Employee Spotlight: Abhijeet Kulkarni, Senior Electronics Engineer
In our blog series Employee Spotlight, we get to know our Ackcio team members on a more personal level. For this month, we feature Abhijeet Kulkarni, our Senior Electronics Engineer, who joined Ackcio in March 2021.
Introduce yourself and your role at Ackcio?
Hi, I’m Abhijeet. I’m working as a Senior Electronics Engineer with Ackcio.
What drew you to Ackcio when you initially started, and how has the company changed since then?
A hope to learn something new drew me towards Ackcio.
Ackcio is establishing its identity in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market, and they are in the specialized areas of geotechnical and structural health monitoring. Since founded in 2016, Ackcio was one of the very few startups in Singapore to be named Top 50 Contech Startups 2020 by CEMEX Ventures. They were recently included in the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch list in August this year.
The company is growing since day 1, from gaining lots of new customers and hiring new employees to develop new products or adding new features.
What does your job entail?
I specialize in electronics system design.
A job at Ackcio is nothing short of a thriller movie. Every day begins with stimulating challenges and ends with new learnings. All my electronics and system design experience over the last ten years gets tested against all the odds. I’m taking these tasks head-on, pushing myself out of my comfort zone and embracing all challenges.
What’s been one of your proudest moments working at Ackcio?
When I joined Ackcio, the entire electronic chip market was facing a global supply crunch. Most of the components were either out of stock or were having longer lead times. This challenge affected our manufacturing capabilities.
I successfully consolidated components from all the different products and increased the reusability. Additionally, I was able to find alternative suppliers for many of the part shortages.
These efforts helped Ackcio to limit the monetary and lead time impact for our customers. I also supported Ackcio in streamlining our manufacturing process.
Could you share with us your personal learning experience in Ackcio?
Being in a young start-up environment, one gets to do a lot of multidisciplinary action items. Every task has a deadline, so prioritization and time management are key to success. I’m learning management processes every day.
What are the most rewarding aspects of your job?
Autonomy, collaboration, and variety are the three rewarding aspects of my job.
Autonomy in a workplace is important because it gives a sense of responsibility and ownership to employees and hence, allows them to make certain decisions independently.
To make better decisions, an employee must collaborate with multiple stakeholders and take in their perspectives. Autonomy and collaboration go hand in hand.
The last piece is variety. Research has proved that boredom arises particularly if a job doesn’t require complex thinking and analysis, or the work is repetitive. In my view, variety makes you feel happier over a long period because it keeps you engaged.
What is the best career lesson you’ve learned so far?
Every job scope and every company is unique in its way. At times, the job can be demanding and pressure situations can arise. Despite all this, what defines us is what we do after our work hours are over.
With this in my mind, I have learned two lessons – ‘look after yourself’ and ‘enjoy your work and never work just for the money’.
Self-care is important to maintain a healthy relationship with yourself.
Don’t get me wrong, money is important, however, when we work just for money, we lose real motivation and purpose in our lives.
What is your work motto or personal mantra?
I prefer learning a work culture and try to add my flavour to it. This way I know my strengths and weaknesses over time. Your best is going to change from moment to moment. I follow it all the time, and I’m a strong believer in this.
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