EccentricDuck wrote:You've always striked me as somewhat entrepreneurial - would that be accurate?
Extremely.
EccentrickDuck wrote:What led you to be interested in the place you're now at?
Several things. First of all, in Huntsville, Alabama, most companies are either government contractors for the Army or government contractors for NASA. Lots of ignorant people think that contracting is amazing work, but Kendall and I both cooped as government contractors and know what a nightmare it really is. It's an atmosphere that breeds stagnation, apathy, and pretty much discourages any sort of learning or productivity. The last place we wanted to be was back at a government contractor.
During my final semester, Adtran hosted a "senior design competition." After slaving away to the point of partial sanity loss on our Lunar Rover project, I decided to enter it into the competition. We won, which gave us an invite to Adtran's "senior design showcase" along with the winners of universities in the neighboring states. After an extremely painful all-nighter during which I literally almost murdered one of my team-mates, we presented the rover. Kendall was present as well, just as support (she wasn't part of the project). We were both approached by engineering managers who were interested in recruiting us.
Everybody that I know who has dealt with Adtran says that they are the most highly recommended company in all of northern Alabama. They are also very entrepreneurial minded and genuinely care about their employees. There's no bureaucratic bullshit here. Hard work is earns deserved reward and recognition. A man who steps up to the plate and assumes responsibility advances. That's how it should be.
The real biggest contributing factor was the engineering aspect. Computer Engineers are schooled in half electrical engineering, half computer science. We specialize in embedded platforms, architecture, operating systems, and that small little niche area where hardware and software meet. Unfortunately the job market is just so software-oriented these days, that 90% of us ultimately wind up as computer scientists coding Java and C# for some PC software.
I really didn't want to be doing that kind of work. Call me arrogant all that you want, but I honestly chose my degree, because I felt like I would learn far more from going to a lower, hardware level than I would going to higher levels into JIT and scripting languages. At Adtran, almost all of our development is embedded platforms. I've heard that managers generally reject CS majors at the door (Kendall got super lucky). Since I've been here, I've worked two different embedded architectures (PPC and MIPS), I have come into contact with FPGAs, I have had to screw with soldering ICs, I've had to move resistors around, and I've already learned a huge amount.
We manufacture routing products for ISPs. So we're kind of like Cisco for AT&T, Verizon, and carriers. We get to work with ADSL, T1, T3, and even fiber technology--all in an embedded environment. My particular group is doing Voice over IP (VoiP) technologies, so there's lots of interfacing DSPs and exciting shit. And while I'm pretty seasoned at the actual development, I'd be shitting you if I said I was a networking expert. I have more to learn there than any other area.
Pretty much, I like this job, because I'm motivated to learn here. I'm not doing something that I'm already good at. I'm doing something that I hope to some day be good at.
