STEM CAREERS IN SILICON VALLEY GILROY BITE OF SCIENCE SEPTEMBER 2016

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1 STEM CAREERS IN SILICON VALLEY GILROY BITE OF SCIENCE SEPTEMBER 2016

2 AGENDA STEM Careers in Silicon Valley My Background Education Career Path Software Engineering & Product Management Math on the Job Key Skills

3 WE LIVE IN THE BEST PLACE TO PURSUE A STEM CAREER, POSSIBLY WORLDWIDE BAY AREA RANKS #1 IN TECH JOBS IN COUNTRY BIRTHPLACE OF HP, GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, LINKEDIN, INTEL, ORACLE, TWITTER, VMWARE, ADOBE, NETAPP, EBAY, YAHOO, NETFLIX, APPLE, AND 1000S OF STARTUPS BUT I HAVE RARELY WORKED WITH PEOPLE WHO GREW UP IN THIS COUNTY WHY?

4 OPPORTUNITIES IN SILICON VALLEY Just about any STEM-related career can be pursued here! Software Engineering, Hardware Engineering, Biotechnology, Data Science, etc. etc. Both Startup and big company careers can be pursued Startup Companies Biggest Startup Company Environment in the World Entrepreneurial spirit and dynamic environment Wide range of responsibility Potential for financial rewards if company is successful Big Companies Good place to start a career lots of resources to recruit/train entry level people Can move around within the larger company and work on different projects in many cases

5 EDUCATION BACKGROUND 3rd Generation Gilroy-an Attended K-12 at GUSD (El Roble, Brownell, South Valley, GHS Class of 83) Gavilan College (2 Years) Sonoma State University BS Mathematics with Computer Science (1987) San Jose State University MS Computer Engineering (1990) Santa Clara University MBA (2000) Played football in high school and college My 4 children went to Gilroy Public Schools Original Career Goal was to be High School Math teacher and Football Coach Decided to pursue software engineering as a Junior in college after taking a programming course as an elective

6 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING ROLES ( ) Tandem ( ) NonStop, fail-safe computer systems for bank ATM networks and other mission-critical applications (Now Part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise) San Jose State Career Center Posted an internship position Software QA Engineer (OS Kernel) College hires typically started in QA Software Engineer/Lead Engineer Kernel Security, Storage Virtualization Engineering Manager Team of 10 Software Engineers building management products Director of Engineering at 2 Startups ( ) MBA in 2000 Brocade Communications ( ) Engineering Manager Managed team building the company s first Software Product

7 PRODUCT MANAGEMENT ROLES (2002 PRESENT) Brocade Communications Product Manager Network Appliance ( ) Senior Manager of Product Management Startups (2005+) Startups transition to becoming public (IPO), get acquired, or die All startup companies I have been at have either done an IPO or were acquired All were focused on storage technology, and in particular high-speed flash storage Latest company was Virident, which I joined in 2011, and was acquired by HGST Currently Head of Product Management at Pavilion Data Systems

8 WHAT IS A PRODUCT MANAGER? Business Owner for the Product Analogy Evaluating Customer and Market Requirements Defining Product Requirements for Engineering Product Manager = Engineer = Home Builder Carpenter, Electrician Manage Product pricing, revenue targets, margin/profit Formulate go-to-market strategy Evaluating/Balancing Business Tradeoffs between cost, time-to-market, and market opportunity Voice of the Product to internal (engineering) and external stakeholders (customers, analysts, market)

9 MATH ON THE JOB MEASURING THROUGHPUT Storage Throughput Can be Measured as Operations per unit oftime, or 0 ΤT, where T = 1 Second In the example below, an Operation is the equivalent of reading or writing a 500-word essay to disk Operations per Second gives you an idea of the amount of overall work a product is capable of, but isn t a guarantee of service within a given amount of time on an individual request basis. OPS/Sec 1,000, , , , , , , , , ,000 0 Performance Stability Measurement Sustained Multi-Threaded Random 4KB Mixed (w30/r70) using 100% Capacity (QD = 256) Seconds Product 1 Average 70:30 IOPS 858,420 Variation Coefficient 2.0% Product 2 Average 70:30 IOPS 325,640 Variation Coefficient 1.7%

10 MATH ON THE JOB (CONTINUED) - WAIT TIME If Storage Throughput Can be Measured as Operations per unit of Time, or 0 ΤT, where T = 1 Second, then average wait time is measured as the reciprocal, or T/O Wait Time is called Latency Example on Prior Slide: Average Latency = 1 / 858,420 = , or 1164 micro-seconds It is even more useful to plot the latency of individual operations observed on a distribution like below Customers often want to know what is your 5-9s Latency, or %-ile latency value, to get an idea on what the worst-case wait time might be for their application, customer, etc. Type IO Size Alignme nt QD * QD >= 99% >= 99.9% >= 99.99% >= % >= % 100% Random 70/30 R/W 4KiB 4K % % * QD of X%: QD set to the lowest QD that results in %X of the max throughput the device can sustain for the given workload

11 KEY NON-STEM SKILLS FOR STEM CAREERS People who can work well with others will be most successful Teamwork and Interpersonal Skills These skills need to cross borders/geographies/time zones Suggested Assignment: Have students from different sections of a course work on a group project where a small team for each section is responsible for a portion, but needs to be coordinated Written and Oral Communications Seek out opportunities to make presentations, persuade/negotiate with others, etc. Seek out diverse experiences Example: I worked for a beer distributor in college, interacting with lots of different people Extracurricular activities, such as sports, student government, working, and volunteering teach a lot in these areas

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