First Month of my Career

After joining IBM as a supplemental hire three weeks ago, I am not the same person anymore. I have grown and expanded my knowledge in numerous ways since becoming an IBMer. On my first few days of work, I had nervous and bewildered feelings of entering my new home. However, those feelings quickly evolved into feelings of inspiration and excitement as I wake wake each morning and head into work. The transition from a background of internships, research, and education into the IBM workforce was seamless. Only a week into the job, and I knew I had made the correct career decision and the best decision of my life. Even better than my decision to attend the greatest university of them all, Texas A&M.

To begin, I was quickly staffed on developing a Mobile Banking application with a senior IT Architect, whose identity will be shortened to BH. The sheer potential of this project made my eyes light up with eagerness. The business applications for this project were straightforward. BH was working on a personal mobile application that functioned across platforms, such as iPhone, iPad, desktop, Android, etc. There were a few caveats that differentiated this type of work from others, including a SpeedCash withdrawal option and a premium retail advertisement inclusion. However, I spent my time familiarizing myself with the architecture of the application and how different modules functioned and communicated with one another. At the same time, I began developing portions of this project, such as enhancing the database and writing web service calls to the Next Best Action back end business logic. Although I would only be with BH's team for nine weeks until I transitioned to the Summit Program, I had a reason to look forward to coming to work and continuing my learning adventure.

As I built up my knowledge base around IBM's mobile and banking presence, more meetings commenced under the direction of BH. The associated culture is one of high intelligence, diligent work, and innovation. Rather than merely assigning developmental work to each team member, creativity was encouraged and expected. By the way the senior team members felt and thought about their ideas, I gained the sense that they are open and always interested to hear new ideas. My heart was ecstatically pounding. Even though I was only going to be assigned on this project for a short period of time, I discovered that I could contribute to the direction of the project. As soon as the meeting ended, I rushed back to my desk to jot down my thoughts and ideas. I would need to test them, but I was looking forward to creating my own value within the project itself and then receiving feedback from the team.

Although my tenure at IBM is short at this point in time, I know that this culture is the best place to grow my career. This intuition is built upon my recent experience of attending the DFW Technical Exchange. I had the opportunity to listen to several extremely interesting presentations about industry viewpoints and internal efficiency. I connected in a small atmosphere with profound experts in their respective industry. The conference drenched my internal flame with gasoline. I saw so much potential to generate my own ideas which will hopefully evolve into patents someday as well as collaborate with other IBMers on a wide variety of topics. 

In conclusion, the culture at this phenomenal company has instilled a desire to innovate within. I am excited to begin my journey as an IBMer in order to create as much value as I can for my co-workers and for IBM itself. I am truly looking forward to making the world a better and smarter place.

I am an IBMer

They always say listen to your elders. However, I did not take other's people weary words when they warned of the full time recruiting process and the difficulty of applying for jobs in today's market. Upon graduation, I interviewed with numerous firms. Many went well, some could have gone better, but I was feeling empty on the inside because no prospect seemed to be the dream job. 

After several intense months of networking among individuals in the computer science industry, I stumbled upon the Summit Program offered by IBM. I researched the program in much depth and gained a better understanding of the role that IBM was looking to fill, which was an IT Architect in my case. Specifically, the role would exist in the service unit under Sales & Distribution to financial service clients. My condensed summary of the position can be best described as the overlap of programming, financial services, and client interaction in a Venn diagram. This position was ideal for someone with my background. I felt my excitement rise as I read more and more about IBM's IT Architect role. This could be what I was looking for all along.

As I went through the interview process, I realized that I enjoy my conversations with IBM's IT Architects and the Summit Programs managers. My conversations with these key people led me even further to believe that I had discovered the Holy Grail of first year hire programs for myself. I fell in love with IBM and the IT Architect. The interviews progressed smoothly, and I was accepted to the Summit Program! I would be a future IBMer in hopes of creating a Smarter Planet.

Although the interview process was rather intense and challenging, I enjoyed the entire process. I found myself attached to the culture at IBM. It was one that was very business oriented, but also required a dosage of innovation in a perfect recipe. Although the program started on July 10, I had several months before beginning work because I was hired in late January. I was looking forward to starting my career at IBM so much that I wanted to start work as early as possible. IBM handled this process with extreme helpfulness and found a Co-Op position for myself, which began in early May.

At this point, I was still anxious to begin my enticing career as an IT Architect. I decided that the best place to start was ordering Java books, which IBM considers one of their main programming languages. I sifted through these books in my ample spare time. Although I was introduced to programming through C++, Java was close enough to C++ that I had minor difficulties in adjusting to the new language. I began writing sample programs to affiliate myself even further.

As I await my start date at IBM, I plan on continuing to grow my knowledge base as much as possible. Namely, I am blessed to have discovered this dream job. The IT Architect role in the Summit Program could not fit my personality better than any other job out there. I may have struggled through finding my job match up, but the wait was worth it. IBM, here I come!

Business 101

Initially, my interest in business grew its roots in finance, and specifically, the market. I was fascinated with applying engineering methodologies to help predict stock prices and back testing ideas with large data sets. Although most of my interest was garnered from self study and research, I decided that reaching out to the Mays Business school at Texas A&M was the next logical step.

Through Mays, I joined several extracurricular organizations to help expand my knowledge about finance.
First, I joined the selective Aggies on Wall Street (AOWS) organization. Through this course, I learned about financial modeling, I networked within Mays, and then took a trip up to New York with my nineteen other classmates. We visited around twenty firms during our two week stay in New York, including J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PwC, and several smaller hedge funds. This was an excellent chance for me to see the lifestyles of the investment bankers in the city. Below is a picture of our group of talented individuals posing with the famous NYSE Bull:

2011 Aggies on Wall Street

Next, I was admitted to the prestigious Titans of Finance. Our of the fifteen members of the class, I was one of two engineers that were allowed past the gates of entry. Our diverse class included finance, accounting, real estate, economics, and a few other majors as a part of the whole. We were official members of Titans 12, following our leader and teacher, Britt Harris (http://robinthecoach.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Britt-Harris-bio.pdf), who is currently CIO of the Texas Teacher Pension fund in Austin with $120 billion in assets under managment. Britt lectured us every other week on the intricacies of macro investing and graciously took our class and significant others out to eat dinner. Britt's vast amount of resources and friendly personality help bring in successful leaders to lecture our class every now and then. Below is a picture of our group with Glenn Hutchins, CEO of Silverlake.

Titans of Finance XII. Glenn Hutchins, CEO of Silverlake. Britt Harris, CIO of Texas Teachers Pension. Jerry Strawser, Dean of Texas A&M Business. Sorin Sorescu, Head of Texas A&M Finance.

The Titans of Investing class taught me much about the financial markets and about life in general. I have so many profound, pleasant, and inspiring memories from this class. Titans is an active part of each graduate of the program to this day and I try to make it back for dinners whenever I am in the College Station area. I hope to give back to the community in my life because of all that I have received.

Finally, I participated in Horizons. The goal of Horizons is to pair current students up with a summer internship in investment banking or management consulting. I decided that investment banking seemed interesting, so I pursued the banking guild. Also, Horizons partners students with mentors in the industry, such as hedge funds, investment banks, private equity, entrepreneurship, etc. Through the help of my mentors and the Horizon program, I received an interview and internship offer from Goldman Sachs in Houston.

I worked at Goldman Sachs in their oil and gas investment banking division in the summer of 2012. I learned an incredible amount about the oil and gas industry as well as the definition of hard work. It will remain one of the experiences that I can always draw upon anytime my life enters a turbulent patch. I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity that many others dream about.

Computer Engineering Videos

Throughout my tenure at Texas A&M, the Computer Engineering department threw some very hard and intense course work in our face at times. However, there were many exciting opportunities to expand our creativity through self engineered projects. The youtube links below demonstrate some of the more appealing projects that we worked on, which include Computer Wizard, Friendly Fire!, and Automated Turret. 

While watching these videos, keep in mind that all projects were completely thought out and researched by our teams and not an assignment from the professor. The projects were created from absolute scratch with no previous work. The projects were developed in under a month in lieu of other course work. We had received A's on all projects. It was after this when the professor asked us to make videos to show future students. So, the videos were compiled on short time notice before semester breaks. I was the primary software developer on all projects and consulted the hardware side as well. Each project is described in more detail below.

Computer Wizard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlkWMx3IwtU

The concept of this project was to create a computer building system that would assist ordinary people with the knowledge to build a computer from scratch from NewEgg components. Essentially, a computer illiterate person would specify how they intended to use the computer, input how much money they were going to spend, and then were returned a list of compatible computer components as well as an assembly guide for these computer components. Out of a class size of 15 projects, we received 2/3 awards, which consisted of votes from our peers. We received the "Grand Champion" (given to the best overall project) and the "Pablo Picasso" (given to the most innovative group) awards.

Friendly Fire! (Educational Robot Tank Game): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldM_XQXgLNU
This project was a turn based game in which two users would play from their laptops against one another. The players had to answer mechanical physics questions correctly in order to move a robot tank across a battle field. Then, the player was able to launch a projectile at the enemy tank in order to score a point. The purpose of this game is to educate players in physics while enticing them to learn about robotics through the assistance of a fun game.In the video, one cannot see the GUI very well in the video, but it monitors whose turn it is, the score of the game, and the current state that the game is in. The GUI is the master control of the game.

Automated Turret: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrAXUkCtobg&feature=youtu.be
During this project, our team created an automated turret system that would track a user defined color on a computer through a Logitech camera, send coordinates to the turret machine, turn the turret, and then resume firing small foam projectiles at the targeted color.
The 1:52 mark shows the main idea behind this project although the camera is angled to the side. In the top left corner, you can see the user click on our team member with a red shirt. You can see a red dot appear on the screen, and the Logitech's internal black and white interpretation of the shirt slightly below. Then you notice how the turret follows our team member with the red shirt on and shoots foam missiles at our team member.

Technical Research

After building up a repertoire of programming skills through my Sophomore year, I decided it was time to get a summer job. I attended the engineering career fair which was superb in pairing employers and students. I had several interviews, was accepted to join each company I interviewed with the exception of one company, but my intuition had a queasy feeling that remained unsettled. I then began to look internally into Texas A&M's own offerings. I stumbled upon a program called the Undergraduate Summer Research Grant (USRG) which appeared intriguing enough. I applied, was accepted, and then instructed to find a mentor to work with over the summer.

After reviewing A&M's faculty profiles online, I matched a professor that had similar interests of computers and mathematics to my own. I walked into Dr. Gabriel Dos Reis's office and then began to tell him of my passions. He gladly accepted me as his summer student and we were underway. I began coding in a program called OpenAxiom, which is essentially a computer algebra system. I was coding in an outdated language called Spad, but it was mathematical in nature and relatively simple to understand. Here is more information on the Open Axiom: http://www.open-axiom.org/.

At the end of the summer, I presented the results of this research. We essentially coded methodologies in OpenAxiom to solve different types of differential equations that were not previously supported. Here is myself giving a poster presentation over our results:

USRG poster presentation while supporting A&M maroon

Following that summer of 2010, Dr. Dos Reis asked me to join one of his other projects. We would be working on his Liz Project: http://liz.axiomatics.org/trac/.

Through working with Dr. Dos Reis, I traveled with him to Paris, France where we worked with Xavier Leeroy at INRIA in rocquencourt. Finally, after a year of hard work, we earned a publication in the 2011 Conference on Intelligent Mathematics. The conference was held in Bertinoro, Forli, Italy. Our research paper was titled "Supporting Structured Generic Programming with Automated Deduction." Our presentation fell under the 'save the best for last' policy in which I presented in front of some of Earth's most intelligent computer mathematicians.

My journey through the business world is just about to begin.

Choosing the Best University

Although many high schoolers look forward to applying to college, the thought seemed overwhelming to me. Since I had the test scores and grades to attend nearly any school in the country, many friends and family urged me to apply to the Ivy schools. However, I knew in my heart that I am a Texan through thick and thin. So, I did what any other indecisive native Texan would do when applying to a university. I sent my application to the University of Texas and Texas A&M University.

Next, my first filter for choosing a major was some type of engineering degree. I had lost too much sweat and devoted too much time to the fields of Calculus and Physics to not study something math or science related. The subsequent question that I had to answer was which field of engineering interested me the most. I knew the future of business lay in the keyboard of computers, so naturally, I decided that Computer Science was the best fit for my background. However, I had to decide which university I would attend. Of course, I made the right choice:

Upon looking more closely at the degree plans that Texas A&M offered, I noticed that there was a plan titled Computer Engineering - Computer Science, which essentially means that I selected a hybrid degree consisting roughly of 75% Computer Science (software) and 25% Electrical Engineering (hardware) courses.

Since the Computer Engineering department had this genius man at its head,

Bjarne Stroustrup

I knew that this school was the right one for me. As I began my academic studies, I realized that the mathematics courses that I was taking weren't enough. So, I decided that it would be a good idea to double major in Applied Mathematics. Furthermore, I came to the realization that I could handle the additional course work of receiving this degree in the form of Honors. This was the beginning of my academic career with a background in Computer Engineering and Honors Applied Mathematics.

Through High School

Hi!, my name is Erik Katzen and this is the story of my career through the computer and business world as an IT Architect.

But first, here is a little background information about myself. I grew up my entire life in the DFW metroplex with my beginnings originating out of Arlington, Texas. I moved to Southlake, Texas at early age with my parents where I attended the grand opening of Durham Elementary school. Precursor to moving into seventh grade, my family moved to Argyle, TX where I eventually graduated from Argyle High School.

Below is a relatively recent picture of myself to help the reader put my words to a face.

My activities in high school included basketball, tennis, and UIL academics. The sport of basketball was my true athletic passion. Through this competition, I learned intense self discipline, how to reap the rewards of long hard hours of work, and to find a niche within a team environment. I lead my Freshman and Junior Varsity teams in scoring during my Freshman and Sophomore years, respectively. At the onset of my Junior year, I made the Varsity team. Through the next two seasons, our team won two district titles with an undefeated record, and advanced to the regional tournament each season. Our record for these two seasons combined to a total of 67-7. I had worked my way up to a starting position my Senior year and discovered my specialty of a defensive expert in shutting down the opponent's highest scorer.

Additionally, I began playing the sport of tennis my Freshman year. I quickly accelerated to the number one singles spot on the team. Despite being new to the sport, I received runner-up honors for our district, and advanced to the regional tournament. The following year, I won district, continued on to runner-up honors in the regional tournament, and advanced to the state tournament in singles as a Sophomore. Although I lost in the quarterfinals, I was proud of my achievement and determined to get back to Austin. My Junior year faced difficulties with maintaining my role on the basketball team, but I still managed to advance to the regional tournament. I lost early due to a lackluster performance, but I know where my tennis future lie. Finally, in my senior year, I decided to switch over to playing mixed doubles. Although the nature of the game changed, my partner and I won district, became runner-up in the regional tournament, and advanced to the state tournament. We won our first two matches which placed us in the state championship. Although we lost to the same team that beat us in the regional tournament and received a State Runner-Up award, it was a great experience, and I am proud of myself and my teammate.

At times, the spring semester proved to be the most difficult. In addition to maintain my grades and playing basketball and tennis, I competed in UIL academics. Since our high school tends to dominate the competition of math and science, I will summarize all of my accolades as tersely as possible. The three math tests include Mathematics, Number Sense, and Calculator. The Mathematics test is the most straightforward with 60 questions to be answered in 40 minutes ranging from Geometry to Calculus. The Number Sense test is an 80 question test that must be completed in ten minutes. However, not scratch work is allow, only the writing of answers as it is a purely mental math test. Lastly, the Calculator test was a combination of number cruncher problems (how fast and accurate can you enter problems) and problem solving questions. In Mathematics, I was on the four man team from my Sophomore year through my Senior year where our team won all three State Championships. I was on the Number Sense team during my Junior and Senior year where we won the State Championship both years. Lastly, I made the Calculator team my Senior year where we achieved a State Runner-Up award.

Subsequently, it was my turn to finally apply to college...