Archive for February, 2005

12th Annual CS/CmpE Career Fair Posted February 4, 2005 at 6:54 pm

I attended the 12th Annual CS/CmpE Career Fair at Georgia Tech this past Wednesday. Over 40 companies attended the event, which was hosted in the Student Center Ballroom. I spent several days before the event researching each company and deciding whether or not I was interested in talking to them. I talked to representatives from 14 companies (see list below), asking about their business, who they were looking for, and how I might fit in. I gave my resume to most of the companies I talked to. Most said that I should hear something within a couple weeks.

One company stood out in particular. Lutron Electronics, which I have already talked about in my blog, describes their business as a very hands-on environment in which every engineer gets to participate in any aspect of the design process they wish to take on. It strikes me as a very different mentality than that of most companies and it’s ultimately what attracted me to Lutron. Within hours of the career fair, an engineer who I had talked to at the fair called me up and invited me to a group dinner that night and an interview the next day.

I accepted, of course, and we (two Lutron engineers and three other potential employees) all met at Uncle Julio’s Casa Grande on Peachtree Road for some delicious Mexican food and banter about life at Lutron. It was a very enjoyable evening and I’m glad that I went. I had my interview the next morning with one of the same engineers (also a fellow Georgia Tech alumnus) from the dinner. I was queried briefly about my interest in Lutron before I presented with a series of problems related to circuits and embedded systems. I handled the problems fairly well, with a little coaxing here and there as necessary from the interviewer. Again, I was informed that I could expect further communication within a couple weeks. I do hope I hear more because it’s quite an interesting company.

New layout Posted February 2, 2005 at 10:27 pm

I decided to switch the main site over to the layout. I’m not done changing around some of the sections (particularly About and Links), but I’ll keep working on those on the backend. Enjoy the new layout and please leave a constructive comment.

I give credit where credit is due. Titus Barik motivated me to make a new layout. Mike Davidson came up with the top graphic style that I subsequently copied. 456 Berea Street provided the tutorial that in some form shaped the top navigation bar. Various other sites linked from Piepmatzel provided inspiration during the design process.

Ice storm Posted February 2, 2005 at 9:12 pm

icestorm-crop.jpg

I’m a little behind on blogging (since it’s now Wednesday) and this is a post about last week.

Things have been moving very slowly with the job search as I’ve been grappling with what’s really important to me in a job, what areas of technology interest me, and so forth. First of all, I didn’t apply to any new companies this week.

On Tuesday, I attended a "Job Search Strategies" info session hosted by Georgia Tech Career Services. The presentation didn’t provide any revelatory insights, but thinking about my job search helps keep me focused. On Thursday, I followed up the info session by meeting with Lara Hanley, the manager of Career Services for the Georgia Tech Alumni Association. Again, nothing groundbreaking, but I did learn about the Atlanta Business Chronicle and the Book of Lists put out by that same publication. Both of these publications look like great resources for finding successful companies in the Atlanta area.

Atlanta got hit with an unexpected ice storm this weekend. We were pretty much holed up all of Saturday. I tried to venture out to get some food late Saturday night and ended up falling all over the place from the ice everywhere. If I can’t walk on it, I probably can’t drive too well on it either. I borrowed Titus’s camera Sunday morning and took some photos of my car covered in a sheet of ice; my car got it worst than most.

I attended the CS/CMPE job fair at Georgia Tech today, so I’ll be making a separate entry about that later. Ja ne!