'You will at best become PA to a minister': When Somanath's boss convinced him not to quit ISRO for IAS

Former ISRO Chairman S Somanath has revealed that he almost left the space agency to join the civil services but was persuaded to stay by a mentor who assigned him constant work to stop him from preparing for the exam. Speaking on the podcast From Code to Culture, Somanath recalled how, despite the lure of more lucrative private sector jobs or the prestige of the IAS, he chose to remain at ISRO — thanks in part to his boss's unusual methods.

"Not very exciting to start with," Somanath said when asked about of his early experience and work culture at ISRO. "It was more of a government job and salaries were very less. I still remember my first month salary was Rs 1,800...living standards were not great and of course the failures were happening." 

He said college friends discouraged him from joining the space agency. “The period from 1985 to 1990 was the start of the IT boom. Opportunities were slowly developing outside and people were interested to move out. I still remember my college mates telling me—don’t join ISRO, you are much more capable to work in a private ecosystem. They told me that because I was good in college. I was leading some things and was considered a good leader to handle complex tasks.”

"But I had a passion for this. I was so much interested in joining the space program. So I stuck to it for many reasons. Though we had failures and issues, the people in the system were fantastic, I must tell you."

Somanath, who studied engineering at Kerala's TKM College, was recruited by ISRO in 1985 before he graduated. "When I was in my final year, I was selected through a recruitment process ISRO used to conduct at the time. They would invite students much before they graduated. So I was only waiting for my results to be declared. It wasn’t a post-academic joining."

Asked if there was anyone he particularly remembered, Somanath named his immediate boss, and mentor Sundaram Ramakrishnan, who later became the director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre. "He was my mentor for almost 20 years. I also started writing the civil services exam inspired by many people around me, and he came to know about it. He would never directly say don't write it, but every day he would come and say—why are you writing such examinations? Look at the work you are doing here, it’s of great technical value. You are developing rockets."

"If you become an IAS officer, you will at best become a PA to a minister. Why do you want to take such jobs?" Somanath recalled him saying. "He would say these small psychological things. Then he would give me task after task so I wouldn’t have free time to study. He would ensure I didn’t take leave. He played all those tricks to stop me from writing."

"But I still passed the prelims. I wrote the mains but narrowly missed the interview. After that, I came back to the office and told him I didn't make it. He immediately said—‘Congratulations, you're not leaving.’ That was the kind of boss I had," Somanath said.