Career Day
High Tech High North County is a school dedicated to preparing you for the future, whether it be college or actual jobs. From the very start of high school, we have looked for our potential career path. Career Day at High Tech High is essentially a day where you look for real life experience in a career path you wish to pursue. This day brings a decision of if you’re still interested in the field of that specific job. For 2 weeks, we searched for a person to “shadow” by ourselves. If you’re not familiar to the term of “shadow”, it means to observe and possibly get hands on experience acting like a shadow of a person. My Career Day started off at Nordson/Asymtek, and the person I shadowed was the product manager of the products that the company produces. His name is Jose Regalado and his line of work consists of being a product owner and a software tester. The company he works for has 3 main buildings and they are the production facility, the engineering facility, idea testing. Jose works in the engineering building or facility. The typical day of work for him consists of managing the product line, implementing code for specified products, and testing for errors in the fixes that are implemented. Meetings with experienced software engineers are planned regularly, and break or lunch is at 12:00 PM. The work policies in his building consists of business casual, they have a card which you swipe every morning to show if you are tardy, and if you get more than 10 tardies then you are fired. Technology usage is allowed but if it’s a distraction then it’s a problem and is a strike. One task that seems very interesting in the workplace is that the building facility that he is sort of part of has a KPI chart or what it stands for, “Key Performance Indicator.” The workplace uses weekly statistics to show where the workers and company is at in multiple scales. Whether it’s the happiness, efficiency, or the problems, the company keeps track and takes action from there. The skills that he learn in high school apply in this profession as it requires grit and problem solving. From what Jose told me, he came from Mexico and took basic software engineering classes in college and high school. He came to America and worked at restaurants for a while before gathering enough courage to pursue his passion for software programming. He started off as a Field service engineer, and worked his way up to software tester and product owner. Jose is happy where he is and wishes for it to stay that way. Working and shadowing my mentor has made me experience the professional working world. The realization that most companies want a really well organized area to get rid of deficiency and boost productivity and efficiency. My interest in pursuing this career hasn’t dwindled as it looks pretty interesting. Although this kind of work can easily be automated, I could be interesting in pursuing being a software engineer of a product owner. Something that I would like to keep in mind for the very next Career Day is to send as many emails and call as many people that in that profession you would like to be in. Getting someone as your mentor isn’t easy, especially if it’s something around the medical field.
Interview Questions:
What’s the history of the company?
The company started out with 3 men working creating printers. Their idea was to create something similar to a printer but instead make it coat and protect stuff. They created a company or this company, “Nordson” and in the past, Nordson used to work with Asymtek for a lot of things. The popularity of Nordson’s products made it so that Nordson was able to buy Asymtek and merge with it. This company is partnered with a whole lot of others as we share buildings and produce products.
What part of software engineering do you do in this company?
Software engineering is left to the higher ups, all I do is test the code that they send me. If I find an error then I report it back. The software for each machine is very diverse and almost frequently I find mistakes and errors.
How does the program work?
The program I work with is called “Easycoat” and it’s on version 6. You have to configure and calibrate the lengths and measurements of the needle as it will be inaccurate if it isn’t. This machine is used in factories that produce electronics to coat them in very protective fluid. This program allows you to make a path where it sprays or coats the electronics with it. We try to get as accurate as possible and we try to automate the system to check for errors.
High Tech High North County is a school dedicated to preparing you for the future, whether it be college or actual jobs. From the very start of high school, we have looked for our potential career path. Career Day at High Tech High is essentially a day where you look for real life experience in a career path you wish to pursue. This day brings a decision of if you’re still interested in the field of that specific job. For 2 weeks, we searched for a person to “shadow” by ourselves. If you’re not familiar to the term of “shadow”, it means to observe and possibly get hands on experience acting like a shadow of a person. My Career Day started off at Nordson/Asymtek, and the person I shadowed was the product manager of the products that the company produces. His name is Jose Regalado and his line of work consists of being a product owner and a software tester. The company he works for has 3 main buildings and they are the production facility, the engineering facility, idea testing. Jose works in the engineering building or facility. The typical day of work for him consists of managing the product line, implementing code for specified products, and testing for errors in the fixes that are implemented. Meetings with experienced software engineers are planned regularly, and break or lunch is at 12:00 PM. The work policies in his building consists of business casual, they have a card which you swipe every morning to show if you are tardy, and if you get more than 10 tardies then you are fired. Technology usage is allowed but if it’s a distraction then it’s a problem and is a strike. One task that seems very interesting in the workplace is that the building facility that he is sort of part of has a KPI chart or what it stands for, “Key Performance Indicator.” The workplace uses weekly statistics to show where the workers and company is at in multiple scales. Whether it’s the happiness, efficiency, or the problems, the company keeps track and takes action from there. The skills that he learn in high school apply in this profession as it requires grit and problem solving. From what Jose told me, he came from Mexico and took basic software engineering classes in college and high school. He came to America and worked at restaurants for a while before gathering enough courage to pursue his passion for software programming. He started off as a Field service engineer, and worked his way up to software tester and product owner. Jose is happy where he is and wishes for it to stay that way. Working and shadowing my mentor has made me experience the professional working world. The realization that most companies want a really well organized area to get rid of deficiency and boost productivity and efficiency. My interest in pursuing this career hasn’t dwindled as it looks pretty interesting. Although this kind of work can easily be automated, I could be interesting in pursuing being a software engineer of a product owner. Something that I would like to keep in mind for the very next Career Day is to send as many emails and call as many people that in that profession you would like to be in. Getting someone as your mentor isn’t easy, especially if it’s something around the medical field.
Interview Questions:
What’s the history of the company?
The company started out with 3 men working creating printers. Their idea was to create something similar to a printer but instead make it coat and protect stuff. They created a company or this company, “Nordson” and in the past, Nordson used to work with Asymtek for a lot of things. The popularity of Nordson’s products made it so that Nordson was able to buy Asymtek and merge with it. This company is partnered with a whole lot of others as we share buildings and produce products.
What part of software engineering do you do in this company?
Software engineering is left to the higher ups, all I do is test the code that they send me. If I find an error then I report it back. The software for each machine is very diverse and almost frequently I find mistakes and errors.
How does the program work?
The program I work with is called “Easycoat” and it’s on version 6. You have to configure and calibrate the lengths and measurements of the needle as it will be inaccurate if it isn’t. This machine is used in factories that produce electronics to coat them in very protective fluid. This program allows you to make a path where it sprays or coats the electronics with it. We try to get as accurate as possible and we try to automate the system to check for errors.