Be free, “be your own boss”. On February 28, 2021, we had the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Mukkamala, a local software engineer with a passion for technology. Mr. Mukkamala knew from a very young age he wanted to be a citizen of the world, travel to many countries and experience many different cultures, but also had a deep love for STEM. At first, Mr. Mukkamala was determined to pursue a career as a civil engineer, as the engineering industry in India was exponentially growing. Ultimately, Mr. Mukkamala decided to pursue computer science to get the best of both worlds, science, math, and travel.
Mr. Mukkamala works for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) as a software engineer. He is part of the customer oriented services at SMUD, and works to make sure that the customer is excited about SMUD. SMUD generates the utility bill at the end of the month for the customer, and this process is done completely online, and executed through programming. SMUD also sends out promotions through email to the different customers, and targets these promotions based on profession and other customer details. Mr. Mukkamala uses his programming to help the customer: “If you say ‘I want to know when my bill amount exceeds 100 dollars’, we can program that for you. We can create a flag for you and…if it exceeds more than 100 dollars, we’ll send a text.”
Mr. Mukkamala was met with a challenge in his career when he decided to start his own company. During that time, he had to learn how to keep up with the ever-changing technological industry, and made sure that the technology he was using wasn’t outdated. Mr. Mukkamala advises others to “always try to be on the leading edge of technology” and learn not only about your specific technological fields, but other peripheral fields that may be important to your job. In addition, he recommends thinking outside of the box and not being afraid to put forth new ideas, not only in your scope of expertise, but also in new and improved job fields.
In the future, Mr. Mukkamala sees IT interlinked with up and coming AI technology. Machine learning and fewer human interaction, he says, is what we might expect to see alongside the flourishing AI industry. These outcomes in particular worried him. He also believes that as more robots take over human jobs, less manual work will be required. However, like a tale told too often, he contends that such a shift in labor could jeopardize human jobs. With all the highly-debated pros and cons of the future of IT, Mr. Mukkamala thinks that, “[T]too much is not a good idea,”. Still, he strongly feels that developments in technology will lead to the growth of industry and humanity. His advice for high school students? He recommends taking up jobs or specializing in areas that require you to analyze or mine data. Computer science, he notes, is all about analytics and extracting data. He also considers the potentials of learning to extract data in a variety of ways.
Throughout his career, Mr. Mukkamala has constantly been learning new information that has helped him progress to where he is now. His experiences have shaped his viewpoint, and as a final note to others who would like to go into software engineering, Mr. Mukkamala exemplifies, “You have to be willing to learn new things.”