Puneet Gupta - The Most Important Ingredient of Being an Engineer Is to Solve Real-Life Problems (Senior VP - HomeLane)

In the pursuit of learning new stacks, many youngsters forget to hone that fundamental skill. With experience, comes the ability to upgrade the complexity of a problem and not just change the programming language.

Tell us about your background, journey, and upbringing.

Born and brought up in the capital city of Delhi, I come from a middle-class family that gives a lot of importance to humility and discipline, values I try to live by. I completed my BTech from IIT Delhi and my Masters from the University of Maryland, College Park, US. Since then, I have worked in niche technologies and product development functions over a 20+ year career in Engineering.

What made you interested in this field and how did you narrow it down?

Engineering happened somewhat accidentally to me - I did not show any telltale signs of being an engineer as a child (no gadgets that I fiddled with and damaged). Like most youngsters in those days, I did not really know or understand which “domain” would work best for me. But once I got started with my BTech, I realized it might be a fairly good fit.

Around the third year of engineering, I started to show a keen interest in signal (speech, image, video) processing and communication engineering with a special leaning toward computer vision and pattern recognition technologies that today is a part of the larger Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) domain. 

My BTech project (document image processing, indexing & smart retrieval) further spurred me on towards the focus area of my Master's research & thesis work.

What does your typical workday look like?

Today, a typical day at HomeLane is filled with collaborative engagements. A fair bit of problem-solving (new solutions, algorithms, or system design/reviews), some mentoring, and a whole lot of roadmap planning & strategizing. 

We are trying to disrupt the home-interiors market with some amazing technology platforms like SpaceCraft, and that is very exciting to be a part of. Beyond that, there are tech talks to keep the grey cells firing, and some fun team-level activities to balance out the ‘nerd quotient a bit!

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Several global companies have come out and thrown their support behind not needing a formal education. What is your opinion about this for your field?

At the end of the day, the purpose of education is to build a foundation for the responsibilities you undertake in your career. In today’s world, there are many means to gain technical knowledge and develop specific skill sets. 

This democratization of education using new mediums (enabled by EdTech portals and upskilling institutions) is therefore changing how people approach getting educated and how corporations hire as well.

Needless to say, the final test of any form of education (formal or otherwise) lies in how well you can apply it and how strong your fundamentals are.

Google, Adobe, and most MNCs have a strict policy around sharing ex-employee data. How can one approach background checks in this situation?

Wherever you can, background verification checks should be conducted by the Talent Acquisition team. Aadhar forms a basic level of verification, but the rest of the candidate’s credibility is often built during the interview stages that he/she is put through. 

A lot can be learned from a simple open chat with the candidate, preferably face-to-face or at least on a two-way video call. It’s just a matter of asking the right questions. Interview questions need to be well planned and thought through for this reason.

How has your field evolved over the years and what future changes do you predict?

As I’ve mentioned, I majored in Signal Processing and Communications engineering. Over the span of my 20+ year career, I have worked in myriad domains: voice/video over IO, video collaboration, video surveillance, enterprise streaming, computer graphics, computer vision, and machine learning. 

My journey started with embedded systems which were all the rage back in the day, and slowly evolved into creating more complex systems. Slowly moving from being embedded becoming more & more versatile, harnessing the higher compute power on devices. Cloud computing further changed the game & the software ecosystem.

In recent years, data science has truly transformed the way we run businesses, with analytics playing a multifaceted role in delivering business insights & enabling applications that were hitherto just dreamt of. 

Extended Reality, I believe, will be a huge gamechanger, especially in the post-Covid world where we need to substitute physical experiences with something that delivers experiences that are close to that of physical reality. AI-driven healthcare and diagnostics also look well poised for growth.

                             

What advice do you have for those eyeing this career?

I feel it’s important for engineers to remember that the most important ingredient of being an engineer is to solve real-life problems and to use innovative methods to do so. 

In the pursuit of learning new stacks, many youngsters forget to hone that fundamental skill. With experience, comes the ability to upgrade the complexity of a problem and not just change the programming language.

Which is your favorite book and why?

I am quite an avid reader (mostly English fiction), and therefore it's hard to pick one. “The Book Thief”, “The Kite Runner” and “Life of Pi” stand out for me, in terms of memorable ones. Most of the books that I like tell simple human stories with some unique narratives. 

As someone who is also a writer and playwright, these are the kinds of stories that I like to write as well.