My Next Steps through Life
I’m about a month away from a major change in my life: I recently signed an employment contract. I’ve been thinking about leaving grad school for a long time now, and a lot of my friends have been aware that this was coming. Now it’s official. The company I will be starting at is a startup founded by a faculty member of the School of Computer Science at CMU, and it’s called Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition—or just PittPatt, for short.
I’m actually, very excited about the move. Well, I’m simultaneously excited and a little worried. At some level, I know that this is a fantastic opportunity for me, and everything seems to really fit together really well. I get to stay in Pittsburgh, for one thing. I have a lot of friends here, and I don’t think the long distance thing would ever work out for me and Sally. Plus, my family and a lot of my friends are back in Ohio. It’s nice to be able to head over there at the drop of a hat.
Despite how well this works out for me personally, I don’t think I’m making any sacrifices with my career. PittPatt is only 18 months old, so I’d really be getting in early. That’s going to maximize my opportunity to really make a difference. I can really align behind the goal of trying to make the company succeed—especially when I really can make a difference. They’re even interested in some of the quality assurance and software process knowledge that I’ve developed over the years. Who knows, maybe I can use all my anal tendencies to give them the structure they need to succeed.
So there you have it. I’ll be stopping my efforts at CMU on May 31, and starting at PittPatt on June 15. That means I’ll have a few weeks off to really enjoy myself in the lowest stress situation I’ve been in for a while. I already passed the PhD qualifing exam at CMU, so it’s fairly easy for me to go back and finish the PhD in a couple of years if that’s what I want to do. So really, this is a great opportunity for me with a limitted degree of risk.
Of course, I’m a worrier, and that’s just what I’ll continue to do.