These Past Three Years
Jul 4, 01:59 PM by Eric Allen
Whew, it’s over! A little over a month ago, I graduated with a B.S. in Computer & Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Since I finished my time at Peninsula School, I’ve spent only six years in intensive formal education, and that’s enough! Some people look back on high school or college as the best years of their life, but I’ll be damned if I can’t do better over the next, what, 80 years?
I went off to college a bit prematurely, which I knew would affect my admissions prospects at top schools. I found myself at RPI, a well-respected engineering school in upstate New York. I opted to steer clear of CompSci and instead declared my major as Computer & Systems Engineering. I wanted to gain experience with every aspect of computing, all the way down to how the circuits inside the chips work. Over the past three years, I’ve definitely gotten that.
I was struck yesterday by some kudos from my 45-year-old coworker who was apparently telling his wife how this kid at work (me) had actually put his education to good use. We had been discussing computer stuff at lunch, and my Computer.Build project had come up. I have actually worked with basically every level of computing, and I understand how computers do their job at a pretty intimate level. A lot of this I learned on my own, but there are details you’re just not going to get outside of school. If that’s the only thing I wanted from college, then I’ve certainly succeeded.
Have you ever wondered why bridges, buildings, cars, and most other engineered things tend to work, while software always tends to fail? I certainly have. Many in the software industry have, too, and there are a number of books on the subject. My theory was that engineers had some secret methodology that we software people just never figured out. So, I went to an engineering school to see if I could learn this secret. Now? I’m not so sure. Engineers certainly take a lot more time on things that we software people just whip through. If we were as careful with software as we are with hardware, things would probably be less buggy. However, the current software industry is based on software being cheap to produce, and applying more engineering practices to it will take a lot more time. Engineers also don’t even think about working until they have a full specification in front of them. We software guys often fly blind, with the business people making up the spec as we go along. In software, we can get away with this, but it certainly leads to bugs and inconsistencies. Engineers don’t have the luxury of 24-hour release cycles like we web companies can pull off. It’s a trade-off we make, and I think we’re making the right choice. All-in-all, I think the software industry has something to learn from engineering, but I’m not going to call myself a Software Engineer. We have yet to figure out how to do it right consistently enough to call ourselves engineers.
Was college worth it? Probably. The elders I talk to tell me I’ll come to recognize the value of my education later on. For now, I keep wondering if I’d have better off capitalizing on my early experience with Ruby on Rails by dropping out of high school and starting a Web 2.0 company back when that was cool. What twenty-something programmer wouldn’t wonder that? I took the conservative path (albeit accelerated), and it’s worked out pretty well. What’s a few years here and there when you’ve got decades to go? I feel blessed to be surrounded by great people, to love what people pay me to do, and to have a wonderful family. Life is good.
Elevator Pitch Competition
Apr 22, 10:23 AM by Eric Allen
Last night I participated in RPI’s first ever Elevator Pitch Competition. Pitches were limited to exactly 90 seconds, which was really tough for this idea. Even so, I won “best presentation style” for the Ideas category! There were a lot of great pitches, and I’m glad I got to be part of such a cool event. I wish I could participate next year!
The context: I’m pitching to an investor with a portfolio of internet and alternative energy companies looking for new opportunities to reinforce your existing companies.
The personal carbon offsetting business is growing like crazy. Were talking about $700 million a year in voluntary offsets, growing at over 80% per year The market has moved so fast that consumers are now faced with a bewildering number of choices, and minimal regulatory oversight. I can buy offsets from an organization like TerraPass, but I have no idea exactly what they’re going to. What do we do about the confusion? Often, nothing.
Conservation Marketplace changes all of that. Instead of blindly throwing their money at vague “offsets,” consumers come to an online marketplace where they can fund other individuals to make lifestyle changes to reduce their carbon footprint. For example, I could fund you to switch from driving to work to taking your bicycle.
By reducing confusion, Conservation Marketplace gains access to a huge segment of the market that is currently underserved. With the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars per year in transactions on the site, conservation marketplace can generate high-quality web traffic for advertisers looking to gain access to green-minded consumers.
Conservation marketplace pairs people who want to pay off their ecological guilt with people who are willing to make lifestyle changes, given a little push. It is a web service that cuts out the inefficient middlemen of an existing, proven market, with exceptional advertising potential.
Somebody is going to get the brand for personal carbon offsetting. Let me make it be you.
What do you think? I’m still iffy on the idea, but I did get some positive feedback. Accountability, of course, is the hardest part of this.
Oh, and videos will be posted soon. I’ll tweet a link when they go up.
Expectations
Mar 24, 05:07 PM by Eric Allen
Last week I suffered a bit of a meltdown. I set extremely high expectations for my peers and for my professors, and they’ve been consistently letting me down this semester. Whether it’s the crazy Professional Development professor railing about how “our kids need to be more competitive” or my Probability professor’s spat with the class about the proper process for handing in homework, the faculty have been really disappointing me this semester. On top of that, my teammates for “Senior Design” have been, well, sub-par. Don’t get me wrong, a couple of them are great, but the majority are clueless and unmotivated. A terrible meeting on Tuesday sent me into an emotional tailspin, and it took me a few days to recover.
As I generally do when I’m not feeling well mentally, I scheduled an appointment with the Counseling Center. I feel weird seeking psychological help when I’m really just pissed off at stupid people, but boy was it a good call. Today I spent an hour there, and I’ve picked up a big piece of wisdom.
Don’t set expectations for events outside your control. That’s it. That’s what I learned today, and it’s really that simple. I tend to set expectations (high ones) for everything around me, and I tend to believe I can, through sheer force of will, control most events. This turns out to be a recipe for disaster, and that’s exactly what happened to me last week. It sounds simple, but it’s not going to be easy to integrate into my daily activities. As an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs, I’m predisposed toward this kind of behavior. It will take a lot of willpower and concentrated effort to change, but I think I can do it.
Already today I’m feeling better. Instead of setting expectations on everything, I’m letting the day unfold. I had a meeting with a couple of my Senior Design teammates (the good ones), and I didn’t set expectations. I simply communicated what I needed to get across and listened to what they communicated. We set some milestones for our part of the project, and we got a ton of work done. Now, instead of feeling guilty about being unproductive, I’m sitting on my favorite hill enjoying the biting breeze of Spring. Experience life as it is, instead of constantly comparing it to your predictions of what it should be. That’s my new nugget of wisdom.
The Home Stretch
Feb 17, 08:01 PM by Eric Allen
When I first arrived here at RPI, I met a number of students who were going crazy with their course work trying to double major, triple major, graduate in three years, get a B.S. and an M.S. in four years, or some other crazy goal. I, of course, was not crazy. I was going to take my time and enjoy college, completing a B.S. with one major in four years. I spent lots of time working on projects and participating in clubs like UPAC Sound, not to mention getting much better at skiing. I really did enjoy my freshman year at RPI. I was off to a good start.
That was then. Fast forward a couple of years, and I find myself racing for the finish line faster than I’d ever imagined. Somehow I’ve managed to line things up to graduate an entire year early, and I’m going for it. I’ve got an awesome job waiting for me in San Francisco at Sauce Labs that has me really excited. I’m even working for them part-time during my crazy final semester. To finish off my education at RPI, I’m taking 22 credits (the normal limit is 21, so I’m paying extra for the 22nd credit). I’m taking Advanced Computer Hardware Design, Capstone Design Experience, Basic Drawing, Professional Development II (and III), and an independent study with my favorite professor (to think I actually dropped his class two years ago!!). I’ve cut back to basically no club activity, though I am keeping up the skiing. Oh, and I’m participating in RCOS for the fourth semester running. Think that’s enough to keep me busy?
What changed? What turned me from the happy little freshman taking his time to the crazy workaholic I’m being now? Honestly, it’s a lot like my transition from high school to college. I’ve by no means exhausted the classes at RPI, and money isn’t really a problem. I have friends here, and I enjoy most of my time. So, then, what is going on? I just feel that it’s time for me to move on. College admissions departments didn’t seem to like that reasoning, but it’s one of the best life decisions I’ve made. I might have gotten into a more prestigious college if I’d stuck around for another year of high school, but I’ve gained so much over the last three years that it’s hard to argue against that choice. Now, I’m doing it again. I just feel like I’ve grown about as much as I’m going to grow here, and I see so much more opportunity to grow in the next stage of my life. I’ve grown an amazing amount over the last three years, and I’m looking forward to continuing that growth.
One thing I’ve wondered about off and on ever since I started college is whether my choice of major was right. I’m not a computer hardware designer, and I’m probably never going to be. I’m a software guy through and through. Why didn’t I choose Computer Science, then? Frankly, it’s because I don’t agree with the way Computer Science is taught at RPI. Looking back, though, I can’t help but wonder if CS would’ve been a better choice. I spend a lot of personal time learning what are essentially CS concepts, and I could have done that in the classroom instead. I’m convinced I made the right choice, though, for one reason: teamwork. Most software developers I’ve met are terrible at working with others. From what I’ve seen of CS curricula, teamwork is rarely emphasized, if it’s even done at all. RPI CS students get one class where they have to do much teamwork, while Engineering students (like me) get something like half a dozen teamwork opportunities. Heck, even my Economics class last semester involved a significant team project. Specific skills are easy to pick up, but meta-skills like teamwork are much harder to acquire. If teamwork were the only thing I’ve gotten out of my college experience (and it’s certainly not), it would still have been worth it. Thank you RPI for helping me learn how to work with other people!
