After more than a decade of working in the IT industry, I recently walked away from a secure job with one of the industry’s largest players.
It all started in 1997, when I realized that I was not loving my job in the aerospace industry (my first out of college). After several months of soul searching, I decided to pursue a career in IT. I had always enjoyed computer programing and I had heard that it paid much better than aerospace engineering. The tricky part was finding someone willing to hire me with so little experience in that field. There were several blind alleys along the way, but then I met a man on a plane.
It was 1999, the year my sister Alisa graduated from Penn State, and I flew there to attend her ceremony. On the flight back to L.A., I started talking with the guy in the seat next to me. He ran a franchise of a popular secondhand sporting goods store, and was returning home from a family reunion. When I mentioned that I was looking for a programming job, but wasn’t having much luck, he said, “You should talk with my brother.” Before I knew it, he swapped seats with his brother, Jeff, and I had an impromptu job interview for the last couple hours of the flight. Jeff was a senior software engineer with an advanced development group at Compaq. I guess he liked what he saw because he recommended that his boss bring me in for a round of formal interviews. Within a couple of months, I became a member of that team and was well on my way to acquiring the requisite skills and experience of a professional software developer.
In May 2002, Compaq became part of HP, but my job remained more or less the same. A change with much greater impact on my career occurred three years later, as Kate and I returned from a three week vacation for our wedding and honeymoon. When I checked my voicemail, there was a message from my boss telling me not to bother coming into the office the next day… because our entire team had been transferred into HP Labs and they were all at the Palo Alto headquarters meeting our new colleagues. My boss knew that I had just returned home and didn’t expect me to join them, but Kate and I decided that it would be in the best interest of my career to catch the first flight out the next morning. I’m glad I did; I met a lot of smart, interesting people over the next couple of days. During the next few years, I moved from Southern California to Virginia, and then to Northern California, and gradually transitioned my career focus from software engineer to research scientist. As I like to say, I began spending more time writing research papers than code. For the past two years, my research has centered around reducing the lifetime environmental and economic footprint of IT, certainly a worthy cause. However, my interests began to diverge from that of the company and I decided to take some time off to consider next steps…
When my last day dawned, I had mixed emotions. I was excited about taking such a big step into the next chapter of our lives, but I was also wistful about this possibly being the last day that I saw the inside of Building 3 and my colleagues whom I have gotten to know over the years. During the noon hour, colleagues and friends gathered for a going-away luncheon. They asked me about our travel plans and the director of our lab (my boss’ boss) predicted that we wouldn’t make it past Hawaii. In fact, I believe he wagered $20 on that statement. The gauntlet has been thrown, Mr. Patel, and we accept your challenge. 
At the end of the day, before I turned in my badge, I took a few minutes to wander through the offices of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Like a museum, they are preserved to give employees and visitors insight into the days of the founders. As legend has it, Bill Hewlett once left money on his desk and bet his secretary that it would still be there after a week, a demonstration of his faith in the HP workforce. The money remained there for months, and a tradition emerged in which visitors would leave a little change or a small bill in tribute to his gesture. I thought it fitting that I leave behind a dollar bill as my last act after more than a decade of contributions to his and Dave’s legacy.
As I drove home, the rain briefly parted and revealed a rainbow. A new era has begun!
