When I returned home to look for a job after graduating from Case, my father talked about my studies with one of his friends. He said that my background sounded like “human factors”. As I didn’t know what that was I went to the library – this was before the Internet – and looked it up: It was the relationship between people and machines; it started with knob design, and expanded.
I looked under human factors in the yellow pages and found about 50 entries – this was near Washington, DC, so there were many consulting firms. I worked through the alphabet, calling each company, and found a job with Serendipity, Inc. My technique was to call a firm and ask about employment (I had a 30 second spiel), usually they asked me to mail a resume. Sensing a pattern, I began asking “Is this just an easy way to end this call, or is there a possibility of a job?” This seemed to get an honest response and, I suspect, made me memorable – increasing my chances.
Serendipity, Inc.
Serendipity was an interesting firm. Founded by three beer drinkers, it provided free beer after 5pm. As it was located in the suburbs – near where everyone lived – most stayed 30-60 minutes to chat about what they had in common: the work. This led to many good ideas. After a couple of years the company moved near National Airport, 30-60 minutes from everybody’s homes, and no one stayed. A few years later the company closed – I believe this was from a scarcity of good ideas.
While at Serendipity I worked on two projects: diagrammatic guide signs and exercise facilities for long term space flight. As there’s a blog post on the former, I’ll write here about the latter. The first thing that the principal investigator had done after winning the project was to write every large toy company in the country asking for free samples. Wham-O sent several of everything they made, so when we got bored we played Frisbee in the hall. One of my tasks was calling companies for advice and assessments of likely technology 15-20 years in the future; I found it enjoyable to work through people in a company over the phone to find the right one for my question.
When I joined Serendipity I was given a choice of job titles, and picked one at random. Years later, when I asked about a raise, I was told that I was at the maximum for my job title. I related the story of how I choose that job title and pointed out that the person who gave me that choice was still at the company to confirm my story. I asked about changing the job title and was told that that would be a promotion, and that no promotions from that job title were allowed. So I looked for another job.
Federal Highway Administration
After working a few months for another human factors consulting company, I found a job with the Federal Highway Administration. They were taking over the diagrammatic guide sign project and wanted someone with experience in the area. Working there was notable because it was adjacent to the CIA, and shared the same exit from the nearby parkway. As our building had no lunch facilities, we could go through a gate in the fence and eat in the CIA’s cafeteria.
During some open time in the project, we decided to see what happened to US Park Police during their extreme driving training. We took one of our instrumented cars to their training facility. (I rode in the back seat of a police car while our car followed. I’d never seen traffic open up like that!) First, we and the instructors drove it on their wet skid pad – which was a figure-8, so we had to avoid collisions with the other car using it – we called this a baseline, but it was really for fun. Then, a dozen of the students drove the instrumented car too. We never wrote anything about it.
During a down period, I was assigned to redesign the main office area, where there were several dozen cubicles. I designed it as a spiral, with me at the center end of the spiral. I justified it as the most efficient layout, with the lowest ratio of aisle/cubicles. But it was really to avoid unexpected interruptions.
When the project was finished I realized that I’d worked on guide signs for five years – and didn’t want to work on them for the rest of my life. So I decided to go back to school.
Masters Program
As my undergraduate grades were so poor I decided to go back to Case – now part of Case Western Reserve University – because I hoped that having actually known me they’d be forgiving. They accepted me into their one-year Master of Science in Management program (it was only the second year of the program, so I had little competition). As I had taken statistics as an undergraduate and a year of mathematical statistics in a night course while I was at the FHA, they suggested that I take the epidemiology department’ statistics course. This was different and enjoyable.
The teaching assistant for the course and I became friendly. One day he mentioned that he read introductory texts because he found that those authors worked harder at explaining than the advanced books’ authors. He said, “You can never understand the basics too well.” Years later, I found the same when I was teaching; I couldn’t teach it well unless I understood it perfectly.
I had two major surprises during that year: first, that I had all A’s; and, second, that I really liked finance. So I looked into doctorate programs.
In introduction to accounting, which I hadn’t taken as an undergraduate because it was only offered at 8am, I learned “Credits by the window, debits by the door.” It still works because remember the room layout.
Doctoral Programs
My choices for doctoral programs were three: the University of Michigan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Harvard Business School (HBS) – the latter two had said “maybe, please visit”. The U of M was close enough to drive to, so I visited. I spent a very pleasant day there and learned that they felt like an anomaly in the midst of a football campus. Also, I was told: “If you can go to MIT or Harvard, why would you want to come here?” I planned a trip to Boston.
My plane landed at Boston in the early morning and I took a taxi to MIT. As we were driving there I thought: “Of the two people in this cab, the wrong one has been driving race cars.” This put me in the proper frame of mind to visit MIT. There, I had two perceptions: (1) These are, by far, the smartest people I’ve ever met; and, (2) They don’t talk about anything but finance. After the visit, they said “we’ll think about it” and I thought “I’m not sure…” and took a taxi to Harvard Business School.
A finance doctoral student took me to lunch in the faculty dining room. He talked of finance, and lots of other things. HBS was experimenting, he said, they wanted to shorten the time spent in the doctoral program and thought that people with work experience would go through faster. My unusual work experience with engineering, psychology, and statistics backgrounds should give me advantages in the program. I talked to several faculty members (I don’t remember who), and left thinking “I’d really like to go there.”
A couple of weeks later I received a regrets letter from MIT and an acceptance from HBS. Yea. (Please see my Harvard Business School Doctorate post.)
July 20, 2020