Morte wrote:
richardgaywood wrote:
I'm a software engineer, ... I specialise in Java development, scalability analysis, and being a standard nerd.
Given your PhD I'm suprised you're not working in the Telco industry, surely one of the network manufacturers would have given you a job?
I live in South Wales and don't want to move, the only wireless planning firms within reach are Orange, BAE Systems, Gamma Technologies, and a small firm called Keima in Cardiff. Orange are skanky to work for since they were taken over by the French and in any event rejected me when I applied there in 2001. BAE sponsored my PhD but presumably didn't like it much because they never offered me a job. Gamma went through a massive downsizing a few years back, we have at least three ex-members of their staff here with few good things to say. Keima are a startup who aren't looking for people at the moment.
So there isn't much telecoms really, unless you include a VOIP firm (Ubiquity) or the IPTV startup that a former colleague of mine works at (Quative). Mostly, though, a few days before my PhD funding stopped I entered Blind Panic Jobhunt Mode and accepted the first offer that turned up. I've been here 3.5 years now so it can't have been too bad a decision I guess. In terms of my personality and skillset, I'm more of a practical engineer than a researcher[1], so it's as odd as it looks that this is where I washed up.
[1] My PhD supervisor was the opposite, he did a maths degree and his own thesis was in combinatorial optimisation. Our conflicting approaches was quite hard work at times but, in hindsight, probably strengthened my thesis no end as he didn't hesitate to bring me up sharp when the thought my theory was lacking and I injected more practical stuff than he would have done.