Well, hello there Internet. I'm a person who has problems keeping up with things. Does that sound familiar? If it does, I'm afraid that you will not find any answers here. My best solution is to find a spot of time when I really have absolutely nothing going on, when suddenly I get the nagging feeling that I should be doing something "productive." Like updating that blog that I haven't done anything with in like 5-6 months.
I had been making most of my posts essentially glorified photo dumps, which are nice, of course. Pictures fairly efficiently transfer information, given their 1:1000 word ratio. But they don't really say that much about me, what I'm thinking, or how I feel about what I'm thinking about myself. This is really all a preamble to my decision to use more words and fewer pictures. Alison seems to prefer the word thing anyway, since she often struggles at great length to withdraw them from me.
The heaviest item on my mind over the past several months has been employment. Perhaps at some risk to my professional career, I'd like to discuss this topic, without going into too great of detail.
In college, I always thought that the "coolest" engineering was done in space. It's an exotic environment, far removed from our comfortable and familiar layer of breathable atmosphere. Barring orbital/interplanetary travel, aerospace was a close second--an engineering space where remarkable design is required to accomplish the mission. Unfortunately I didn't align myself very well to the field, because I was also cheap--there was research money available to me in friction stir welding research, and not in aerospace applications (of which there were not very many at my school). This had the net effect of pushing me toward material and manufacturing science, which doesn't really "do" it for me. But, a degree is a degree, and if you can get it nearly fully funded, who am I to disagree?
With my degree soon to be completed, I eagerly sought out opportunities in aerospace, only to find that the prevailing economy and government budget (let's face it--most of aerospace innovation is funded with taxpayer/borrowed dollars) was not very conducive to my interests. Faced with the prospect of being "dressed up with nowhere to go" I became less selective in my employment applications. That ultimately netted me a few options, from which I picked the surest and most attractive offer--in the computer industry.
I've always been a bit of a technophile, so being a part of a relatively young industry was initially exciting. The excitement faded somewhat as I realized that the projects I worked on were on the periphery of my company's product line. I kept with it regardless; after all, I needed to become familiar with how to manage the thermal design of computer enclosures. Far better for everyone to have me take some chances on things that won't kill my company's revenue stream if I goof up. I didn't goof up, so I was shifted to a more "cutting-edge" project.
That seemed promising as well! I was trusted with a new product line that was going to "change the market." Well, changing the market is long, hard work. I bent over backward to make workable solutions for products that barely sold. Increasingly I found myself getting pigeonholed into a specialty line going nowhere fast, as I saw younger engineers quickly rising in recognition of their peers as they worked on higher-profile products that made bank. By the end of 2014, I felt as if my three years of work placed me no farther than the new hires who had been working for one year.
At this point I asked myself, "Where do I see this all going? Who will I be and what will I be doing 5 years down the road? 10?" I didn't see a clear path out of my current position. I actually started to dread doing the same work day in, day out. Sure, we were building machines that make the Internet run, but my efforts only made sure the Internet stayed online on a hot day. I wasn't actually helping design the hardware that ran the Internet, just its A/C. It was...boring.
What isn't boring? Well, what inspired me in engineering school? Space! Thus began my rebranding efforts. Evenings were devoted to reading technical papers, textbooks, and training on specialty radiative heat transfer software for which I barely managed trial licenses. My evenings became more interesting than my days.
Nonetheless, it was very slow-going. I had the support of a couple of former coworkers (who found opportunities outside the company) to help me along, but it took a solid 3 months before I landed my first interview in upstate New York. That ended up being an interesting but ultimately frustrating experience. The following three months were perhaps the longest, most excruciating of my professional career. I had a botched effort in Tucson, a couple of unappealing leads in New Mexico, and a lot of contractor spammers before I got out to my next interview, this time in Silicon Valley. It was very interesting and encouraging, until I saw how utterly unaffordable it was to live there. I had avoided California entirely for this express purpose, until I felt that I was cutting myself off from at least half of the aerospace industry's openings by discounting the Golden State.
Fortunately, you only need one job. After nearly 7 months of searching and expending nearly all my vacation time, I found just the niche I was looking for in the Los Angeles area. It made sense logically, it felt right spiritually, and it was insanity financially. But...here I am.
The toughest part about the most recent 3 months (late October to present) has been my separation from my family. My new job required me to start before we could even place our Houston house on the market, much less sell it. The selling process is almost coming to completion (literally today, we have received an offer at last), and I look forward to being able to have Alison and my little guy close by. I am not looking forward to the increased house payments, but it's either that or ever-increasing rent.
We had a wonderful Christmas time together with all the Gibbs in Houston and in the Bahamas, but that is a story for another time. This text-dump is enough for now.
Until the next update, have a happy 2016 and get hyped for work! Woohoo...
