Obsession with twngan

It's been a while since I made up my career decision, so I think I'm cooled off to summarize a few interesting things in my job search.

• The maximum difference in base salary for all my offer is 42K. That's twice what I'm earning now.
  
• The minimum base salary is, unsurprisingly, from the convicted monopolist.
• The best benefit is, again unsurprisingly, from the nonevil company. A rough estimate is that I can save 4K per year on food alone.
• There is also a large variance in how the HR people handle my case. When I decline their offer, some kept playing mind games with me; some just asked for my reason; others just said "good luck."
  
• Most places I interviewed accept and appreciate who I am; the only exception is the Colored Giant, which tried to convert me into something I am not.
• Same goes to working environment. I can see myself enjoy working in all but the same one, as the place is too political and people are too arrogant.
• All places I interviewed, except Seattle, have direct flights to Hong Kong.
  
• I have an unforgettable start date in Sep 11.
  

Starting this semester (well, perhaps last, as it is already summer), our department has implemented a "mentoring" system, where a lecturer is assigned as PhD mentor and talks to us poor students.

Today I had my very first mentor meeting. It was only for checking my progress and seeing if I have any problem/question/suggestion. I do have a suggestion, but I decided to keep to myself.

Why? Well, my suggestion is to ask a particular lecturer to refrain from singing and dancing in class, as it is, surprisingly, anonying. The problem? It is the exact same lecturer...

Just for you (you know who you are; right, that's everyone of you), I have changed the template for this blog to remove my 30boxes schedule (sorry, I have converted to Google Calendar) and Amazon ads.

To show your support to this less clustered design, please click every single one of my Google ads for the next 105 days, i.e., until I start earning real incomes.

I figured, other than talking about the c a t s, I rarely talk about my apartment. Time for a change. Let me talk about everything but cats.

My apartment is relatively cheap, and with electricity paid is really a bless in a hot place like Houston. No wonder it attracts a lot of poor graduate students from Rice and UH and retired singles. You don't see a lot of nice cars here. A couple years ago, my then pretty new Corolla was one of the better cars, with some occasional Camries, and a yellow Mini Cooper owned by someone also from my department.

Thanks to the recent clearance sales of 2006 Camries, there is a surge of them, mushrooming even on the unassigned street parkings. But it doesn't stop there. In the last couple of months, I have seen many nicer cars. New Infinity. New Lexus. Even a brand new BMW convertible parked on the street.

The apartment is also getting many new tenants. A lot of them with Louisiana license plate. Probably because many refugees from New Orleans are finally being kicked out of hotels, as the federal government finally stopped sponsoring them.

So you would see this coming: They are now raising their rent. And there's nothing I can do, unless I want to move to a new place for two months before moving to LA...

If given a choice, I wouldn't want to stay. Not just because of the cats, but also because I have just received a warning letter from their office. The accusation? I made noise and disturbed my neighbor at night. Turns out, they got a complain from a "courtesy officer" that vacuuming noise came out from my unit at 11:30pm. (Those who know me well enough would know that it would be a surprise that I even vacuum at all, not to mention at that time.) I slept well that day and didn't hear a thing. And no one found it necessary to knock my door to check if it was really me. I would have left just because of this...

Just told my boss that I want to leave by Sep. His reaction? "Propose now and defend before you leave." Sounds right, that's totally doable...

So I'll need to finish my proposal, which should last around 20 pages, in... no time. Well, that's not a problem. I'll just copy from my MS thesis, and then add a new section in future tense at the end.

Yes, this is final. I have decided to accept the offer from Symantec Research Labs, located at Santa Monica. Watch for their stock, because it is definitely going up once I join.

I hope to move to LA around September, but that of course depends on the progress of my dissertation and the opinion of my advisor. Stay tuned for my exact move date.

(This is really not a big deal, but it makes a fine title.)

That's true, I became a man who said no to Google. Maybe this would be the biggest regret of my life, who knows, but I really can't see myself in five years if I were to join them. After suffering this many years in graduate school, I would turn into a software engineer and start optimizing mail and calendar clients... are you kidding me?

Some day, if Google would conquer the world, I might be sadly calculating how many millions I could have earned. But at least, this doesn't look too promising right now...

Disclaimer: This entry has nothing to do with this article.

If you follow this blog closely, you would know that Cafe Japon is one of my favorite sushi places, at least in Houston. It is relatively quiet, at a convenience location, sushi is always fresh and tastes great, and has the best ginger I can find.

Maybe because there are too many new Japanese restaurants opening lately, they have recently extended their happy hours to whole day Sundays. I went there today, and it was pretty empty for lunch hours. However, the price is really unbelievable. Most sushi 1 buck each. Hand rolls 2 bucks each. Asahi beer for 2 bucks. Even appetizer like dumplings, wings, and sirloin wraps are only 2 bucks each.

I can now see myself going there every Sunday for lunch. At least before they stop this insane lunch happy hours.

After finishing my last interview, I finally have time to sit down, relax, and think. Particularly when I have known the details of all the offers (except one hasn't decide whether to make me an offer yet).

For me, it seems to be simply a decision between two.

The interview I just had with the startup was a really fun experience. I never interviewed with a company of such a small size. But the funniest thing was, I had some alcoholic drink in the lunch, and the interview wasn't yet over by that time. That's right, I wasn't that clear-headed doing the afternoon interview. But what's important is, their position would allow me to stay in the research community. They write papers, collaborate with universities, and join conference committees, among other things. Thus, this would allow me to go back to academia later if I wish.

On the other hand, the anti-virus company has put together a very attractive offer. It is a big company, meaning that five years from now, it is probably still going to be there. I am also going to have the chance to work on a large variety of products.

I don't know what to say, but I know definitely that this is going to be a painful decision.

I just arrived back from Mountain View (again). My plane landed right after midnight. This company is in a very special position. It has a long history (7 years is forever in this industry), yet it has the mentality of a startup. It has a large team of engineers, yet the position I interviewed is more of a research position, requiring publishing a lot of papers and staying in the research community. It is also interesting to interview with someone who just reviewed one of your conference paper submission. More importantly, it is not extremely small in size (>100 employees), yet it makes decisions very fast: an offer comes within 15 hours of my landing...

Is it me or is it what always happen to "more senior" students? I find myself spending the days talking without doing any useful work.

Or maybe it is just because I am a PhD students? Sucked into the world of procrastination?

So finally interviewed with the colored giant, I can now compare that with the anti-virus company.

What can I say? It is a bit hard to believe that it is the older company that is the one trying to push for a completely new, business-oriented area. Their environment is pretty much the same as academic environment, where you have to work hard on writing proposal to get funding and find collaborations to make your projects more competitive. The only difference is, professors get tenure and be worry-free in 6-7 years, while you struggle for a better rank or even to retain current rank for the rest of your life.

So my choice is basically like this. Taking a leading position in a small but young lab on the research of next generation products, or as just another researcher to learn about business models and try to explore how technology can better business so that companies can fire more IT staff. Tough call, huh?

Anyway, I will interview with another company waiting to be bought in Mountain View next week. Maybe I should decide after that.

So I finally fly back to Houston. I wanted the first flight before 6am, which would be largely empty, but since the reservation process goes through at least two levels of indirection (although I'm not sure what kinds of computer science problem they are addressing here), I ended up getting a 6:55 flight, which was almost full. Since I had no more business in NY anyway, I figured I would arrive to the airport early and standby for the first flight to get a more comfortable seat.

My strategy worked. I am now sitting in a first class seat writing this blog, after finishing my breakfast with omelet, potato, and Canadian bacon. They don't offer red wine this time, probably because... well, it is just a breakfast.

The reason that they make you to have a two-day interview is that they require candidates to also interview with another group. This is probably to serve as a gateway to prevent an understaffed group from hiring whoever they can get. This actually adds a dimension to the interviews, because now you get to interview with outsiders who in general have more doubts on you.

A nice way to put it is that there are a lot of smart people there. Without the spin, a lot of people there are plain arrogant. By that I mean very arrogant, have a very strong view point, and extremely biased. I get people who don't buy the way I model my work, despite her view is completely unrealistic and impractical. I get people who are not trying to evaluate me, but throwing their own research problems at me and force me to tell them stuff in digital right management, something completely unrelated to my research. And then the worst, there are people who just fundamentally disagree with my research (and confused functionality with constraints), which makes the discussion fruitless.

I guess one thing I learn from these interviews is that you can estimate how it goes pretty easily from the first three minutes. You would already have a strong feeling on whether you like or dislike the person, and the impression is going to be bidirectional and unchangeable. It makes a lot of the interviews meaningless, because regardless of what I say, their comment is going to be similar.

The interview finally starts. The very first thing is my seminar. In the middle of my seminar, the fire alarm goes up. In 15 seconds, after I pack, the alarm stops. So I try to restart the talk. But before I can finish one slide, the alarm goes up again, finally forcing us to evacuate. My acting host (the real host had urgent meetings like they always have) tells me that this is the first real evacuation he has had for his two years there. Turns out the fire alarm is not a false one. There is an actual fire instance in the cafeteria, although just minor.

We manage to resume the talk later, but by then most of the audience has gone. It doesn't matter anyway, since essentially none of my interviewers is there. For each interview, I need to repeat what I have done for my research. Talking about the same thing for so many times makes me feel like a robot.

My last interviewer of the day, who also happens to be the director of the whole group and the most important one, is also graduated from Rice. We talked about business models and game theory. I guess if I get an offer, I know which person I should thank.

Ok, I am going to refill what happened for my NY trip.

This is the flight out for the interview with the colored giant. I start to dislike Continental. They don't upgrade me as in their rules the day before the flight, even though there are available seats. Elite members' checkin bags are supposed to get priority treatment, yet my bag comes very late. I have no idea why they put either of those in their policy if they don't deliver.

The drive from LaGuardia, the airport in the city, was not too bad. At least not much worse than the busy hours in the freeways in Houston. But the $5.25 toll just seem to be robbery to me.

Enjoy!

Ok, this is disturbing. It is now one day before my outbound flight to NY for my interview, when I should get an automatic upgrade to first class. Except that I didn't when there are still seats available. Maybe that is because I didn't book the ticket myself with my account. Now I need to wait until I check-in to find out. And I also find out that the first class cabin is already full for my return flight...

Speaking of travel, I'm going to Bay Area again the week after to interview with a startup. Busy busy!

Ok, this guy actually has a point on the 33/19 mins guess. According to my updated agenda, at least half of the interviews are now 45 mins long, probably in order to fill up the time slots. Now I get two full days of 9-5 interviews.

Don't just think "so what, it only means each interview becomes 50% more." It has a much bigger implication.

Think about the actual interviews. I'd need to go from one office to another. That's 5 mins. I'd need a coffee break (obviously necessary!) and a restroom break. That's another 5 mins. The interviewer is going to describe a bit about him/herself (Yes, at least 3 shes. My first ever technical interviews with shes.) This means that the actual time for throwing questions at me would only be 10-15 mins. Now compare that with an interviewer that has 15 more mins.

I have a "promotion," if you will. The anti-virus company has upgraded the offer to a more senior position (and, of course, better salary). The offer is so good that it is now damn hard to resist.

Gosh, I need all the help I can get! I am worried now that I'd accept the offer even before my interview in NY!

An interesting experience.

Yesterday when I was on my way home, I was approached by a white guy outside Valhalla, a bar that has featured in PhD Comics. He said to me, in Cantonese, "Google's good," referring to the Google T-shirt I was wearing. After we chatted a bit in Cantonese, I praised him for his good Cantonese. He said his isn't that good, and said in Mandarin that his speaks much better Mandarin. We went on to talk in Mandarin, and, man, he speaks better Mandarin than me! He's really talented in languages.

Going on to prepare for my interview, I suddenly realized one thing: I don't know anything about resource management. I mean, I could probably come up with this abstract okay, but there's a large gap from there to actually giving a presentation on that matter.

Another problem I face is that there's not very much I could talk about during my internship. But I do have an ingenious solution for that: blame the NDA. I can just claim that I cannot legally discuss anything further...