M.Tech. or ISRO?

Posted by Dipanjan on April 6, 2013
Posted in: ISRO. 11 comments

Pursuing M.Tech. or joining Govt. organizations, e.g. ISRO, BARC etc.? A burning question indeeed. To my understanding, it can’t be unanimously answered. Both have their pros and cons. It’s you who have to weigh both the ends and settle down to a decision. Rather I’d try to aid your thought-process providing with certain information which people are generally unaware before joining ISRO.

I wrote GATE 2012 and had an AIR 1403. Also, I took ISRO entrance exam in 2011 and had an AIR 11 out of 23 CS candidates selected. GATE result came out in March 2012 and prior to that in November 2011, ISRO result was published. My joining at ISRO was on March 16, 2012. I’ve mentioned the precise timing just to highlight that for me taking decision was somewhat easy. GATe result was not upto the mark as per “my ” expectation. So, I joined ISRO and gave a second try.

Life is not so smooth always. One of my friend has an AIR 115 in GATE 2012. He joined ISRO initially along with me, filled up the forms in IITs and resigned after three months to join M.Tech. in IIT-M.

So, what do you conclude? That having a stunning AIR in GATE always prioritizes joining an M.Tech. rather than joining ISRO, right? Unfortunately, no. Some more stories follow.

After coming down here at ISRO, I have found one lady having ME@IISc. in 2008, one guy having a dual-degree (B.Tech. + M.Tech.) from IIT-M in 2012 are also working here. Our Deputy- Director, who is an ex-IISc-ian, is still contributing here for last thirty years. One lady from ECE discipline, discontinued from IIT-KGP in 2009 and joined ISRO. During our induction program (called as IITP – ISRO Induction Training Program), I met may people who we can see in TV screen during launches. I have seen many people taking our classes who have earned “Padmabhushan”, “Padmabibhushan” and similar kind of series of national and international awards. And ample such examples are there. Though I didn’t disclose the names of the people I have taken as examples above, count on me. Such people are there.

Why will you join ISRO? What can you expect out of it? Why will you even bother to stick to ISRO? Read this.

And why will you pursue M.Tech.? This is what my perspective is.

Now, choice is yours. Never allow anyone else to dictate you what to do. Ask yourself, and take a decision for which you yourself will only be responsible.

11 comments on “M.Tech. or ISRO?”

  1. I am B.Tech CSE (part-time, year 2011) guy. Now my age is 33. Not yet be good at professional side and career. I have been working with a PSU(a contract employee) and then working with a small company. Now I wish to build a nice career . Is doing M.Tech@IIT is good choice for me ? If so can I find a good career from there? What are the opportunities there (consider my age too)? Or try for ISRO job is a good option than MTech? or trying to build an IT career at private sector is good for me ? Your blog says you can guide me..Pls reply..

    • Hi Kittu,

      All three (a) MTech@IIT (b) IT (c) ISRO are promising options, but in different, probably in mutually orthogonal dimensions. Nonetheless, I have arranged the options in decreasing order of financial benefit. Weighing the options against each other, I should say that GATE in CSE has become highly competitive. My intention is not to discourage you, but to help you pick up the very best as well as feasible one for you. Probably, building an IT career is the easiest option for you at the moment as it seems to me. If you work hard, it’s financially rewarding, too. To crack ISRO, again the difficulty is less than nailing down an old IIT through GATE, but you have to be back in academics once again.

      • Thankyou Dipanjan . Also can you please guide me through the following ?

        1) Do CS grads/engineers get good work opportunities(like R&D , software development) at ISRO ? if not , can the department be changed ?

        2) Pursuing M.tech from IIT’s /IISc will give an extra advantage to our career ? As I have heard that M.tech does’nt have much scope from industry point of view .

        P.S. – I am a computer graduate currently working in Infosys .

        • Hi Anish,

          I didn’t find any of my peers to get the opportunity of doing any R&D, in the true sense of the term. As soon as you join, it is way too much to expect to have any control on any impactful decision/process either. I continued for exactly 18 months with ISRO. I am not sure that going down the line after how many years the research opportunity, if any, opens up. Again, I have seen my seniors who are continuing for around 10+ years, but not doing any research work either. The task they accomplish is important beyond doubt. I feel what can thrill someone is to think about the importance of the job itself, setting any innovation-related aspects aside. If you consider software development, as you say, to be a rewarding work, then there are divisions offering an array of challenging tasks to divisions which make you work on absolute ****shit (e.g. internal canteen management system, website management, development of recruitment software and managing internal emailing system).

          If you are not so satisfied, unfortunately the “official” scope of changing divisions is too little. Even if you manage to have it changed, the outcome is very unwelcoming in the sense that the division head of the division you switch from won’t be very happy towards your deeds. I was initially put into such *bogus* (excuse me for opening up and using such strong a word, no intention to hurt anybody but to speak out the truth) a division. After much “fight”, I was able to have it changed. How I changed it is a different internal story altogether, but be assured that the process was not very easy-going.

          Yes, of course pursuing M.Tech at IIT was a big boost to my career. And it is applicable in general to anybody with a decent potential. You have been misinformed about the scope of an IIT M.Tech in IT, especially compared to someone working in Infosys. Please have a look at last year’s placement statistics of IIT Madras. The truth is apparent.

  4. Hi Dipanjan
    thanks for that detailed reply on ISRO , what I have concluded from your reply and other posts is that for a computer science grad one can get much better work in good private product based companies if one manages to crack their interview . Perhaps , that’s why people leave the scientist post at such a reputed institution . Offcourse there might be other reasons also but I am saying from the work satisfaction point of view .

    I have gone through the placements for m.tech (Cs/IT) and yes figures are quite impressive .But what facts mostly concern me are :
    a) Placements for B.tech /M.tech students are done through same process and thus have more competition .?

    b)they might not consider our previous work experience like in MBA placements (both are perpendicularly different fields but saying w.r.t experience point of view ).

    c)Higher salary/designation/other advantages will not be given when compared to freshers who will sit for same company .

    PS: yeah anyhow position will be better than kind of work in Infy/TCS where there is alot of non-engineering kind of work .

    • Hi Anish,

      1. Right you are.
      2. Again, correct. I didn’t find your previous employment to have a big impact in on-campus placement. That might be helpful if you apply off-campus, though. Most of the companies expect to recruit freshers when they visit IIT campus.
      3. Absolutely right.

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