AN INTERVIEW WITH
AN INTERVIEW WITH
I wanted to learn more about computers, so Georgia Tech seemed like the obvious place. Starting my second year, I had a friend who interned at NCR and recommended the internship program to me. After sending in my resume and interviewing, I was hired on to complete a co-op until I graduated. Fast forward, I’ve been here for four years now.
When considering how widely used our terminals are going to be, globally, it is moderately anxiety-inducing, but incredibly exciting.
It’s a double edged sword because on one hand it makes the job the most interesting because new issues arise that expand and test our knowledge, but it also can be very stressful, especially when it’s on a tight timeline. 99% of the time, we figure it out and find a solution, but it can get stressful working through that space.
It’s a quiet, outdoor side garden with expansive trees and plants that have grown up. It's nice to sit outside for a little bit to destress and focus on my breathing for a moment before tackling the problem again.
In the past couple of years, there has been a bigger spotlight on acceptance and embracing who people are and who they want to be. That’s also the change we are hoping to make. For such a long time, it went from being something you had to hide, to being acknowledged but not spoken about. And now we’re finally moving into a phase of being able to celebrate every individual for how they authentically live their lives, being exactly who they are. NCR is and was a great place to work, but there’s always that last step of truly enjoying and celebrating everyone’s individuality, rather than just bypassing it.
At NCR, we are interfacing with customers, working with project management and making products that are exciting to sell because they will change the world. So OK, the dork part is still true, but all of us take a lot of time and effort to actually break down these advanced concepts to make them understandable to everybody because everybody can understand it— it just requires some good teachers.
What I would say is just be excited to learn. At the time, school can feel like such an ordeal and you come out of it feeling as if you know so much about everything. Truly however, the concepts behind your classes and the actual doing or application of these concepts, is completely different. So, outside of knowing and understanding the fundamental concepts, everything will be taught on the job. You’re going to be helped through it by your teammates and managers. That’s one of the reasons I took this job—I was working with an amazing team of engineers that were so smart, experienced and taught me so much. Here, I felt like I could truly learn something and not be just another face in a huge crowd.
Just being in nature with the wind in the leaves, it’s great and so calming to me.