I considered myself quite prepared for my first day of work. I'd done a dress rehearsal - testing preparation time and traffic - the Friday beforehand and was more excited than nervous. I could give the play by play on unnecessary details that are only warranted, in my opinion, with 48 hours of the "first day experience" but now that a week has passed here’s the fast forwarded description: I walked in, had a seat in the lobby, got my badge made, went through an HR orientation presentation, met and went to lunch with my manager, returned and met my temporary manager and coworkers, started reading documentation about the project I am working on, went home. All went well, no hiccups, and a few really cool things.
I'm currently awaiting my security clearance so, for the time being, I am working on an unclassified project called MUOS. Due to it's unclassified nature I am able, however discouraged, from discussing details about it so I'll just stick with the general public description.
"The Mobile User Objective System is an array of satellites being developed for the United States Department of Defense to provide global SATCOM narrowband (64 kbit/s and below) connectivity for communications uses by the United States and allies.” [more from Wikipedia]
Even if I were encouraged to discuss details I think I'd do a pretty poor job of it as, now 8 days in, I am still weeks away from understanding the intricacies.
Here's what I know: The project is enormous. Seeing documentation and flowcharts and presentations and requirements and "The LMS interfaces with the CMCI producing the GC and GP data for OA," when I have no idea what LMS, CMCI, GC, GP, or OA are leaves me feeling overwhelmed in a big way. There is no group project in Comp Sci 415 that could even begin to prepare you for contributing to something like this. It's taken 3 years of work by 4 government contractors to produce what exists today... and the satellites still aren't launching until 2009! To further illustrate the scale, the primary contractor is Lockheed Martin who has subcontracted to General Dynamics who has subcontracted to Northrup Grumman (me/us). The degree of coordination and pages and pages of information this all requires is truly like nothing I've ever seen and almost incomprehensible.
So, for that last week I've been trying to play catch up on 3 years of work. It's not been easy. It's alot to take in. However, I know this much: the piece that my team is working on involves the geolocation process of the MUOS systems. 2 satellites get a signal at different times and, using this information and some surprisingly simple math, an accurate point of origin is determined over time.
I have yet to get into the real meat of the project, which I far from expect at this point, but in the coming weeks I hope to write some code that will eventually find itself orbiting earth. I find it pretty awesome to be able to say that.
As far as other work details go it's a pretty neat place. I feel very James Bond-ish entering the doors with my "proxi card" which illuminates a keypad with a random placement of 0-9 on which to type my PIN. People are pretty laid back which I found pleasantly surprising knowing that it's a company contracted by the government. Jeans and earrings are not uncommon. It also feels alot smaller than it is. When I was being shown around by my boss, everyone knew him and he didn't even work in the same building. I think the fact that they encourage people to switch projects as often as possible shuffles the deck of cards enough that everyone has been in the same hand at some point. It really changes the feel of things.
Some other points of interest:
- I was told to take my badge of at lunch because we don't advertise who we work for as we can be targets
- If I don't show up to work and I haven't notified anyone they call the police
- There's a black phone room, I'm not sure what it's for, but it sounds pretty cool
- The black phone room is not as cool as the red phone room next door
So far the actual work has ranged from boring to busy, nothing yet that really utilizes or excites me, but I know I have to be patient.
Here's the final big piece of news I didn't anticipate: I'm starting my Masters in January! After being hired I asked HR about education reimbursement and until 2 weeks ago their policy was that they would reimburse you for the lowest price per credit the state offered. This price was $405/credit hour at University of Colorado, a far cry from the $873/hr cost at nearby (and highly reputable) University of Denver. When I heard this I considered either going with the cheaper option or waiting some time before trying Denver. However, in an incredible stroke of luck I was granted a wish!
For the first time University of Denver is starting classes in January on Northrop Grumman’s campus for a MS in Computer Science Systems Engineering at the exact cost Northrop is willing to pay! (wow that’s a lot of prepositional phrases) Whoopee! Sign me up!
I’m really excited about the potential of having security clearance and my Masters in a few years. I really got lucky when this company found my resume on Monster.com!
-dp
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