In the Belly of the Beast

I have now been working at my new job for about one month now and my first impressions are along the lines of, Whoa...

This company is much larger than my previous employer and I am finding the sheer scale of operations to be a bit daunting. I now realize that previously I was performing the tasks of people who fill 5 or 6 (more like 10ish) positions at this new place. I now can focus more directly on my own role in the lab, rather than on keeping track of all the different responsibilities I had before. This has its pros and cons. I am able to get more done and in a faster fashion, but at the same time, I'm not juggling as many balls, which had it's own invigorating merits. I have to say that I am lucky for my previous multi-faceted work experience because it gave me a good overview of how a company is run internally through many different departments and will be a huge asset moving forward. Not to mention that now I am mainly dealing with ICs (integrated circuits), where as before I was dealing with everything high tech, across all sectors and fields. This too will really allow me to remain broad within the narrow field of Failure Analysis (though not too narrow to be fair).

My second major revealation comes from how I as an individual am being treated here- like a Grownup of all things! I mean I know that 28 is still rather young, but not having to take competancy tests, not needing to fill out a time card, and having my opinions honestly considered really makes me feel like a professional adult. I guess what it really boils down to is trust. I am being trusted to be intelligent and not waste time. Before, I was being trusted to not screw up the lab while my boss was out, but not trusted to be intelligent and not waste time. I always found that juxtaposition to be rather daunting.

Finally, THE DRAMA! It is amazing how the amount of drama goes like the number of people cubed, well, acutally I think it's more like n! b/c it probably scales with the number of relationships that are possible and I think that is n! in math terms. You go from 24 possible relationships with 4 people (ie groupings of people who can talk and generate drama) up to 120 possible relationships when there are 5 people involved. I am working with approximately 6 people who directly affect my life which is approximately 360 possible relationships, mmm drama. There isn't even that much drama, just a few conflicts of personality (by others around me, but not actually me btw, I love everyone!) that affect my life, but it is still very stark in comparision to zero drama (well, near zero drama).

Anywho, I just thought I'd share some of my first impressions on going from a small company to a medium company. It has been an interesting experience and I am still learning loads everyday about business, failure analysis, engineering, and myself. (The above image is an x-ray image of the cross-sectional view of a wire bonding to a lead.)