IT Accelerated Program, 2019 Study Tour

Wesley Reed | Honors Experiences

This past December, I was offered a great opportunity to travel to San Francisco, California to visit with several companies. We visited Macy’s Technology, Cisco, Intuit, Google, Splunk and Trōv. Of all of the companies we visited, I enjoyed Cisco and Google the most. What really set Cisco and Google apart was they seemed less interested in marketing their company to us and getting us to come work for them, and more interested in developing us as professionals.

At Cisco, we had a panel discussion with several recent hires and speed mentoring sessions with four different individuals who have been at Cisco for many years. Throughout these discussions we talked a lot about what it’s like to apply for a job, how to impress a recruiter, how to make sure you represent your personal brand in the best way possible, talked about some tips for performing in your job after you’re hired. These discussions were very informative and answered a lot of questions I had about what comes next after college, and some I didn’t even know I had. That being said, I do wish there would have been a little bit of “here’s why you should come work at Cisco” in the conversation.

At Google, we did talk a little about the programs Google offers for their employees, but most memorable part of the experience was when one of the people hosting us took us through several mock interview questions to help prepare us for future interviews with any company. Google struck a nice balance of “here’s why you should come work at Google” and giving us tips on how to interview even if we don’t choose to apply to Google.

Intuit’s presentation was very focused on what Intuit does as a company, and what benefits they offer to their employees. It was really cool to see all of the things that they are working on and to hear what they value as a company. They spoke a lot about work/life balance and how the company values the time employees spend outside of work, both recreationally and helping the community. Like Google and Cisco, it was great to hear that they value us as individuals and want to make sure we are growing professionally.

Both Macy’s Technology and Splunk seemed a little unprepared to host us. Macy’s Technology had a recruiter speak to us for about 20 minutes, walked us around their rooftop space and one floor of the building, then sent us on our way. Overall, not a very impressive experience. Similarly, Splunk gave us a short walk about a floor of the building and let us have a panel discussion with a few employees who didn’t have any talking points prepared and seemed surprised when we didn’t really know how to get the conversation started.

The last company we visited, Trōv, was very unique because it is a small startup company. Our host there talked about what it is the company does, and how they are utilizing modern technology such as Azure DevOps to enhance their product and delivery of their product. It was very cool to see how tools we are learning about in our classes are being applied in the real world. We also got to speak with the CEO of Trōv about being an entrepreneur and coming up with an idea, then making that idea a reality and marketing it.

In addition to visiting the companies, we also had lots of time to explore the bay area and visit tourist attractions such as the Computer History Museum, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Muir Woods, the Intuit Museum, the San Francisco Cable Car Museum, and many other places.

View my notes from the companies here

Robotics Mentoring Reflection 2/2/20

Wesley Reed | Robotics Reflections 2020

Over the last month I have been working with a group of students on the Lakota Robotics Team (FRC Team 1038) to code a robot to compete in the 2020 FIRST Robotics Competition, Infinite Recharge. I feel like I should be doing these reflections more often, however not a lot has been going on for the students I am leading. Currently the team is experiencing issues with attendance on the mechanical team and it is making the mechanical design and construction of the robot progress slower than usual. This is causing the controls team to have little to no work to do and limiting my usefulness on the coding front.

Questions to think about:

  1. Are all of the students involved?

The students that are attending the meetings are involved for the most part. I do see some kids sitting around waiting for work to do, and the controls kids are often sitting around doing nothing for the reasons mentioned above.

  1. What can I do to make sure all of the students are involved?

I could start giving the controls kids practice exercises to work on when they aren’t busy so that they might learn more from their experience on the team.

  1. How is the team progressing toward their goals?

The team is progressing very slowly toward their goals because of a lack of manpower. The competition is fast approaching and tensions are running a little high as the robot design isn’t finalized yet.

  1. What am I doing to help the team toward their goals?

I’m currently helping out any way I can to try and get the team back on track but unfortunately, I do not have much mechanical background so I can’t be super helpful.

  1. What can I do to be a more effective leader? What ideas can I bring to the team to help them further their goals?

One of the things I have been thinking about is ways to help the team grow. Usually, we have a lot of people who come early in the year and then after a few weeks the number of people drops significantly. I’ve thought of surveying the people as to why they do or don’t come to the meetings to try and see how we can retain more people.