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.