Professional Interview
Interviewee: Jim Lewis, electrical engineer
When: 10/24/15
Where: National Instruments
Professional Background:
Interviewee name: Jim Lewis
Specific degree: B.S. and Master’s in Electrical Engineering
Place of Employment: National Instruments
Contact information: [email protected]
Interview
Question #1:
Osric: “What are the kinds of things you do on a regular basis?”
Mr. Lewis: “Mostly, I do programming and some hardware design. We make a product that is used to design programs to run on FPGA stuff, and kind of cover a wide area. But, it’s closest to what a computer science major would do.”
Osric: “Do the job duties involving hardware limited to circuit boards only, or do you go past that?”
Mr. Lewis: “No, I don’t touch the hardware itself. It’s all about programming the hardware. It’s kind of a different paradigm from programming a regular computer with a CPU because parallelism is a big deal in hardware. That’s the reason we do it. So, it’s a different programming language and kind of a different conceptual flow into designing a program.
Osric: “What is parallelism?”
Mr. Lewis: “If you’re running on a computer, you are basically taking a sequence of instructions and running them through a processor, and you’re limited by how fast that processor can churn through those instructions. So, if you go into hardware, you’re designing, basically, a circuit that executes instructions in a customized way. So if you need to do four adders, you can just drop down a circuit that does four adders in parallel and you get much higher (unknown word).”
Question #2:
Osric: “If we go back all the way to high school, can you describe your education experience in relation to engineering?”
Mr. Lewis: “I went to a high school in Ohio, in a town of 2000 called Spencerville, Ohio, and basically went through their standard college prep track there. [There weren’t] a lot of options for customizing [my] experience. One thing I found when I got to college (which was the University of Houston) was that I was the only one in my calculus class that had not been exposed to calculus in high school. So, I wasn’t really happy with my high school experience at that point. Our senior level class was called ‘PCPA’, which was precalculus, trigonometry, and advanced algebra. …calculus…turned out to be my favorite subject. That was high school, and I got an academic scholarship to go to Houston. So, I basically went site unseen, 1200 miles away, [to Houston].”
Osric: “When you were in ...college…, what was the first programming language that you used, and was it the first one that you got comfortable with?”
Mr. Lewis: “In the freshmen level classes, we used Fourtran 77, and I was comfortable with it at the time. We didn’t do any large applications with it; it was mostly homework problems. Part of the test would usually be to write program on pencil and paper and write out the code. There wasn’t anything to check the syntax, and it would be manually graded. I don’t think anybody ever executed the programs. It’s interesting compared to today. I think that would be a strange thing to be writing out programs longhand for a test.”
Osric: “So after college, what kind of stuff led you on to the path of engineering that you are on today?”
Mr. Lewis: “Well, I took a detour. I signed up for the Navy my senior year in college…that was partly because my brother…had gone through the naval academy…so I was familiar with the program I went to, which [was the] nuclear propulsion plan for submarines. So, I did that, which involved two years of pretty rigorous training, and I spend five more years – three years assigned to a sub, and then the last two years were on shore duty in Hawai’i. At that time, basically, [the value of] that experience is (if you go back into a civilian role) the management experience. But, I was feeling more drawn towards the technical side again, so I decided to go back to grad school after that. While I was finishing up my stint on shore duty in the Navy, I took the GRE and the engineering training, the IT, test.
“I took the refresher course for the IT and I enjoyed getting back into that stuff. … Then, I applied for Stanford and Rice…I went that way [to Rice].
Osric: “After grad school, were you immediately hired by NI, or did you do something else?”
Mr. Lewis: “I didn’t do anything else, but I was unemployed for about six to nine months. I was in the Master’s/Ph.D. program, and after I got my Master’s, I started interviewing for jobs. Since I was technically still in the Ph.D. program, [however,] my advisor was in no hurry to get rid of me. Finally, I just quit because I felt guilty, like I wasn’t really accomplishing anything.
“I’ve had [a] much less varied experience than a lot of engineers you’ll run into, but it’s fairly typical for NI. Like your dad, for example.”
Mr. Lewis: “I was not formally trained in software design or computer science. It was something that was completely picked up on the job….in grad school, the only programming language we really used was MatLab. It [had] more of a signal processing emphasis, and we did whatever programming we had to do to test out [our] algorithms and that sort of thing.
Question #3:
Osric: “Currently, what is your official job title?”
Mr. Lewis: “My official job title…Senior Software Engineer.”
Osric: “Senior Software Engineer…it has a nice ring to it.”
Mr. Lewis: “It definitely has the word ‘software’ in it.”
Question #4:
Osric: “On an average work day, what do you do (over the course of the day)?”
Mr. Lewis: “Well, you sound like my manager now! Typically, I’ll come in and check my email first and work through any action items or flag something to work on later. Usually, I have an ongoing project, so it’s not like a new batch of work every day. Then, I’ll just jump into whatever it is I’m working on, and that depends on the phase of the release cycle that we’re in. Right now, we’ve basically finished our development project for the next release, and we’re just concentrating on testing and fixing bugs.”
Question #5:
Osric: “If you could do something over…if you had a chance to do anything over, at any part of your life…what would you do?”
Mr. Lewis: “That’s a tough one. I often feel like I should’ve done things differently, but I don’t have any specific…like, I wonder if I should’ve taken the other job, and the higher title associated with it. [It was] ‘Senior Member of Technical Staff”, whereas [at NI] I started as entry-level, fresh out of college. They really didn’t even count for a Master’s degree. I wonder about that, but of course, I had my wife and I had my family here, so that’s not something I would do over. I mean, I would do it over – the family thing; making the opposite choice I wouldn’t do.
“It’s hard to say: career-wise, where I’m at now, the downside is that I’ve been doing a lot of the same things my whole career, so [I] tend to be limited in what other opportunities I’m qualified for.
Osric: “Exploring on this topic you just introduced about doing [the same kind of thing], would you prefer a job that catered towards your skills or a job where… each day was different/unexpected? Would you prefer that kind of job or a job where you can expect what’s coming?”
Mr. Lewis: “The Navy was more like that every day – a new challenge. It was more stressful. [There’re] positives and negatives to both.
“Even here, every day, it’s some kind of different challenge. You might know from day to day what kind of project you’re working on, but even projects…something will get behind and you’ll have to shift people onto a different project, you can get thrown into a different situation at any time…there are plenty of opportunities to kind of move around and do different things. I haven’t done a whole lot of that but those opportunities are there. You’ll see some people who’ve been in marketing for ten years and all of a sudden, they move into RND. You can always reinvent yourself without leaving the company.”
Question #6:
Osric: “What advice would you give me if…I was going to pursue a similar career path as you?”
Mr. Lewis: “Well, probably nothing that hasn’t been heard before…do what it is you love the most, especially earlier in your career because when you’re younger and single, the income isn’t such a big deal. You can maybe sacrifice some income and try out a direction. Once you get married and have kids, it gets harder to take a leap in a different direction that might involve a significant pay cut, even if it is something you would be happier doing. I would say, ‘try…don’t be afraid to try things early on, even if it doesn’t seem like it’s advancing your career in a linear fashion.’
“I think maybe I overdid it with the seven years in the Navy and the three years of grad school…one way of looking at it is ‘I lost ten years in my career’, but I don’t think that’s exactly the right way to look at it. Going to grad school was valuable – I would have not gotten into NI, because they don’t recruit out of the University of Houston. Just to even get looked at… pretty much Rice was my entry into [NI]. I don’t necessarily advocate trying to go to the biggest name Ivy League school, but I guess there is some truth to certain schools opening certain doors.
“…Even with the University of Houston, there was plenty of opportunity, just that [it was] more around the Houston area and the oil industry (for the most part). That’s where people [and] companies were familiar with the university, and they had relationships. Any university can be like that, where you have certain pipelines…of opportunity [that] are open to you.
“It was kind of a non-traditional experience at Houston because it was kind of a commuter school. I lived on campus, but on-campus was the minority. Most of the people were older and coming in on the evenings. Very non-traditional experience, but I still enjoyed it. I actually thought my grade point average was lower at Houston than at Rice, but I felt that it was more meaningful. … Rice seemed to have a little bit of a grade inflation.”
Osric: “Thank you Mr. Lewis! It was a pleasure talking to you!”
Personal Reflection
The part of the interview that surprised me the most was when Mr. Lewis talked about how it is easier to take leaps when you’re not married. This had been something that was floating around in the back of my head for some time, and Mr. Lewis directly addressed it. In addition, I believe this was one of the more important points I took away from this interview. Looking at the issue with the information Mr. Lewis gave me, it makes a lot of sense to try new things and take risks. When you get older, it seems that a lot of people get locked into a routine – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because predictable isn’t stressful. However, I am not sure (at this point) that I will be able to hold a very predictable job for decades. I like variety in my life, and I would really enjoy my work if it involved responses (sometimes under pressure) to sudden and/or profound issues that have come up in the middle of a project.
I have seen many adults reminisce about a particular part of their past and wish they had done “that one thing” differently. I know that we all have at least one of those (as I like to call them) “facepalm” moments, and most likely I will have one, but I want to live my life without regrets like that. Being in an unchanging job seems like it would lead to, as Mr. Lewis said, a lesser ability to go for other opportunities, which can easily lead to regret. All of that guilt and possibly anger at a carelessly slipped opportunity or missed chance only breeds more of the same negative emotion. I don’t want to live under a shadow of my own creation; I want to be able to look back on my life when I’m older and say, “I’m glad that I did what I did.”
This interview has brought to the forefront of my mind the issues of a “desk job” that drags on endlessly through the years. As I mentioned earlier, I want to have a job that has at least a modest element of unpredictability; a little chaos puts order into a sharper perspective. This interview has influenced my decision to have a career that is more active and thrillingly challenging in its unpredictability – similar to having new students every year makes for a changing classroom environment that can be radically different from year to year, but is probably preferable to having the same kids over the course of an entire career. My feelings for my career have changed to a more dynamic one.
Mr. Lewis said to “not be afraid to try things early on” – this deceptively short and inconsequential statement will help me find my future career. I plan to at least have some kind of general career in my radar after college, but to try things out and go with a series of different jobs to make sure that I really know what I am getting into before I make a potentially life-long commitment.
The next step for me to pursue my plans is to do well here at Westwood in an academic, extracurricular, and in an outside-of-school manner. This way, I can go into the college that can help me explore as many options as possible for my future career. I need to talk to the counselor and people who know about specific colleges and what they look for in their admissions processes, as well as the people around me in general, so I can develop my soft skills. I will need to know how to manage my time, so I can work more efficiently and do better, as well as the things I can do to increase my chances of admission into the colleges I will be shooting for.
When: 10/24/15
Where: National Instruments
Professional Background:
Interviewee name: Jim Lewis
Specific degree: B.S. and Master’s in Electrical Engineering
Place of Employment: National Instruments
Contact information: [email protected]
Interview
Question #1:
Osric: “What are the kinds of things you do on a regular basis?”
Mr. Lewis: “Mostly, I do programming and some hardware design. We make a product that is used to design programs to run on FPGA stuff, and kind of cover a wide area. But, it’s closest to what a computer science major would do.”
Osric: “Do the job duties involving hardware limited to circuit boards only, or do you go past that?”
Mr. Lewis: “No, I don’t touch the hardware itself. It’s all about programming the hardware. It’s kind of a different paradigm from programming a regular computer with a CPU because parallelism is a big deal in hardware. That’s the reason we do it. So, it’s a different programming language and kind of a different conceptual flow into designing a program.
Osric: “What is parallelism?”
Mr. Lewis: “If you’re running on a computer, you are basically taking a sequence of instructions and running them through a processor, and you’re limited by how fast that processor can churn through those instructions. So, if you go into hardware, you’re designing, basically, a circuit that executes instructions in a customized way. So if you need to do four adders, you can just drop down a circuit that does four adders in parallel and you get much higher (unknown word).”
Question #2:
Osric: “If we go back all the way to high school, can you describe your education experience in relation to engineering?”
Mr. Lewis: “I went to a high school in Ohio, in a town of 2000 called Spencerville, Ohio, and basically went through their standard college prep track there. [There weren’t] a lot of options for customizing [my] experience. One thing I found when I got to college (which was the University of Houston) was that I was the only one in my calculus class that had not been exposed to calculus in high school. So, I wasn’t really happy with my high school experience at that point. Our senior level class was called ‘PCPA’, which was precalculus, trigonometry, and advanced algebra. …calculus…turned out to be my favorite subject. That was high school, and I got an academic scholarship to go to Houston. So, I basically went site unseen, 1200 miles away, [to Houston].”
Osric: “When you were in ...college…, what was the first programming language that you used, and was it the first one that you got comfortable with?”
Mr. Lewis: “In the freshmen level classes, we used Fourtran 77, and I was comfortable with it at the time. We didn’t do any large applications with it; it was mostly homework problems. Part of the test would usually be to write program on pencil and paper and write out the code. There wasn’t anything to check the syntax, and it would be manually graded. I don’t think anybody ever executed the programs. It’s interesting compared to today. I think that would be a strange thing to be writing out programs longhand for a test.”
Osric: “So after college, what kind of stuff led you on to the path of engineering that you are on today?”
Mr. Lewis: “Well, I took a detour. I signed up for the Navy my senior year in college…that was partly because my brother…had gone through the naval academy…so I was familiar with the program I went to, which [was the] nuclear propulsion plan for submarines. So, I did that, which involved two years of pretty rigorous training, and I spend five more years – three years assigned to a sub, and then the last two years were on shore duty in Hawai’i. At that time, basically, [the value of] that experience is (if you go back into a civilian role) the management experience. But, I was feeling more drawn towards the technical side again, so I decided to go back to grad school after that. While I was finishing up my stint on shore duty in the Navy, I took the GRE and the engineering training, the IT, test.
“I took the refresher course for the IT and I enjoyed getting back into that stuff. … Then, I applied for Stanford and Rice…I went that way [to Rice].
Osric: “After grad school, were you immediately hired by NI, or did you do something else?”
Mr. Lewis: “I didn’t do anything else, but I was unemployed for about six to nine months. I was in the Master’s/Ph.D. program, and after I got my Master’s, I started interviewing for jobs. Since I was technically still in the Ph.D. program, [however,] my advisor was in no hurry to get rid of me. Finally, I just quit because I felt guilty, like I wasn’t really accomplishing anything.
“I’ve had [a] much less varied experience than a lot of engineers you’ll run into, but it’s fairly typical for NI. Like your dad, for example.”
Mr. Lewis: “I was not formally trained in software design or computer science. It was something that was completely picked up on the job….in grad school, the only programming language we really used was MatLab. It [had] more of a signal processing emphasis, and we did whatever programming we had to do to test out [our] algorithms and that sort of thing.
Question #3:
Osric: “Currently, what is your official job title?”
Mr. Lewis: “My official job title…Senior Software Engineer.”
Osric: “Senior Software Engineer…it has a nice ring to it.”
Mr. Lewis: “It definitely has the word ‘software’ in it.”
Question #4:
Osric: “On an average work day, what do you do (over the course of the day)?”
Mr. Lewis: “Well, you sound like my manager now! Typically, I’ll come in and check my email first and work through any action items or flag something to work on later. Usually, I have an ongoing project, so it’s not like a new batch of work every day. Then, I’ll just jump into whatever it is I’m working on, and that depends on the phase of the release cycle that we’re in. Right now, we’ve basically finished our development project for the next release, and we’re just concentrating on testing and fixing bugs.”
Question #5:
Osric: “If you could do something over…if you had a chance to do anything over, at any part of your life…what would you do?”
Mr. Lewis: “That’s a tough one. I often feel like I should’ve done things differently, but I don’t have any specific…like, I wonder if I should’ve taken the other job, and the higher title associated with it. [It was] ‘Senior Member of Technical Staff”, whereas [at NI] I started as entry-level, fresh out of college. They really didn’t even count for a Master’s degree. I wonder about that, but of course, I had my wife and I had my family here, so that’s not something I would do over. I mean, I would do it over – the family thing; making the opposite choice I wouldn’t do.
“It’s hard to say: career-wise, where I’m at now, the downside is that I’ve been doing a lot of the same things my whole career, so [I] tend to be limited in what other opportunities I’m qualified for.
Osric: “Exploring on this topic you just introduced about doing [the same kind of thing], would you prefer a job that catered towards your skills or a job where… each day was different/unexpected? Would you prefer that kind of job or a job where you can expect what’s coming?”
Mr. Lewis: “The Navy was more like that every day – a new challenge. It was more stressful. [There’re] positives and negatives to both.
“Even here, every day, it’s some kind of different challenge. You might know from day to day what kind of project you’re working on, but even projects…something will get behind and you’ll have to shift people onto a different project, you can get thrown into a different situation at any time…there are plenty of opportunities to kind of move around and do different things. I haven’t done a whole lot of that but those opportunities are there. You’ll see some people who’ve been in marketing for ten years and all of a sudden, they move into RND. You can always reinvent yourself without leaving the company.”
Question #6:
Osric: “What advice would you give me if…I was going to pursue a similar career path as you?”
Mr. Lewis: “Well, probably nothing that hasn’t been heard before…do what it is you love the most, especially earlier in your career because when you’re younger and single, the income isn’t such a big deal. You can maybe sacrifice some income and try out a direction. Once you get married and have kids, it gets harder to take a leap in a different direction that might involve a significant pay cut, even if it is something you would be happier doing. I would say, ‘try…don’t be afraid to try things early on, even if it doesn’t seem like it’s advancing your career in a linear fashion.’
“I think maybe I overdid it with the seven years in the Navy and the three years of grad school…one way of looking at it is ‘I lost ten years in my career’, but I don’t think that’s exactly the right way to look at it. Going to grad school was valuable – I would have not gotten into NI, because they don’t recruit out of the University of Houston. Just to even get looked at… pretty much Rice was my entry into [NI]. I don’t necessarily advocate trying to go to the biggest name Ivy League school, but I guess there is some truth to certain schools opening certain doors.
“…Even with the University of Houston, there was plenty of opportunity, just that [it was] more around the Houston area and the oil industry (for the most part). That’s where people [and] companies were familiar with the university, and they had relationships. Any university can be like that, where you have certain pipelines…of opportunity [that] are open to you.
“It was kind of a non-traditional experience at Houston because it was kind of a commuter school. I lived on campus, but on-campus was the minority. Most of the people were older and coming in on the evenings. Very non-traditional experience, but I still enjoyed it. I actually thought my grade point average was lower at Houston than at Rice, but I felt that it was more meaningful. … Rice seemed to have a little bit of a grade inflation.”
Osric: “Thank you Mr. Lewis! It was a pleasure talking to you!”
Personal Reflection
The part of the interview that surprised me the most was when Mr. Lewis talked about how it is easier to take leaps when you’re not married. This had been something that was floating around in the back of my head for some time, and Mr. Lewis directly addressed it. In addition, I believe this was one of the more important points I took away from this interview. Looking at the issue with the information Mr. Lewis gave me, it makes a lot of sense to try new things and take risks. When you get older, it seems that a lot of people get locked into a routine – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because predictable isn’t stressful. However, I am not sure (at this point) that I will be able to hold a very predictable job for decades. I like variety in my life, and I would really enjoy my work if it involved responses (sometimes under pressure) to sudden and/or profound issues that have come up in the middle of a project.
I have seen many adults reminisce about a particular part of their past and wish they had done “that one thing” differently. I know that we all have at least one of those (as I like to call them) “facepalm” moments, and most likely I will have one, but I want to live my life without regrets like that. Being in an unchanging job seems like it would lead to, as Mr. Lewis said, a lesser ability to go for other opportunities, which can easily lead to regret. All of that guilt and possibly anger at a carelessly slipped opportunity or missed chance only breeds more of the same negative emotion. I don’t want to live under a shadow of my own creation; I want to be able to look back on my life when I’m older and say, “I’m glad that I did what I did.”
This interview has brought to the forefront of my mind the issues of a “desk job” that drags on endlessly through the years. As I mentioned earlier, I want to have a job that has at least a modest element of unpredictability; a little chaos puts order into a sharper perspective. This interview has influenced my decision to have a career that is more active and thrillingly challenging in its unpredictability – similar to having new students every year makes for a changing classroom environment that can be radically different from year to year, but is probably preferable to having the same kids over the course of an entire career. My feelings for my career have changed to a more dynamic one.
Mr. Lewis said to “not be afraid to try things early on” – this deceptively short and inconsequential statement will help me find my future career. I plan to at least have some kind of general career in my radar after college, but to try things out and go with a series of different jobs to make sure that I really know what I am getting into before I make a potentially life-long commitment.
The next step for me to pursue my plans is to do well here at Westwood in an academic, extracurricular, and in an outside-of-school manner. This way, I can go into the college that can help me explore as many options as possible for my future career. I need to talk to the counselor and people who know about specific colleges and what they look for in their admissions processes, as well as the people around me in general, so I can develop my soft skills. I will need to know how to manage my time, so I can work more efficiently and do better, as well as the things I can do to increase my chances of admission into the colleges I will be shooting for.
What I did in this project and what I learned from it
Before starting the interview, I emailed Mr. Lewis via his professional email, and set up the time and date of the interview. I arrived 30 minutes early and waited for Mr. Lewis. When he arrived, we sat down, I set up the phone recorder, and I began to ask him questions. I asked him all of the questions I was required to have in the report as well as a few more (when he said things that piqued my interest). After roughly 23 minutes, I wrapped up the interview and I left. Later, I listened to the recording of our interview, transcribed it onto a word document, and created the report.
I learned a lot of things from interviewing Mr. Lewis. Arguably the most important thing that I learned (on reflection of the interview) is to get out there and not be afraid to try things out. As one gets older (especially because of marriage), it becomes harder to venture out on a limb and do something, particularly if it involves a disruption in a paycheck. Knowing this is important because it provides a powerful reason to not procrastinate. Procrastinating on a school assignment may not seem like such a big deal now, but bad habits have a nasty tendency to stick around and keep malignantly growing. If I keep procrastinating now, I may put off a life changing event in the future and not have the time to pick it up. I have to motivate myself to push through and get things done, and not to be afraid to take a chance -- don't wait until the chance is gone. (However, I will try to evaluate the risks and benefits of that chance before diving into it).
I learned a lot of things from interviewing Mr. Lewis. Arguably the most important thing that I learned (on reflection of the interview) is to get out there and not be afraid to try things out. As one gets older (especially because of marriage), it becomes harder to venture out on a limb and do something, particularly if it involves a disruption in a paycheck. Knowing this is important because it provides a powerful reason to not procrastinate. Procrastinating on a school assignment may not seem like such a big deal now, but bad habits have a nasty tendency to stick around and keep malignantly growing. If I keep procrastinating now, I may put off a life changing event in the future and not have the time to pick it up. I have to motivate myself to push through and get things done, and not to be afraid to take a chance -- don't wait until the chance is gone. (However, I will try to evaluate the risks and benefits of that chance before diving into it).