The Stanford diaries

Diana's journal

WEDNESDAY, 10 JULY:

Andy [the project leader on Diana's project, a network design application, at Spectrum Wireless], who's been on vacation for 10 days, came back today. I thought he was going to be back on Monday, though. Of the assignment he gave me before he left, I finished a little over one half. However, I did figure out some key GUI [graphical user-interface] implementation things by looking at the examples provided with the visual C++ on-line books, so I was ahead of schedule in that respect.

I wish I had finished everything, but Andy wasn't expecting the completion of the list since it was intentionally made much longer than I could handle. I was quite proud to have found two very useful examples for our GUI. We can leverage a lot of the code and save a lot of headaches. I can't believe I'm saying this, but visual C++ is a pretty good product. The on-line manual is actually understandable and helpful. I'm starting to despise Microsoft less.

FRIDAY, 23 AUGUST:

I met with Karen Coates (the company vice president) at 10 a.m. just to chat. Karen has been very busy, so we haven't really had much one-on-one time since I got here. I e-mailed her last week to see if we could meet sometime and talk. So we talked for almost an hour. She was interested in what I learned in the e142A course (the first of the three required TVC courses), and whether any of the things were applicable to this company.

I told her that we did some case studies on the decision- making/crisis-handling process of start-up companies. I have certainly seen a lot of it here, such as making the decision to build this one piece of hardware that will increase the technical risk of the company, and Mark, the marketing VP taking a leave of absence to take care of his personal life, and so on. I said that I felt that the company had made the right decisions.

We also talked about things like what the major fears of the people in the company are, and how to confront the fears with courage. Karen doesn't believe that working longer hours will make people more productive. Instead, she wants people to work really hard only for a short period of time, then give them a chance to catch their breath so they'll be ready for the next crunch. She said the philosophy of the company is to make it a great place to work; therefore people should be able to balance their lives. For instance, Mark was having family troubles, so even though his leave would have great impact on the company, it is important that the company allows him to do that because it's more human. Also, spreading management responsibilities makes one person's absence less devastating.

She also talked about how she, Jerry, and David (engineers responsible for the early architectural design of the company's base station products) try to manage the engineering issues. Jerry and David are polar opposites of each other, but that's a positive thing since it gives the company more ideas to work with. We also talked about the experience of school and work, how they differ and how one can get the most out of them.

I thought this was a really good talk. Karen really listens to people and makes people comfortable. She genuinely enjoys what she does and that affects other people. Overall, I feel that the company is run by good people who understand and respect others; that gives me some confidence in their success.