134: Finding Your Dream Job in an Automated World with Bhoopathi Rapolu

Pete Mockaitis
Bhoopathi, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Thank you, Pete. It’s a pleasure, in fact.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, you have a fascinating area of expertise and your book and so I’m so curious to dig into it. It reminds me a little bit of Terminator or The Matrix here where the future of work may be going in some ways. So, maybe you could open us up by sharing kind of your own personal struggle amidst what you’re calling the second machine age and how that led you to write your book here The Race for Work.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Great. Well, there are two parts. One is my struggles. The second part is the reason for writing the book. Actually, one preceded the other. I had obviously a bit of struggle in my early career with the lack of growth that I expected. In fact, straight out of my grad school, in fact I graduated from one of the elite schools in India, then I spent five years without promotion. Pretty much stuck in my career.
I was working as a product manager in one of the renowned IT company in India and I was doing most of the managerial work in managing, of course, large teams of projects. There was world travel, engagements. Outside it was looking pretty attractive for others but internally I was really stuck somewhere, lack of growth and not going where I wanted to go.
So I took it as a challenge and I invested a lot of money in educating myself on how to crack this puzzle of career growth, what kind of skills are in demand, how do I get into those fast-growing technologies. So I took some of the expensive courses, tried a lot of experiments with the courses. I managed to get into my dream job, so that was part of the breakthrough, kind of career breakthrough without the background automation, without the case for race for work or anything.

Pete Mockaitis
If I could hop in right there. I mean, so that’s great stuff. Well, I’m a huge fan of education and that’s kind of why I do the show, and it can make the world of difference. And so, while we’re there, before we forget, do you recommend any particular kind of game-changing courses or resources we should look at?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Well, I have taken multiple courses. One that I can quote is, because I have taken the Dream Job course from Ramit Sethi.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Ramit. He’s great.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yes, I just learned from him. After that I met him a couple of times.

Pete Mockaitis
We interviewed his brother Maneesh on the show earlier talking about the Pavlok and how it can shock you and result in changing habits. That was Episode 90. He’s a character.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yes, I just met him recently in three-four months back in New York in one of the events. Yeah, he’s an interesting character.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Well, so, okay, noted. So, education makes the difference. It works and you found Ramith’s stuff pretty helpful.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yeah, not just that. I have taken a couple of courses, minor ones, and then initially it didn’t work for me and then I thought I should do something different. Then what I did is that I started customizing all the principles that I learned into the local environment, let’s say Indian market, and kind of opportunities, the technology maturity.
So, ultimately, I learned that only the experimentation testing and the individual context circumstance usually the right results, not just copying somebody’s tools or tactics are going to work. So, that I formed my dream job. In fact, it was indeed a dream job and the kind of growth I got from my previous job to that job that I got is phenomenal. That was my launch pad, I must say because I got a job where my manager in the previous company has ended up being my subordinate in the new company. Apparently, the manager that I also got in my new company.

Pete Mockaitis
Moving on up in the world.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yes. So, like I got two levels up where my manager has got just a job in the different company at the same level. If that was not surprising I have to say that the fact that manager has not joined the new company directly. He has taken a break for a year and he has joined an Ivy League business school.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
And from out of that business school he got a placement in the new company as my subordinate.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’re doing something right.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
That’s not a small business school either. It is in the top 20 in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you have my attention. Show us the way.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yeah, so one success leads to a subsequent success. That gave me an idea that, “Okay, things can be cracked.” That actually triggered into multiple areas of my life, be it health, be it writing, be it relationships, whatnot. And one by one, one by one I started working on afterwards. Okay, that’s one part of this.
The second part of the question that you asked is, “Why would this work?” Apparently, my job is in the area of building automation solutions for Fortune 500 companies. Every project I took in the last four years eliminated tens, twenties, even hundreds of people after we rolled out our solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
I see.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
So I also manage business for my company, so every project that I get is aimed at eliminating people.
So that’s the reason for writing my book. I thought, “Okay, people are losing jobs and there is a way to get jobs. Why don’t I combine these two areas? I know exactly how to get into a job that you want, how to get into a dream job, and I also know that a lot of people who are losing their jobs there’s a real context. I’m witnessing them. So can I combine these two things?” Yes, that’s the result for this book.

Pete Mockaitis
I see it. Now, are you sure it’s not just a guilty conscience? You’ve put so many people out of work. You try to make amends.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. That is a fascinating vantage point, yes, that you’ve had in terms of seeing some not so-great results in your career progression as well as a fantastic sort of leapfrogging there.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
And then being at the forefront of the actual implementations that put folks out of work. So, please, let’s definitely make sure we get both sides of this. So why don’t we talk a little bit first about this robots and automation. I guess I’m wondering the extent to which that notion that they are going to sort of put tons of folks in the U.S. or around the world out of work. To what extent is that real and is going to be happening on a massive scale, versus, it’s more minor or on the fringes?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Okay. Well, it depends as all answers, you know, that’s the usual answer we expect. Unfortunately I had to do. But I can clarify, I can do much more deeper view into that. When we say robots or AI, nothing like what you see in sci-fi movies.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
It’s not going to be a real robot out there. It’s not going to be an invisible artificial intelligence sitting somewhere trying to dominate or eliminating your job. It’s about mundane things. It’s about the skills that you see every day in our daily life, life we see face-recognition technology clearly working when we see Facebook or when we log into Facebook and it recognizes your face and your friends’ faces, right?
The translation technology is working. The moment you put any language, Google Translate can translate, right? And also the speech recognition started working, so Siri understands most of the language now and it logically answers. So these are the fundamental capabilities that the growth of these capabilities is phenomenal.
In fact, five years or six years back when IBM’s Watson computer has won the Jeopardy game. From then, well, in the last six years it has grown to a whopping 2,400%, so that’s the kind of growth.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say grown, in what exactly? What’s the measurement?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
In terms of its accuracy, intelligence. Watson has answered questions from a Quiz Master and won the world’s most famous quiz master in that game, Jeopardy game.
And then voice-recognition technology from Google now claims 98% accuracy, and Facebook’s face-recognition technology is also similar around 97% success rate. So they are reaching the culmination point where they’re going to be as accurate as human mind. Now, whatever we are doing in our day-to-day work with applying these capabilities trying to do on a similar scale, or trying to accomplish tasks that can be eventually done by an artificial intelligence either deployed on your laptop or deployed somewhere on Cloud but can be accessed so that is at risk.
It’s not the entire job but the task that you are doing in a day, let’s say probably you are doing an hour in a day or two hours in a day, whatever percentage of time you’re spending on doing such tasks, they are going to be automated. So, you may not feel the heat anytime now. Until you see that 60% of your days’ work is actually done by some kind of software algorithm.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
And then slowly you see that your role in the current job is diminishing. So it’s not a sudden threat but eventually we come to know about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so now, what’s the approximate kind of, I guess, scope of this in terms of projections? Because, I mean, you talked about some specific things from speech recognition to facial recognition and such.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
And translation.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I guess in some ways I’m thinking – oh, and translation – that seems like a relatively small piece of the workforce. Or I think there are other forces coming down the pike as well.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Absolutely. We broadly divide the workforce into blue-collar work and knowledge work. So, the threat is actually more for knowledge workers than the blue-collar workers, I must say.

Pete Mockaitis
I see.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Because the knowledge work is more around this capabilities like processing language, processing numbers, analyzing things, so this is where growth is getting at much faster rate. Even if you look at it from an evolutionary perspective, the analytical skills, the thinking skills have been able pretty much recently in the large scales of evolution, the pen skills, but whereas our grasp motor skills, the ability to maneuver things, or the skill that we have in our hands, legs, ability to run. All these are developed for a period of multiple hundreds of millions of years.
So it is very difficult to master that skill. Are robots mastering the grasp motor skills of humans, are matching the grasp motor skills of humans? It’s really difficult. It’s going to take much more time. But an algorithm mastering the capability of analyzing things just like human brain is not that difficult. It’s counterintuitive but it’s actually happening now.
So, take calculators that was unimaginable hundred years back. Now, that’s why we call our computers computers because they compute. Today, nobody uses mind to calculate in terms of divisions or multiplications beyond a certain point. We use calculators because they’re good at it and they’re much better than human mind.
Now, similarly, extending that to deeper analyzes, processing large amounts of data, numbers, texts and deriving meaning, we are slowly losing our relevance in that work. We no longer want to depend on our mind but we want to use algorithm, software for that, AI for that. So, without our notice, we put machines on the tasks relieving humans out of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so you’re saying that sort of how many current jobs are we thinking will be impacted by all this?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Well, there are studies, research, reports, estimates that say around half of today’s jobs may become irrelevant because the skills are already being matured in our artificial intelligence in some or other form. But then we will figure out new skills. The moment we identify or we found computers, people learn computers and started working on computers.
Earlier, people thought that computers are going to eliminate jobs, but they created more jobs because people started learning computer skills. I think that’s going to nullify to some extent. It’s not going to be a major threat like 50% of the jobs will be eliminated, or there are 50% of the people will become jobless. They may not become jobless. They look for jobs that are coming up. But, still, I‘m afraid that’s not going to be 50% all, right? Maybe 10-20% of the working population will see the heat and they face the heat and they might have to struggle to find their relevant work in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
And so this is 50% over like ten years, 20 years, 30 years?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yeah, that’s for 20 years.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Noted. Well, so now, it seems like determines maybe are at risk, assessment of sort of your given sort of career path, I guess, you could think of it if it’s a matter of translation, or face-recognition, or speech-to-text, or kind of data kind of pulling and processing. Those are kind of ripe for being shaken up. So are there any other sort of key acid test or means of assessing whether we should be fast-tracking our new skills development?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Right. So there is a simple test that we can do anytime that is whether our work is algorithmic in nature or heuristic in nature. By that, mean algorithm is something that can be put into a formula. Whatever I’m doing at my desk, can that be put into a formula? Is it logical? Is it following a step-by-step rule however complicated that role is? Is it not nestled in like if-this-then-that? Now, that is the simplest rule put into a computer program. But if my work can be reduced into such a complex logic, even if it has hundreds of loops and end-loops, even then that can be automated in no time by artificial intelligence. That’s algorithmic work we say.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Contrary to that, the other part is heuristic work where human judgment, apart from human judgment we use our empathy, our feelings, our imagination, creativity to come up with an outcome that cannot be put into any reasonable logic. So that’s heuristic work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
So, if your work is falling more into algorithmic work and less of heuristic work then there’s a pretty high chance that that work will be automated.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Noted. Thank you. Well, so now, tell us, what’s the answer? Let’s get to the light side of this. What are the keys to getting to career fulfillment and being in a safer spot?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Okay. So, there are conflicting developments in the career space especially when the millennials enter into this job market, right? So, earlier jobs were primarily seen as a source of income for survival. But come millennials they want more freedom, they want more money and they want more meaning. So we want more than a salary from our jobs. So, job satisfaction is totally really fine in the last 15-20 years.
To get that, if we want to work in a company, even if it is a stable job with a good salary, many people are going to the gentech because they may not find meaning in that. They may not find enough freedom in that, just in case that job is demanding you 10 hours of your time every day irrespective of your personal responsibilities.
So, career fulfillment revolves around these things – how you maximize your money, meaning and freedom. So I see that in emerging technologies. There is a growing opportunity to get this magic combination of more money and more meaning and more freedom if you manage to get into any of this emerging technologies.
Or it need not be directly working on the emerging technologies. I’m not suggesting everybody go to artificial intelligence or internet of things, but any job that involves direct or indirect effect of emerging technologies or application of these technologies give you the factors for career fulfillment, the factors for money, meaning and freedom, primarily because when you work on emerging technologies or when you work using the power of these emerging technologies the growth path is laid out.
These are some of the fastest-growing technologies. If a technology is growing, your industry is growing. If your industry is growing, your career grows along with that. And recognition is much better in the emerging technologies compared to the existing age-old technologies.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say recognition, what do you mean by recognition?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Recognition, yeah. Recognition to the job, at what you do.

Pete Mockaitis
In your book you’ve got a proven step-by-step method to find career fulfillment whether that’s in emerging technologies or another industry. So sort of what’s the step one and how do we progress?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Right. So, that’s part three of my book where I divided the book into three areas where, first, I cover the situation today of why automation is going to take up. And the second thing is, ironically, the same emerging technologies that are going to eliminate most of the jobs are also offering some of the dream jobs, some of the opportunities for career fulfillment. The very technologies are giving you an option to grow your career, give more money, more freedom, more fulfillment. So, I list out all the options or the sexiest jobs of 21st century where you’ll find them.
In the third section I talk about the specific strategies I have used in my own dream job and I’ve trained hundreds of my students who use the same approach to get into this emerging technologies. Most of them do not have experience.

Pete Mockaitis
So what is the strategy? What’s step one and then how does it go?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Okay. So I formulated that into simple five steps which I call DREAM, a good acronym for the dream jobs, you know, So, D-R-E-A-M. So at a high level D stands for discover where you actually identify your dream job. This is something for people who do not have any idea about what their dream job is. Majority of people fall into this bucket. They have vague idea about what their dream job is. Often the thing that are getting double of the current salary is a dream job.
Some people think, “If I have a little more freedom, not being tied up to 9:00 to 5:00 I’d probably work whenever I want. If I have an option of working from home that’s my dream job.” But actually that’s not what social scientists say a dream job is. That’s not what the human resource experts say.

Pete Mockaitis
What do they say is the dream job?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yeah, the dream job is actually a combination of all these, neither money or meaning or freedom alone would give you a dream job. It’s a combination of all these three things.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
And there’s a way to discover it. I mentioned multiple ways, depending on a specific situation of an individual, but a simple way is actually doing window shopping, something like window shopping. Just go to LinkedIn, or go to a particular industry you are in and then browse for jobs, sample jobs in that particular industry. And then you find tens, 20, 30, 40, hundreds of jobs and see, and for each of the job role you find a lot of people in your close circles, first level, second level, even third level and see what they’re doing. And then if you want to really know how that particular job is talk to somebody.
So, by window shopping we understand much more than what it is. It eliminates most of our illusions or the illusions about the job before we’re spending a lot of time imagining about it, wasting six months or one year of effort involved. So first, seeing the job in case by luck. Unfortunately, if you manage to get that job then joined the job and then later you find that job is not actually your dream job.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. It happens all the time.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
It happens all the time. So, with window shopping technique you actually do a shopping of jobs that you fancy about. Talk to people who are actually doing their job the past five, 10, 15 years and then get their past 10 picture of what it looks like, “Is that really your dream job or not?” Then come and then re-evaluate. So that is the way I found my dream job. I actually made mistakes two, three times. I thought this A is my job and this is my dream job, and I went ahead and talked to people and then realized, “Oh, my God. I would’ve wasted my life if I get into this job.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s perfect, yes. And so after discover, what happens?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Then the second thing is R is for reach. So this is all aligned to getting into a job that uses advanced technologies. Reach is about identifying what is growing in that, what are the technologies that are shaping that particular function. For example, you take marketing. Marketing is, today, dominated by social media marketing not like age-old marketing where you come up with ads on TV or on newspaper or meeting some people in a certain industry. Most of the marketing is now dominated by social media, digital marketing, online marketing are even getting clients from marketing.
So, how these technologies are changing this marketing function? So, identifying the levers which are going to take the function, business function, as well as your career to at least 10X in the next five years. So it’s about identifying that and reaching those people who are in that particular role. Who’s the guy who’s doing digital marketing and has grown at least two to three promotions in the last five years? Go and reach that people. So they’re the people who have done that part. So that’s about reach. I have given out specific strategies to do that.
We are on the third step now – engage. So E is for engage. So, in engage we talk about you stepping into that role. How do you start mastering the particular technology, particular business domain, and then engaging your industry? Primarily by blogging, or writing, or speaking. You go to your own alma mater, you go to university and talk about that topic and create your students and discuss about the topics, and use that experience to go to and even try to get a speaking slot.
So, basically, the idea here is to become an authority in that particular area. So this is where you build your expertise in that particular growing technology in a particular business domain that you are interested. So that’s where you’re building the momentum for your career to elevate yourself into that role.

The fourth leg is the attract. So this is to attract the right job opportunities. So when we say job we always think about searching for online portals and applying for a job and try to get it. But, no, again and again most of the research reports say that 80% of the jobs are filled up before it comes to a job portal. So remaining for the 20% of the jobs, 80% of the people apply for it. So, most of the jobs get filled based on the referrals, based on the connections, based off a network.
So, how do you attract those jobs? By proving yourself in the market. You have to be visible for the area you are standing for. So you are standing for a business domain and for a particular technology or a group of technologies. How these technologies are transforming these particular career paths and what kind of value you are adding to that. So you have to be a thought leader in that, and it’s not difficult to become a thought leader. It’s not difficult to become a speaker. Now, in a span of six months I started with zero and managed to get 10 speaking engagements.

Pete Mockaitis
Paid speaking engagements?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
No, they were not paid initially for the first 10. First 20 of my speaking engagements were not paid but after that I started getting payment. But the idea is not to get the payment but to build my expertise, right? So I used to go to these universities and business conferences, and even I used to go to small companies, medium companies to speak about this topic. So that’s when you build the expertise. And then the industry starts recognizing about your capabilities, your contributions and then what you attract is the quality job offerings. Literally you’ll be spammed by job opportunities. That’s the attract part.
And the last part is M in the DREAM. M is about mastering the whole selection process. It’s about how you master the interview, how you manage the interview. Interview is not about yourself. It’s completely about the company. It’s completely about the hiring manager, what is his requirement, what he’s looking for. So how can you contribute to his mission? So, I laid out some tactics there and some of them I used in my own struggle as well as some of my students helped me to conceptualize these tactics and tools.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Can you give us one tactic that suggest “killer” for making a great interview impression?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Sure. So, one thing I would usually recommend my students is that you bring a plan. Bring a plan in your interview about how you’re going to add value to the company, especially the hiring manager, in the next three to six months’ timeframe. Pick one or two challenges, the hiring manager would have it, depending on all the data that you can online website for a typical role in a typical company, what is the size of the business he’s managing.
So take one or two challenges and see how you are going to address those challenges, what is your contribution. The moment you bring a plan to an interview, the focus will become completely shifted from you to the plan. So the discussion is about how you are adding value to the company, so that puts you in totally different ballgame that you will be viewed as a contributor not just a person acting in an interview aspiring for a job, looking for a job. That makes a lot of difference. It’s a killer.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Thank you. All right. Well, this is good stuff so I think we ought to shift gears here and hear about some of your favorite things. Can you start us off by sharing a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Sure. One thing I usually think about, at least once a day I think about this quote. This is from Tim Ferris. The quote goes like this “What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.” It’s about productivity. Everybody thinks about, “How can I be productive, more productive?” How you get more things done in less time.
But actually what you, like prioritizing things is much more important than doing things at a much better rate, because if you’re doing the wrong thing, however productive you do it, ultimately you’re doing a wrong thing, isn’t it?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Favorite book. I like the book from Steven Pressfield, The War of Art.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, right.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
I keep reading it again and again.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. And how about a favorite tool whether it’s a product or service or software or app or something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
I use Evernote regularly. It’s my digital junkyard, I would say. Everything that I want to keep track of that goes into Evernote and it helps me a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, good. Thanks. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that helps you flourish?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
I do meditate every day and write journal. That is something that keeps me on track on the regular hustle and bustle of life, travel and job priorities. But in the morning, 10 minutes of meditation followed by five minutes of journal writing would keep me focused at least to decide my priorities of the day.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And is there a particular nugget or piece from your book or teachings that seems to particularly resonate with folks in order to get them nodding their heads and sort of saying, “Ah, yes, that’s brilliant”?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Okay. The two concepts that are getting increasingly discussed among my readers, one is the big three technologies that I talked about in my book. The big three technologies are the artificial intelligence, internet of things and 3D printing. These three technologies together have much more impact on the world and they’re the fundamental three technologies that are ultimately going to lead to the technological singularity, what we call. The machines overtaking humans.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, my

Bhoopathi Rapolu
We don’t know when that is going to be.

Pete Mockaitis
So you think it’s going to happen at some point, that’s your take.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
It is going to happen for sure, but there are ways to interpret it. Probably a better or more desired singularity is when humans also transcend. We have now people talking about cyborgs. Like Elon Musk is talking about humans transcending more into cyborgs. We already started that. We have wearables now. Some of the wearables are actually internal. You have the embedded technology within your body.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, like the pacemaker in Silicon Valley. Technically I’m a cyborg.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yeah, true. Absolutely. So when you become a cyborg you won’t need to worry about machines because you’re a part of them.

Pete Mockaitis
Otherwise they’re going to come flaming and chopping your head off.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yeah, that might happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where should they reach out?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Well, my Twitter handle is @Bhoopathi, B-H-O-O-P-A-T-H-I and my website is also on the same name Bhoopathi.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d leave folks with who are seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Sure. I would definitely request for people to take this challenge. Take a brutal assessment of what you do at the workplace, hour by hour for a week. Brutally honest. You don’t need to be friendly to yourself because this is to assess your risk of automation, right?

So at the end of the week strike off those tasks that are already automated somewhere or prone for automation. Basically tasks that are algorithmic in nature. And create your own plan to get out of those stuff by replacing them with more of a heuristic work or creative work. Your career success will follow eventually. Usually in not more than six months because the moment you eliminate algorithmic work and add more and more of creative work, you find your career success automatically.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. Thank you. Well, this has been such a treat. Thank you and good luck, and stay safe amidst the potential machine, what’s the word you used? Quantum? Point to point?

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, stay safe.

Bhoopathi Rapolu
Right. Pete, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.