Monday, November 18, 2013

Industrial perks

This is the last repost from my posts that were deleted.  Sorry for the reposts, but this should be it!  Everything from here-on-out will be fresh.

The medical device industry is booming. With an aging population and tons of people that don't take care of themselves, we're doing very well. Also, with the heavy lobbying in congress on behalf of the medical-industrial complex (more than oil and defense COMBINED), we've got more money than we know what to do with.

Because of this there are great perks in the form of compensation (healthcare, pension, retirement, discounts on everything, bonuses, salary, etc).  But I didn't really get into scingeering (scientific engineering) for the money. I like discovering new things, building stuff to help the world (research devices, medical devices), and playing with cool shit. 

I got reminded why I like industry today. I watched a show where they covered emerging tech, and they highlighted a very cool toy from a start-up in Canada. I immediately recognized the novelty of the product for its potential use in the medical device industry (something that none of the start-up's documentation would point to).  I brought this up my boss, and explained the potential novelty. He was on-board then told me to use my corporate card to pre-order 10 developer units, 10 completed units, and 5 developer kits. Total cost was $6000 on a whim for something that may not even pan out. My corporate card hovers around $100k each month with random things that usually don't pan out. And these are just purchases I make through my corporate card, there are many more purchases made through our PO system. This is, by far, the only thing I will miss when I make the jump to academia (I WILL MAKE THE JUMP). I get to do crazy stuff and play with the coolest toys, albeit in a field I'm not as interested in. Perks are nice, but the technology, science, education, and freedom are where it's at. 

3 comments:

  1. While I appreciate seeing these posts again, you can back date posts to appear like they were posted. Just go to Schedule when editing a post and it's there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yeah, good luck on the search!

      Delete
  2. I had no idea! Thank you, I've changed the dates.

    ReplyDelete