Working in Tech - FirstLight Fiber

We got an early start from campus so we would arrive in Portsmouth on time for our 9:30 a.m. red carpet treatment and grand tour at FirstLight, a fast-growing provider of internet services in the northeastern United States. New Hampton School uses FirstLight for our one-gigabit connection to the Internet.

Jim Doyle, V.P. of Sales Engineering, leads us through a presentation about the role of sales engineers in a company like FirstLight. He advises students to understand what the customer needs, understand what the company is reasonably able to provide, and be able to communicate and advocate for both sides effectively.

Tech workstation standards: Two screens, two coffee cups.

Pretty photo of cables in company colors - could use some zip ties, though!

Mr. Fay with Bob McKenna, FirstLight's New England Enterprise Director of Sales.

In the office kitchen, Jim Doyle explains some company benefits and daily routine.

Group photo on the stairway landing overlooking the Network Operations Center (NOC) "mission control."

One of just a few NOCs where FirstLight employees ensure their New England network is functioning flawlessly.

Taking a moment to reflect on what we've seen so far.

Jim Richards, Senior Enterprise Account Director, gives us much advice about what is required to succeed in sales and customer relationship management.

Tony Salamanca is also a Senior Enterprise Account Director, and is New Hampton School's main point of contact at FirstLight.

Paul Badeau, Marketing Manager; and Tanya Williams, Client Services Team Lead; talk with us about the customer service role at FirstLight--and the importance of professional connections and a dedicated work ethic.

In the Customer Service center, Tanya describes flexible work schedules and a "day in the life" of a FirstLight customer service representative.

A little bit of Customer Service Representative humor goes a long way!

Lunch at Longhorn Steakhouse! We took several more photos but they did not come out well.

Unfortunately we do not have any photos of an extremely informative, hour-long Skype interview with Bethany Pawlak, the HR Manager for FirstLight. She leads a small team that is responsible for the hiring, benefits, and professional development of 400+ employees who work for the company.

Some advice and quotable quotes from Bethany include:

• Take a public speaking course
• Step out of your element; get along with other people
• “Positive visibility creates career mobility”
• To get noticed “stand with your hand up not your hand out”
• In the rapidly changing technology industry, experience and certifications are more important than a degree
• Loyalty and experience are equally worthwhile, so don’t job-hop
• “The only monotony at FirstLight is our constant change”
• If you want to advance, then “stick with it, keep learning, work hard, and grow with the company”

At the FirstLight data center in Manchester. Jim Doyle gave us the tour, and told us of many high profile customers with equipment and services hosted in their space.

Copper data, fiberoptic data, and electrical power cables EVERYWHERE! Every cable has its color and its place in a well-organized data center.

All the equipment generates heat - and this unit is one of several that keep the temperature and humidity at ideal levels.

Jim Doyle talks more about colocation of equipment and functions of this data center.

So much equipment...

...and so many cables and so much electricity!

Our group made the following comments about today:

• Jun: Today, I learned that work ethic is as important as experience. Also, I learned that communication among different departments is crucial to the success of the industry.
• Taka: Hearing from sales and customer service section, I learned what a tech industry consists of and how they make their connections with each other. It was interesting and was a really nice experience to learn about their perspective responsibilities, and their jobs. Through the interview, I felt how important it is to be hardworking: the lady who works in customer service had no experience in tech stuff but she was hired since she was really hardworking: and made me think that your character and your trustworthiness would be important in any aspects. Hearing from Ms. Pawlak, I thought of applying for the internship next year and make somewhat progress for the future.
• Kyle: What I liked most was looking at the data center. It was cool to see how they were designed.
• Karina: I really liked today's trip because we learned so many things about the business part of each tech company including the sales engineering, product marketing, and customer service. We also went to the data center with hundreds of data storages and wires.
• Jared: How in some cases to grow, tech companies have to acquire, and to survive how they must be able to quickly pivot. Also the tools they use to promote their company and make connections with companies.
• Keenan: Developing relationships with those within your company & industry, as well as with clients, is imperative for success. The only thing monotonous about the tech industry is constant change! You must be willing to change and adapt.
• Jone: We visit FirstLight company and I really like to see the scene of employees working together calling customers. I learned a lot of different roles related to IT running in FirstLight. In the afternoon, it was really exciting to interview product manager of FirstLight. We learned a lot about his background and how to make a company competitive. We visited the data center of FirstLight. We saw a lot of cool equipment in the data center.
• Streck: Today we visited FirstLight, the network service provider for New Hampton School and many other businesses. I found it very interesting to witness such an active and productive workspace.

We are thankful to the many people at FirstLight (especially Paul Badeau, who arranged all the details of our visit) who made our day so much fun and who gave us privileged insight into how an Internet Service Provider functions, from a high level down to the daily operations.

Tomorrow, we will be preparing for our symposium exhibit, so this is the last post of the week. The average student rating of our project is 9.6/10. By the numbers, we all had an excellent time!

Working in Tech - Alumnus Interview, and Career Prospects Exploration

Snow was still coming down this morning as the group gathered to Skype with Alex Kent, a New Hampton alumnus and the Director of Analytics at 24/7 Wall Street. The company's primary revenue source is from advertising on their website. A challenge that they face is attracting users through sponsored content boxes and advertising on sites like Facebook and AOL. The company makes an initial investment to attract users to their content. If a user views multiple pages, 24/7 Wall Street is able to generate sufficient ad revenue to recoup its investment. Bulk demographics is one source of input that helps them target potential viewers effectively. Their profit is dependent on user interaction. Therefore, it is important that they produce quality content.

The 24/7 Wall Street Media Network also includes other websites that cover Finance and Investing News. Alex loved economics in high school and recommended taking a Computer Science class. He said that relationships with advisors and teachers are invaluable. He works very hard and noted that “everyone is trying to program me out of a job.” This exemplifies the dynamic nature of the technology industry. He also recommended dedicating time to learning one new thing every week. His technology skills are critical for job performance and were almost entirely self-taught, primarily on his own time after his "day job." As one of New Hampton's home-grown lifelong learners, he continues to build his skillsets and cultivate a mindset of growth. (Contributor: Keenan Fitzmorris. Edited.)

Skype with Alex Kent.

When the call ended, the students led a passionate discussion about many of the comments Alex had made referring to the personality traits, personal commitment, and interpersonal connections required to achieve success... in any job, certainly, but especially in any field that relies heavily upon technology. Just a few years out of college, Alex is doing well, largely due to his intrinsic motivation to stay current and do whatever he can to succeed. 

We couldn't have asked for a better segue into our next activity: a trimmed-down, "teenage-version" of the Myers Briggs personality test, with results presented in the context of career selection for each personality type. The resource we used for this exercise can be found at interactiontalks.com - a site dedicated to information about teenage education, careers, and jobs.

Part 1 of the instrument we used as a fun exercise, with the understanding that it is very general and definitely does not substitute for the real test as administered and explained by a trained consultant.

The students tabulated their results and then we headed over to http://paulsohn.org/the-best-jobs-for-all-16-myers-briggs-personality-types-in-one-infographic/ to get a high level indication of the types of careers that may match well with each student. 

Visit the link in the paragraph (not photo) above to view the entire infographic.
Also, ask your child about his or her opinions about the test and its results.

Again, we had a spirited discussion on this subject, and even speculated about the personality types of some of the people we had met earlier in the week. The conversation transitioned naturally into the theme of compensation and benefits for these possible careers. Where better to get solid numbers about compensation than from a respected recruiting firm? Robert Half has released its 2018 salary guides, so we looked at the wide ranges of salaries for the careers students imagined they would enjoy... and then surprised ourselves by considering the market variances for compensation, available within those guides. I cannot republish the data here, but your child has a copy and should be able to guide you through our exercise if you're curious.

Mr. Fay had some interesting reactions as we looked at tech industry salaries!

Students were happy and laughing as we wrapped up for the day, eager for our visit to FirstLight Fiber tomorrow!

Working in Tech - Husky Nation Tech, and Coding

So many times in life, we look for answers and excitement far from home... when what we need is right in front of us! Rather than let the impending storm hold us back, we dove into an on-campus tour of New Hampton's technology infrastructure. Our group took a tour of the school's data centers in Meservey and Pilalas, visited the tech office to hear about Mr. Routhier's career path that led to New Hampton, and saw the room that was the data center prior to the 2014 renovation of Meservey. We also saw the boiler plant in Pilalas that currently supplies heat to Pilalas and Meservey, and in the future will heat all of Academic Row. Afterward, Mr. LaCroix drew a rough campus map and gave a history of how the school's network has grown over the last 22 years.

Mr. LaCroix explains the purpose and function of each item in the main network rack in New Hampton's data center.

The former data center was far from an ideal location, and now all that remains is the disorganized cable spaghetti necessary for that building. "If it isn't broke, don't fix it." Right?

Two giant highly-efficient boilers in Pilalas generate heat for half of Academic Row. Boilers and control systems are technology too!

This messy map gives a rough overview of how campus buildings are connected with fiberoptic cabling.

In the afternoon, we talked about very basic coding principles and process. First, we saw a brain teaser - a diagram that the students needed to try to draw by putting their pencil to paper and -- completing in one continuous line without lifting the pencil or crossing any lines... and they couldn't use an internet search to find the solution! A few different solutions were presented, basically by altering the starting point but ending with mostly the same path. This taught the students that there is more than one way to solve a problem, even a problem that may appear to have just a single solution. Next, we talked briefly about a simple drawing language called Logo, which is a fantastic tool to teach novice programmers about sequence and logic. Students were given graph paper and pencils, and a rudimentary command set, and asked to replicate the drawings Mr. LaCroix made on the whiteboard by writing down the commands required. Then, the students switched "programs" and had a chance to simulate the Quality Assurance process by "running" their classmates' programs to see if they worked. Finally, a more complex challenge was given to each student (as shown below) and again, the students wrote the "code" and were asked to check (and correct) each other's work. Though the assignment didn't have a built-in competitive element, we had touched on the concept of code efficiency, so many of the students were motivated to recreate the assignment image in as few code steps as possible. After our afternoon "code sprint," it was vitally important to replenish sugar levels by visiting the Route 104 Diner in Meredith for root beer floats and ice cream shakes. Though our trip to Boston had been canceled due to the northeaster, spirits were high and everyone had a great time!

The single-line drawing challenge, pictured on the left; with one possible solution, shown to the right.

Starting from the thick dot on the left, students were asked to write a "program" to recreate the image. Results varied by nearly 20 steps between the shortest and longest code. One student even incorporated loops! On their first try, this savvy group of students did an excellent and accurate job!

We're looking forward to another fun day tomorrow!!

Working in Tech - NHTI and Blackbaud

Two points of focus for us today (Day 2, Tuesday):

• What are some options to get directly to work in a technology career?
• How does a thriving software company operate?

New Hampshire Technical Institute - Concord, NH

In the morning, we visited New Hampshire Technical Institute, heard about their certificate programs and 2+2 offering (2 years for an Associate degree, then a transfer to another school to complete a Bachelor degree in 2 more years), and toured their campus - including the new Beverly Grappone Center with state-of-the-art medical training facilities for nursing and dentistry. We also saw facilities for mechanical engineering, computer network management, and software development. NHTI has expended significant resources on increasing availability of true lifelong learning programs, with "students from 18 to 68 years of age."

NHTI - Concord, NH

NHTI's partnerships with local businesses create scholarship opportunities, lead to career placement, and ultimately yield and/or attract adjunct faculty with current, relevant experience that benefits NHTI students.

Mr. LaCroix and Mr. Fay joke about Streck's tie-tying skills: Apparently the 30-minute drive to Concord didn't give him enough time to prepare. Lauren Mercier from NHTI Admission is ready to show us around; and Kyle, Keenan and Jone are eager to get started.

Lathes, presses, and other equipment in the Mechanical Engineering wing are cleaned and ready to use.

Taka is very interested in the network lab, where racks of computer networking equipment await configuration and testing by the students enrolled in Network Management classes.

Mr. Fay's nurturing personality has motivated him to consider a career in nursing.

Some student comments:

• "If you pursue a career in the tech industry, you need to constantly commit yourself to learning. The industry evolves quickly." ~ Keenan
• Kyle observed "how the school used the old machinery. We are all very familiar with new products and it is good to learn with old products too."
• Taka expanded his horizons: "I was only thinking of inventing or designing something or managing the industry, but there were actually tons of different ways to utilize the technology. This experience has broadened my view."
• Jun "learned that education--regardless of size or name--never stops and helps us innovate and develop. Also, I learned that I can pursue different jobs and fields no matter what age."

Blackbaud - Bedford, NH

In the afternoon, after a hearty meal at Friendly's in Concord, we traveled to Blackbaud. New Hampton School hosts the newhampton.org web site with Blackbaud; uses the onCampus learning management system for all students and families; and runs the business and development offices with Blackbaud's Financial Edge and Raiser's Edge, respectively. Bedford is the base of Blackbaud's K-12 division, most of which is comprised of the recently-acquired company WhippleHill. We were welcomed with open arms and given the royal treatment during our visit by some of the most senior and high level employees in the division. Our group appreciated a rare opportunity to discuss intimate details of the software development process and the daily operations of Blackbaud as not only an agile software company but also a force for social good with a strong demonstration of commitment to developing talent and giving back to the community.

Group photo by Blackbaud's core values.

Blackbaud reception area group photo.

Streck contemplates daily cubicular existence mindfully.

This is the face of a technology savant.

Our group hearing about the software development process from Jackie Christensen, Senior Product Manager; and Kelsey Warren, Director of Product Development.

A small meeting assembled in an adjacent room and developers considered the timelines for upcoming projects.

Tim and Mike shared their career stories and gave our group a clear picture of daily life at Blackbaud. Our effervescent hostess Victoria led us on the grand tour, including comfortable work and lounge zones, high-tech conference spaces, and well-appointed refreshment stations.

Jared is amazed by what Mr. Fay is saying, Streck is sure there's a joke in there somewhere, Victoria listens politely, Keenan dutifully scribes the conversation, and Kyle stands clear.

The entire group was thankful to have the insider's view of a day in the life at a busy software development company, as their comments below indicate:

• Jun: I learned that in tech companies, communication among the employees and between the company and its customers are very important for the company to improve. I also learned that time management is crucial to the success of tech industries, given that the world is changing so fast around us.
• Streck: "Visiting Blackbaud was very interesting. It was really cool to see a group of individuals working in a tech office to achieve certain goals."
• Jone: "I’ve got a better understanding of how a real tech industry separately work in different departments and the whole system of it. I learned from what Blackbaud employees said of the company about how does it feel to be in the workplace with so many teammates. Helped me to prepare for my future."
• Taka: "This experience gave me an actual idea of working in the tech industry. There was a strong community among the workers, and they seemed to enjoy working there. I learned how a tech company make itself better: they get their feedback from their customers and the managers come up with some ideas and implement as soon as they can: so, this company will keep growing and I found it really interesting."
• Kyle: "[Visiting Blackbaud] was very cool. We got to go to a company that treats their employees very well by having a lounge and a kitchen in the office. All the employees liked to work there and were all very enthusiastic about their jobs."
• Jared: "Blackbaud was my favorite part of my day. They painted an amazing picture of the tech in my mind. I learned of some internships that I might apply for too."
• Keenan: "LinkedIn Profiles are very important tools that can be your first impression in the interview process. Goals in the Blackbaud company are created at the management level and are filtered down to individuals based on their position."
• With the many facts Karina compiled in her writeup about today, she includes these comments: [Blackbaud is] one of the leading software companies in New England. Blackbaud has been named as a leading employer for diversity by Forbes – America’s Best Employers for Diversity 2018. We talked to several representatives of the company, who were happy to share their stories with us. 

We had an informative, productive and tiring day!

Working in Tech - Interviews and Jobs

Sourcing videos for what to do in interviews - and what NOT to do!

We started by having a discussion about the potential technology careers in which our group members could see themselves. From network engineering to software development to biomedical innovation, the spectrum was wide! What skills would be commonly required for everyone in the group? The students gathered several job descriptions from online postings for openings in their selected careers, and compiled a list of responsibilities and skills required for these positions.

Next? The interview! We had a great time as a group, searching for and watching videos designed to help people be successful when interviewing... and videos that hilariously demonstrated what interviewees should avoid.

Looking forward to our trip tomorrow to NHTI in Concord, and Blackbaud in Bedford!