Blog: Goodbye, Applied Signal

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Goodbye, Applied Signal - Sunday, February 3, 2013
After 5 years and a few days working at what is now Raytheon Applied Signal Technology, it's time to move on! As of this Friday, it's official - I've accepted an offer with a company in Mountain View called Pure Storage, and I've given notice to AST that my last day will be February 22. I'll start at Pure the following Monday, the 25th. In the meantime, I'll naturally be helping to tie up whatever loose ends I can and possibly train whoever will be taking over my role on my current team.

Why the change? Well I'm at that point in my career where I feel like a change would be beneficial for me to grow my experience and work with new technologies. Defense is also an uncertain field to be in right now, with the government cutting defense funding. My previous team was affected by this last year and had to let some engineers go to other teams because of dwindling funding. And sadly, with the acquisition by Raytheon, the environment at AST has slowly turned from personal and employee-centric to impersonal and rigid. Soft benefits like monthly lunches, section lunches, service awards, holiday parties, company-sponsored events, and even the budget for the candy bowl in the lobby have been slashed. Meanwhile, healthcare premiums have gone up, including employees having to pay a good amount in premiums for a high-deductible HSA account which used to carry no premium for the employee.

Things haven't been so great for morale, and walking down the hallways, this is evident by the name signs many people have modified to display only their employee ID number (in reference to the fact that Raytheon changed our logins from our name to said impersonal ID numbers)... a silent protest, if you will. In the past year, I estimate that at least one person I know has left every month on average, an attrition rate that has been unprecedented.

So I'd been applying to companies I found through job boards like Monster and TechCareers. I applied to 15 companies from late November to early December, and 7 in early January. Unfortunately I didn't hear back from most of them, and I think the primary reason was that I was applying to ads that were a few days old, which in this job market usually means that the position's been filled, at least for a smaller company that's not hiring for too many positions.

But along the way, I happened to apply to a recruiting agency (found through Monster), and the recruiter who got in contact with me eventually sent my resume over to Pure Storage. Things progressed rather quickly from there, and though I thought I could've done slightly better in the interview, they were pleased to give me a competitive offer!

Prior to the agency submitting my resume to Pure, I knew nothing of the company. But I did some research and liked what I saw, and apparently they have a Wikipedia page, which is a good sign.

Pure is now a mid-stage startup with around 110 people. They operate on the cutting edge of enterprise-grade flash storage, and their flagship product is a flash array that delivers better performance than spinning disk at a lower cost. Their office is on Castro Street and they have some awesome perks like unlimited vacation days, which encourages people to be responsible, be productive while they're at work, and to take ample time off when they need to. Everybody there seems really bright, and I'll probably be amongst the youngest of people, so I'll have a lot of people to learn from.

I'll definitely miss working with some awesome and bright folks at AST. It was difficult to break the news to my managers and I did so with mixed feelings, but they were pretty understanding. AST was my first company right out of college, and it'll always have a special place in my heart. At the same time, I think I'll really like it at Pure. Not just for the exciting and challenging work, but for the laid back (but hard working) and personal atmosphere. Something that I miss about AST, and something that I've realized is important to me.

A company's bottom line should be its employees, not profits. That's not to say that profits aren't important (because at the end of the day, we all need to get paid and the company needs to have enough left over to keep the lights on and continue growing), but a company that invests in its employees first will know how to retain talent and create a positive working environment that channels into a positive feedback loop. That's the kind of environment that I thrive in. And I'm looking forward to seeing it again!