An industry interview

This summer, I submitted my CV to a conference career fair, and got a few industry inquiries. I turned all of them down at the email stage, except for one company which is famous for being a very good place to work; that company's email I just ignored and left in my inbox. Two weeks later, a second copy of the email came, which I ignored. And two weeks later, a third copy, which I gave up and answered. It was a questionnaire asking about my experience in different areas, and I dashed it off without really caring.

That email led to two phone screens, which were interesting because when they would ask why I wanted to work there, I said that I didn't apply for the job, but thought I'd see where the interview process led. It sounds terribly arrogant to say that, but I didn't have a better answer, and amazingly, they let it pass, so I won the grand prize: a free trip to visit. I flew in in the morning of the previous day, so I got a full day to wander around the area, and then visited some friends for the weekend, so it was a nice mini-vacation.

I was not persuaded by the interview to go to industry, but I did learn a few things.

1. PhD or other well-educated types who become managers are really sharp, both smart and affable. It's a fantastic combination, and if there were any incentive to enter industry, this would be it: to attempt to become one of them. Though I know that I really just wouldn't care enough about the job to succeed.

2. All industries try to get the most work out of their workers, and pay them the least they can. It's an uncomfortable fact of economics which we tolerate for cog-in-the-wheel professions, but some people are extra uncomfortable when it's educated knowledge workers. I have a friend with a PhD who had a job in Silicon Valley for a few months in the peak years before he started feeling like his company's business model was to take advantage of smart people who are willing to follow directions.

Companies do all kinds of things to keep their employees in the building. While I was there, there was a service giving free oil changes to employees, and a barbershop on wheels giving haircuts, both with cutesy names and mottos which make it sound like they are continually making the rounds of different companies. They also add weird luxuries: they have heated toilet seats with little bidets built into them.

One employee put it as, "You just need to do your work. Everything else is taken care of." They even wash your behind for you.

3. By creating good will with employees, they will accept conditions that coerce them into doing more work. The well-known example is with law firms where people stay past 7 to order in on the company's tab.

Here, people are placed in an office or cubicle with 4-5 people each, and the cubicles are also close together. If you have facebook open, everyone can tell. Personal phone calls are out of the question.

4. If you ask the right questions, you can discover if people are really happy in their jobs, or if they knew what they were getting into.

A. An exchange that I had with an interviewer who had left his university position, where he had been a semi-independent PhD in a larger lab:
Me: How did you transition to this job as far as your motivations go? That is, in your academic field, you might have been driven by curiosity, the desire to understand [a specific thing], and to add to science. How do you go from that to a job whose goal is to maximize profits for this large company?
Him: This company is very collaborative, and everyone's nice. I don't have a problem making money for them. It's not like I'm working for Raytheon; it's goals aren't unethical. I wouldn't work on the [Company] Bomb.

He then revealed that the only reason that he came to industry is because his lab was moved to another country and he didn't want to move with them. That contextualized his answer more clearly. He could have said that he is motivated by contributing to the US economy in the way that his company does, and clearly it does, but instead he said that it's not unethical. That was the saddest part.

B. With another interviewer, I asked what he had done his dissertation on fairly early in the interview because it fit into the conversation. Shortly after, he said that he had expected the work to be like his dissertation, but it was very different. Which seems like an important detail to tell someone before they accept a job. At least he was happy with how it turned out.

5. Out of the perhaps 100 people that I passed at their desks, two were asleep. One had his hands still on the keyboard.


These facts about industry would not have surprised me --- people work extremely hard, don't have control over what they do or where they sit, sometimes end up not so enthusiastic about their work or doing things that they hadn't anticipated, no apparent thought to career development of employees --- were it not for the fantastic reputation this company has as a great place to work.