An Unemployed Engineer

“Yes my son! You secured a brilliant rank in your JEE. Its time for you to become an engineer now.” These lines of a proud father ploughed the impeccable seeds of hopes and dream in the child.
“Average package=4.5lacs, highest=15 lacs, Average 4.3, highest 17, Wi-Fi campus, Ranked one in International Robotics Championship,” such were the cheeky lines that were wooing them to invest all their bank balance along with 50-50 mixture of optimisms and reveries in an engineering institute. With every passing semesters the thoughts kept on changing. They (yes, the thoughts) travelled a beautiful journey from, “I will bag up a package of 20+ lacs” to “Let’s prepare for P.O.s and SSCs” passing via “GATE, paper publications, UPSC, CAT, Start-ups.” When the doomsday came, it was only a handful who could get a job and the rests were “Unemployed Engineers.”

There is no difference between an employed engineer and an unemployed one. No I am kidding! There is a huge difference. An employed one has an all clear answer to the question, “What are you doing in your life?” whereas an unemployed has all clear ways to tackle that questions with answers like , “Looking forward to GATE”, “Yaar, I just have to get out of this country. You know GRE and all”, “Job is for kids but men do start-ups.” Come on people, they are engineers, they can write a book on things that they don’t know a thing about. An employed one waits for the joining letter, whereas an unemployed one looks for a job opening letter. An employed one enjoys the peace and comfort of his place, when an unemployed tackles the rush and pace of the world. Employed is the king but the unemployed is the warrior.

An unemployed engineer is trapped in the quad-lemma of further studies, preparations, search for jobs and start-ups. He is trapped under the pressure of being called a liability or I better use the word “bojh.” 

“How would I be able to repay the loans?”

“Wish I would have just done diploma.”

“My father invested 5-10 lacs in my education but was I even worth a penny?”

These thoughts buries down the confidence and the zeal he had in him once. He tries to stand up and rise again. But every surrounding is not like the cave people in The Dark Knight Rises, they are more like bullies in our Bollywood movies, who believe that you are good for nothing. They never encourage you to move ahead, but despair you for sitting stagnant. But none can break the engineer in you. Even after finding negligence at every turn, an engineer continues his search. Multiple accounts at Linkedin, Angelist, Naukri.com, Intershala, Pinterest, Tumblr (ofcourse, fun is necessary), applying for 1000 jobs in a day. Roaming around the streets of Bangalore, Gurgaon for Walk-in interviews at every corners, an engineer never halts. Rejections make him stronger. Rejections make him smarter. As Joker once said, “Who doesn’t selects you simply make you stronger,” and it actually happens.

Searching for a conclusion, searching for a happy ending. I bet you are. An unemployed engineer doesn’t have one. His struggles continues until he finds something, he is actually made up for. An employed one, who is an out-of-world artist bugs up his life when he sits at 10-6pm job debugging up the programs. Whereas, an unemployed engineer in his struggle discovers the best option in the course – Passion or a secured life? You can see the example of one of the greatest comedian Rowan Atkinson, double Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and look what he is doing. An unemployed engineer lives an uncertain life, with an unsecured future. You can’t just predict how it will end :)