Duality

When I started this weblog, I thought I would let you follow my search for a job. I got gunshy halfway through, which is why you probably didn’t know that Power Integrations has been checking up on me for the past month or so.

Today, I verbally agreed to their offer. In a week and half, I’ll be driving down there to sign the papers. I’ll become only the eighth member of their design team. The thought scares me, yet excites me at the time.

Now I need to get a hold of the EE 143 textbook and reader and download the EE 241 lecture notes. I don’t why my parents think I won’t want to go back to school after working. I won’t get tired of school. Working will be just like school—except with better pay.

This was in the Berkeley EECS undergrad announcements. I think a couple of you might be interested:

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Six Apart Summer Position

Six Apart (http://www.sixapart.com/), the company behind the Movable Type, TypePad and LiveJournal weblogging systems/services is looking for a handful of talented summer interns to work with us in building, designing and marketing the next generation of weblogging software. You will work on a global team to build software used by millions of individuals and businesses.

The positions will begin May 23rd and last through the summer (start date is negotiable). Hours will be Full Time and pay is negotiable based on experience.

Openings:

Engineering: 2-4 individuals with savvy web software development skills. Candidates must have prior experience in Perl and be comfortable with knowledge of basic Software Engineering concepts: development models, testing, and documentation. Experience with high-volume web sites and open source technologies are pluses. Please include notable project examples.

Marketing: 1-2 individual with strong writing and communication skills and prior experience marketing for a web property.

Design: 1-3 talented individuals with creative graphical and/or user interface design skills. Please include project/portfolio examples.

Customer Analysis: 1 individual who will analyze customer data to discover patterns, test hypotheses and form insights that influence our product and marketing decisions. Candidates must have excellent quantitative skills and experience or education in survey design, sampling, and data analysis. MBAs or post-grads are preferred. We will also consider smart, eager undergrads who are either Math or Economic majors.

The ideal candidates will have the following characteristics:

1. Ability to learn. Candidate must show they can adapt to the rapidly changing technology landscape. Good listening skills are paramount.
2. Ability to communicate. Candidate must show that they can express ideas with elegance and flair. For marketing/design candidates, excellent written and verbal skills are an absolute must.
3. Technical ability. For our technical intern positions, candidate must be part of a CS program or have prior experience developing web based applications. Good project experience with web programming languages is preferred.
4. Flexibility. Candidate must be comfortable and excited to be part of a start up!

Send your resume to jobs@sixapart.com

I don’t think Jay knows yet, but Alan was really disappointed when he heard I didn’t get an offer. After Alan got his offer, we all assumed I’d get one too. It would’ve been just like 142: the three of us taking on assignments way over our heads.

But I should’ve known. Steve, newly promoted to a general manager of Linear, called me late in the day (6:30 PM). If a company wanted to give you an offer, they’d call you in the middle of the day, right? Leave all the rejection calls for the end of the day. I’m serious. Susan, the rotation program manager for International Rectifier, called me at 4:50 PM.

Allow me to drop the professionalism for a moment.

No offense to Chris or Alan, but… International Rectifier choosing Chris over me and Linear choosing Alan over me feel like slaps in the face. Counting only those of my graduating class that are going to work, I should be #2 when it comes to analog circuits—#1 being Jay.

That’s it. Not doing any work tonight.

(interviewed on Wednesday, March 30th and Thursday, March 31st)

Unlike the design engineer positions I applied for at Power Integrations and Emosyn, the position I applied for at International Rectifier (IR) is a rotation engineer position. IR’s rotation program is a two-year program where engineers get to work in different roles at different locations. March 31st was the official interview day for rotation engineer candidates. About half of us chose to fly in the day before to have a casual dinner with current rotation engineers.

This interview couldn’t have happened during a worse week. I ended up going to the lab the morning of my flight to LA. And I ended going back to the lab after flying back to the bay area. But I digress.

In the morning, I was interviewed by four people: two from HR (including the mentioned Dave Taylor), the director of IC design (Chris), and Andrea from IR-SA (IR’s partnership with Sanyo Appliances). The interviews were fairly relaxed. My only true technical interview (the one with Chris) went okay. His insistence on conceptual reasoning caused me some problems—though I should know the stuff from 240. In my interview with Andrea, 192 saved me. It wasn’t really a technical interview; he asked me if I had dealt with or implemented various things: high-voltage circuits, IGBTs, PWM signals, regulators, boost converters. The last three are used in 192.

After lunch, we were given a tour of IR’s 8 buildings at their El Segundo site. The buildings were pretty old and unglamorous. I think BWRC’s sexy design has spoiled me.

The whole rotation program feels like an extension of college. The manager of the rotation program, Susan Sanchez, organizes events for rotation engineers to help them get to know each other. It was easy to see that the rotation engineers I met were all friends with each other. It made the place feel like a comfortable place to work.

That’s one thing both Power Integrations and Emosyn lack. I felt out of place at both sites because I was at least four years less-experienced than everyone else. At IR, there would be 15 other newbies along with me.

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Random Highlights

Only the candidates from Berkeley were Bachelors students. The rest were Masters. I’m not sure if I should take that for more than face value.
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Me: What are those exhaust tubes for?

Guy: (Turns from his work) Solder fumes.
Guy: (A moment after returning to work) I probably should be using them.
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(not-UCB-) Alan: (Holding a PCB) Where are the wires?
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Just for the EE people reading this: one of the projects that was demo’ed during the tour was their audio amplifier. It’s a Class-D amp with an LC filter at the output. They said its efficiency is 96%. Gotta be, because the board didn’t even have a heatsink. I was hella thinking about how it all worked out in the frequency domain (LC fixing the non-linearity of Class-D) during the walk back to the HR building. Made my head hurt.

Just got back from my on-site interview with International Rectifier in El Segundo. They flew me out Wednesday afternoon, took me out to dinner (Octopus in Manhattan Beach), roomed me in a nice hotel (DoubleTree in El Segundo), interviewed me, gave me lunch, showed me around, and flew me back. It was a fun trip, especially because I knew the three other Berkeley students that went as well. Oh, but the hotel didn’t give me a cookie =(. Connie said it was really good.

So now that it’s over, I have to deal with all the things I temporarily left behind. I had a midterm this morning; I (and the other two guys, Paul and Chris) will have to make it up tomorrow. We all studied on the flight back. I need to go to the 192 lab to re-calibrate our sensor circuits later tonight [it's already past 10 PM =(... ]. Tomorrow morning, I need to go to BWRC to finish some stuff before the exchange student on the project leaves for good (which might be tomorrow or a week from tomorrow). Everything’s gone craaaaaazy…

I wonder if Dave Taylor read my last entry. He was my first interviewer. At one point, he asked me, “what’s ‘quadoshock’?” I kinda expected him too—after all, practically every other interviewer has. I gave him my usual answer and he followed with, “so what kind of stuff is there?” I replied, “you know, personal stuff.” He suddenly turned to his computer and said, “how about we find out right now?” I totally spilled the beans then. “Well, I currently have a write-up of my interview with Emosyn…” He stopped. Wonder if he checked it out afterwards.

I’ll do a full write-up over the weekend.

(interviewed on Friday, March 25th)

My interview was at 9 AM, so I left the house at 7:20 AM (actually planned to leave at 7). I figured that I’d run into rush-hour traffic. An hour later, however, I pulled into the parking lot of SST’s Sunnyvale office (Emosyn leases office space from SST; Emosyn is a subsidiary of SST). I was way early, again.

The wait was a little longer this time, but I had a couple forms to fill out and was given a folder with SST company info (which I was later told not to read too much into).

You know those images of offices with rows and rows of cubicles? SST’s building is like that. Rows and rows and rows and rows of cubicles. You’d think it would be in their best interest to create a more-pleasant and more-inspiring work environment for their employees. Well, guess not. I could have easily gotten lost there. I made an effort not to stray from the interview room without an Emosyn or SST employee guiding me.

The interview itself was much more relaxed than I thought it would be. I was only given a few technical questions. The rest were behavioral questions and questions about classes, projects and research. I brought that up during lunch (yes, they got me lunch! =)) with Shane (my on-campus interviewer) and he said they were looking for a personality fit as much as or more than a technical fit. Makes sense for a company of about 40 people (half working in Sunnyvale).

Comparing Power Integrations and Emosyn, Power Integrations feels much more distant. Their office is in a new development area at the southern tip of San José. It’s up the hill and overlooks a valley. The place is very quiet—on the outside and inside. Emosyn is the exact opposite. Their office is in the middle of Sunnyvale; there’s a Costco a block away. Looking out the window of the interview room, I constantly saw people walking by. There was a continual hustle and bustle. Reminds me of BWRC, except for the whole cubicle-crazy theme they have.

Home-field advantage apparently applies to interviews too.

Home-field, in this case, meaning not having to drive 50+ miles to get to the site like I did today. It was only my second time driving to San José—the first time being yesterday’s practice run with my dad. Traffic was light on the way there. I reached Power Integrations‘ site in one hour. Of course, since I left two hours before my interview time, that also meant I was one hour early. Commuting is such a lose-lose proposition.

Luckily, my interviewers were willing to start early, so I didn’t have to wait long. First, Gitte (from human resources) went over employee benefits with me and answered all of my non-technical questions. Heh, I asked where employees eat and sleep. Well, worded properly, of course: “I didn’t see any eateries around here; where do employees typically eat?” (cafeteria on-site or places farther away or bag lunch) and “Where do new employees usually find apartments?” (San José or Sunnyvale/Santa Clara for lower rent).

Next, the head of IC design and both design managers took turns asking me technical questions. The questions were fairly conceptual, like the questions I received at my on-campus interview with Power Integrations. It was a mix of RC and LC circuits, device physics, digital logic, digital circuits, current sources, and PTATs and CTATs. If any of the EE-focused among you (are there any?) want to know the questions I got, leave a message in the comments. I did okay with the questions. There were some I answered easily and some I couldn’t answer at all—most notably why β of a BJT drops when Vbe gets past a certain point and what excess carrier concentration vs. distance (graph) looks like for an NPN.

I was quite surprised to learn that Power Integrations only has seven IC designers (out of approx. 250 employees at their San José site). Three have more than 15 years of experience. The least senior of the group are two guys with five years of experience each (both hired straight out of college in 2000). I find it quite scary to be so much more of a newb than everyone else. I wonder if Linear Tech has such a small design group.

I didn’t realize this while I was there, but after reflecting on my experience today, it hit me: Power Integrations felt eerily quiet. Maybe my interview was held in the quieter side of the building; I don’t know. I didn’t see that many people around too. I’ll have to keep that in mind when I check out other companies.

I had an hour-long, on-campus interview with Linear Technology today. It was with the same recruiter that interviewed me in the fall. The interview went fairly well. I worked through all of the problems he gave me—well, with a little help. He said he wanted to bring me in for an on-site interview. But get this—it’ll be in the last week of April or first week of May. Why? You’ll be better prepared to deal with the T0T4L 0WN4G3 then. Okay, he didn’t quite use those words, but really, is there any better way to describe an interview that lasts seven hours?! =(

Back in June of 2003, I was in a bit of a jam. I had just left school, I had no financial aid, and I needed a job. After several days of walking around town handing out resumes, I got a call from a small gas station/car repair shop called Hoffmann 76. Seeing as how I needed the money, I took the job. At first, I had no real interest in the repair side of work. I was never much of a car person and barely knew the difference between an oil filter and a windshield wiper. (OK, extreme example, but yeah…) But they took me in and over the years I learned a lot from them.

Yesterday, I found out that Gamestop wanted to hire me.

So it was with a heavy heart that I decided to say goodbye to my beloved gas station. Today I quit my job. However, today I also finished the necessary paperwork and was hired at Gamestop. It’s an odd feeling I have right now. One one hand, I’m sad to see the station go and I feel bad for leaving. On the other hand, I’ve got a new job that I should enjoy even more and a bright future to look forward to. (Oh, and the fact that I get discounts on games helps ease the pain too.)

Farewell Hoffmann 76, Hello Gamestop.

Well…interview (singular), to be exact. I’m gonna combine several things into this post that slightly relate to each other, but are things that I think are awesome. And yeah, its a bit more ‘personal digging’ and whatnot, but bear with me.

In high school, I always knew that there was one place I could go to and be myself. I didn’t have to worry about people judging me and I didn’t have to worry about whether or not I ‘looked cool.’ For me, that place was the theatre. I loved the theatre. I love the theatre. After high school, though, I dropped out of the theatre scene almost entirely. I went to college and studied to become a Computer Science Engineer. But despite how much I loved computers and really wanted to learn how to program, I just never felt like I belonged among the other engineers. I never felt like I was accepted. And after two years, I dropped out.

A year went by and I decided to return to school. But this time, I was going to do what my heart had been telling me to do all along. Theatre! So I returned and joined the Theatre department. I took several theatre classes my first quarter, and while I did meet some new people and get to do a bit of acting, all in all, I never got the feeling like I did in high school. And the fact that the next two quarters (and two summer sessions) were almost theatre-free didn’t really help things.

However, this quarter started about two weeks ago and through a series of coincidences and a risk or two, it’s turned out to be the best quarter ever! In a later post I’ll be explaining one of the biggest factors, but the other one is the fact that I know people in my classes now. This may sound like a trivial thing, but in all my classes so far, I’ve known like one or two other people in them, tops. But this time, I’ve got four classes and for the most the same group of people in each one. That, to me, makes all the difference in the world. Being able to sit in a class and joke with someone makes them all the more bearable (not that they’re that hard to sit through to begin with, but it definitely gives me another reason for going to class).

And my time outside of class has also changed. Now I can walk up and down the halls and see people I recognize. Somehow these past two weeks have changed me in such a wonderful way. I’m meeting new people and I’m actually being outgoing, and talkative, instead of my usual shy self. It’s awesome! I really get the feeling that I’m back in high school with all my old friends. I’m finally becoming hyper again! School has no longer become something I need to do. It’s turning into something I want to do.

I know I skipped a lot of things, but as long as the gist is there, I think you’ll get it. Anyway, to tie it into the second thing I was going to talk about, today I had a job interview at Gamestop. For the past 5 months or so, I’ve been stopping by Gamestop every week and asking them if they have any job openings. And while the answer was always “not now, but we’ll be hiring for Christmas time” I kept going. If for no other reason than they might eventually get so tired of me asking that they would give me a job. However, last week I went in and was told that the hiring for Christmas has started and I scheduled an interview time.

Today was the interview and I have to say that it went GREAT! If I didn’t have such a crappy ass schedule right now I could almost guarantee that I got the job, but since I do have a really busy schedule, we’ll have to wait until Friday or so to find out. “But what does this have to do with theatre,” you’re probably asking. Well, I felt that because of how open and loose and confident I’ve become over the last few weeks, I was able to have a REALLY great interview. Because I’ve been taking so many risks lately, and saying things I usually don’t say, It’s like I’m a different person. And i think that really showed in the interview. I was completely relaxed and I was even joking around with him and everything, it was awesome.

Anyway, long post, I know, but just a taste of what I’ve been up to lately. I’ve still got about 4 or 5 topics I want to post about, but for now this will have to suffice.

I think my inner child has been waiting 5 years for this moment and now, the spotlight’s finally back on him. Wheee!!!

A recent article at Gamespot talks about union voice actors calling for a strike until game publishers offer residuals. Since this is what I want to do with my life, it obviously affects me and what the industry will be by the time I get to join. It’s an interesting article and I would recommend that you read it if you’ve ever cared about the voices in your games. I’ll let everyone know if there are any changes.