On wednesday we went to visit Qualcom, a communications company in San Diego. I liked what I saw there. It seemed like a place where I would fit in – full of intelligent people working on interesting problems, and the company was run by Engineers, not MBA’s, which is something I’ve been wary of after listening to my dad. I visited another company called ‘ViaStat’ which was in Carlsbad. I think maybe that’s north of San Diego? They gave a pretty boring tour, but after talking to some of the guys that worked there, it too sounded like somewhere I’d like to work.
I like the idea of having a job. I like the idea of working on projects and getting stuff done and being part of a team that accomplishes something. I enjoy the research I’m doing here, but I’m not really accountable to anyone, I don’t have to produce anything of value to anybody, and I still get paid the same no matter how much work I do. That bothers me. If I’m being paid by a company to develop an algorithm, that seems like honest work. If I’m being paid by the government to do research, it seems different; the job is so cushy and nice that it seems dishonest. I don’t really have to produce anything of value to anyone except for other academics. So I have the whole question of working in industry and working in academia. Academia sounds pretty awesome but I think I have ethical concerns with that sort of job.
I am still not 100% certain that I wish to attend graduate school, although I’m getting closer and closer to deciding that is the case. When I go, I need to decide what to study. I find complexity theory fascinating. I am fascinated by automatas and their computational power. So, one track is theory.
I am also very much interested in communication theory. Cryptography, error correcting codes, and information theory have cool math behind them, and I see connections between information theory and automata theory. It doesn’t hurt matters that there’s a ton of money to be made in this field.
Lastly, I’ve always loved video games and simulations. Apparently, physical simulations and computational geometry are a hot field and there’s good money to be made there, too.
Ran, our professor, told us to pursue what we love. I like all of those things, though. It’s cool to have many different interests, but eventually I need to pick one.