Intel / Portland

Most of you have probably seen by now the things I [Melanie] have posted on my Facebook.  I had an interview with Intel in Portland last Thursday.  It was pretty brutal - four hours of hard technical questions with a two-hour lunch in the middle.  It was like Don Rags for electrical engineering, but eight times longer.  But it went well.  There has not been an official job offer yet, but they have told me they intend to offer me one. 

After the interview, my brother Robert met me and I hung out with him and his fiancee Laura until I flew home Monday morning, which was ridiculously fun.  We did several awesome things, including English country dance (Laura leads a dance class once a week) and two games of Dominion (an excellent card game) and adventures in one of the more epic parks I've ever seen and frisbee and one of the best discussions about Scripture I've had since graduating from Torrey and more.  Laura is involved with Homeschool Alumni and many of the others I met are in that group - so they were nearly all Christian ex-homeschoolers with, well, quite a lot in common with me, actually - and better at socializing than some of them stereotypes, yes... :)

My brother Jeff really wants me to keep working for him and is strongly considering matching and surpassing whatever Intel offers me... but I still find myself leaning toward Intel for a few reasons.  Mostly, it's the fact that Intel is, well, simply the best in my field of study.  I enjoy microprocessor design; it's what I studied the most in school, and I loved it.  Working for Jeff is not completely outside my field of expertise, but it's not half so central, either.  It's really just fun to know that you're really good at what you're doing.  And, well, Intel looks great on a resume and contributes splendidly to an overall career trajectory I can be happy with.

Meanwhile, if I take the job with Intel, I have to move to Portland, Oregon.  Well, I loved hanging out with Robert and Laura and their circle of friends up there, so outside of Los Angeles, this seems like one of the best locations I could wish for.  But then again, the outside of Los Angeles part is a big deal to me.  Los Angeles is my home, and it's where many of the rest of you are too.  I love having friends galore within an hour or two of me, not just a few.  I love my church.  I love being able to crash Torrey sessions.  I hate the process of starting over, building a new circle.  And although Robert and Laura are pretty close to Intel as such things go, they're still about an hour and a half away.  So I couldn't exactly interact with them and their circle on a daily basis, though I could on a weekly basis.  Besides, Portland is *cold.*  But I do love the rain... and it's really beautiful up there.  Trees everywhere, including a lot of brightly colored flowering trees.  Lots and lots of green.

Intel is almost bound to be less flexible than Jeff as far as time is concerned.  It will be harder to take time off, harder to choose hours that work well for me, harder to make sure I don't work killer hours as deadlines approach.  (And deadlines do approach.  I hear they are *very* results-oriented, which is both good and bad.)

Meanwhile, I'm told that at Intel, it would be possible to do just about any aspect of microprocessor design without ever switching companies or managers.  There are so many different aspects.  And I'm told that I'd be at least two years, probably more like five years, ahead of what they're teaching in school.  You know how I've been considering getting my master's degree?  Well, at Intel I could design technology that actually winds up in the master's level textbooks down the line.  The woman who took me out for lunch informed me that she once considered going back for her master's and took a couple classes.  They taught her about a state-of-the-art 100-nanosecond adder.  Well, she had already designed a 1-nanosecond adder for Intel...

It's just plain fun to be at the cutting edge.  To know that you're working on the best (______) in the world.  Of course, Jeff is working on what I strongly suspect is the best calculator software in the world, and I think that's pretty fabulous.  But meanwhile, Intel is working on the fastest microprocessors in the world... and that has So. Very. Many. Applications.

With Jeff, I know and like my coworkers (they are, after all, almost all family), and I think along the same lines as my manager (Jeff).  With Intel, who knows?

Basically, careerwise, Intel is the better move, but I'll lose some other things that really matter to, well, overall life satisfaction, and working for Jeff is not a bad move careerwise, either.

Then there's the fact that Jeff is my brother and I love him and he's worried about having me quit just when he's likely to get a contract from TI to do a certain amount of programming.  He wants to be able to use me to help him make the contract.  I don't exactly want to leave him in the lurch.

(To you programmers out there: I might know a job which will be available soon...)

Still... I think I will be moving up to Portland and working for Intel, and I am excited about it.  I do have a good beginning already.  When I say hanging out with Robert and Laura and their friends was great, I really mean it.  And oh man, nothing beats Intel in microprocessor design...

So this is what I'm thinking about and where I'm at.  It's rather a lot to handle, emotionally.  It's weird, realizing how very many years might perhaps turn on this decision.

I really must hang out with all of you in Southern California before I leave... whenever that turns out to be.  And even on the off chance that I stay in SoCal, I still need to hang out with each of you soon.  :)