Wally Hasnat

Writing for Engineering

Professor Bubrow

3/5/19

Navigating a Comfortable Career Path:

The Path of Saqib Banna

 

Finding a passion and prioritizing it to develop a successful career path is exactly what Saqib Banna did, a multiskilled engineer that graduated from NYU with a degree in both computer and electrical engineering. In our interview, I got to experience his career path and learn about the hard work he had to do to get to where he is today. Not completely certain about the level of interest in computer engineering myself, I wanted to become aware of his beginning interests and what lead to each job he had in his professional career. Talking to him, it was clear that Saqib is a conscientious and focused work that has proven to be efficient at what he does. According to him, engineering came naturally as he stayed consistent with his interests in coding and software. However, it did not begin that way.

Saqib entered the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering studying chemical engineering with a pre-med track but had a switch of the direction the next semester. He declared an electrical engineering major as he started getting involved with organizations that required coding. As a logically oriented student, he knew electrical engineering was the “best career path that fit his interests.” Soon after, he joined multiple nonprofit organizations and volunteer group to expand his knowledge on what he could potentially do as his profession. This allowed him to attain the skill of optimizing and doing things efficiently and faster, which is what I am working to develop. With the experience of being part of multiple corporations, he was able to land his first electrical engineering job as an estimator at EJ Electric. Although it was a good line of work, he stated that the work environment was aggressive and the office space was comprised of people older than him that would yell and argue. Consequently, he understood that people expected him to get his job done so he adapted to the situations and fulfilled his role.

He is currently working as a Site Reliable Engineer at T Rowe Price. He acquired this job through a manager at a previous job that moved over to T Rowe Price and called in Saqib once he needed a team. Saqib mentions that this job has been top 2 when it comes to its environment as everyone is said to be friendly and willing to lend a helping hand. Nonetheless, everyone is still expected to get their work done since they are responsible for the finances of multiple corporations. On the account of myself wanting to be a part of a big corporation one day, I wanted to familiarize myself with his role in the field and what responsibilities he has. Saqib often works with accommodating internal products, owned by the company, to fulfill the needs of whoever they go to. He and his team ensure that these products are always working while adjusting and integrating them to satisfy requirements. He likes that he gets to learn new things and challenge himself as he would not want to be part of an institution that did not “offer challenges”. We also talked about how he often deals with tasks he does not know how to do so he continuously highlighted the importance of communication.

Along with the essential traits of having problem-solving and adaptation skills, communication is a crucial part of being an engineer. During our call, he emphasized how valuable it was to be able to talk to people and get information by including, “For you to learn something new, you need to learn it from the internet or someone else and often, it is a lot faster to learn from someone else.” I understand the severity of this skill since the main thing to get far in engineering is to learn how to do certain things. If one does not know how to ask the right questions, it makes obtaining the right answers more difficult. Furthermore, he added that along with monthly conferences, he has meetings with his team every morning, discussing updates about the previous workday and objectives for that working day. For his job specifically, he often has to reach out to various groups to get their inputs in order to know how to use certain products and make sure they are functioning properly.

As Saqib and I share the same choice of major, he has taught me many things that I will keep in mind on my career path. His work ethic and diligence is what I aspire to develop as he has shown a great deal of success already while being comfortable where he is located. Saqib reminded me that many things can go wrong but in order to persevere, one must prioritize certain aspects that need to be on top for things to work. The experiences he faced of things going wrong gave him that ability to attain the skill of prioritizing along with the skill to navigate how to make yourself valuable and making sure you are being treated as valuable as well.  

When he said “5% of what you learn in school actually matters in the real world,” it opened my eyes and gave me the realization that I need to start getting hands-on experiences now. Obviously, it is an exaggeration, but that 95% of real-world experience is what I am more focused about. He suggested that the best way I get ahead is by getting involved in internships and being part of something early. As a result, I think I am more adjusted to getting more information about computer engineering and expanding my knowledge to strengthen my interest.