Quote:
|
Since you work at one, how would you describe the atmosphere of companies like yours?
|
I can't really speak for all of them. I really like my company - no serious complaints (I've been working there 9.5 months, since I graduated). The atmosphere feels hybrid academic/corporate. 55% of the technical staff have some sort of graduate degree (20% are PhDs or ABDs), and those of us who don't are encouraged to pursue them. There are "scientists" and "engineers", but it's more of a continuum than a binary - I like to say that I'm in the middle (or sometimes, "a closet scientist"). The engineers get to publish and present and write grant proposals too, if they want to.
Quote:
|
And what would you say is the mission/goal of the company?
|
Cribbing from our website, "Apply cutting-edge computational intelligence technologies to the difficult cognitive, vision, and decision problems facing our customers." Where "our customers" are nearly always the armed services, DARPA, and NASA. I think we've gotten a couple of DoE projects as well. Once the research is done, some of it gets turned into commercial products (many of which have a target audience of researchers, but we just got a Google Appliance).
Quote:
|
Does it lean towards either direction? Or is it truly just middle ground?
|
I think it's pretty middle ground. You'd get different answers from different employees, depending on their own biases. To some extent, it depends on who you're working with. My old project felt more traditional corporate, because the PI (a term we get from academia) leans more in that direction. In my new project, the PI leans very much the other way, so it feels more academic.
Working there has made me decide that I want to get a PhD in CS or a related discipline someday and be a senior scientist in a similar sort of company. Got to get my master's first, though (I go to school part-time).
