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Great careers are made with good people, and better questions.
This week I spoke with Ramkrishna Sharma, UVA rising fourth year who’s a Software Engineer at NASA. He’s published at the United Nations, researched at Georgetown, was a PM at Georgia Tech, and an analyst at MIT.
The Rundown:
COLD OPEN: DoorDashing and UN research, UVA, landing a job at NASA
TURNING POINT: How to think like someone who succeeds in any industry
STEAL THIS: Finding the transitional point and increasing your luck
INDUSTRY INSIDER: NASA is slow, but that’s on purpose
IF I WERE YOU: Innovation and finding your “purpose” is more so about current momentum than an optimized plan
COLD OPEN
How Did You Get Your Start?
I was working odd jobs in the gig economy in the transition between high school and college – DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates – to save up for college.
Between work, I audited physics classes at a local college in my area, following my interest in the subject. My professor there encouraged me to apply for a research role at Georgetown, but to temper my expectations because it was highly competitive.
A quantum mechanics professor at Georgetown named Jim Freericks took a chance on me, and brought me on as a researcher for the summer.
He taught me a new way to think about science, research, and the pedagogy behind making complex ideas accessible that I carry with me to this day. More than anyone, he showed me that if you're intentional about what you're trying to solve, and you collaborate enough, anything's possible.
That role inspired me to continue researching and to pursue a college education. I received a full ride from UVA, where I studied Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. I had a growing interest in how markets and systems operate, which shaped a lot of how I thought about the world.
When I came to UVA, a professor, Rider Foley, was my first mentor.
He introduced me to policy, to people, and to resources. My goal was to understand where I stood in the larger ecosystem of university life and in a professional sense.
This set the stage to working at NASA, MIT, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
I love fast-paced engineering, but research is inherently slow. I was trying to find something in the middle.
I couldn't get my break at NASA for a long time, until one day Rider told me a UVA alumni from NASA was coming to speak at Darden. It was 8AM on a Wednesday and I was the only one from my cohort who showed up. So, I took a front row seat.
I introduced myself to the speaker, who was high up in AI at NASA, James Villarrubia, and we ended up having dinner afterward. He became a friend, and then my boss for a very long time.
It was all just a matter of going up to someone and introducing myself. Take a front row seat to meaningful opportunities.
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TURNING POINT
What’s A Challenge You Faced Early On?
Across my internships and roles, there’ve been different focuses and styles of working. It was a challenge to know how to adjust my mindset for these different experiences.
More than just the workflow, it's about what kind of thought process do you need to have in order to excel?
With policy, you want to think in systems. With NASA, you want to think in engineering. With Darden, you want to think in entrepreneurial terms. They're very different philosophically in how you should approach them.
At the end of an accelerator at Darden, Omar Garriot, who leads the program, said "We're not in the business of making products." You would think that an accelerator, which is all about accelerating products, should be in the business of making them. He said, "We're in the business of making entrepreneurs."
And that stuck with me. Every role, every context, is less about the output and more about the kind of thinker it's shaping you into.
STEAL THIS
What’s A Question You Love To Be Asked (Or Asking)?
I love to ask successful people what their transitional point was.
I was in Dave's Hot Chicken in DC with a friend a while ago. Dave's Hot Chicken is massively popular. It's a multi-million dollar franchise. On the walls it says "Started with $900 and an air fryer in a parking lot."
And so, you look at that, and think "that's cool." But what happened there? How do you go from $900 and an air fryer in a random parking lot to what Dave’s Hot Chicken is today?
Sometimes the story can be long and drawn out, but I find you can narrow the timeframe to something very specific.
When it comes to success, there's a lot of luck. But successful people rarely depend on luck. They put themselves in situations where the probability of success is higher. And they take a front row seat.
INDUSTRY INSIDER
What Do People Misunderstand About NASA?
Most people think NASA is all about rockets and space. It is to a degree, but it's really more about open science.
NASA gets a lot of criticism for being slow. The slowness is intentional. Science is slow. Things need to be validated and tested, and the stakes are high.
Other space firms move quicker, but their motives are different. NASA isn't driven by profit. It's driven by accurate science, trust, and credibility. For federal institutions, whose reputation rests on being right, mistakes carry more weight. When the bedrock falls, who can you trust?
IF I WERE YOU
Do You Have Any Advice For Students?
We undergraduates are heavily concerned with our purpose, and rightfully so. Everything you commit to is a tradeoff. Every decision made is another trajectory or opportunity walked away from. What should I devote my time to? What internships do I like? What should I learn about? It can give people a lot of paralysis.
But I don't think you need a purpose to move forward. You just need momentum. Create contacts, talk to people, gather resources. Be experimental. Try something you normally wouldn't, and let yourself gain skills and build relationships from spaces you didn't expect to be in.
I attended a talk recently by Steven Kelts, who spoke about the difference between prediction and anticipation. He referenced Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." I think that applies to students too. The moment you fixate on a specific outcome, whether it's a job title, a salary, or a five-year plan, you stop paying attention to what's actually in front of you. Anticipate, don't predict. Stay responsive to what's happening now rather than trying to map out something you can't control.
He also made a point that if the 19th century had focused exclusively on improving existing tools like better looms and plows, humanity would have missed out on entirely new categories of technology like antibiotics, jet engines, or rockets.
The breakthroughs came from discovery, not optimization.
I think that applies here too. If you fixate too narrowly on one trajectory, you might miss the innovative paths you didn't know were available to you. Give yourself enough space to go to that conference around the corner that has nothing to do with your field. Tag along for an opportunity that isn't relevant to you. That's how you capture chance in a bottle.
When a purpose clicks, and eventually it does, you'll have an arsenal of tools to draw on in the form of experiences, lessons, failed and successful attempts in entirely unrelated projects.
CLOSING TIME
What To Do Next
Reading is great — but putting yourself out there, meeting new people, and finding opportunities is what this is all about.
4 things to do right now:
Find a UVA alum and send them a cold message.
Follow up in a week if they don’t respond.
Prepare for the meeting, and talk to them
Explore a new industry:
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