3 ms·

Out of undergrad I was recruited by a major defense contractor and selected for a leadership development program. Aside from making me fly various places and do

Out of undergrad I was recruited by a major defense contractor and selected for a leadership development program. Aside from making me fly various places and do nothing they also made me do nothing at my "home" desk in a secure facility (so no cell phone or playful browsing) by myself. I found a bunch of old math texts and starting reading them and doing practice problems out of sheer boredom. It was then without the stress of juggling other subjects and exams that I realized I actually liked math and just had terrible teachers for most of my education. I went through Calc I,II, III in the first month or two (some was review) and by the time I quit about a year later I had enough momentum and interest to go through differential equations, linear algebra, some analysis, and more advanced matrix methods. It was one of my favorite jobs.

swerveonem 8y ago
You passed up a leadership career at a defense contractor to read some books you could have read at home? Sounds like they recognized that this person they hired wasn't all that and decided that rather than fire you and risk a lot of paper work they tucked you away knowing that you would quit eventually, this is often preferable to termination. The odds that your lack of productivity went unnoticed is slim, they noticed. I've been in a similar situation, the appropriate action and the path worthy of leadership would be to self seek out innovations and begin drafting proposals for business process improvements. You might have actually been stealing time. What were your interactions with your direct supervisors like, what would you talk about?
- pcmoney 8y ago
  Oh it was all fine, just the work wasn’t hard or interesting and there wasn’t that much of it (except for crazy spikes for 2-3 weeks sometimes) I dont feel like I passed on anything significant. I was just really under utilized. I got poached by a startup and they offered to match but I declined. If your great goal is leadership at a DoD shop I would recommend a better goal. Even if you make it up the ladder over 15-35 years the top of that ladder just isn’t that great, or at least it wasn’t for me. I keep in touch with some other people from the program, all have since moved on. I would say this indicates the program didn’t know how to utilize and retain the “talent” it selected for. And sure you can argue we all weren’t that talented, I don’t particularly care, I am very happy with that particular career choice.
spicytunacone 8y ago
Very jealous. There was a defense contractor in my city I admittedly applied to out of undergrad mostly because I wanted to peruse their library, mostly texts on discrete maths. Glad you could discover your interest in the subject.

swerveonem 8y ago

You passed up a leadership career at a defense contractor to read some books you could have read at home? Sounds like they recognized that this person they hired wasn't all that and decided that rather than fire you and risk a lot of paper work they tucked you away knowing that you would quit eventually, this is often preferable to termination. The odds that your lack of productivity went unnoticed is slim, they noticed. I've been in a similar situation, the appropriate action and the path worthy of leadership would be to self seek out innovations and begin drafting proposals for business process improvements. You might have actually been stealing time. What were your interactions with your direct supervisors like, what would you talk about?

pcmoney 8y ago
Oh it was all fine, just the work wasn’t hard or interesting and there wasn’t that much of it (except for crazy spikes for 2-3 weeks sometimes) I dont feel like I passed on anything significant. I was just really under utilized. I got poached by a startup and they offered to match but I declined. If your great goal is leadership at a DoD shop I would recommend a better goal. Even if you make it up the ladder over 15-35 years the top of that ladder just isn’t that great, or at least it wasn’t for me. I keep in touch with some other people from the program, all have since moved on. I would say this indicates the program didn’t know how to utilize and retain the “talent” it selected for. And sure you can argue we all weren’t that talented, I don’t particularly care, I am very happy with that particular career choice.

spicytunacone 8y ago

Very jealous. There was a defense contractor in my city I admittedly applied to out of undergrad mostly because I wanted to peruse their library, mostly texts on discrete maths. Glad you could discover your interest in the subject.