts from my own reading.

• I had written about a book called Tribes of Mentors and how the author has spoken to 100+ successful people and distilled their advice. Someone read the entire book and has created this summary.
• Ever wondered why many people get stuck in mediocrity and/or why sometimes we ourselves get stuck there? This article talks about the reasons for it and what to do get unstuck.
• 3 ways to attract the mentor you truly want - My regular readers know the importance that I put on mentors. There is a lot of misconceptions about the type of mentor one needs, our expectations etc., This article sheds some light on how to go about finding a great mentor.
• Prof. Cal Newport, author of one of my favourite books Deep Work, introduces us to Jocko Willink a former Navy SEAL and talks about the Power of Discipline. As someone in need of more discipline, I immediately ordered his new book Discipline Equals Freedom. Rocko says:

 If you want freedom, then you need to have discipline…the more discipline you have in your life the more you’ll be able to do what you want. That’s not true initially; initially the discipline might be things you don’t want to do at the time, but the more you do things that you don’t want to do, the more you do the right things, the better off you’ll be and the more freedom you’ll have…”

Has your new year resolutions started falling off already?

Hopefully you made some new year resolutions this Jan too (however cliched they might be). Perhaps you are noticing that the intensity has started dropping back and you are getting worried that the stories of several years might repeat again. Is it happening? How do you plan to cope with it? What are your suggestions for rest of us?

Food for thought for the Weekend (6-Jan-18): Intel

Food for thought for the Weekend: My series where I present assorted collection of interesting blog posts, TED talks, podcast and articles I read/listened this week, some quotes that resonated with me, excerpts from my own reading.

Yesterday there is a big story on Intel chips having a security breach (later confirmed that even processors from ARM, AMD etc., also to have similar issues), which means that almost every PC, smartphone, tablet is under threat. Here's some background (including Intel's official response).

This reminds me of the famous Pentium floating point bug that had come to plague Intel in 1994. As an young engg then, I had found it very fascinating (the mathematical analysis of the bug, how it was discovered, what all it'd affect and some jokes around it at Intel's expense) and if you read Andy Grove's  (Intel's co-founder and later its CEO) seminal book "Only the Paranoid Survive", you'd learn a lot about this story in the very first chapter itself.

Some people are predicting that the current crisis is much bigger than that. I also read about work arounds people are already proposing (which would have performance impact). Infact in the RFmx global weekly update meeting y'day, there was a very short discussion on how this might affect NI's product and is there anything we need to do. Worth keeping a tab on it (and if you find interesting articles, kindly let me know or put the links in the comments section for everyone's benefit).

Finally, some people are accusing Intel's CEO of selling all his shares (worth about $39M) after knowing about this bug, but before it became public.

Interesting links if you want to know more:

• Kernel-memory-leaking Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign
• Intel chip security flaw: Here's all you need to know about 'Meltdown' and 'Spectre'

Want to make 2018 little different?

Last year I urged you all to take just two initiatives in 2017. One was setting goals and the second one was getting a mentor. Hope you did both. In case you were not able to find a mentor, I have some good news for new. Tim Ferris celebrated author, entrepreneur and public speaker (many of his podcastshave been ranked #1), has come up with a new book titled "Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World". He has gone and asked the same 10-12 questions to over 100  very successful people who have gladly shared what has worked for them (I'm reading this book in office - one mentor a day, so you may find my copy on my desk if you want to take a look for yourself). 

Why one mentor, we now have access to hundreds of them. Wishing you every success in 2018.

Here's what the book is all about:

When facing life’s questions, who do you turn to for advice? We all need mentors, particularly when the odds seem stacked against us. To find his own, bestselling author and podcast guru Tim Ferriss tracked down more than 100 eclectic experts to help him, and you, navigate life. Through short, action-packed profiles, he shares their secrets for success, happiness, meaning, and more. No matter the challenge or opportunity, something in these pages can help.

You will learn:

- The three books legendary investor Ray Dalio recommends most often
- Lessons and tips from elite athletes like Maria Sharapova, Kelly Slater, Tony Hawk and Dan Gable
- How and why Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz says no to most incoming requests
- The meditation and mindfulness practices of David Lynch, Jimmy Fallon, Sharon Salzberg, Rick Rubin, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and others
- The high-school loss that motivated actor Terry Crews for life . . . and how you can use the lesson
- Why TED curator Chris Anderson thinks ‘pursue your passion’ is terrible advice
- How Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens went from repeated rejections to global mega-bestseller
- Why comedian Patton Oswalt wishes at least one catastrophic failure on anyone in the arts
- Astrophysicist Janna Levin’s unique reframe that helps her see obstacles as opportunities
- Why actor Ben Stiller likes to dunk his head in a bucket of ice in the morning

TIM FERRISS is one of Fast Company’s ‘Most Innovative Business People’ and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba and more. He is also the author of The 4-Hour Work Week, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef and Tools of Titans. The Observer and other media have named him ‘the Oprah of audio’ due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, which has exceeded 200 million downloads.