Sharing an interesting and motivating thread that came on my timeline by Shubho Sengupta

This post is for young friends who think they are in the ‘wrong job’ and that they deserved better.

Albert Einstein could not get a job for two years after graduation because his professors refused to give him a recommendation letter (he used to interrupt their math equations with the final answer, which they did not like).

Out of pity, a friend’s father offered him a job as a third-class clerk at the Swiss Patent Office. Though he initially found the work dull and uninspiring, he quickly realised some of the best scientific ideas in Europe passed through his ‘lectern’ (see pic).

For example, synchronizing the clocks at train stations using electrical signals – this was a hot idea at the time, and passed through Einstein’s lectern (he stood and worked). He eventually found a job as a professor, after seven years of the Swiss Patent Office.

By then, he had written four groundbreaking papers, on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy.He was not even 26 when he left the patent office, as Europe’s scientific establishment applauded his four papers.

He later referred to the patent office as “that worldly cloister where I hatched my most beautiful ideas”. So, you’re in your early 20 and bored with your job?