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Rob,
Please allow an old engineer to pass along some advice. strictly my opinion.
Adam, avoid the dark side. You studied for a long time to learn the things you have.
Practice them for a while. Become proficient and understand why engineering is hard.
Make mistakes, and push the window a little.
Project management really is not all that hard and once on that path if you are halfway good at it, you will not be working as an engineer.
You'll be doing tracking books and spreadsheets and counting labor hours.
You can always make that transition. coming back into engineering once you've gone to the dark side is much harder.
after a few years of program management, you can't come back.
Interesting advice. My son has been working for Google and working up the ladder, starting for two summers as a paid intern. He's been there after getting his PhD, for another four years. He has learned what you're saying and wants to keep his hand in coding after receiving many promotions. He's gone as high as he wants to go or he thinks it will be all meetings and reviews, etc. and not enough hands-on which is what he loves. He is a project leader under a boss who appreciates Kyle's talents and that he wants to keep his hands in it, while the boss is more the meeting type, so it seems like it should work out fine. They have total respect for each other's talents. (Yeah, I had to brag.)
^^^
Congrats,Patty,you deserve to be proud of both your kids.
Thank you, Emil. My daughter just finally got a job offer at the Denver Zoo. She's been applying there for 9 months and going to interviews, after she and her boyfriend moved to Denver for his zoo job last September. (They both were zookeepers at the Sacramento Zoo.) Every time she was either overqualified for a temporary position, someone edged her out with more specific animal experience or was a current temp at the zoo. This time she'll be with the carnivores while a woman is out on medical leave for 3 months. She's hoping that this finally gets her in the door to stay. She's been volunteering there all along and even took a job she hated at Camp Bow Wow in the meantime. I took these photos of her when I went to cheer her up in May as she got off work. She told me she cried she hated the job so much. I totally understood as I had a job with Lockheed that I felt the same way about.
Just a quick update (also because I'm very proud of Adam). He has been with Honda slightly longer than a year now. He's very happy with the company and it appears that the company is happy with him. He just got his first review and he was very happy with the results. He wants to grow to the position of Project Manager, and they are letting him take over a small project in order to get experience. All in all, Adam and Honda seem to be a very good match.
Honda closes for the July 4th week, so he is flying out to Reno to spend a few days with his brother, after that he's flying here to spend a few days with us. Liz and I can't wait to see him.
Rob, make sure to remind Adam to come to Mid-Ohio for the race and look us up. There will be about 30 S2000's there.
Adam started at Honda a little more than 3 years ago. His first assignment was in Engines working on Noise, Vibrations and Harmonics. He did very well in that department and learned an awful lot about how engines come together and work. After about a year and a quarter, Adam transferred to Driver Assist. Because of his background in Engines, he worked on projects such as adaptive cruise control and other of the current driver-assist features that Honda is putting in their cars. Over time he learned a great deal. Honda was a good place for him to work, but he started to feel like it was time for a change. Wanting to stay in the automotive field, he sent out resumes to various car companies.
A little more than a month ago he got a response from Tesla. After a few weeks of interviews, he was given the job. His last day at Honda was March 29th. The people at Honda were sorry to see him go, and he is sad about leaving Honda, but he felt he needed to make this career change and felt that companies like Tesla represent the future. Honda is an automobile company whereas Tesla is thought of as a technology company.
Last week he flew out to Fremont, California, where he'll be working and found a free-standing house to rent. This weekend he driving here to bring back my MG (unfortunately he hasn't had a chance to finish it) and staying for a day. It'll be good to see him as except for Sunday night Zooms we haven't seen him in a year and a half. Next weekend he and a few friends are driving to California. He's renting a truck and driving his BMW. He's got about 4 friends going with him so they'll take turns driving the truck and the BMW.
He starts at Tesla at the end of the month. He's excited. More to follow.
That's great news for Adam, Rob! Making a career move is a major decision, but the future with Tesla should be a winner. He's come a long way from this guy in 2004:
06-28-2018, 05:15 PM
