Peer pressure

I had actually developed a post about peer pressure for my new digs at Academic Infiltration here on blogspot, but mainly in relation to some of my new faculty colleagues pressuring me for one thing or another.  Given recent peer pressure advising me to move to Word Press, I'm doing that.  My biggest hang up was how easy it would be to manage from my phone since the vast majority of blogging I do is on my phone.  But it appears I'll be able to manage it just fine.  I'm going to save the peer pressure post for my new site because I've given into pressure and am moving Academic Infiltration to Word Press.

academicinfiltration.wordpress.com/

I'll catch you there!!!!!

My new digs

The name of this blog is PhD-ing in Industry. I've decided that rather than change the name, PiI will serve as a relic of my industrial encounters and my academic search. A new chapter in life warrants a new blog. I've been batting around names and I've decided on Academic Infiltration (academicinfiltration.blogspot.com).  I'm still keeping the Phindustry moniker...just uploading to a new blog. Leaving PiI will also be emotional as it's been a loyal sounding board for everything I love and hate in (mostly) my professional life. I'm really pumped about the career shift and writing about how I go gray in the course of my first year as an academic!

I know that especially as of the past few months my posts have been more infra- than ultra-sound (that's a frequency joke).  I can't promise I'll be uploading any more frequently, but I am beginning to have more free time. While blogging is very fun it's pretty low on my list of hobby-priorities. Those of you that have following me on PiI, I sincerely thank you for any kind/funny comments/emails. I hope you'll still follow even though I'll be a boring academic ;)

Things I'm looking forward to in Academia

I only thought it was correct to list the positives I have to look forward to I'm academia after listing the positives I had in industry. This is about to be a very naive list of things, so maybe in a few years I'll revisit with a series of edits about how much of a mistake I made....

Here goes!

1. I'm super pumped about the students. Mentoring grads and undergrads will be a lot of fun. 

2. Working on my own stuff. I've got ideas flying through my brain all the time. Having a lab where I can actually apply these ideas, even if they won't result in a profit, is going to be a blast!  I got to work on a lot of my own stuff in industry, but there were always a few projects where some board member came to my group directly and forced us to spend half of our time on some business-critical project.

3. I won't report to anyone! I can't stress how great this will be. I don't want to worry about making sure that some guy that's just trying to climb the corporate ladder gets his data to present to more guys trying to climb the ladder. I want to go in and out when I want. I didn't appreciate this freedom when I had it in grad school, but I'll appreciate it now!

4. Being around students. I'm not just talking about mentoring them. I'm convinced that being around young people keeps you young. I notice I'm sharper when the people around me are energetic. I'm really looking forward to that again. 

5. The college town. I'm moving from a very big city to a college town. I really like college towns because you get the diversity of things to do, food, people, etc of a big city, but the ease of driving and personalities of a smaller city. I love the sense of community that college towns have. I'll miss all the things to do, and experiencing the expanded cultural opportunities the big city offers, but I won't miss the commuting and cost if living. 

6. Being able to talk about what I'm working on. Things are very secretive in industry. One leaked secret could cost your company hundreds of millions of dollars. So I could never talk about my stuff even though it's all really badass and deserves to be talked about. I'm going to talk about my stuff with anyone that will listen!

7. Outfitting my lab. I did this in my current lab, but I picked things that would be needed to get my company's work up and running. I'm looking forward to buying my own computer and equipment that best serve the research I'm interested in. 

8. Public outreach. Universities love putting research in the forefront. I was interviewed by media and donors in grad school several times about my research. Like #6, I'm looking forward to being part of a community and putting my research out into the world. 

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As my time in industry has come to a close, I've been riding the emotional roller coaster. It's been a crazy few years. I'm leaving behind a group that I led to a lot of great things, but my number 2 is taking charge and she'll be awesome (and she'll hopefully throw some research money my way).  

I've left behind a bunch of friends again (leaving behind friends when I left grad school was insanely emotional), and I've been crying a lot, and I can't help but wonder if I'm making the correct decision. I've noticed that with each move I feel more and more alone because I'm stuck trying to make new friends again. 

But I think it will all be worth it.  

Things I'll miss about industry

Do you want to be vastly overpaid after your PhD?!

Do you wish you could just work on projects without begging national agencies for money?!

Do you want crazy discounts on all sorts of personal purchases?!

Would you like a practically unlimited budget to do your research?!

Then maybe industry's right for you! 

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I complain about the problems in industry, but there are all kinds of perks. Especially if you have a PhD. Starting my academic job will undoubtably change my life. My lifestyle will remain similar as my spouse and I live our lives as though we pull in $60k/year in a major (very costly) metro. We're pretty frugal. The rest of the money goes into savings and donations. It will change my life for other reasons. Mainly, I want to work on my own stuff without justifying that it will make profit, want to mentor students, and I want to make my own schedule. Obviously, I haven't experienced faculty-stress yet; so I may change my tune (or tune-ure...that's a tenure joke :) ). 

I know that as I continue this blog (well, a linked blog with my same name) I know I will chronicle the good and bad of the industry-academia switch. In my past posts I think I focused mainly on the bad of my industry work so I thought I'd list the things I enjoyed.

Things I'll really miss about industry:

1. Unlimited budget.  My budget is practically unlimited; pushing $300,000/month nonsalary, just supplies. I've purchased $30,000 worth of disposable parts on a whim on my corporate credit card in a single purchase with no one batting an eye. I've been able to buy cool technologies that end up having no use after the first cool novelty factor. I don't think I'll ever be on the cutting edge of consumer products like this again unless I strike it rich.  I'm really going to miss my corporate credit card.

2.  Travel and amenities. I get to talk with brilliant people all over the world. And while I'm traveling, I get to fly first or business class everywhere, and put expensive wine and food on my corporate credit card due to my $300/day food per diem. The hotels are top-notch with views of oceans or the Eiffel Tower. 

3.  Peers.  I work with mostly people around my age. My peers. So there ends up being more of a friend-like relationship. When I'm gone, I know I'll still talk to a few of these people and visit if I'm in town. I'm going to miss these friends. And from what I hear, faculty members don't usually hang out together outside of work.

4.  Income. I've said it before. I make double what my old advisor (a moderately successful associate prof at a major R1) makes in base salary. Tack on my 15% bonus, and I'm living pretty comfortably.

5.  Discounts.  This mainly qualifies if you work for a large entity. I get very big discounts on cell phones and the bill, insurance, realty, cars, home improvement, electronics, exercise equipment, parking at the airport, admission to all kinds of attractions, and other smaller things.  It's crazy since these discounts saved me around $12,000 last year.

6.  Physicians and collaborators. Whenever I need help with something I pick up the phone and help is provided. Whether I'm putting together a device outside of my expertise or need a physician to try my device on a dog or pig, it's so easy. This is mainly because we pay these collaborators huge sums of money, but I remember how difficult it was to get physician collaborators to do anything for us in academia before. Having anyone I need at my fingertips will be missed. 

7.  My lab. I put $15 million into making the perfect lab. Every desk, office, and lab station was customized down to the lip on the counter. It's perfect. I know I won't have a blank check when I start at University of Phindustry, and I'll be given whatever lab space the university has laying around. 

8.  Impact. Talk to 99.99% of those doing medical research in academia, and they will tell you they work on Crazydisease. You ask for details and they say they're trying to better understand Obscureprotein or they are making Cooldevicetotreatordiagnose. In actuality, they don't directly touch patients, and probably never will in academia.  I said my research was clinically relevant in grad school and have heard nearly every biomedical researcher in academia say it (I know some will say that basic and cutting-edge research lays the foundation for applied. I agree, but when industry people see these project most people say they're useless, and will never be useful in the clinic. Every academic lab I've visited saying they have a cool technology turned out to be absolutely useless and a waste of my time to fly out and see it.  But I digress.). In industry I've directly touched more patients and saved more lives with my medical devices in just a few years than I will with direct impact throughout the rest of my academic career. There's instant impact because we don't make profit otherwise in industry. I know there is indirect patient impact in academia, but most focus on pushing the knowledge of the human race. Important, just not as directly applicable. I will miss the direct-impact I have had and could have had on thousands of patients and their families.

9.  The people that care.  I would not have lasted that long if the people in my group and my boss don't care about patients.  This is by far the most important things to them.  I fear I will never see this kind of passion again, and I feel confident that these people will be taking care of our healthcare future.

There are a couple smaller things, but these are the big ones. Leaving industry is quite emotional for me, not just because of the move from friends and great work, but because it's a part of me.  It changed me as a scingineer.  My time in industry, just like my time in every job I've had so far has molded me professionally and personally into who I am today.  If I switched to another industry job, I wouldn't be as emotional, but this is a major shift to my life. I'm incredibly anxious, but I've never been so excited for anything in my life (including my wedding! Sorry, Spouse)!

I moved...

The last few months have been a little stressful.  During the week I was putting in 12-16 hour days and on the weekends I was flying to my new lab. Or I would work on the weekend so I could take some time during the week to do a recruiting event, meet with a student, talk to a collaborator, etc. It's been an insane few months capped by eventually moving my life to my new city. My spouse told me to just hand off tasks and be done, but my thought is leaving a good taste will only increase the possibility of my old company wanting to fund my new research. In the past months I've had a ton of post ideas I've written down and I do plan to post them soon since life is beginning to calm ever so slightly. There's this quote used in House of Cards about the wind blowing the hardest the closer to the top you climb. I feel like I summited. Left with my name not sullied or damaged. But it's kind of a false summit (hikers out there know what I'm talking about) because I see this new mountain and at the top the flag looks like it says "tenure" but my visibility in these goggles is pretty bad.  

I plan to have two more posts related to what I'll miss about industry and look forward to in academics and start up a new blog. I'll keep my name: 1. Because I'm lazy and 2. Because my industry experience has shapes me more than anything I've done so far. Students are already lining up asking me everything they can about successful in a medical engineering field and they all talk about how they're so excited to have someone that's "made things inside of people".  

This move has been absolutely crazy: finding a renter (we don't want to sell yet), packing all of our crap, hiring new people in my old group, planning out budgets, transitioning knowledge and planning to the new guard, buying a house, moving everything, and a ton of smaller things that add up.  And there are plenty of stories to tell. You'll be seeing a few last posts and I'll talk about my new digs in the upcoming week!

Tough week (update to the trolls that emailed me)

I made a post a little while ago about having a bad week because of a device of mine that killed some patients during a humanitarian-use situation for patients that would die shortly without this hail-Mary of an intervention.

Update:
I normally don't respond to trolls, but I thought I would say a little something about why I feel bad.

I got a few emails about why I would feel bad when other people are dying.  That I should be punished for producing something that has killed people (directly or indirectly).  Here's the thing about humanitarian devices: these people have no other options.  In my past experience with this type of study about half of people end up recovering from a disease which they had no chance against.  I feel good because they can finally leave the hospital after months or years of constantly being there, but also because I can add something to my short list of great things I've accomplished.  This most recent device was their only chance outside of a miraculous multi-organ transplant or a Dollhouse-ian transfer of minds.  I obviously feel bad because someone died because of my device, but I also feel bad because I failed at something; also, future people that needed this type of operation definitely don't stand a chance now.

So fuck you if you've been emailing me saying I'm selfish.  I can feel bad for lots of reasons, and you don't get to pick the reasons why.

Regarding the emails I made about less relevance in academics in the medical field: I'm still correct.  I don't feel like having this argument.

There's a reason I disabled comments for that post.  Ugh.

Getting yelled at

Why do I always start breaking into a smile when someone yells at me at work?  I don't know if it's a coping mechanism, but I'm glad I do it.  Because I almost always joke about it with friends and colleagues afterwards.  Gives us something to joke about.

Tough week

Like most humans, I live through disappointment on occasion in my life.  When I was looking for a faculty job, every email or phone call rejecting me hurt me pretty bad.  In my personal life, an argument with a friend cuts into me pretty deep.  I can only put on the facade of a happy-go-lucky person so much.  Luckily, I have a pretty good support network to pull me through these kinds of things.  I highly recommend you have a good network for when life diverts one way or another.  It's better than any drug, vice, or otherwise.  But this week a few personal and professional things cut kind of deep.  This post doesn't have any insight, advice, or whatever, and I was thinking about not publishing it, but I hate letting words go to waste, sooooooo........

This part week I started a study overseas introducing a 'humanitarian-use' type of device.  This was for patients with no other option; so it gives us data on the device while giving people a chance.  I recognize that some patients will have complications with therapies I have developed, but I rationalize it with the fact that lots more will live and often have much better lives.  The good greatly outweighs the bad.  And when I heard about someone losing their life because of a complication I had a strong leadership team above me, and great friends around me, to help me stay strong.  

For the past week I've been coping with a 0% survival from this device.  A major unforeseen problem that even physicians had no idea was coming.  From past experience it takes time to dull things that happen like this.  The first thing I thought of after getting to the airport was that I really can't wait to get into academics so my work will not (directly) enter the clinic.  I won't have an impact on patients directly.  Sure, my research is very translational, but I can't help but think that I'll never have to experience something like this again.  My biggest beef with academics in the medical devices field is they claim to know devices, design, medical science, and engineering well, but most have never actually had a direct impact on patients or designed a devices used by a physician.  Nearly every engineering class I took has been useless in designing medical devices.  My background in physics, on the other hand, is something I use every day.  But I'm pretty okay with this trade-off.  My beef with academic research is warranted to disconnect myself.  I'm now a little more okay with being disconnected from clinical work.  The more disconnected I am from real medical device design, the less likely I'll be to deal with this kind of pain.

The CTO of my company was on the flight next to me and could tell that I was hit hard.  This is my first real failure here.  I've had failures, but with far less impactful ramifications.  He told me something like, "Suck it up.  These are the things that happen on the cutting edge. You will always be disappointed at some point.  The key is not to drown it, but reflect on it.  Remember the good, identify what needs to be changed, and be grateful for where you're at."  I responded with, "I'll try".  Then slept for 12 straight hours.

Admissions Committee

While I have yet to start at my new school I've been flying out every once in a while to get involved with my soon-to-be school.  My most recent trip was for an admissions committee.  I'm trying to get an insiders perspective o the incoming class to see who I can recruit.  I had no idea how much schools are trying to expand diversity.  It seemed that every candidate had a 'diversity' category the school is trying to satisfy.  I'm okay with making some concessions for a candidate with weaker credentials because they're in a unique demographic, but their cultural backgrounds seemed to matter more than anything else.  Crazy.

I feel very strongly about diversity.  People come from backgrounds that aren't conducive to going to the best schools and having the best GPAs, and in the STEMs we have more problems than people.  Bringing in some diversity allows us to bring in more atypical students.  I am just so freaking surprised how much it matters.  I was able to get two students through the admissions process that no one else wanted: one male, one female....both white.  But I'll be the only faculty member with my specific specialty, and these two's research interest are right in line with mine.  So I'm hoping to get them into my lab.  I've already reached out to them.

The other faculty members were a little upset with me since there's only so much RA/TA money to go around and they would rather spend it on key demographics.  The girl falls in to this; the guy doesn't.  It was a surprisingly heated meeting.  And I don't think they expected me to speak up as much as I did, so I'm certain that combined with some of my comments really rubbed people the wrong way.  When I come in I'm thinking of bringing some doughnuts, bourbon, and weed.  Might loosen some of these people up.

I had this same issue when I first started in industry: people really not caring about my opinion.  It took some harsh comments and alpha-dog tactics to get people to respect me and my opinion.  I'm certain I'm going to have to repeat this process, and I'm not really looking forward to that.  I'm still trying to determine whether to be the really nice person (as I usually approach most problems with), or the hardass (as I approach the most caustic of situations with).  To be honest, I have more fun being the hardass.

As an aside, I'm been watching The Americans.  I freaking love this show.  Unrelated point to the post, but I feel like me getting into academic is kind of like the KGB couple in America.  Trying to belong, but still in my industry mindset.

Getting scooped in the same company

Like most corporations, we highly value innovation.  When I originally proposed my group idea to upper-management they weren’t interested until I mentioned that we could crank out a ton of patents without a lot of time-investment.  My group would be the grand creators.  They suddenly got on-board and it’s been a great decision because the four of us have been responsible for a plethora of live-saving products.  On top of that we get 10 patents to every 1 outside of the group.  The patents are cool because 1. I get a plaque, and 2. I get $4000 for every patent awarded.  Now, compensation in group goes like this: base salary, fringe (insurance, retirement matching, etc.), yearly bonus (~15% of base salary), independent awards (between $250 and $30000), patent bonuses (between $500 and $4000), miscellaneous bonuses (gym memberships, cell phone, etc.).  A lot of our yearly bonuses, independent awards, and patent bonuses rely on an internal competition.  If you separate yourself and rise above the others you get all the accolades and the $weet $weet cash money.  This breeds competition.

Because this breeds competition people steal ideas all the time.  Within our group the ideas are safe and we’re all on each other’s patents.  The group that takes the idea to a real working medical device gets the glory eventually but all the early glory heads to the people on the patents.  So each group keeps what they’re working on pretty secretive to keep other groups from getting ahold of it.  In grad school I remember doing the same thing.  But a little information would leak out or like minds would work on similar things and another group would publish.  In academics I kind of saw it as a good thing: it meant we were working on something important.  Though it also diminished the impact factor of our target journal.

In industry, my group has to present for the CEO or maybe a physician interested in our devices pretty frequently.  They, thinking it’s okay to share information within the same company (but not realizing the petty competition), share our device or idea.  Then the other group runs with it, submits an inferior patent, and they get it.  Lame. 

Our group recently got scooped by a group that we call “the nut sacks”…can’t remember how they got that name, but we do not have confidence in their abilities to create medical devices.  We traced the leak back to an intern I hired that leaked a small part of the product. The nut sacks aren’t even pursuing it as a device to prototype.  They’re just wanting to scoop us and patent-block.  Those of you thinking scooping doesn’t happen outside of the ivory tower: it’s here and in full force.  I thought for sure this wouldn't happen when leaving academia....you know.....common goals.  Time to just batten down the hatches.

My terrifying interview

Turns out this is the season for interviewing so another post on the application/interview process: So one of my friends mentioned an interview that she had for a faculty position that was very stressful and it made me recall my worst faculty interview.  The faculty members threw around their weight.  Tried to beat her down verbally, and made the program unappealing from a friendliness standpoint.

My situation was at a very big school and they asked for three presentations all over the same day.  This was a 7am-8pm day.  The presentations were a research talk, teaching and research interests, and then a lecture.  The lecture was covering a topic that I had taken a class on over a decade ago and a topic that isn’t really used outside of the classroom.

I showed up and immediately had a discussion with the department head.  After this, he took me over to the room to give me research talk.  There were a ton of questions.  I loved this!  I love answering questions and getting feedback so this was awesome.  My teaching and research interests went over okay, but then the lecture came up.  Again, this is a topic, that when I took it, that I got an A in.  Top of the class. But a decade later and with only a few days to prepare, I wasn’t coming in at the peak of my knowledge.  The lecture started off well and then about 15 minutes in, things started to fall apart.  I was asked questions I couldn’t answer.  They wanted this lecture to test my knowledge of this narrow topic that I definitely didn’t remember.  So I answered as best as I could while they pretended to be naïve students.  I was sweating hard.  I couldn’t hold it together, but somehow persevered and made it through the class.  I could tell I was discombobulated by the end and not of the proper mindset. 

I’m normally really personable, great conversation, not a bad face to look at, but I was really really off after this.  I felt like they were talking down to me for the rest of the day including the dinner.  Afterwards, one person said it was because I’m more applied and make more money, but I brushed it off as a just a comment trying to relax me. 

What’s funny is that I already came in with a job offer and this was just a backup.  I don’t know why I was sweating so hard.  I looked up the school recently and saw they hired someone I know that I enjoy the company of, so I’m glad I wasn’t their pick.  But holy crap.  We get it: you’re smart about this topic, maybe you should be smart about your human interactions and you wouldn’t be a lonely man with nothing but your right hand to come home to.  Sorry, that was uncalled for.  But remembering back to that situation gets me in a bad mood.

A friend's academic journey

It's crazy to think that a year ago I was interviewing for faculty positions. Time really does fly when you're terrified of what the future holds.

A friend from my National Lab days after my MS went to industry after his PhD and now he's applying for positions in a similar field to mine (this is his 2nd application cycle). I helped him with his applications but I still have no idea what committee members look for. He's only applied for 3 schools this since he's very particular about where he lives. And he's said that this is his last year. Otherwise, he'll just stay with the company he works for forever. This will be more monetarily beneficial but he says he isn't stimulated.  Now, I don't view him as a spectacular researcher, though he does have great pubs and he went to a top-10 school for his BS, MS, and PhD.  One big thing is how his students react when I ask about him.  THEY LOVE HIM!!!

They have mentioned how he is the sole reason for keeping in the field.  He clearly cares about students; much more than most profs I've talked to.  He's far from selfish and can truly inspire students while getting some cool results out.  I guess a lot of profs have fed back to him that he doesn't have enough academic interbreeding....that he went to the same school (though a great one) for all his degrees.  He needed to stay close to home for family reasons...his dad was very sick and died which he was in grad school.   I never heard of academic interbreeding before this.  And I kind of wish I wouldn't have.  Now I'm wondering if when I get to be on search committees if I'll pass judgment on this simple metric.  This is someone that really cares and if you feel the main job of a professor is to educate, then he's perfect.  I told him to look at maybe some R2s that wouldn't care and maybe make his way up.  His schools are better than mine, but wasn't able to change schools because he took care of his dad.  So his career is forever tainted.  

Dear NPR, please don't become Discovery Channel

I used to love the Discovery Channel.  I watched it as a kid and started watching it even more when Mike Rowe came in with Dirty Jobs and the Adam and Jamie showed up with the Mythbusters.  While I don't necessarily agree with everything the MB do, I appreciate how they get the younger ones interested in science and engineering.  That being said, I wish someone would teach them statistics....among other things.  My heart really lies with Dirty Jobs though.  Mike Rowe's personality mixed with the content makes it one of my favorite shows.

When I saw that Dirty Jobs was cancelled it broke my heart, but to me it signalled something different: Discovery Channel needs to fill this massively great show.  They have been filling it with basically the TV show equivalent of click-bait: horrible shows to get viewers one time.  The network it not good now, and that upsets me.  Once the network figured out a recipe that works: crazy experiments and explosions with a dash of bad science equals ratings.  They've been taking a a quantity over quality tactic.  I'm concerned that they'll just creating more and more shows therefore diluting the brand.

NPR has been coming out with a lot of shows lately.  I hear about a new podcast roughly every single week.  And so far, I've been liking it: Snap Judgment is a relatively newer show that I love, and Serial exploded with popularity.  It seems like every few months though, my favorite podcasts like Radio Lab and This American Life are plugging newer shows on NPR.  So far, they've been interesting; I just ask you, NPR, PRI, or whatever, to make sure the quality of your flagship shows don't get diluted with newer shows.  I don't suspect it will happen, I just worry a lot about my entertainment.  Unrelated to anything academic or industry....just a quick thought since I've been listening to a lot of podcasts in my travels.

The new house

Happy New Year!

As soon as I accepted an offer from the new school I started looking at houses and talking with people.  I wanted to find a good neighborhood: close to stuff but quiet.  It took my 9 months to find my current dwelling, so I figured it would take me longer to find my new one.  Turns out it’s waaaaaaaaaay cheaper to live in my new city, so I found it in 3 months and about 5 visits between myself and my spouse.

Finding my current place was a long process because I live one of many markets that’s expensive and hot (not unlike me).  I wanted something very specific and the architecture of the area combined with cost and safety made it tough to find exactly what I desired.  Every time I found exactly what I wanted, someone scooped me.  On my first visit to my new city I found three houses and checked them all out.  None of these were really what I wanted.  Then my spouse went out and looked at about 10 over a few days.  I came back out to look at the top three and we had found the one we wanted.  We put in an offer about 5% below asking and got it. I especially like it because it’s almost turn-key.  So are renting it out for this semester and next, then in May we’re starting to rip parts out the house and replace.  Plans are that it should be ready by the end of the semester just in time for us to move in.

I have to say that we’re a little worried about renting it out to students but that’s the advantage of ripping the house apart when the semester is done…it almost doesn’t matter what they do.  On top of this the neighbors will be thanking the Lord when we move in because we would be replacing the rowdy college kids.  It’s kind of like giving someone REALLY bad news before giving them kind-of bad news.

I’m really pumped about the move (though we haven’t yet put our current place on the market) as I can already see having friends over, how I want it arranged, and having students over a couple times a semester for lab celebrations.  On that note: my advisor would have the occasional get-together at his place, but I noticed other advisors would just take their students out.  In our lab the get-togethers weren’t related to a lab event like when someone finished their PhD.  It was just a random Spring or Winter one.  I’m fine with that, though I plan on celebrating their achievements.  Unless they don’t want that.  What if they would prefer not to celebrate with their boss?  What if they wreck up my house because they actually secretly hate me?  Actually, I have no idea what I’ll do.  It’s too bad there isn’t an “Advising for dummies”...kind of like those parenting books.

The lost art of Winter Break

When I was a kid (including being a teenager) I have very fond memories of leaving school on the last day of the Fall semester and going home with nothing to do.  I had chores and an easy department store job (when I turned 16), but for the most part I was free.  A few weeks with no real responsibilities.  I would hang out with friends all the time, sleep in, exercise, read.  It was awesome.  In grad school my university shut down for winter break (no heating means I’m not coming in).  I would plan it so I didn’t have any wet-lab for the shutdown.  So I would still have a relative amount of freedom.  I would still work during break, but it still felt pretty relaxing.  Even when I would go on a ski vacation, I would still be plugging away on my laptop, but I still felt relaxed knowing that I didn’t have to go in for a few weeks.  Since coming to industry, I work up until the 23^rd and take off until the 27^th.  And it’s just family time during that period which I’m not fond of.  So I don’t feel relaxed at all during this time.  This is combined with the end-of-the-year push my group has become known for.  We usually complete 10 animal studies in the last two months each year.  This is because we know every other group is slowing down, but yet patients don’t seem to magically get better during the holidays.  This is on top of very selfish reasons: bonuses for the preceding year get locked in the first week of January.  And a lot of it is making lists of what we’ve done throughout the year, but there’s always a “what have you done for me lately? (thanks Janet)” undertone.  This is partly why my group gets the biggest bonuses in the company.

In grad school my advisor took off the entire break with no way to get ahold of him.  He said he was taking vacation and working.  I would freaking love to take a few weeks off to work at my own pace.  There would probably be the week of familial obligation then I would have 2 weeks of relative peace.  I understand I’m going to have to be preparing for the next semester of teaching, research, etc. but not being under such hard deadlines will bring the blood pressure down a few mmHg.  The holidays have become far less enjoyable because of this.  So I propose this: a nationally sanctioned Winter Break.  Everyone gets 2.5 weeks off to spend time with/away from family.  Leadership is forced to delay deadlines.  Obviously, critical jobs like doctors (real ones), police, firemen, etc. wouldn’t be able to really take the time off, but there could be another incentive.  I don’t know what, but I’m sure there’s something out there.  I just really miss having a long winter break without feeling guilty about it.  I sometimes wish there was a pill I could take to just get rid of my guilt….though that could have some REALLY bad consequences.

With that, here’s to the new year, I hope you all have a great Christmas (or tail end of Hanukkah)!  My academic peeps out there: use this time to take in some fresh air and see your town, while trying your best to avoid bugging your students about their projects.  Cheers!

Frequent flyer report 2014

I hate ignoring the blogosphere, but every time I see a light at the end of the work-life tunnel a contractor adds some extra segments to the tunnel.  I never remember being this busy ever.  I love having stuff to do, but I freaking hate being busy.  I don’t want to complain, but I feel a complaint-post creeping up my back.  I’ll try to stomp it down. 

I’m doing some year-end accounting for all the travel I’ve done this year to make sure I didn’t miss any expenses I can put on this year’s budget.  Business travel is different than I remember my academic travels to be.  In academia I would talk to the department’s coordinator to schedule travel, then book and track every last receipt along the way.  Then submit a long report and get money back.  On the corporate side, I buy all travel (plane, hotel, car) with my corporate card, pay for everything along the way with the card, then go online at the end of the month and say what the travel was all for (no receipts).  Going online to check the statement is also when I put in miles (like to the airport) or out-of-pocket expenses to get reimbursed for.  This means I have to have notes on every last expense and all the locales I've been to lately.  And this means I can start counting my trips.

As I’m reviewing all of this, I realized it would be interesting to put up some numbers about this past year.  So here we go:

Total number of cities I’ve been in for more than a night*: 36 (I thought it was fewer cities)

Number of countries that represents**: 10

Number of airports: 26

Number of cities that had repeat visits within the same year: 16

Number of cities for vacation: 8 (wow, I slacked off this year)

Number of cities with both vacation and work travel overlap: 3

Number of work cities classified as conference travel: 4

Number of cities for upcoming academic transition and past interviews: 7

Number of academic-related trips: 13

Total number of trips***: 70

*Major metros count as one city.  ie, not counting Queens and Brooklyn, or Los Angeles and Santa Monica as two separate cities.

**The USA is included in this count, as are separate countries that are part of the United Kingdom

***Rounded.  I can’t remember every last road trip.  Road trip counted if city is more than 2 hours away

My summer was quite light on the travel, but things blew up after the summer was over.  There were a couple months where I slept more in hotels and flights that my comfy bed.  Though, I’m really glad because I’ve reached super-high status in all my frequent flyer clubs.  I’ve been getting upgraded on personal flights to first class nonstop while also getting access to all the lounges and free meals.  Even though I’m experiencing the meals in a daze where even my watch hands have trouble catching up.  I’ll be going to my spouse’s family in a couple weeks for the holiday.  Visiting family feels more like work than work does, so I’m trying to arrange some R&R (instead of R&D) for January.  But if nothing else, I know that I’ll be taking two months off before the move to my new university.  I can’t wait. 

One kind of weird thing about all of this travel is that I don’t feel extra busy because the work is pretty cut-and-dry, I just feel taxed because I can’t sleep the way I want.  Business class has fold-down seating, but it’s still not my bed with my blankets and the smell of my fabric softener.  This travel is simply a time-sink, I don’t really feel stressed because of it.  I talked to an old mentee and she asked about the traveling and she beamed because she said she likes to travel.  My comment was something like, “traveling to Cancun with your friends is different from traveling by yourself to random destinations for testing”.  Knowing which terminals in airports throughout the world have the best restrooms and food is information I prefer to erase.

Bad software!

I love computers (I'm including smartphones). People will complain about them because they're difficult to use, slow, etc., but I love them unconditionally.  I'm like the smartphone's dog.  It's one of the few unconditional loves in my life.

Lately though, software developers have been starting to irritate me. I don't want to blame computers for the issues, since it's the software developer's fault but the computer is the only thing here to blame. Here's what's going on:

1.  I have 3 computers for various tasks running Ubuntu, Windows, and Mac OS. In the analysis software I run with Ubuntu, when I use more than 14 GB of RAM (I know, I should switch to VRAM...I'm working on it) I get some matrices with zeros in bad spots and end up with some unstable analyses. I scale back the analysis to 13 GB an allow it to use the hard drive as temporary space and suddenly the analysis works. In Windows....everything bad happens. In Mac OS everything has been slower even though I haven't changed the software except for updates. 

2.  I used a cloud service for my phone that has decided lately to randomly not sync my contacts or photos. I've lost some great photos lately.   It's been laggy at times, and also dropping signal at weird times. 

3.  I play video games (3 brothers=mandatory video game playing) and a few games have come out the past couple years which have horrible network connectivity, glitches all over the place, and software holes that ruin the game for some players. 

Yes,the common factor across all of this is me, but I've been using this type of software since 2011 with no issues whatsoever. Why lately, has all this software come crashing down around me?  Am I getting old and there's a rule against old people using software?  My guess is that software developers are lazier.

My company has software modules for some of our medical devices.  And we have deadlines just as tight as the rest of the software industry with software that I feel is much more complicated aside from the fact that if our software goes bad we kill someone.  We don't settle for barely working buggy software, so I hold everyone else to the same standard.  I understand alpha and beta releases will have bugs, but fully released and sold software should only have very minor bugs.  My theory for this is that the internet is to blame.

Once most software studios realized they could just push updates to fix bugs and people would still buy their stuff they started shortening deadlines.  They were okay with the "we'll release and fix it later mentality".  What if the medical field, car manufacturers, and house builders did this?  They would be screwed.  Perhaps I'm jealous that the software people get to make craploads of money with inferior products, but as a consumer I spent my (sometimes) hard-earned money and I want something that freaking works!  Why not have some pride in your work, put in the extra hours and release something I can use out of the package?

What's happening? (Don't worry it's all good)

I realized that I haven't been really taking part in the blogging community. To answer those who've emailed: everything is good. Sorry I've been vacant. I know you come here when you want useless news and sarcasm. And I've disappointed you.

So a few things have happened recently:

1. Gave a talk at soon-to-be-employer. I treated it like a recruiting/get-to-know me talk. This talk was attended by someone from another school, who then asked me to give two talks: one at his school and one at a conference. I agreed to both and requested vacation time at work to do so. By the way, I'm going to be soooooooooo ducking [sic] glad when I get to take off without asking for permission. Anyways, this took up some of my time and I think that the experience will make for a good post. So look out for that. It's funny how I could barely get any interest from schools when I was looking for a job and now several places want me to give talks.....about my industry work.

Taking the time off came at a bad time. A new medical device of mine I've been working on is reaching full prototype level and that means I have to test the crap out of it. This has required a ton of travel and testing...while also trying to balance the unpaid academic duties.  The travel had been so busy to the point where I do a study, have to process data on the plane while traveling to the next place, then process that data on a plane to present the results. Then rinse and repeat. Actually...no rinsing. Just repeating. I've slept in hotels more than my home the past few months and I've slept on a plane for more than hotels for the past few weeks.

In addition, I've been on a few outreach panels and helped out in some youth STEM stuff when I can.

Finally, I've got a house in the new city (I'll talk more about that too soon). Been a packed up couple months. This has all been on top of me getting a new phone I have to figure out. I've found a decent blogging app but it's not quite everything I want. Mainly, I want an app that's easy to use, do offline stuff with, and keep separate from my personal Google account so I can maintain some anonymity. Any of you have advice?

So that's what's been happening. I'm not going to ramp up to the old frequency of posting yet since I plan to first catch up of reading all the posts I've missed.

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An old coadvisor keeps asking me when I will start the faculty work. He wants to collaborate NOW! I haven't answered yet because doesn't it look bad for tenure and grants if you're teaming up with old advisors? He has said he's tired of crappy students that take forever to get their work done. This comment made me think "how do you know my first year student will be any better than your 4th year?". Then I realized that he's implying that I will be doing it. Not sure how to approach this. I know that if my main advisor asked me to do this work I'd politely tell him to fuck off but I really like this other advisor.

OMG! I've been blogging for a year!

I created this blog as an outlet for myself and as a way for anyone interested to see how things are in industry, the progress of an academic pursuit, and miscellaneous other musings. I've 'met' cool people and gotten advice while giving out a couple tidbits.

I never thought I would have so much fun blogging, but it's been a super blast!  I had a shitty hang-up taking things down for a while, and I honestly thought I would be writing for years in the blog before getting a faculty job.   Now that I have one, it's crazy to think my journey started a year ago.  And looking at old posts, it really brings back memories, good and bad.  I'll eventually be transitioning to a new blog covering the academic switch (title TBA...but I'll try to make it funny) :), but I will look forward to looking back at this blog.

Thanks again for reading!  I've had a blast!!!

Scientific feasibility

I hate dealing with manufacturing and sacrificing innovation for quick development.  This is one of the biggest trade-offs I've had to deal with in industry.  Every time this comes up I think more and more about how much I hate it.  And my group doesn't deal with manufacturing that much.  We develop crazy medical devices and do crazy studies then other groups worry about how to take our devices to the next level.  But because I work for a company that has to make profit, I inevitably have to make sure the devices are grounded in reality.

This came up recently.  I came up with a crazy technology that I feel could really revolutionize the field, but it will take a year of scientific evaluation followed by a year of development.  This is much longer than our typical development cycles in my team.  And no one hear is willing to invest in the kind of core science I need to do.  Higher-ups are making me use rudimentary technology with a misunderstanding of the biology to get this done quickly.  I understand we need to make money.  And the faster we get things done the faster we'll get these devices in patients and make said money.  The problem is that for years I've been told, "That's a great idea.  Let's save that for the next generation."  But we never do.  Leadership just keeps pushing it through.  And we end up doing the most basic of feasibility studies on a device that could have been much better.  We need the best possible core knowledge and technologies if we're going to solve healthcare's most difficult problems.  Even if it takes an extra year.

This is one of the key differences in academia I can't wait to get involved with again.  I am really looking forward to doing core science, then creating the best technology possible regardless of how far off it is.  What's weird in all of this is that leadership is excited about giving my new lab money to pursue these core science and far-off technology ideas.  They just don't like funding their own labs to do this stuff.  I guarantee my current group would do this science and development much faster than my academic group will.  And probably for cheaper.  So why can't industry do more on the science and feasibility side.  Talking to lots of friends (I'm popular!!!!) in the field, they all have jobs that involve having to design devices for manufacturablility and quick turnarounds.  They don't mind, but whenever they hear about my group they're always amazed at the level of science and R&D we do...taking designs to feasibility then letting other groups handle the details.  This apparently is rare in most of the industry.  In most groups, if you designed it, you will inevitably take it to the next level.  I would hate to do this, especially since I want to regress even further,  working on tons of core science and devices that are ugly and take forever to design, but they do the job in new ways.  Seriously, I can't effectively describe how excited I am about getting more back to (translational) basics.  And every time I deal with people outside of my groups it makes me want to start my new position even more.