One more bit of personal blogging, and then it’ll be back to the math. You may have noticed
that I haven’t been as active in the discussions on my posts for the last few weeks as I
would normally be. There are two reasons for that; one I’ve mentioned before – my father’s illness.
The other is actually something good.
As of today, I’m unemployed. Briefly.
After 11 years at IBM Research, I decided to change jobs. Today was my last day working for IBM. One week from monday, I’ll be starting work for Google, as a Software Engineer at their New York lab. Nothing against IBM – it was just time for a change. Over the last few weeks, the process of interviewing, and then wrapping up my work at IBM has been taking up a lot of time. Things should be nicely mellow for the next week, and then a bit crazy for a while as learn the ropes at my new job.
Congratulations on landing the job at Google, I hope you find a new and rewarding set of challenges there. An apparent industry veteran like yourself would certainly deserve it.
Another one bites the dust! 🙂 I’m getting tired of saying “that’s really exciting!”. But, it does sound pretty exciting. Good luck, Mark!
Ah, I’m jealous; Google is THE place to work these days. If I were still working, I’d be camping on their doorstep. I’ve worked in three places that were hugely exciting and satisfying places to work: Brown in the Hypertext days, IBM (yes, IBM) Cambridge Scientific Center in the CP/CMS days, and the little company SofTech (Waltham MA) in the days of SADT and DOD-1=>Ada.
So you’ve outed your blog identity as an IBM employee AND as a Google employee. I assume Google is cool with that, as IBM didn’t seem to be?
Congratulations!
Congratulations
Finally we’ll have an inside guy at Google. 🙂
Congratulations!
Congrats! Google is the in-place.
BTW, I also got a new job this week: Starting April 2, I will be working for BrainScope, analyzing EEG data to try to diagnose different neurological impairments using a new and much less cumbersome method of getting the data.
Congratulations, Mark. Wow, half the blogosphere works for Google these days. Some day I’ll go through my subscriptions and see how many of us Googlers there are on there. (I love saying “us Googlers”–I start in two weeks in the Dublin office.)
Sometimes I wonder if the Google-guys read the applicants blogs before they hire. Time to start blogging about some technical stuff…
Tell us, if you meet somebody at Google not blogging.
Bob:
Yeah, Google is much more comfortable with my blogging. They have no problem with my identifying as a Googler on the blog, as long as I don’t give away any company secrets. 🙂
In fact, I know several of the interviewers had read the blog, and I think it might have something to do with why they hired me.
Pat:
Great to see you popping up here! Thanks for the congrats.
“Googler?” That’s a standard construct — IBMer, SofTecher — but unfortunate in that google is widely used as a verb, describing an activity that everybody does all the time. “I think we’re all googlers on this bus.” I have no good alternative suggestions, except maybe “googols.”
You probably don’t want to start out there by insisting that everybody change what they call themselves, anyway.
Congratulations! Hope it’s fun and that you learn lots of new and interesting things.
“Googler?” That’s a standard construct — IBMer, SofTecher — but unfortunate in that google is widely used as a verb, describing an activity that everybody does all the time. “I think we’re all googlers on this bus.” I have no good alternative suggestions, except maybe “googols.”
Well, if a “Googler” is someone who uses Google, then logically someone who works for Google would be a “Googlee”.
Well I’m a new reader, but judging from what I’ve seen, I will be a regular one. Congrats on the new gig.
Congratulations.
Congratulations & all the best! As a colleague at IBM Research I’m sad to see you leave. (On another front, I hope things work out for your father as well.)
Oh good for you! Google is a fantastic place to work I hear.
Congratulations, sounds like an exciting move. Google (and IBM) is a bit too math-heavy and theoretical for my preference, but for someone like you it seems perfect.
Congratulations! Just don’t let the power of ‘The Google’ go to your head… I’ll get upset if ‘Good Math, Bad Math’ starts appearing at the top of all my searches! 🙂
Congratuations and good luck!
Congrat on the new job! Way to go Mark.
You’re not alone. By pure coincidence (doing some research on RSS) I found the blog of another Mark who has recently left IBM for Google: http://diveintomark.org/
I would imagine you’ve never met and never will, but it’s a fun coincidence that Google has, at the same time, lured two guys named Mark from IBM. What are the odds?
“… it’s a fun coincidence that Google has, at the same time, lured two guys named Mark from IBM. What are the odds?”
Depends. Are Marks Bosons or Fermions?
Congratulations Mark… Google’s gain is IBM’s loss.
I was chatting with some Caltech Math Postdocs about how it’s harder each year for them to find faculty positions. They feared that the USA was slipping to towards the Japanese model, where one is a postdoc for an average of at least a decade, to soak up excess talent. They also were aware that Microsoft Research and Google had replaced the Thomas J. Watson lab of IBM, and Bell Labs, for hiring top Mathe and Science PhDs. And that China was pushing hard to be the global math hegemon.
I’m in a bad mood from getting a form letter from a teaching-oriented college saying thank you for your application for our 4 tenure track Math opening, we got many good applicants, blah blah blah, when I feel sure that they should have at least called me in for an interview. With 4 openings, they could have chosen 3 safe bets, and then intervierwed the interesting outliers such as myself, with thousands of students taught, many Math classes taught, and a 2,400 publications presentations and broadcasts. It’s not a researchy school, but the shortest commute from where I live. I know there’s nothing in my CV to bar admissions, as a different department there once offered me a faculty slot. But surely research should not count AGAINST a teacher?
So I had a Physics PhD Qauntum Computing/Parallel computing friend over for dinner and watching UCLA basketball (he’d done a postdoc there). He loked very carefuly at my Caltech transcript and sdaid that a mere HR person might not be able to tell that I actually had a B.S. in Math there, as the data was on page 1 instead of at the end, and didn’t actually say “Math” but rather “Ma-En” because I had two B.S. degrees, in Math and English. “Ma-En” looks Chinese, he suggested. Then my grad school transcript started off with my undergraduate degree, but mis-stated it as “B.A.” without giving the subject. Then the Grad school transcript was several months off in when the M.S. in Computer & Info Sci was granted (for parallel theorem proving software). And so on.
HR does its job by looking for any excuse to throw out a CV, and not have to interpret it, rather than forwarding the possibles to the math department, which is actually qualified to interpret. So they probably never read the extremely strong letters of recommendation by Caltech’s Provost and Execitive Officer for math, let alone read the annotated transcript explaining why the 54 credits in Computer Science beyond the M.S. were actually Math.
I feel vaguely discriminated against, as if computer science isn’t accepted as Math by the ignorant. I several other schools applications I did verify later that the math department never actually saw my CV.
Or are on-line publications deprecated compared to hardcopy journal publications?
I miss teaching. I’ll do my research and publications anyway, but it would be nice to be paid.
Not trying to rain on your parade. I’m happy that you’re at Google. But I admit to being a little jealous, too.