Question: What does your job involve ?

Pawel Rulikowski answered on 10 Nov 2021:

Hi JadeM,

In Nokia Bell Labs (see my profile and extra info) my work was to create new things, build them, test them and write about them to professional journals and create intellectual property (patents). I had big freedom as to what those inventions were as long as they aligned somewhere with the company profile (telecommunication). Lot so f it is reading about what others did in this direction that you are actually working on (books, professional journals), discussing ideas with your colleagues (brainstorming session are the best around the coffee table!). Now it is design time, lots of computing needed there by hand and by the computer – I specialise in 3D electromagnetic simulations – example here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Me_TlFpW1w). Next, there was development phase, you need to connect with suppliers that will provide the components for the piece of equipment tha you are building. Since lots of those things were new and looking into the future (18mths to 10yrs), you requests are often unusual and you need to find a suppliers who is willing to engage with you in such project. After that you build something, so that were things really starting going wrong – blow, burn or simply do not work. Now you repeat all the above 2-3 times or more and hopefully you succeed or not – it is ok as long you understand why you did not succeed as even in failure you can learn something valuable. Now, you write patents, papers for journals and tell the world what cool thing you just did.