How I ended up in DC
So, I'm now working in Rockville, MD, for a company called Emmes that does computer work for medical research.
In fall of last year, I started grad school at the College of Saint Rose, in a track that would have given me a masters degree and teaching certification for high school math after a two-year program. The goal in all this was to become more employable; computer-related job interviews had not been going well for several months prior, and the ones that did go well were for jobs that were not interesting enough that I could realistically expect to put forward a good effort towards them. Yes, I know work is not always designed to be fun, but if I'm depressed about my prospects on day 1, I doubted that it would go uphill.
So, grad school. This seemed to go reasonably well, though the amount of writing I had to do was occasionally pretty taxing. Fortunately, I was able to integrate XKCD comics into my papers on multiple occasions, even still getting an A on some of them. (Example - this was part of my paper on how to integrate the Scholar Academic ideology of curriculum design with a more student-centered approach - if you can convince kids to think of a fruit bowl in terms of the cartesian plane, how can you possibly go wrong. Actually, you could go wrong with that title, so let's omit that part.) So, with the humor level in good shape, spirits remained high in the face of occasional weekends that included writing 15 pages across multiple classes.
With grad school going on, I had pretty much stopped sprinkling my resumes in various locations. The grad program had a lot of pseudo-teaching activity requirements, like spending 10-20 hours per semester at local schools, doing observation or mini-lessons. I figured with that going on every semester, someone I meet would probably think I was an interesting person and connect me to a job someday.
Come Thanksgiving 2010, I had a random conversation with my old college roommate Noble, who asked if I was still looking for a job. A corner had already been turned in my mind, but hey, another sprinkled resume couldn't hurt. So I gave him one. I really didn't want to break from grad school in the middle of the semester - that would be a waste of several thousand dollars of tuition in addition to whatever expenses I would have - but I figured I'd entertain the idea of putting grad work on the back burner for the purpose of a cool job. After my interest-gauging interview, I figured that my performance in feeding this line to the HR rep probably sounded pretty pathetic, so the status quo would likely continue.
Christmas comes and passes without a response from the interview. I felt vaguely obligated to call HR and pester them about when to expect a response, except that any response at this point would put my start time squarely after the Date Of No Refunds for the spring semester. So I didn't call.
Mid-January, I get an email saying that after careful consideration, they've decided to hire nobody for the position. "We'll keep your resume on file." Yeah yeah, heard that story before. I had essentially resigned myself to the status quo anyway.
Fast forward to early March. The same HR rep writes me back and says that the position has opened again, and am I still interested. Whoa, that's unusual, actually being truthful about keeping me on file. I go through the motions with a couple phone interviews, with my interest piqued more than in December but I'm still wary that I would seriously flunk a technical interview, having not really written a 'serious' program in over two years.
To my surprise, the awkward technical question doesn't get any further than my job history. They seem vaguely satisfied with that, and not upset that Javascript is not one of my primary skills. In early April they fly me
down to BWI for a face-to-face interview.
Okay, I figured, *now* is when the stupid technical question is going to show up. But after some lunch at a local deli and about an hour discussing vague platitudes and job responsibilities, the technical question that finally comes is not that technical at all.
"Alright," the manager says as he grabs a sheet of paper from his notes, "here's a little quiz we had prepared for you. But actually, if you'd rather," -- he glances at the freebie local newspaper lying on the desk -- "there's a kakuro on the comics page, you can do that instead. I'll be back in 15 minutes to see whichever you choose to do."
I grab his paper and read it as he walks out the door. "You have 100 valuable coins that each weigh one ounce. They were produced in 10 lots of 10 each. However, one of the lots is found to be counterfeit, and coins from that set actually way 1.01 ounces. Using a digital scale, how can you identify which lot is counterfeit in only one weighing?"
Really?
I think I first saw that puzzle in like seventh grade. Even if I hadn't, it's not that hard to work out. I hastily write out an answer on the paper, filling like half a page even though one sentence might be construed as sufficient. Having only used up a few minutes, I grab the newspaper and start to work on the kakuro, which I get about 75% done when the manager walks back in. I push the coin puzzle towards him and say, "In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably tell you that I've heard this one before, so I also worked on the kakuro."
"Oh good," he says, smiling without a hint of sarcasm. "I get my best answers from people that have heard it before." He acknowledges my answer as correct, and offers to confirm my progress on the kakuro, which is apparently what he spent the 15 minutes working on. Everything seems to go smoothly and they send me on my way, a remarkably short interview all things considered. (My basis for comparison here was Microsoft, which had five one-hour face interviews on the same day, when I took that trip.)
About a week later, they send me an official offer letter, and a spurt of senioritis immediately kicks in at St. Rose. My last couple essays for Adolescent Psychology had some pretty hard-core procrastinating behind them, but I still manage to slip through with an A-.
Last Friday, I moved into my new apartment here in Rockville. Although in Maryland, it's still within reach of the DC metro system. After some insane phone tag with various utility and rental companies, I started work on Tuesday and just finished my first week.
The company works like this: A research institute, such as the National Institute of Health, has some study they want to run. My company, Emmes, offers to give them computer support and statistical analysis. We give the NIH a pre-written web-based tool for data entry, that comes with a lot of medically-inclined database tweaks, plus the training on how to use it. They get to provide feedback on the tool and we respond by coding variations to the tool as they request (this is my role). Eventually, once they like how the tool works, they use it to enter data for their clinical trial, and someone else on the Emmes team does statistical analysis on the data to hand back to them.
So far, my work has been very preparatory, with no actual tasks from the client coming my way. The orientation schedule of the job won't be completely over until mid-August, though I seriously hope that actual project work can begin within a week or so. (More likely, it will be a question of speed - I'll probably get to do real work but won't be expected to do it at the full pace until August.)
In fall of last year, I started grad school at the College of Saint Rose, in a track that would have given me a masters degree and teaching certification for high school math after a two-year program. The goal in all this was to become more employable; computer-related job interviews had not been going well for several months prior, and the ones that did go well were for jobs that were not interesting enough that I could realistically expect to put forward a good effort towards them. Yes, I know work is not always designed to be fun, but if I'm depressed about my prospects on day 1, I doubted that it would go uphill.
So, grad school. This seemed to go reasonably well, though the amount of writing I had to do was occasionally pretty taxing. Fortunately, I was able to integrate XKCD comics into my papers on multiple occasions, even still getting an A on some of them. (Example - this was part of my paper on how to integrate the Scholar Academic ideology of curriculum design with a more student-centered approach - if you can convince kids to think of a fruit bowl in terms of the cartesian plane, how can you possibly go wrong. Actually, you could go wrong with that title, so let's omit that part.) So, with the humor level in good shape, spirits remained high in the face of occasional weekends that included writing 15 pages across multiple classes.
With grad school going on, I had pretty much stopped sprinkling my resumes in various locations. The grad program had a lot of pseudo-teaching activity requirements, like spending 10-20 hours per semester at local schools, doing observation or mini-lessons. I figured with that going on every semester, someone I meet would probably think I was an interesting person and connect me to a job someday.
Come Thanksgiving 2010, I had a random conversation with my old college roommate Noble, who asked if I was still looking for a job. A corner had already been turned in my mind, but hey, another sprinkled resume couldn't hurt. So I gave him one. I really didn't want to break from grad school in the middle of the semester - that would be a waste of several thousand dollars of tuition in addition to whatever expenses I would have - but I figured I'd entertain the idea of putting grad work on the back burner for the purpose of a cool job. After my interest-gauging interview, I figured that my performance in feeding this line to the HR rep probably sounded pretty pathetic, so the status quo would likely continue.
Christmas comes and passes without a response from the interview. I felt vaguely obligated to call HR and pester them about when to expect a response, except that any response at this point would put my start time squarely after the Date Of No Refunds for the spring semester. So I didn't call.
Mid-January, I get an email saying that after careful consideration, they've decided to hire nobody for the position. "We'll keep your resume on file." Yeah yeah, heard that story before. I had essentially resigned myself to the status quo anyway.
Fast forward to early March. The same HR rep writes me back and says that the position has opened again, and am I still interested. Whoa, that's unusual, actually being truthful about keeping me on file. I go through the motions with a couple phone interviews, with my interest piqued more than in December but I'm still wary that I would seriously flunk a technical interview, having not really written a 'serious' program in over two years.
To my surprise, the awkward technical question doesn't get any further than my job history. They seem vaguely satisfied with that, and not upset that Javascript is not one of my primary skills. In early April they fly me
down to BWI for a face-to-face interview.
Okay, I figured, *now* is when the stupid technical question is going to show up. But after some lunch at a local deli and about an hour discussing vague platitudes and job responsibilities, the technical question that finally comes is not that technical at all.
"Alright," the manager says as he grabs a sheet of paper from his notes, "here's a little quiz we had prepared for you. But actually, if you'd rather," -- he glances at the freebie local newspaper lying on the desk -- "there's a kakuro on the comics page, you can do that instead. I'll be back in 15 minutes to see whichever you choose to do."
I grab his paper and read it as he walks out the door. "You have 100 valuable coins that each weigh one ounce. They were produced in 10 lots of 10 each. However, one of the lots is found to be counterfeit, and coins from that set actually way 1.01 ounces. Using a digital scale, how can you identify which lot is counterfeit in only one weighing?"
Really?
I think I first saw that puzzle in like seventh grade. Even if I hadn't, it's not that hard to work out. I hastily write out an answer on the paper, filling like half a page even though one sentence might be construed as sufficient. Having only used up a few minutes, I grab the newspaper and start to work on the kakuro, which I get about 75% done when the manager walks back in. I push the coin puzzle towards him and say, "In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably tell you that I've heard this one before, so I also worked on the kakuro."
"Oh good," he says, smiling without a hint of sarcasm. "I get my best answers from people that have heard it before." He acknowledges my answer as correct, and offers to confirm my progress on the kakuro, which is apparently what he spent the 15 minutes working on. Everything seems to go smoothly and they send me on my way, a remarkably short interview all things considered. (My basis for comparison here was Microsoft, which had five one-hour face interviews on the same day, when I took that trip.)
About a week later, they send me an official offer letter, and a spurt of senioritis immediately kicks in at St. Rose. My last couple essays for Adolescent Psychology had some pretty hard-core procrastinating behind them, but I still manage to slip through with an A-.
Last Friday, I moved into my new apartment here in Rockville. Although in Maryland, it's still within reach of the DC metro system. After some insane phone tag with various utility and rental companies, I started work on Tuesday and just finished my first week.
The company works like this: A research institute, such as the National Institute of Health, has some study they want to run. My company, Emmes, offers to give them computer support and statistical analysis. We give the NIH a pre-written web-based tool for data entry, that comes with a lot of medically-inclined database tweaks, plus the training on how to use it. They get to provide feedback on the tool and we respond by coding variations to the tool as they request (this is my role). Eventually, once they like how the tool works, they use it to enter data for their clinical trial, and someone else on the Emmes team does statistical analysis on the data to hand back to them.
So far, my work has been very preparatory, with no actual tasks from the client coming my way. The orientation schedule of the job won't be completely over until mid-August, though I seriously hope that actual project work can begin within a week or so. (More likely, it will be a question of speed - I'll probably get to do real work but won't be expected to do it at the full pace until August.)