Exit Interview with Motorola 8/21/97

1) What were your job expectations when you came to Motorola? Did you
receive an adequate job description?

My job description was given during my phone interview as having
a wide range of possibilities dealing with VCS and OMCLT. [Test and
verification tools.] Dean [Skarin, my manager] explained that this was
a celluar-system stability, stress and performance (SSP) group. VCS
- Virtual Cell Site - excited me the most because it was not yet designed,
and would have dealt with DPs, 68360s and board design. From the interview,
I was expecting to do some hardware work or assembly language programming
dealing with SSP, but instead was utilized for my advanced background in
multiple UNIXen and C and C++, and unix software porting skills.

2) Were your managers understanding, easy to conatact and helpful?

All contact with my manager, as well as with my mentor (Yan Rong), was
enjoyable. Both have greate personalities and would help me with anything
I approcached then with.

3) What were your major accomplishments during your internship?

A) Porting OMCLT (SuperCell Operations and Maintenance Load Tool) from a
MIPS machine to the SGI Indy platform.  It is a stability, stress and
performance testing tool designed to push an OMC to its limits using the
SuperCell message passing mechanism.
B) Upgraded the code from PDC release 5 to release 7, and made it modular
enough so tht it merely needs to be recompiled to run on a reall MM
(Mobility Manager-usually a Tandem Integrity system) as well as the OMCLT
platform of choice: IRIX 5.3 (SGI Indy).  The code was divided into logical
subfiles via #include so that is is trivial to upgrade the tool for future
SuperCell releases. An added benefit is tthat it just needs to be recompiled
in order for it to work with both PDC and CDMA SuperCell releases.
C) Documented IRIX 5.2->5.3 upgrade installation procedures.
D) Made scripts to transport necessary SuperCell binaries and OMCLT tools
to a destination machine on a "remote" LAN.
D) Tested the new updated OMCLT code on 6 machines.
E) Participated as a "tester" in a Fagan inspection of a VRTX Ethernet packet
driver. I performed very well, because of my past knowledge of drivers
and Ethernet.

4) What skills do you fell you have left Motorola with which you lacked 
at the beginning of the summer?

During slow times of the day where I felt I was not utilizing my skills to
their potential, I reinforced my Perlk, Java, JavaScript, csh/ksh, and HTML
(4.0) skills by reading tutorials on www.mcil.comm.mot.com/edu.
New skills I aquired are an understaanding of the redundancy of Tandem's
Integrity Systems, Non-StopUX Operating System through my experimentation
and familiarization phase of comparing its differences to other UNIXen.
I also now have a better understanding of Motorola's quality control/testing
process that is needed to facilitate achieving the 6-sigma quality mark for
SuperCell releases.

5) Were you disappointed with any aspect of your intership? If so, please
explain.

A) First day of work, I arrive at 7:30 to be here at 8. 1) I found that my
manager was NOT HERE that day. 2) No one from my group was around. 3) I
was told to go to the wrong building in the first place. 4) I didn't meet
someone (my boss' boss) from my group until 9:30. That was a very stressful
morning of waiting and running around campus.
B) I am also displeased as far as not having a cube, phone or email account.
It took 9 weeks til I finally got my email (this is unacceptable. I had to use
my school email account for work purposes!) and only in the past 2 weeks was
I lucky enough to grab an unassigned cube to have some peace and quiet. The
SuperCell lab I worked in before this had a 75dB ambient noise reading which
is classified as a "quiet factory". I still would leave work at the end of the
day with headaches sometimes probably from this factor.
C) The non-hardwareness of my internship as explained in #6 and #1.

6) If givent the chance, what would you do differently if you could do your
internship again?

I would express an over whelming interest that I know software engineering
very well, but am more interested in working with hardware. I have an
understanding of computer hardware that most people don't. I want to
expand that knowledge and apply it.

7) What are some of your career interests?

I am a computer engineer that is a privately-accomplished software
engineer. I have a passion for working with 680x0 and PowerPC machines.
(Macs) My interests are in research and design of PowerPC RISC compilers,
OS design, and hardware integration as well as microprocessor architecture.
I have quite a few ideas that could be patented if I had the chance to
explore them, expecially dealing with processor instruction sets.
I also do quite a bit of freetime research on debuggers (software based.)
If I had one, I would be very into using logic analyzers. I love Macsbug
for MacOS. VLSI design is also in my future, but more as a familiarization
of the design of a chip rather than the manufacturing process.
This summer I learned PowerPC assembly in my freetime [at home].

8) Do you have any suggestions for Motorola to improve the internship
experience next year?

Have activities that require team work. Picture scavenger hunts. (3 hours)
Sports (volleyball, frisbee, ultimate frisbee, softball.)
Do NOT send internship contracts to students and require a 3-day turn around.
I would have liked more time to consider other opportunities I could
have pursued, but was not given the chance.

Written by my manager:

Motorola Cellular Summer Intern Evaluation
Final Performance Appraisal

1) Summarize in order of importance, the major responsibilities, duties,
and/or objectives of the student's internship:

SGI port of existing OMC load tool from MIPS platform.
Document tool - Users and Installation Guide.
Scripts to install tool on new SGI units.
Improve tool operation.

2) Summarize any major accomplishments during the student's internship, and
describe the individual skills and abilities which positively impacted job
performance:

Successfully ported code - very limited reliance on supervisor.
Own idea to create install script, saving bother current and future staff time.
2nd lab now prepared for tool execution.
Independent learning of UNIX OS versions and quirks.

3) Describe any objectives that were not accomplished during the student's
internship, and describe individual skills and abilities requiring improvement:

Accomplished all goals. This manager could have pushed him harder, which he
could have withstood.

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Additional comments - Supervisor:
Met expectations of summer internship - accomplished goal within timeframe,
came up the learning curve quickly, overcame obstacles. Strong interest in
operating systems, mac, unix, etc.
Interested in return summer internship w/ SPS dealing with PowerPC.

Additional comments - Intern:
This was great experience for me to aquaint myself with non-average consumer
UNIX OSs, as well as what it is like to be a Motorolan. Definately an
experience I would repeat.