Employment Question & Answer with the CEO

Webmaster's note: the following is an interview conducted via e-mail between Nick Corcodilos of EE Times' "Ask the Headhunter" column and Jeff Brower, Signalogic CEO, in Oct 2001. The interview was never published because the deadline was a Friday and Jeff did not submit his response until Sunday -- or maybe Jeff's material was not well-received... In any case, the content is highly relevant to persons considering work at Signalogic, so we have reprinted it here. Nick's questions are in bold type.

1. Online recruiting and job hunting get a lot of attention. About half the students polled said they have posted their resumes on the Net. Yet, fewer than 15% said they found a job via the Net. Working engineers seem to confirm the reality of poor online job hunting results: only about 20% seem convinced that the Net is a good way to find a job. What's your advice to students about what methods to use to meet good prospective employers? Does the Net work for you as a recruiting tool? What do you do that's different that works?

The Internet offers mixed results at best for employers. As an engineering employer, we have found job boards and "monster" boards to be nearly worthless. Resumes are often out of date, people cannot be located or the e-mail address bounces, searching by keyword seems either to encounter technical obstacles or be unreasonably expensive -- overall we've found that the time and cost spent trying to find top 10% engineering candidates is not worth the results. The best use of the Internet for employers is their company's website, where they should accurately post their open job positions and describe in detail the work environment, compensation package, and company philosophy. A "people page" with quotes from actual employees (and maybe even some pictures, if the employees grant permission) is worth far more than the few days it takes to create -- it shows authenticity, realism, a willingness for management to go farther than their own egocentric "bios", "management team page" and "investors page" in explaining the character of the company. In my opinion, the most effective sites by far in attracting quality engineers are ones who break things down in true detail, for example posting an actual example of a job offer, and interview with an employee about what they do and what they think of the company, etc.

On the other hand, for engineers seeking employment, the Internet is an excellent tool -- the best ever created. Clearly, engineers can search diligently by keyword, location, product type, etc. and create short lists of companies at which they would like to work. Furthermore, they can (mostly likely) figure out who are technical executives and management at these companies and send inquiries asking about positions.

Here are some suggestions for entry-level engineering candidates seeking employment:

1. Do some research!! What's the point of blanketing 10s of companies if they do not develop products that require your skills? If you say "I did JAVA programming at my part- time job" but the company has no use for JAVA, well... It shows engineering management something if you've taken the time to figure out precisely what the company does, what is their current new product direction, and how you might help their new products get developed faster and better.

   In sending your inquiries and resume, try to get to the top. If you can figure out who is the CEO or lead technical executive, and even better, figure out what is their e-mail address (not always so easy!) this will show management that you've got both moxy and some amount of "debugging" skill. Send your job inquiry to as high a level as you can. Try to avoid human resources departments when possible -- the institutional meat grinder.

   Being lazy when the Internet is sitting right there to help you qualify your employment targets is just no excuse.

2. Keep your initial inquiries to the company short, very short; i.e. "...here is my objective, and here are my top three (3) strengths. Should I send a resume?" If you get a fast (e.g. same day or next day), solid response such as "yes, we would like to see it" then that's a good sign. This will both save you time and allow you to prepare a "short list" of truly interested candidates that you definitely want to pursue.

   Signalogic is flooded by resumes, sometimes more than 5 (five) per day, and it takes us time to search and categorize these. Basically, we search them for a short list of keywords, and before anyone takes a serious look they go into two (2) stacks: file for review, and file for indefinite hold. Obviously we try to keep stack #1 short since it takes time on the part of engineers and engineering management to look these over, and the input to this stack should be a qualified as possible. For those who are curious, the next level of qualification for Signalogic is degree type, location and years of experience. For entry-level, we look next at part-time work experience, senior project or master's project, and minimum GPA (3.3). Time management, motivation to learn, and self-discipline qualities shown by part-time work experience in your field is worth much, much more than a high GPA.

3. With a short list to work from, prepare for your interview like it's an exam. One typical fail-to-prepare sin is lack of knowledge about the company and its products once you are called in for an interview. Nothing cuts an interview short faster than the manager reading from your resume that your objective is to "obtain a position in a [fill in the blank] engineering company with leading edge products" and then being asked if you know of some of the leading edge products made by the company, and your response is "ummm...". For example at Signalogic we specialize in DSP (digital signal processing) based products. You can imagine our reaction when we interview an engineering candidate who says he/she has done DSP projects, taken DSP classes, and should know something about DSP, but then cannot name one DSP product that Signalogic has on the market, when our website is covered with such products. How serious is this candidate about Signalogic? Not very.

4. During your interview, pay attention in the interview and take notes. I can't begin to count the number of times I've asked a candidate during the interview to send me certain items after they get home or back to school (e.g. source code excerpts, writing example, class schedule, etc) and then the next time I heard from them is a few weeks later when they asked "hey, how about the results of my interview?" Then I respond, "one thing we require of our employees is the ability to follow instructions, and you were not able to do that, so we are not interested at this time." In fact, I make it a point to ask entry-level interviewees for several things (more than they can remember without making some notes) during the interview, to see how they deal with that.

   Also during your interview, be prepared to deal with short programming problems and design problems. We routinely ask CS majors to solve short problems and write working C or C++ code on a white board, or ask EE majors the same or to solve short logic design problems (e.g. a state machine that does X).

   Likewise, be prepared to deal with off-the-wall questions that are designed to test your ability to think logically and break down a problem. Such as:

   You are in the first floor of a house with two floors. On the first floor are three switches, and on the second floor there are three lights. Each switch is wired to one light. You can do anything you want with the switches, take as much time as you like. But, you can only go upstairs once. What do you do with the switches to determine exactly which switch is wired to which light once you go upstairs?

   The answer, of course, is that you turn one switch on for a few minutes, then off. Then turn one of the other two on. Then go upstairs: the light that is off but still warm is the first one, the other two are then obvious. During the interview, we are not interested in the correct answer, but more in how the candidate thinks, how they break down the problem, and whether they realize quickly whether just setting all the switches at once and running upstairs is not going to solve the problem.

   And be prepared to deal with questions that test your communication skills, such as this one: "I'm an alien from another planet. Describe to me how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich". Normally that one starts off something like "Ok, first you have get some bread" (interruption) "what is bread? I've never seen bread before. On my planet, we don't have 'bread'." And so it goes, and if you cannot express yourself articulately, with detailed, well-organized information, well...

5. If you are an international student or recent graduate, make sure the company knows how to handle H-1 and O-1 visa applications. Look at the company's "people" page, executive bio page, or management overview page, and determine if they have at least some contingent of international employees. Have none? Then they're probably either not proficient at visa application, or as a matter of policy deliberately avoid candidates who require visa applications.

2. ADVICE TO WORKING ENGINEERS: Given the "stats/facts" quoted in previous item, what's the most effective way for a seasoned engineer who wants to work at Signalogic (or at another successful small company) to get your attention?

Much of the above advice for student/entry-level applies. In addition, for seasoned engineers, you have to be able to demonstrate your commitment to "done". Too many engineers promise to be "result oriented" (a buzzword) without being able to back it up. What will you do when your project gets behind? Specifically, how do you react if you have a single, mission-critical bug that stretches for 2 days or more? What is your attitude in an unexpected tough situation when another engineer has to be away from work and you and your team need to take up the slack?

Sometimes I have hired engineers who look excellent on paper, and in fact are really good in terms of intelligence, problem-solving ability, and skill level, but for reasons that are difficult to fathom, simply do not seem to be able to complete their projects. Are they good "starters" but not good finishers? Are they distracted by personal problems? Did we incorrectly evaluate their ability? Do I have time to try to figure it out and help them get on the right track?

Getting things done is the key. And yes that can mean you work 60 or more hours per week when you are new to a company or project -- simply because you are on the steep part of the learning curve and don't know enough yet, and have not "seen it before". Engineers who struggle with "done" are the hardest part of hiring to predict, and the hardest part of personnel management to deal with. Whether these engineers tend to lose interest as the project stretches on, have a distaste for the tedium of debugging, are easily distracted by other neat things happening around them, or whatever, it's a huge problem and one of the main reasons you hear managers talking about hiring engineers as if the process is a "black art" or a "mystical ability" possessed by only a chosen few.

Getting a result is really about being able to deal with adversity. We know ahead of time there will be strange bugs and unforeseen problems, we know ahead of time a teammate will make a design error and everyone will have to back up a step to help out, we know ahead of time that an assumption we made initially will prove invalid, etc. We know the project will be difficult -- if it were easy, everyone would do it, and then what would be the purpose of the company? We are paid to solve difficult problems and build difficult products.

As an experienced engineer, other crucial areas to highlight in seeking employment are your communication skills and teamwork approach. Can you write? (If not, forget working at Signalogic.) Do you enjoy working in a team? Or do you aspire to your own private office with a door? "Door persons" are not hired at Signalogic. My experience has been that "door persons" are not good at offering help or, even more critical, receiving help. They tend to be the type of people who say "this is my job and area of responsibility; I need to prove that I can do it; I don't want or need your help" -- which is an absolutely unacceptable attitude in an engineering team, but one which a surprising number of managers are willing to tolerate to avoid trouble.

Another area that one hears a lot about is "initiative". However, I tend not to place this in its own category. In my experience I've found that the same engineers who are good at getting things done are the same ones who routinely take initiative. They find a better way to document a project, a better design technique, take steps to improve the work area, make new product suggestions, etc. They take initiative because they know doing so will help them get things done faster and will help the company, their group, and themselves.

3. Almost half of students polled say their career goal is to become either the president/CEO or CTO of a company. Another 15% want to be entrepreneurs. I don't know of any college that offers an EE program that helps students plan for these objectives. What specific things should an ambitious new grad plan to do during the first 2, 3, 5 years of his or her career with these leadership goals in mind? It might be useful to contrast these "steps" to steps another EE might take to develop a successful "individual contributor" career.

Below I've given some specific steps, but before you read any of that, the true answer is hard, hard work, but only those who really want to get to the top will accept that answer. Entry-level engineers know next to nothing. To be effective and contribute significantly enough to catch management's eye they have to learn fast, which means work. To learn business-side skills and nuances needed to communicate effectively with customers in obtaining new business takes extra time, attending extra meetings, writing extra e-mails -- which takes extra time, and again extra work. To meet project milestones means fighting through bugs and solving debug problems they've never seen before -- again, more extra work. In short, everything I've just mentioned means more time, which means more work. Painful? Yes indeed, ultra painful, and that's why few people who want to start or run a successful company ever do it -- they are simply not willing to spend the enormous amount of time required, and the simple fact is someone else is willing, so they lose. The answer is so simple to explain, but like losing weight so difficult to really do and stay with it. Everyone wants to find the short cut -- the "work smarter, not harder" folks. The truth is: you have to work smart and hard, and harder, and harder.

For every entrepreneur who wants to start a company and pull down 500k+ and does excellent work, there is another one who is more ambitious and who does even better work and is happy to make 20k and pay his/her engineers the other 480k. For every entrepreneur who is not willing to sell his house and live out of his car to start his company, there is another one who is. It's all about competition and so few people are willing to realize and admit that. The bar is very high, and you either jump over it or you don't -- there is no almost, maybe, or close. Statistics show that 98% of new businesses fail after 1 year, regardless of the product area. I usually phrase it to people like this, and then sit back and watch the surprise: why should starting a small business be any different than going to college? You will spend at least 4 years, you will work your ass off, you will live hand-to-mouth, you won't make any money, but the whole idea is deferred reward. What, starting a technical business is easier than college? I don't think so. Now if you can honestly say: I'm ready for that level of dedication and work, I'm ready to sell my house, live in a studio apartment on 20k, work 16 hrs per day 7 days a week for 4 years, then right there your chances for success just increased a hundredfold.

Here are some specific steps a new engineer can take at his/her company to chart a path towards upper management or an eventual entrepreneurial situation:

1. Get things done, regardless of the time required. Nothing impresses managers and executives more than hearing "it's done, what's next". See my comments above about the meaning of "done" and the sacrifice required in terms of time and effort.

2. Learn, learn, learn. Learn everything you can about everything. Learn about who are your customers and how the marketing people approach them, about all aspects of your product or project and not just your part, about other project member's roles and tasks, about other projects your mangers' are dealing with, about the history and background of your company. Knowledge truly is power, and will help you see patterns and make connections between things that on the surface seem unrelated. And the little extra bits that you know will come in handy in unexpected situations where management is involved, and you need to think on your feet.

3. Do not be afraid to speak your mind, but always on the basis of fact and well-reasoned argument. You may not be appreciated by everyone, but the people who matter will value your candor. For speaking out, the worst that can happen is that you will be reprimanded or even fired -- but at least then you know that wasn't a company with a short road to the top.

4. Treat your peers and subordinates with respect, and be helpful when you can, regardless of how well you are doing, or how much harder or longer you are working. You have to develop the ability to gain friends and earn respect. You want people to say about you "he/she knows everything, and still he/she is willing to help. I love to work with (for) that person".

5. Learn how to write without emotion. When composing e-mails and reports, keep your opinions and feelings out. Write carefully, factually, with detail yet with a minimum of words. Entry-level engineers typically learn the hard way about what happens when their passionate and argumentative words are taken out of context or are read by an uninformed, impartial observer. Remember when your Mom said "if you don't have anything nice to say, then shut up"? The same holds true in a professional engineering work environment. If you have to make negative comments in writing, it had better be for really good reasons and backed up with incontrovertible evidence.

4. About 2/3 of EE students expect to stay with their first employer a long time (5+ years). In fact, 2/3 of working EE's under age 35 say they have had no more than one or two employers in their careers. So, contrary to the image young engineers have as job-hoppers, they seem quite stable and loyal. (After age 35, engineers seem to change employers more often.) How can a new EE grad evaluate an employer to increase the likelihood of "staying put" and being happy?

I suggest this checklist:

1. Are the company's products leading edge? Does the group in which you will work introduce at least 3-4 new products every year? Is the company willing to jump into new product areas? Have they done so in the last 6 months?

2. Does the company emphasize on its website products and engineering personnel and expertise as the basis for success, rather than "Management Team", "Investors", "Corporate Headquarters" and other glitz and glamour? Does the company provide good technical support resources online for its customers? If they do not make effort for their own customers, then what resources will they provide for you? In general, try to get a handle on the level of attention and respect the company pays to engineers and how it values them in terms of the company's overall success.

3. Does the company place emphasis on teamwork and constant communication between project team members? Is this spelled out in the company policies and in your job offer? For example, is it made clear in writing that other engineers are expected to help you learn and you in turn are expected to help others when possible? Is it made clear that engineers are expected to reach out to newsgroups and online resources when they get stuck on a bug, rather than solve the problem alone? Is it made clear that engineers are expected to avoid time spent re-inventing solutions and first ask the group if they have some ideas on how to solve a particular problem?

4. What happens when you ask for references for people who have worked there, or in a particular group or for a particular manager, currently or before? The typical large company response: "that information is confidential". Your response: "Ok, here is my personal e-mail address and telephone number. Please ask people in this group (or who work for this manager) if they would be willing to call me or send me an e-mail with their telephone number so I can speak to them privately by phone and ask them a few questions about the work environment." If you have the courage to do that, you will quickly find out whether the talk about teamwork, supportive management, leading-edge products, etc. is accurate or bullshit. If the company is not willing to do it, then you have two (2) choices: run as Nick says, or be willing to live with the facts that a) you will struggle to climb in this company, and b) they could lay you off at any time without a care or second thought.

   Note: some managers will offer to give you a few minutes to speak with one or more engineers in the group privately after your interview, before you leave the building. That's a step in the right direction, but still not as good as being able to speak privately outside the workplace, for example at lunch or at home. I suggest to insist on the private contact information -- a better test of management's willingness to allow the truth about their workplace environment to emerge.

5. Does the company sponsor an active, thriving part-time engineering student employment program? This is so important for so many reasons, and any engineering company that doesn't do it is kidding themselves. A part-time engineering student employment program provides a number of advantages:

   • it tends to foster an atmosphere of helping, teaching, and learning. Full-time engineers are obligated to take the time to teach, and student engineers are obligated to learn and practice and thus become productive and make real contributions. I cannot say enough about the positive, synergistic cycle that this creates. And if one of the student engineers should become full-time, they are automatically in teach mode -- they already subscribe to the theory

   • students bring a steady stream of new ideas -- maybe some of them are a bit impulsive and not well thought-out (yet), but their original thinking is refreshing and can lead to surprising technical discussions and new product ideas

   • the best and brightest students may become the company's future full-time engineers -- it goes without saying that they could not have received any better or more relevant training

   • it helps keeps the company connected with the local universities and otherwise in touch with what's going on with EE, CS, and TE technical development and marketing in the local area

6. Does the company have at least 1 full-time H-1B or O-1 visa engineer on staff, and is thus able to demonstrate a working relationship with an immigration law firm and knowledge of INS regulations? This may not seem critical at the time, but what if an important new project or customer comes along and the one qualified engineer available to help with the new requirements needs a visa? Company management is abdicating their responsibility to all employees and to overall company health and preparedness if they are not adept and willing at visa application processing.

7. Does the highest-ranking executive on-site (VP, Gen. Manager, owner, partner, etc.) meet with all employees, in their work environment, in project groups or one-on-one, at least two (2) times per week? My personal opinion is that you should always know the person who signs your paychecks -- beyond mere acquaintance. I realize this is not possible in many cases, but it's something to think about. If the company has to make a layoff, and the decision-makers do not know you and do not know the quality and depth of your work, then what good is your hard work and time spent? The axe will swing and you will be just another number.

8. Does the company have some specific overtime work policies? For example, does the company promise that a manager will always be present any time engineers are asked to work overtime? Will the company take care of dinner if you have to work past 6:00 p.m.? Will the company give you time off or other compensation once the overtime requirement is concluded?

A lack of requirement for a manager to be present during overtime work can be especially revealing. My opinion is that no engineer should be asked to work overtime unless the manager of his/her group is present also -- even if the manager is not doing the actual work, then at least he/she is there to answer questions and provide moral support. After all, if the project is behind, then everyone is at fault, not just one engineer, and the manager absolutely must take responsibility for the overall situation.

In general, the above guidelines help to identify whether an engineering company is people- oriented and new-product oriented, as opposed to ones that hesitate to trust their people, and are slow to diversify or try something new. In my experience, managements that are people-oriented also tend to be willing to learn new things and keep pushing the envelope. I have learned over the years that a constant stream of new products, market exploration, and new thinking is the one absolute critical thing that every company must do, big or small.

5. Only 15% of engineers polled said they changed employers in the past 12 months. Your company has a reputation for high retention -- how do you do it? (If you'll tell me what your retention rate is, I'll mention it. I'd like to make up for any inaccurate image I might have projected about Signalogic last time.)

For the last calendar year, Signalogic's full-time employee retention rate was 81%. We calculate retention rate by summing, at any given time, the current number of full-time employees (including engineers and marketing and business professionals) that were employed a year ago, and dividing by the total number that were employed a year ago. For engineers specifically, the rate in the last calendar year was 100%, and for the same period in 1999-2000 it was 83%. We also have a high part-time student retention rate, but we measure that differently. In that case, the rate is measured by summing the cumulative number of students who work at Signalogic the maximum number of terms possible (i.e. if they start as a senior, then they might have 2 semesters or 2 semesters plus a summer term in which to work), divided by the total number of students. Signalogic's all-time (since 1994) part-time student retention rate is 94%.

As far as a specific plan to achieve a high retention rate, we have none. We simply follow the principles and philosophy spelled out in my answers to the other questions. I will say in short- form that I think two (2) keys are a) always striving to build a company committed to developing many new products and to constantly learning new areas; i.e. a steady, continuous effort to diversify, and b) always striving to create a fun, challenging, creative, people-oriented place to work.

6. Engineers are often dismayed at how inflexible employers are about "quality of life" benefits, like flexible work hours, travel requirements, and even the requirement to carry a beeper 24X7. Knowing what you know about the industry, if you were considering a job offer today what quality of life benefits would you push hard for during your employment negotiations?

Here are some suggestions; note that not all of these fall strictly into a "quality of life" category, although I believe that all of them have at least indirect impact on an employee's quality of life while working at the company.

1. Ground floor office next to trees and nice scenery, with lots of glass. Every employee should have glass and be able to see (and feel) the sun and birds and leaves changing color.

2. Overtime policies as described in answer to question 4) above.

3. Flexible work hours. Working from 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. should be perfectly acceptable, as should be working from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

4. Stock ownership plan -- not stock options. By this I mean as you work at the company you earn stock; it accrues based on a time-in-service and vesting schedule, and you do not have to pay extra for it -- even a discounted amount is too much. If the company is not willing to let you earn ownership by dint of hard work and extended time-in-service, then I would suggest looking somewhere else.

5. Fully paid medical and dental insurance -- the company absolutely needs to do that. There should be no stress on employees about not having a good health plan and having to pay for some portion of it out of their paychecks each month.

6. Offering a decent 401(k) plan. No matter the size of the company -- even if the company is in the 20-employee range like Signalogic -- they should have a 401(k) plan.

One additional note about stock ownership: not offering an employee plan may mean the company has no stock to distribute. That could be the case with a venture start-up (e.g. the VCs own the majority of the company), or a large corporation limited by sheer number of employees and no stock held in reserve (all stock publicly traded). The worst, but fortunately not common, situation would be a company where the owners are not willing to share and/or believe that engineers are interchangeable and they are not worth the time and effort of a stock ownership plan.

7. How many hours per week should a new grad expect to work? If the hours are long, what's the payback to the young engineer?

That really varies with the company, group and its product type or stage in the product's lifespan, and the manger. And it varies dynamically -- is the project behind? Is the customer withholding payment because of failure to meet specifications (i.e. too many bugs)? Has the customer paid an expedite fee up front? There are many short-term factors that might apply. Please see my comments above about working hours and effort.

8. More than half of students polled say they'd prefer to work for a company that has 500 or more employees. Would the typical new EE grad serve his/her career best by starting out at a small or a large company? Why?

My biased opinion is that if you choose the correct small company, with 100 employees or less, you will learn more and get paid more. But you will also work harder, be given more responsibility, endure more stress, and be pushed towards leadership roles faster (assuming you are good). That's both a challenge and opportunity, and clearly requires a higher priority placed on career. Some entry-level engineers want that, some do not. It really depends on the person and where they are in life.

One of the things I do in interviews with entry-level engineers is say this: "you will be assigned to work on critical parts of the project design, implementation, and debug. When the product is first shipped to the customer, we know there will be problems -- that's a given in engineering. When the customer calls and says they are having a problem or they have found a bug, and it turns out to be in your section of the code (or hardware), then you will be required to get on the phone, and calmly, diplomatically find out exactly what is going on, and tell the customer what we are going to do about it, and when." Then I carefully watch the candidate's reaction -- if they look like a deer caught in headlights, I know that person is not a good prospect -- at least at this stage in their career. If the person leans forward, and confidently, resolutely says, "yes, I can do that, I won't let you down" then I know the person has potential to work for Signalogic.

9. Students interviewing for their first jobs are relatively naïve about evaluating companies and job offers. What's the one biggest "deal breaker" they should look out for? What should make them run, not walk, to the nearest exit?

Assuming that the compensation package offer is comparable to other offers, then that's easy: either not being given references as I described above in answers to question 4), or not having written specifics in the company policies about overtime work as I described also in answers to question 4). Otherwise you could end up in a situation where you work your butt off only to find out that management never cared about its employees and quality of the products in the first place.