Lunch

Lunch on Friday with very-BC was good. It was actually really laid back and comfortable. It didn't feel like an interview-in-disguise at all. The two people who took us were PhD chemists, both U of A alums, and they were very helpful in explaining in a broader way what their jobs are like and what they do. It was good to get an idea of their career path - what their background was, what kind of position they were initially hired into, how often/early they changed projects or groups within the company. It was interesting, although slightly dismaying, that neither of them work on anything remotely related to their PhD work. Like not even the same field of chemistry kind of unrelated.

For me at least, I think it was nice to see that they had both worked on a variety of things since joining the company 30 and 13 years ago, respectively. The idea of taking a position with the idea of staying there and possibly working on more or less the same thing indefinitely really weirds me out. So far, every big decision I've made has had a very clear end date. As long as you're not Van Wilder, college has a definite and foreseeable end, as does studying abroad, and graduate school (even if sometimes it seems like it doesn't). This might be one of the reasons doing a post-doc appeals to me - it's another obviously temporary move.

They were also able to give examples of projects on which they've had a lot of independence and decision-making ability, as well as explained the project in a way that makes it sound cool. Because honestly, the idea of working for a company like very-BC and telling random people/my grandmother that I work on deodorant, or paper towels, or boxed cereal or something equally inane sounding, is really weird and not so awesome.

The (free!) lunch was good, and it was nice to get at least two perspectives on what working in industry is like. I'm not sold or super gung-ho at the idea of working for very-BC in particular, but they didn't say anything to sway me away from industry or really big companies in general, so I figure that's good.