I was on vacation in Mexico when I wrote this about my transition from college to work.
In the final stages of my thesis I set out to interview at several companies and ended up at Level One Communications. Dave Nack was my manager for my first full-time job after graduating college. Dave was an excellent first manager and I am glad I chose the Level One route. Dave and I didn't always agree, but in the end Dave was always correct. The time period was 1998 pre dot-com bust.
My thesis advisors Stephen Lewis and Paul Hurst were involved in the Sacramento electronics scene since they do research in communications and data converters. Paul and Steve are also two of my key mentors (and more about them later). When a company sponsors university research it gets on the thankful students' radars. I am still very thankful and appreciate the companies who helped fund my interleaved ADC calibration work and decided to target those companies first. Level One was one of those companies.
I recall waiting in SSCRL for the Level One phone screen since I didn't have a cell phone and had to use the community lab wireless phone. 5pm went by and no Dave Nack. He didn't call the lab as he was supposed to. So I got on the lab phone and looked up the phone number for Level One on their (new) website. I called the Level one front desk hoping someone was still there. Once I got a hold of phone operator I asked for them to find Dave Nack. I was then transferred to a lab phone number and Dave was in there busy working. He sad "Dave Nack" and I responded "This is (SSA) and how about that phone screen?" Dave responded "We are going to call you back and setup an on-site. The fact you got a hold of me in the lab means you passed the phone screen. Sorry I forgot."
During the interview process I try to treat the companies basically the same, and of course improve as I go along. I used some of my last money to buy a suit at Mens Wearhouse along with a blue blazer. (I prefer to interview in a blue blazer if I can since its a little less formal than the suit.) I would wear that, dress pants and leather shoes. I also wear a tie normally a muted blue or dark red. My father in-law clued me in on an excellent book titled Sweaty Palms: The Neglected Art of Being Interviewed. In this book the author, H. Anthony Medley, discusses interview behavior, styles, how to dress and also how to behave at meals. He also includes a way to reduce the clammy handshake. You can get that book in Kindle for cheap it could 10X your chances of getting a job, based on my interactions interviewing dozens of interns at a previous company. The more prestigious the school, the more they needed Medley's book or so was the trend. I hear that Silicon Valley is "relaxed" but I still don't buy into that as an excuse to show up in blue-jeans and a t-shirt. (As a manager, personaly your odds reduce to near zero if it appears you are not willing to put the effort into getting the job. Is that also how you do design?)
I always come prepared as much as possible for an interview. Get a good nights sleep beforehand. I bring a folder or a small document bag that contains an engineering notepad and a separate notepad with information about the company (my notes from studying the company and its product lines). In addition I would have a calculator (cell phone with calculator), a pen or mechanical pencil, and an extra copy of my resume. Most engineers I know that do interviews still like a whiteboard or paper. If you handwriting is bad stick to paper. Before the interview I try to get the list of people I will meet ahead if possible so I can study their names and titles. There are memory techniques I learned along the way (Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory) that enable me to memorize the names of everyone I meet. I use the engineering pad during the interview to solve technical problems. If you are fresh out of college this will be a big part of the interview getting and answering technical questions. (Fresh-outs should bring wit, enthusiasm and energy to an interview. Be careful not to over-do it, read Sweaty Palms) I would only take only brief notes during the interview on my non-engineering notepad. That notepad was most useful after the interview. As soon as possible after the interview its good to write notes about everything you experienced, saw, or messed up and compile notes on the people you met. It may take weeks to get through the whole process, you will meet a number of people and may forget a critical detail, so don't be afraid to write 5 or more pages of notes. These post-interview notes will be combined with my initial notes and later used to help size up the opportunity. In the beginning of your career you should be looking for mentors and some stability. A start-up is normally a bad-idea for a fresh-out, since you will probably be abused or be in an unstable situation and NOT have the street-smarts to know it. Running a good IC company is not just technical, it requires a cohesive team. During your interviews if you meet what looks like a good mentor make a note of it. If you find a jerk also make a note of it. Your school network (IEEE, LAB) may also may have some notes and even example questions from their interviewers assuming those students already have taken jobs or eliminated the company you are interested in. I know the SSCRL lab had example questions from hiring managers including Dave Nack. Often students would talk about their interview experiences giving valuable insights.
I interviewed at just under ten different companies. I learned a lot by checking out many companies at the same time. Companies have personalities like people. Their size, age, product lines and where they are located all all factors. Best was small, stable and growing. Worst was "We can pay you low because our company is great and you are new and not worthy." Not realizing I have a choice. Understanding that I was still new to the business I wanted to observe how companies can make decent money on mixed-signal and analog. It came down to two, Crystal and Level One. Level One was the best fit and ironically didnt require I move . The interview at Level One was actually fun and I didn't want to leave. I liked the people, lots of SSCRL grads (Chuc Thanh, Jim Parker, Charles Cai), the noise level (not too quiet), the company was growing rapidly and appeared to be a fun place to work. I met Perry Heedley during that interview yet another reason to work there. There were also many other good technically excellent (and cool) people. Dan Ray was a big influence he liked the mixed-signal DFE work and adapted the concept to a couple of product lines I would later design a transmitter for.
When I make a career decision after interviews I normally turn to a Excel spreadsheet as a tool. I make a scale from 1-10 and pick a weighting where the topmost items on the list have the highest influence. The most important factors I use are personal and yours should be to. The list can generate a custom score for each company you interview with. This is an example of what my list might have looked like:
#1. Will this job make happy/help to accomplish my career goal?
#2. How does the project and company personality fit your strengths?
#3. How would taking the job affect my Spouse (and children)?
#4. How would taking the job affect my extended family? Travel?
#5. How close is this job to friends or people in your network (other places to work)?
#6. How well do I like my potential manager and his reputation?
#7. How-many good potential mentors available? ( - people you didn't like)
#8. How competitive is the salary offer?
#9. How competitive is the whole compensation including benefits.?
#10. Level of opportunity vs. stability
The list is also important if you have to turn down a company since you would have identified what makes it not a good fit. Politely put negative feedback be can be useful to human-resources and potential hiring managers. How were you treated during the interview? Did you wait around? Did you talk to the people who you were supposed to or substitutes? Is the place a mess? In some cases negative feebdack can open up negotiations since most everything is negotiable during an interview process. Some things are easier to negotiate than others. Post college I have added a "life coach" and discussions with key collegues as well as Paul and Stephen.
Level One clearly passed my spreadsheet and gut test, so I took the job after submitting my thesis to the second of the three professor readers required. Its very difficult to write your first thesis draft while working full-time. You are not paid to do your thesis during work hours, so those are done on your own time. Companies will complain about delays but its not uncommon to negotiate a delayed start of a month for a student to get their studies in line. This brings me to another point that employers interview when they are looking for employees. Once they find someone the position (rec) is normally closed. So if you wait till the very end of your studies to interview you may have to pass up a great opportunity. You also have the freedom to reject the not so good jobs Its better to interview and be honest about your readyness than to wait until its all over since starting dates are negotiable. Collect data. Its not a good idea to interview at a company if there is zero chance you will work there. In those cases, you can offer to do a talk at the sponsor's site, saving a lot of time on both sides of the interview table while gaining respect since time=money.
My first job function at Level One was Electrostatic Discharge protection and pads (ESD) since we had a designer going out on maternity leave. Dave was my manager, mentor and was there when I needed him (Along with lots of help from my new friend and mentor at the time, Perry Heedley). Dave would fight for me and go to bat for me. He focused on culture and efficiency, not just getting the most hours of work during a week at minimal cost. (This required long-term, big-picture thinking and planning on Dave's side.) Dave didn't micro manage (Micro-manage=tell you each thing to do often in a list). Micro-management of highly competent people is bad since it stamps out creativity and eliminates feelings of accomplishment and ownership from a job well done thus leading to lower overall product quality. It was amazing and now in hindsight I had no idea how good he was as a manager. Dave worked hard to make sure I got everything I deserved including publication bonuses for university work that overlapped Level One. I try to copy Dave's style when I manage since it creates the positive karma required for a strong and dedicated team. Dave demonstrated that its not all about one person but building a cohesive team (not unlike a basketball team). The LAN group had career advancement potential all within a motivating environment. The transition from college to work wasn't easy for me and I had to work on my personal interaction style and Dave and Perry were very helpful. The biggest challenge I faced was working as part of the team. Its not efficient to do everything yourself so you need to learn the right times and ways to ask for help. On a healthy team everyone wants the chip to work, so its in everybody's best interest to help out new people.
After a few months of ESD I took over the (Gigabit media independent interface) GMII interface for a gigabit ethernet part. Then we had a labor crunch since the AFE was growing in complexity. Gigabit was a huge change for the company being the most complex SOC in the company at that time. Doing the gigabit Ethernet project was almost like trying to swallow too-big a piece of food. The methods of IC design change with the complexity. A brute-force design process can take much longer than expected and also have collateral consequences to other product lines within the company. If not done intelligently this can add huge amounts of cost and delays. (tape-out is a meaningless milestone..) In hindsight, the greatest cost came from a lack of focus on the primary goal of delivering a working reliable product. To combat the ever expanding schedule I ended up taking over the AGC and eventually the ADC debug. Later I would architect the ADC used for future generation 1G products.
To combat the complexity creep in SOCs we would try to stick to a methodology. Schematic signal flow left-right. Avoid drawing in all your bulk ties since they clutter up the schematic. Names should be clear and should not be mistaken for their complemented counterparts. Name power supplies with a number that represents the voltage with an "a" added to specify analog. Short list of passing names:
vdda2p5
vdda1p8
vssa
vddd
enable
reset
adcdataout<7:0>
Now back do Dave Nack, his schematics were quite horrible to look at. He would often use as few pages as possible but they were huge. Where Dave excelled with interface names. Daves signal names were "the best". This is where I came into conflict to Dave for the first time. I got my first review Dave gave me a "needs improvement" on one item, it was my signal naming convention. It wasn't good enough for Dave.
I used an MDAC or "Multiplying Digital to Analog Converter" for the gain-control in the gigabit. (This was based on a constant return-ratio approach from a paper authored by Bret Rothenberg and Paul Hurst.) Part of the MDAC has sampling capacitor array. The more capacitors that sample the input, the higher the gain. So as a key part of the AGC I had bunch of these little "leaf cells" that had a digital control signal on them called "sample". If sample=1, the capacitor in the cell samples the input. By setting more leaf-cell sample signals to 1, the gain of the circuit increases. The center of the block had a centroided grouping of these unit cells. The AGC had a gain range from like 0.5 to 2.5 or something like that, so some capacitor leaf-cells always had sample=1 to give the gain of 0.5. So on those cells I tied sample signal to VDDA2P5. Dave just wouldn't have that.
"Why would anyone connect a sample to a power supply?" Dave asked. I told him its an MDAC and it samples the input when that signal=1. "But its a sampling circuit".. Dave would reply. It dawned on me that Dave didn't fully understand the MDAC. He was confused by the way the "Sample" signal was used, it was interfering with his ability to understand the circuit. It was making him confused. My choice of signal name was a problem.
So Dave did convince me. If there is a signal name that can be interpreted in different ways, or associated with an unrelated function its name should be changed. Normally these bad signal names give them selves away by coming up in group meetings or discussions. I know digital designers don't like to change signal names, but sometimes the work of a few digital designers changing a port listing is less than hours of wasted time in group meetings. Dave is right, if your schematic port-name is unclear or causing complaints, get over yourself and change it.
I miss Dave as he passed away while at work in Irvine some 5 years after we parted ways. As I type this I am sitting on a ship on the mouth of the Sea of Cortez in Mexico thinking about Dave. Dave had a boat and loved to take it on the Sacramento river. He seemed to be most happy when talking about spending time with wife, son and daughter on the river. Its sad that such a great analog talent had to die so young. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like with Dave around. In some ways, I guess he still is.
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