My mom likes to tell a little story about me:
When I was a little boy, we used to live in a house that had two bathrooms, one had a shower only and the other one had a bathtub only. One day she asked me which one I wanted to use, I hesitated, then replied “I want a shower”, so she takes me to the shower bathroom, then, after a couple of minutes of being in the shower I kept thinking about how nice a bath would be, so I said “I want a bath” Mom took me to the other bathroom, after that I changed my mind and asked her to take me to the shower again, at which point my Mother proceeded to whoop my ass in a very Latin fashion, the point of the story is, I am indecisive, specially when it comes to big decisions, this can be a character flaw. I never suffered from it in the Service because I knew that I had to make decisions in a timely manner, but when it comes to things in which I am allowed to ponder, I am bad, really bad.
Which takes me to today’s post, I want to take some time to discuss my decision making process. In which you will learn a few things about me.
It comes down to two choices, I have not heard back from the a couple of other companies; since I have to make a decision by next Monday, for all practical purposes they don’t count.
I have one offer from Motorola, in
It is not simple, it is not a trivial decision, and it’s killing me. So I will attempt to point what I like and what I don’t like about the offer, maybe that will help.
Why I like Lockheed Martin
Since I was a little kid, I had a fascination with aircraft, especially warplanes, I just loved it, I used to draw little diagrams of plane bisections, I was in love with those things, Dad used to tell me that I was going to be an aeronautical engineer, I love airplanes as much as I love computers, here, they want to use my computer knowledge to do neat things in the leading edge of technology, I always wanted to work on something like this, since I started college I wanted to work for a company that did the sort of thing Lockheed Martin does. I feel so psyched just thinking about it.
Good education system,
Lower cost of living
I like the Northeastern part of the country.
I think that it’s good place to live.
Quality of life will be higher for us there
3. A chance to go to
It’s not guaranteed, but I qualify to compete for a slot to go to the DLP program or something like that. The basic thing is that they would send me to
For all that it’s worth, my first impression of the people I’d be working with was very good. They were very nice to me, and they sold me the company really well, Lockheed spared no expense to make me feel comfortable, they paid for a rental car, two nights at a nice hotel and all the meals, not only that, but, they were so damn nice.
Why I want to go to Motorola.
My Mother lives here, I don’t want to break her heart. I know she doesn’t want me to move far away. I love the way her face lights up when she sees Anthony, she is never going to tell me not to follow my dreams, but it is hard for me to leave her knowing that I had the chance to stay.
If I leave, I will miss my sister a lot. I want to see her get through college just like I did, I am very proud of her. I don’t want to leave her.
My Mother in Law helps us out, my family on both sides always help us out with big or little things. Our Hispanic culture is very family oriented. Leaving my Family and my in Laws will be hard.
To be honest, I never thought I would get an offer from them, most of the Electrical and Computer Engineers from the University of Miami, Florida International, Nova and FAU want to work there. Many apply, few are chosen, I applied there because I wanted to give Florida a chance, thinking that I was going to be ignored like most of my classmates, instead, they gave me a call, asked me to go interview the next day, and gave me a full day of technical interviews in which I happened to know all the answers to. If it wasn’t for Lockheed I would be happy to be there, hell, I consider myself honored that they made me an offer, they made their decision rather quickly, three days after the interview they called to offer me the job.
One of my closest friends in college works there, my cousin works there. Many classmates are there, many of my professors do research from them.
They have a good reputation here. Big company with good benefits, they offered me a salary that is about 5% higher than Lockheed. They will pay for my Masters degree, which I am want to get it from the University of Florida, one of the best schools in the country, it is not Ivy League but it’s surely the best engineering school in the state…besides FAU of course.
If I sell the house I will lose money, it’s a buyers market and I doubt I will be able to rent it to cover the mortgage payments, so it’s a problem that I’d rather not deal with.
Overall, I would be very happy to accept the Motorola offer if it weren’t for the fact that I had my dream job offered to me at a different place. The bigger things stopping me from jumping to Lockheed Martin are my family and the hassle of moving there which I can avoid by just staying here, but it seems to me that those are not good reasons to say no to a great job. But I can have a good job that I sort of like, and stay here all the same, but my mind does not let me turn away from a job like Lockheed.
I want to thank Martha my wife for being so supportive.
For those of you that don’t know me, you should know that Martha and I fight, we get into arguments and stuff like that, I am telling you this because I don’t want you to get the impression that we are the perfect couple, however, she has been great in giving me all the support that I need and she basically says that she will go with me wherever I decide to go.
So that is my dilemma, writing this helps me understand well the issue, and it’s back to square one. I can accept the Motorola one because it seems like it’s a win-win, I mean, great company with a good reputation, great benefits and I can stay at home and avoid all the hassle, but, on the other hand, it’s my dream job…in NY, with a chance to get my Masters degree at an Ivy league school living like kings. So, what do I do?
Things I’ve been thinking about.
So right now I am in a plane, flying from
Anyway, the thing is, I am having one of those moments when I learn something new, or when I read something that gets my wheels spinning, I am really bad at presenting my ideas clearly, the problem is that I don’t think I ever write anything new, that I don’t have any ideas of my own, it seems like all I do is merely repeat what someone else has said before me. This bothers me because I don’t want to give the appearance that I am so clever or what not, since I am not, I am not intelligent at all. I get very self-conscious when I write my thoughts, since I believe my thoughts are plagiarizing other thinkers before me.
I know nothing about computers, or better said, I only know a few basic principles about computers, but I am straying from the subject, the real thing I want to say is how much I appreciate other people who do not worry about what others think, people like Richard Feynman, Copernicus, people who doubt, and ask, scientists who know what it means to know something. It makes me understand that I don’t know much of anything, I feel humbled in comparison, I only wish to understand what they are talking about.
But the thing that bothers me is that I am supposed to be an educated person, (somewhat) I am about to graduate with a Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering and I barely understand what my field is supposed to be about, not that I did not study, is just that I realize that I have only scratched the surface of what there is to know. I know that I don’t understand math that well, I must admit with a great deal of shame that I cannot do an integral without a calculator. I have forgotten most of what I’ve been taught about physics, so what do I know? Not much really.
Mysticism in our world
People seem to turn to mystic things to explain the world that we don’t understand, I can understand how we can have faith in the things that we cannot know, for example, science cannot prove that there isn’t a God out there.
I wonder
Just because somebody believes in evolution does not mean that they are against religion, why is that we think that?
Or why is it that we seem to associate atheism with immorality? How is atheism unmoral?
Why do we still believe in palm readers, astrology, superstitions and silly things like that? All these things that we know have to be fake, but we still believe it.
Humans are lazy
People seem to be very lazy when it comes to believing what they are told, it is easier to accept things and move on rather than to think and analyze what is going on. I think is great when we question things, like when we make our leaders accountable for their actions. I think that is a good thing, I think that’s what democracy is supposed to be about
I just want to write that like Feynman, I am not afraid of not knowing the answers to all the questions that haunt us, like what is the meaning of life and all of that, I may think about it for a second, but I am going to dedicate my life to continue to learn, but only learn those things that I can know for sure, things that I can prove with experiments, theories that have results and number that agree with it, not just some mumbo-jumbo that anyone with a typewriter can make up.
Maybe something good will come out of it, maybe I’ll work on a chip that will change the world, who knows? But that’s not what I am after, it’d be nice if it happens, but I just want to learn for the pleasure of finding things out.
Like the other day, they called me from work to see if I wanted to put in some extra hours going to the lab on a Saturday, so I had nothing to do that day anyway.
We had these medical machines that measure the performance of pacemakers, some expensive pieces of equipment that IBM makes for medical institutions, so anyhow, some of them had bugs in it so we were to take a look at them and if they had this error we were supposed to go in there and copy the log files and the software version for the engineers in Texas to figure out what was wrong, so it was a very basic thing, all we did was to look for this logs, compress them and copy them to a USB drive and then upload them to the web, the trick was, these machines run a version of Linux a bit different from what we normally use, our manager did not know Linux and this guy and I decided that we were going to figure out how to make the USB drive work. So we figured it out, well he did the USB part, I just figured out what order to do things in order for it to go faster.
So we didn’t accomplish anything significant, but the mere feeling of figuring out a puzzle, not knowing anything before, thinking about the problem and then finding a solution gives such a great satisfaction, it is great. I want to do these types of things. I like to solve problems. I don’t want to say that I am good at solving problems; I just want to say that I like doing that.
I am still a rookie, a newbie, I have ways to go. I am glad that I now know what I like to do. Let’s see how things turn out.
So this is what’s I’ve been thinking about as a cruise south across the country at forty thousand feet. It is
Family
Tomorrow I am going to see my family. I want to see how Anthony has changed, he is growing up so fast, it is crazy, wow, and time doesn’t stop. My son is going to grow up and be and adult someday, isn’t that something? I mean, from a few cells to a full person.
Ok folks, that’s all I have.
J.V.
