- May 30, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 3
In the early days of graduating, a lot of people were surprised why I went into banking from engineering.
It had been a huge move, and to a certain extent, looked suicidal as well given I had no prior knowledge to finance. I was far more handicapped than any fresh graduate today that was seeking entry into an investment bank.
After 14 years today, no one saw this degree as an awkward handicap. In fact, most people that I meet today thought that the study of engineering gave me the necessary foundation to build my knowledge in the world of banking. It was hard to imagine that I had went this far without receiving any formal education in accounting. And because of that, I think the way I looked at financial statements was fundamentally very different. Most of the valuation stuff I learned on the job made a lot of logical sense to me.
Although I am admittedly a poor student when it came to grades, I credit a lot of the mindset that I have today a result of rigorous training and analytical skills acquired during those 4 years in engineering school.
I chanced upon this video I took way back in 2003 (about 17 years now). It was a project in our third year of engineering whereby students had to get into groups to build a remote controlled car literally from scratch.
You were being graded on not only the basic functionality of your car—whether it moves according to how you programmed the remote—but also any additional features. For example, we added a module that would automatically turn on the headlights of the car under low light, using a light sensor chip.
The ironic part about the project was: while we had managed to program the direction pads correctly including the addition of some interesting features to the car, the live demonstration lasted no more than five minutes.
The car ran on a single 9-Volt 6LR61 battery then. It was a rechargeable battery.
And every time we ran the tests and used up the cell, we had to go back to the lab to get it replaced. It costed $12 for each replacement. To make matters worse, we added a finishing touch before the final evaluation, constructing the entire chassis using steel scrap bought from the streets at Sungei Road, effectively doubling its weight. Within thirty seconds from switching it up, the car gave it all just to roll forward-left, forward-right, flash its headlights once and then the battery collapsed.
It was a classic amateur engineer's mistake.
The weight of the car was simply too much. We must have easily replaced 4 to 5 batteries that day.
Engineers may not be the most commercial of people - not at first. But they learn fast and are resourceful. People give us too little credit for being practical people.
When I started out my very first job (2 weeks after my last exam paper in the final year of university), I managed to snag a job working alongside the Chief Engineer at Philips Institutional TV. My main task at that point of time was to build a working prototype of how the software interface would look like on their TVs. As we were nearing completion, the Chief Engineer asked me, "Does it work?" and I replied, "Yes". And he would say, "We are engineers, if we say it work, it better work!".
By the way, we passed the remote-controlled car module eventually with a B+.
