Monthly Archives: December 2006

Light at the end of the tunnel

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Finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with my thesis. It has taken close to 6 months to write my phd thesis. Which works out to be about one chapter per month. For those that are doing a phd I would recommend that you start writing your thesis as early as possible! It will save so many headaches later on. It also helps to publish a lot early on in your candidature too.

I have a complete draft now and will work towards cutting the fat and refining each chapter over a number of iterations. I believe I am still on track to submitting my thesis by the end of January or early February. It all depends on when my superviser is able to review it and provide feedback. After which further modifications will need to be applied.

It has been a long and painful journey, much like conquering your Mt Everest of challenges. But when I get to the top of my Mt Everest I can finally look back at what I’ve managed to accomplish in the last four years, and find satisfaction in all the experiences that I’ve had along the way.

Factor Analysis with SPSS

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I just completed a factor analysis with SPSS using this guide. The factor analysis was conducted on a survey that was completed by first year engineering students that completed a semester using Dotfolio. The analysis was roughly done, and I’m not sure if I did it right as I had extracted 10 factors, when really I was looking for something closer to 3 or 4. In fact if I use the scree plot I can reduce it to 4 factors, however if I select initial eigenvalues that have a total greater than 1, then I end up with 10 factors.

Nevertheless, on preliminary inspection it appears that one factor is “Interest in a topic” and another factor is “Taking a shallow approach to learning”, and a third is “E-Portfolios are too much work”. I haven’t interpreted the remaining factors just yet. However, what I am interested in finding out is whether or not students that take a shallow approach to learning perceive e-portfolios to be a useful tool in their learning experience. I suspect that they don’t, which is a good thing, because prior research suggests that e-portfolios encourage deeper learning, which may indicate why they require a lot of work to maintain. Which also appears to be a factor as to why students do not wish to use e-portfolios in other engineering units of study. Anyway the factor analysis was kind of cool, and the results look promising. Just as well, because I needed the factor analysis to complete the last chapter of my thesis.

I can see now how businesses would employ such techniques for market intelligence. I guess those pesky marketers that phone you up during dinner asking you to participate in a survey would run a factor analysis on the responses, compile everything into a report and sell them for a lot of money to large corporations with big marketing budgets.

New Job for the New Year

I accepted a job offer yesterday and will be working for ThoughtWorks in the new year!

I had a number of job offers to consider, so it was a hard decision in the end. I decided to go with ThoughtWorks because they are a dynamic IT consultancy, that essentially try to make large companies develop software like small more agile companies. They have the culture of a startup, which reminded me of the great times I had working at a startup called Xylogy. A good corporate culture does go a long way in making work fun and enjoyable.

I had the chance to meet a lot of ThoughtWorkers during my brief trip to Melbourne for the Graduate assessment day. Normally in job interviews you only get to meet an HR person and your future manager. At ThoughtWorks you get to meet the whole gang! So you get the opportunity to assess whether what they say about their employees is true or not. I can now vouch that they are a friendly, enthusiastic, and intelligent group of people. They were a lot of fun too, which was kind of strange, because none of my other interviews or assessments with other companies were considered fun!

The graduate day at ThoughtWorks consisted of individual and group activities. These activities tested my presentation, consultancy, and group interaction skills. I have to say that these activities were fun, especially the “competition room” that tested how I would interact with a potential client. However, they were at times quite stressful when the pressure was turned on. I tried very hard to keep my appearances relaxed, focused and confident. However it was a different story on the inside. My brain was switched into overdrive, the adrenaline was pumping, my heart was thumping, and the knot in my stomach was just getting tighter and tighter. It was a buzz, and I enjoyed the challenges they presented to me. If this is any indication of things to come, then I am going to enjoy working for ThoughtWorks!

Job Prospects

For the last six months I’ve been wondering what I will be doing with myself after I’ve completed my PhD. I have applied to about a dozen graduate positions over this time, and have only heard back from a handful of companies. I don’t know if the companies that I haven’t heard from are taking their time

I find it strange and sometimes rude that some companies these days don’t bother to let you know that they will no longer be considering your application for a job. Especially after it takes so much time and effort in answering all their questions in the application forms. They should at least have the professional courtesy to inform you that you will no longer be considered, especially since they can easily bulk mail a few thousand applicants using a mail form. The problem with being kept in the dark is that you have no idea whether they are still processing your application or have trashed it altogether. I’m sure others like me will not consider working at these companies in the future.

The companies that I have been thoroughly impressed with so far are: Google, IBM, ThoughtWorks, and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).

The RBA is the odd one out, but they have a very large IT department, and have some serious IT infrastructure for moving money around. They do all of their IT work in-house, so nothing is out-sourced. It seems to have worked well for them. Now I’ve heard a lot of companies try to pitch their work-life balance to me, but this has got to take the cake. The best thing about the RBA is that being a government agency you only have to work 7 hours and 22 minutes for each working day of the week. You also get rostered days off, which is one extra day off work per month on top of your 4 weeks of annual leave. Any extra hours that you work can be claimed as overtime. This has got to be the best work-life balance in any IT role out there.

Google is Google. Every software engineer wants to work there, and why wouldn’t they? They have a lot of perks, such as free food and drink, video games, pool tables, etc. Sounds more like Club Med than an office. I think they are smart in providing these fringe benefits, as it confines you to the office so you work longer hours. However, I also want to sharpen my business acumen, and I don’t think Google has the capacity to do this.

ThoughtWorks is an IT consultancy that develop custom software solutions. They have a graduate program where they send you to India for 6 weeks of training at their “ThoughtWorks University”. I am familiar with a lot of the open source software that they work on, such as Selenium and CruiseControl. I am also attracted to their agile methodology, and their use of Ruby on Rails. However, I have my doubts that they actually use rails in Australia. It seems to be mostly .NET and Java development in Australia. I guess most of their billable jobs are in the finance industry, and Java seems to be the language of choice amongst the big banks.

I have also been very impressed with what IBM has to offer. They are a global corporation with close to 350,000 employees worldwide. There is a lot of room to grow and progress within the organisation. Not to mention the flexibility of changing roles along the way. I also like the amount of investment that they put towards developing their employees to become “future leaders”. The job that I am going for is within their Software Group. I have heard a lot of good things about this branch of their business from friends of mine that work at IBM. Even those that left IBM also have good things to say about them. I have also been very impressed with their recruiters, as they continue to keep me updated on the recruitment process on a weekly basis. I guess the only downside is that I will have to use a Lenovo Thinkpad with Windows. I wonder if the Thinkpad can be reformatted with Ubuntu Linux?

Considering a site overhaul

Damn this site is looking old! I’m going to have to change the theme one of these days. Hopefully I will have time after I submit my thesis in January next year. I will no doubt start working in late February, which will give me a month to work on a few little projects of my own, or to just have a good long holiday before I start full-time work in industry.

I am undecided as to whether I will use another blogging system, or continue to use WordPress, but with a different theme. There is nothing wrong with WordPress, except that I would like to start hacking my own blog, and I really don’t want to do that in PHP. Now that my hosting is with TextDrive, I am restricted to PHP, python, and ruby on rails apps. This rules out any possibility of using OpenACS, which is a web application framework that I’ve been using for the last 5 years. So it might be a good opportunity to do something different with rails or django.

Adam and Jackie’s Wedding

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If you were to have an Aussie wedding, then you should do what my mate Adam and his partner Jackie did, get married on a beach on a perfect Summer’s day. Then hold the reception at the local Surf Life Saver’s club.

Jackie and Adam married on 15 November, 2006 in front of family and close friends on Avalon beach. The location was quite spectacular, and the weather held up nicely for the occassion. It was an awesome day.

I would like to wish the newly weds a happy and prosperous life together. Congrats!

It also seems as though their wedding has set off a trend amongst some of my other mates. David and Michele’s wedding will be in February 2007. And hot off the press… Ernie popped the question to Fiona yesterday in Argentina! Happy days!