{"id":435,"date":"2008-11-07T16:26:46","date_gmt":"2008-11-07T21:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poojanwagh.opalstacked.com\/poojanblog\/?p=435"},"modified":"2008-11-18T17:20:06","modified_gmt":"2008-11-18T22:20:06","slug":"im-leaving-motorola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/im-leaving-motorola\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m Leaving Motorola"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve accepted a position elsewhere. My last day of employment at Motorola will be Nov. 21<sup>st<\/sup>. Before I get into where I&#8217;m going, I&#8217;d like to <span style=\"color: #000080;\">reflect on<\/span> \/ <span style=\"color: #000080;\">point out<\/span> a few things <span style=\"color: #993300;\">with embedded humor<\/span>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>I&#8217;m not dissatisfied with my position at Motorola.<\/strong> Indeed, I am in an ideal environment for someone who both likes to invent and innovate, and likes to see things ship. The role in which I found\/positioned myself allowed me to investigate some really new technology, without the ridiculous schedules that plague market-reactive engineering environments. At the same time, the stuff we made actually gets shipped, tested, and developed further. It impacts customers.<\/li>\n<li><strong>I have learned how to present and explain things<\/strong> to external customers that aren&#8217;t up to speed with the daily tasks of the project. I&#8217;m still not great at it, but I am comfortable doing it&#8211;and I&#8217;m better at it due to mentoring by some amazing communicators.<\/li>\n<li><strong>I&#8217;ve learned a lot about making decisions and plans<\/strong> (strategy). It is always the case (and always going to be) that we can&#8217;t do everything. Figuring out what <em>not<\/em> to work on can be as essential as figuring out what <em>to<\/em> work on. It&#8217;s important to have some criteria guiding these decisions. Goal-setting is important to decision-making. You don&#8217;t have to write down the goals, but have them.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve learned that it&#8217;s <strong>always better to be pleasant and kind<\/strong> about technical disagreements. <span style=\"color: #993300;\">Okay, all disagreements.<\/span> Even to the people that bug you. They usually think they&#8217;re helping. <span style=\"color: #993300;\">Sometimes<\/span>, the other guy\/gal is right. <span style=\"color: #993300;\">Okay, more than sometimes.<\/span> It&#8217;s very easy to think that what you&#8217;re doing is optimal, because you&#8217;ve already laid out the plan and can&#8217;t see the other alternatives. An open mind is essential.<\/li>\n<li>At the same time, <strong>don&#8217;t spend time arguing<\/strong> with others if you&#8217;ve convinced yourself. There&#8217;s always going to be things you could do better. Accept that what you do won&#8217;t be perfect&#8211;and other people will point it out, but it wasn&#8217;t their decision to make, was it? You&#8217;re in charge for a reason. Take ownership of what you do, and you will do it better. <span style=\"color: #993300;\">Get someone else to write the project report, though.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>The most important thing is the business.<\/strong> We&#8217;re not here to have fun. We&#8217;re here to make money for the company. Almost all the time, you can have both. Question if what you&#8217;re doing is what is best for the customer\/department\/business. You may have to do some things that aren&#8217;t fun, but most of the time, success will follow&#8211;and that&#8217;s always fun.<\/li>\n<li>I have had the honor of being a member of very passionate groups that are doing amazing things with technology. These <strong>amazing things don&#8217;t get realized all of a sudden<\/strong> on a glorious day. The problems are so complex that one ends up solving very small problems for a long period of time to get incrementally closer to the goal. It&#8217;s hard work, and believing in the goal is helpful. Having a management team (and customer) that understands the labor of research is essential. <strong>Celebrating small advancements (for example, as feedback to your peers) makes for good teams.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m not leaving because things are bad at Motorola. In fact, it is the focus on technological work that makes me want to expand into more areas of technology. If I wasn&#8217;t happy at Motorola, I would probably be getting my MBA and be considering business instead. <span style=\"color: #993300;\">To all executive recruiters: I am not ruling the MBA out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Where am I going? To a private hedge fund in Chicago. Why? Because:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I want a change. I want to learn something new. I want to broaden my knowledge.<\/li>\n<li>I like the environment. Working in the financial industry is good. Working with technology is good. However, it&#8217;s more important to me that the firm invests in their employees. They&#8217;re willing to hire a person<span style=\"color: #993300;\">&#8211;okay, it&#8217;s me&#8211;<\/span>because <span style=\"color: #993300;\">they think<\/span> he&#8217;s smart. I like their attitude toward people.<\/li>\n<li>The people I know at the firm are some of the most ethical and just people I know.<\/li>\n<li>This opportunity isn&#8217;t going to come around again.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #993300;\">Free lunch.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Will I be a financial analyst? No.<\/p>\n<p>Will I have stock tips? No.<\/p>\n<p>What will I be doing? <span style=\"color: #993300;\">I don&#8217;t know: stuff. Smart stuff.<\/span> Mostly software initially.<\/p>\n<p>Is this change necessary? Absolutely not. However, there&#8217;s no reason to wait until <a href=\"http:\/\/hbswk.hbs.edu\/item\/5548.html\">change is necessary<\/a> to develop and grow. If you<span style=\"color: #993300;\">&#8211;well, not you specifically&#8211;<\/span>embrace change on your terms, rather than the terms of your environment, you get to pick how you develop, and you get to pick your strengths. <span style=\"color: #808080;\">There&#8217;s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0618879641?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=obsecompthind-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0618879641\">school of thought<\/a> that states that evolution picks convenient solutions, not optimal solutions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I sincerely plan to stay in touch with the people I&#8217;ve met at Motorola and continue to keep up with my friends from Freescale. This blog is a good way to contact me (see <a href=\"http:\/\/poojanblog.com\/poojanblog\/voicemail\/\">voicemail page<\/a> to the left). Or, consider subscribing (<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/PoojanBlog\">RSS\/Atom<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.feedburner.com\/fb\/a\/emailverifySubmit?feedId=2358468&amp;loc=en_US\">Email<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve accepted a position elsewhere. My last day of employment at Motorola will be Nov. 21st. Before I get into where I&#8217;m going, I&#8217;d like to reflect on \/ point out a few things with embedded humor: I&#8217;m not dissatisfied with my position at Motorola. Indeed, I am in an ideal environment for someone who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[125,120,124,121,123,122],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-careerwork-life","tag-best-practice","tag-career-change","tag-lessons","tag-motorola","tag-resignation","tag-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":51,"href":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}