sielwolf's Journal: Sittin' 'Round

Odd... now that I've graduated I've had less to do... yet I participate much less on /. than I ever have. I guess one big difference is that I spend less time in front of a computer: work, between classes, doing grading, online help. All that shiznat.

Here's a little masturabatory JE on:

• Grades
• Jobs

Well I pulled a 4.0 my last semester. I would have been fucking insane with rage if I would've gotten anything less. I was pretty sure on my OS class: I 95% the first exam, dropped only one point on the paper and the prof loved our project. When the final came I was shocked to find I knew each and every last answer easily. Odd how that works, yes?

Then my seminar class... *ugh*. We spend all that time doing theoretical and experimental analysis of the algorithms, coming up with metrics and writing a snazzy doc. We presented and the prof was incredulous that our algorithm was so superior to a published algorithm in all cases. Maybe he was just annoyed that his golden children (his RAs) couldn't even get a n-time speedup on their algorithm by running it on n processors. Hell, their results even changed!

So we appended our code, gave examples of hour algorithm worked, etc. We turned this in during the final (when the last four groups presented). What did the prof do? Read our paper then and hand it back to us with comments as if he expected us to do more work on it!

Pfff! Fuck that noise, dude. We just sent him an email pointing to the same PDF and our code. "Run it at your leisure". After all that work and hardship if he even THOUGHT of giving me a 3.5 I'd have his head on a stick by sundown.

Anyway, I got my 32 credit hours and my good GPA. On to job hunting!

I flew down on Sunday, this being the day after my graduation party (where my g'ma flew in from Boston MA). Hectic. Luckily I know my way around town. So I landed, called my buddy I knew and told him we'd meet at my motel (paid for by The Company) as soon as I drove over. For my automobile I got a little red Hyundai Alero[sic] (paid for). Being the 6'5" person I am, my head touched the roof and the rearview blocked my vision. But the bass was really good and I demolished them speakers with my music.

Drove fast, hung out, ate at the Cheesecake Factory, saw A Mighty Wind (funny but also surprisingly touching). My friend then dropped me off at my motel only to find out his battery died in the parking lot. He waited around for AAA and I went to bed.

Next day: interviewage. Luckily my motel was right across the street from The Company Compound. I decided on a half-windsor knot and my Bass shoes. 80 some degrees (MUCH different than the cool Midwest weather).

It was a busy day. I was to meet with 6 folks in half an hour increments! Insane. I talked about my projects, published work over and over and over again. I was asked to implement a bubblesort (hadn't done that in... five years?). I forgot the 'df' function although people were surprised to hear I ran Linux. They were then disappointed when I hadn't actually developed a device driver.

Ok, an aside. Let us compare academia to business. Academia is predicated on research. Research is about bleeding edge. Bleeding edge means Not Business Ready. What did we talk about in my OS class? The basics, an overview of Linux, an overview of NT... and then we went into Mach (a toy OS until Mac OSX made a man out of it) and Ameoba (a distributed OS that is toy like Fischer-Price).

This drive for the vangard goes against every impulse of business. Business isn't concerned about cool novel shit. They only want A) Faster B) Cheaper C) Easier to make/use (usually in a "pick any two" compromise). Business would love it if people were forced to admin a server, rewrite the Tulip driver for Linksys NICs, and do a little sodering. Yet however applicable that is, a PhD in uni can't spend their time babysitting that. Why would they spend 10,000 in hardware for a class that will never get them a patent or in Nature? Mundane activities don't get Federal funding.

So there is a clash of wills here. Luckily they guy I'd be working for (the fourth guy I talked to) said that they want college hires NOT for their prowess... but for fresh perspective. Schwing! That's all I'm about baby! He also mentioned "intern-hires" which means I have a leg up. Half of the time it seemed like they were trying to sell me on the job. Other times they seemed disappointed that I only had "application experience". So I'd talk about the above and say that "I loved my OS stuff... and I'd love to do more work with it." It's pretty cool stuff: top of the line RAID controllers.

And before lunch the Manager said "Hey, if you aren't busy, do you want to talk to our sister group? They have an opening as well?" Hell yes! The sister group does the firmware on the controllers. And so it seems as if they would then do a powwow and decide who I might be a better fit for (fingers crossed). The nice thing about either of these jobs is that The Company is constantly putting out new product. Half dozen new storage devices every year. So constant work, constant challenges, no "99% of the job is maintaining code" shit.

The best part: good or bad, they'll get in contact with me. Like I said two JEs ago, that's my biggest gripe with job hunting. Gotta respect character like that.