The Big Leagues (Corporate)

[Pekka]

What I suggest is, that you make sure you do the 5 minutes. Don't do overtime. Do 5 minutes. Other than that, seems like you are backed up by your manager so it means you should come out OK. Just try to be smooth, if some people can't take the fact that a newbie comes there and has a good idea, then there's nothing you can do about it. It's not in your hands, so don't worry about it. YOu can't do anything about it. What happens, happens, it's up to them, not you. Just believe in what you're saying, it's a great bunch of suggestions if it's been backed up and they want you to do presentation on it, so don't seem to be too suggestive about it or not sure. Believe in it and sell it. YOu have 2 things to worry about. That you do 5 minutes, and that you are confident enough, and that should derive from your own work which should be solid, if it's backed up already. So just.. go kick ass. Try to feel great about it. It's a huge opportunity, don't think about the million ways you can blow it. Believe in yourself, because you're the man, and you'll be just fine. At worst, what could happen.. maybe a short embarasing moment at worst. If it goes OK.. you'll be OK and most likely will nail the full employment. IF it goes great.. hey, Just think about the time you have and what you want to say in it, what's the most important. If there's time left, a minute or two, think what you will continue to talk about if time permits. If you seem to be shooting over, think about what you can cut off. That way you'll be safe no matter how it goes. Go there and kick ass son! We believe in you, so you should do that too!

[Asher]

Thanks for all of the advice everyone.

It went great! I ran into the room screaming and sweating "I love this company! Developers! Developers! Developers!

Developers!

Developers!"

Seriously though, went as well as I had hoped. I was surprisingly not really nervous, and it was well received with a few good questions at the end (no criticism though, which was cool), and after the meeting a couple developers chatted with me for a few minutes. I worked the room and projected my voice well (not yelling mind you), but they had a wireless mic anyway, and used gestures and facial expressions to make it less bland, but without overdoing it to look like a moron. It kinda just fed my confidence, I liked how I sounded. I said things with authority and confidence, which by itself boosted my confidence further.

I just got a meeting schedule thing in Notes with the back-end architect later this week, so I'm happy as can be right now.

I ditched my hoody and contact lens' today in favor of an IBM sweater that we got last week and my glasses, cause it makes me look a bit older.

I was also very impressed with the slides my team-lead made for me, extremely professional (as I guess I should have expected).

[Flubber]

Excellent!! Knew you could do it !!

[Ming]

Congrats Asher... speaking in front of a large group of people can be tough. I'm glad to hear it went well for you. Hopefully it is just another step in you getting employment there later.

[JohnT]

Told ya!

[-Jrabbit]

Very pleased, though not surprised, to hear it went well, Asher.

Congrats!

[DanS]

Good show!

[LDiCesare]

I was also very impressed with the slides my team-lead made for me, extremely professional (as I guess I should have expected).

Wekk, he's a boss. He's supposed to do slides.
Nice to see you got it going well.
I wonder: Do you know if IBM FORTRAN compiler is still tested by compiling CATIA?
I'm quite sure that old programs so get old and all (good) developpers end up knowing it (and hating good chunks of the code and some architecture errors they have to live with). So if you managed to propose some easy to implement changes, then I think it's quite impressive in itself and that should be well received by others.

[Asher]

I'd presume if it was used before, it's still used now. Every single test case we receive (including applications) gets put into what's called a scenario, and made platform-agnostic where possible, and tested automatically. It's pretty amazing how much validation is actually involved with the products. The database of test cases is massive, over 10 years of code we've dealt with. There's huge labs of expensive AIX/Linux/Mac boxes and servers, always doing testing against our test case repository for upcoming fixpacks/releases/milestones.

[pchang]

Pace and clarity. Do not speak too fast. Do not ramble. Stick to the point and enunciate. Ask friends to come up with impromptu questions so you can practice thinking on your feet. Be prepared for questions/comments from the audience and don't be defensive or stammer when confronted with them. If they ask something you don't know or did not consider, just say so and move on.

[pchang]

Whoops - didn't realize that is was after the fact. Sorry.

[LDiCesare]

It's pretty amazing how much validation is actually involved with the products. The database of test cases is massive, over 10 years of code we've dealt with.

I understanfd this. We have about 10 years of tests for our own product at Dassault Systemes (CATIA V5) and that's a lot of tests. Unfortunately, they still don't cover every possibility and take a lot of time to replay, meaning a lot of machines are needed to replay all these tests (and on windows, aix, solaris, hpux, irix too)... I guess there are still bugs that get through whatever the quantity of testing you can do.

[Asher]

I think I've dealt with a Dassault case before...interesting.

[LDiCesare]

Considering that most of our C++ programmers come from FORTRAN and that the management wants to hire people with high potential and not tehcnical people, well, sometimes we find bugs in the compilers and think these are features.

[Ted Striker]

Nice work!