Potentials - January/February 2016 - 45

my first job

The learning
continues...
by Brock J. LaMeres

y career began in the late 1990s after earnthat first day of my first job, everything that was to come
ing my B.S. degree in electrical engineering
in the first 16 years of my career, I don't think I would
from Montana State University (MSU). Two
have believed you.
weeks after graduation, I went to work for
the interview
Hewlett Packard (HP) in Colorado Springs, Colorado,
When I approached the end of my degree in electrical
as a hardware design engineer. In the 16 years since
engineering in the late 1990s, I knew that I wanted to
starting my first job, my career has been filled with
work for HP. This wasn't because I had researched the
exciting twists and turns including designing electypes of engineering jobs that they had, the compatronic test equipment, making international cusny history, or even the pay structure. The
tomer visits, getting my M.S and Ph.D.
reason was that it was the company for
degrees, teaching night classes at a
which nearly all graduating students
university, cofounding a tech startin the electrical engineering departup c o mp a n y, a n d u lt i m at e l y
ment at MSU wanted to work.
becoming a professor, where I
Every engineering college has a
have been researching future
set of big companies that recruit
computer architectures.
there. In the late 1990s at MSU,
It is fun to look back at my
those companies were HP, Boecareer path from the start of my
ing, and Micron. Everyone
first job, where I sat down in a
wanted to work for one of the
cubicle with a lab notebook and
big three. I knew that if I could
began learning how to design
land a job at HP, I would be one of
digital systems, until today. In my
the success stories that I had
first year, I fully anticipated to be
heard about.
doing what I was doing at that moLooking back at that time, it's interment for the next 40 years. When I atesting that my desire to work for a specific
tended retirement parties on Friday after© Can StoCk Photo/iqonCePt
company was based solely on the culture
noons in the HP cafeteria, I just knew that
I was immersed in and had nothing to do with any subwould be me someday.
stantive details about the company. Nonetheless, knowTo my surprise, my career now is nothing like what
ing a specific company that I wanted to work for was a
I had anticipated. The projects I work on now are light
tremendous advantage in my job hunt because I was able
years away from the work I did on my first job. In the
to learn about the types of interviews that HP conducted.
fall of 2014, I launched a new computer technology into
At the time, HP's interviews were technical with a capital
space aboard a sounding rocket. In the summer of 2016,
"T." There were no questions about how you felt today or
I will be sending a new computer technology to the Interwhere you saw yourself in five years; it was about sitnational Space Station for a six-month demonstration. I
ting down in front of an HP engineer and working circuit
was also notified by NASA that my computer was selected
problems. It was stomach-turning having to walk into the
for a stand-alone satellite mission. If you had told me, on
interviewing room and seeing the interviewer sitting at a
table with nothing but a pad of engineering paper and a
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPOT.2015.2432191
Date of publication: 8 January 2016
calculator on it.

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