• Name of your host: Vikram Dabre
• Relationship to you: Father

1. What is your job title?

• Senior Staff Engineer (Electrical Engineer)

2. What is your job description?

• Design and Verification of electronics chips also called as ASIC (Application specific integrated Circuit)

3. What are the duties and/or tasks you perform at your job?

• Architecture of Testbenches and mentor junior electronic engineers.
• Testbenches=Programs to test functionality of complex chips

4. What qualifications do you have for this job in the following areas:
   A) Training?

• Specialization in Microelectronics during my masters, Hands of training in verification languages

B) Education?

• BITS Pilani: Birla Institute of Technology and Science
• Masters in Microelectronics

C) Experience?

• 22 years of experience with companies like Microchip and AMD

D) Skills and attributes (personal qualities)?

• This job requires logical and Analytical thinking. It also requires detail-oriented approach to solving problems

5. What are some of the things you like about the job?

• Being able to apply all the educational knowledge in work and the complexity of designing circuits is always an intriguing challenge.

6. What are some of the things you dislike about this job?

• The tendency of getting involved too much results in losing quality time with family.
• This job is also quite draining because of the long working hours.

7. How do you anticipate this job changing in the next 5 years or so?

• With the shrinking size of transistors, currently at 3nm design size the complexity will increase by many folds because of which we need to adapt to a new approach like using AI in verifying these challenging designs.

8. Other Question(s): How many years of education did it take until you were able to get your first job?

• Personally, it took 16 years of education. After that, I got my first job

Student Reflection: 

1. Give three reasons why you would like this job (be specific):

Firstly, I like the logical approach required to do this job. It requires a lot of critical thinking and mathematics which happen to be my plus point. Secondly, this job requires talking and teaching people. I love socializing and teaching people. Explaining and learning from people who are older and younger than me opens opportunities to learn new concepts from a different perspective. Lastly, this is well paying job. It takes a lot of time and energy to master your knowledge in this field, but once you are done that, you make a lot of money.

2. Give three reasons why you would not like this job (be specific):

Growing up, watching my dad never intrigued me. Being is screens constantly is mentally draining and personally, I can’t do that. This job also requires a lot of application of things you know. Applying concepts to real word problems has always been a struggle for me because I can’t think outside the box a lot. Lastly, I like doing things that are more hands on, not digital. I’m not the best at technology and it doesn’t interest me a lot. I’m more into Science and I want to pursue something in the medical field.

3. Is this job for you? Why or why not?

This job unfortunately isn’t the best fit for me. As I explained before, I don’t enjoy the usage of technology, and nothing intrigues me about it. Growing up, watching my dad work and code for chips set a barrier in my mind that I would never be able to do this. I need a job that doesn’t involve sitting in one place for hours and staring at screens to solve problems. I enjoy helping people and I want to pursue something in the medical field. The human anatomy and the science behind everything are what I want to learn. My dad’s job is a very difficult and amazing job. I appreciate his efforts but his job just isn’t for me.

4. Explain the value of the TOKTW experience in relation to your ideas about your post secondary (after high school) plans (education?, training?, travel?, work?).

I think TOKTW day is a wonderful way to explore what your close ones do. I had no idea what my dad and this day gave me the chance to learn about this other side of him. I never appreciated his job and always thought of it as something boring and never gave it a space in my checklist of what I want to do after high school. This day gave me the opportunity to learn more about what he does. I was able to connect my personal attributes and I got to evaluate if this job was for me. Going to his work made me appreciate the beauty of his job more. It opens new job possibilities and gives me more insight into his job. My post-secondary plans include going to university. I’m hoping to go to a university outside of Vancouver or maybe even Canada. This day gave me ideas of what I want to do for university and has diverted me to explore more jobs.

My dad’s workplace:

My office: