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Work at L-3

It's been one of those craaazy weeks at work. For most of the year, I work 8 to 5 (or 9 to 6) and go home. Every other Friday I get to stay home from work. This schedule is known as the 9/80. 80 hours worked in 9 days, instead of 10. But for the last week or two, work has been a little stressful.

Of the two projects I'm working on, one of them is approaching a Technical Interchange Meeting with a customer. Basically, I must present and sell my research to a division of the military in the feasibility of a new area of networking. I can't say much more or I'll have to hunt down and shoot a lot of people. ;) Needless to say, I'm under the spotlight and scrutiny of not only the customers, but the upper levels at L-3.

"Jerin, what do you actually do at work?"
For you nerds and the wanna-be-nerds out there, L-3 Communications CSW, traditionally builds high speed RF data links. This means planes, hummers, ships, etc. can talk to other planes, hummers, ships, etc. through their directional or omni antennas. And I'm talking about speeds that you would have NO problem surfing the web on. In fact, no casual browser of the internet would have use for this kind of bandwidth. In keeping with the times, L-3 must change their directional, point-to-point antenna mentality to a networked mentality. With the internet at home, you connect to yahoo.com through many other computers and servers, not just directly to yahoo. You join the Comcast monopoly or some other ISP to connect you to the outside world. Otherwise, you'd never get there. Similarly, the military is looking to connect planes to other planes to connect to an aircraft carrier. In other words, information should be able to easily make multiple hops through routing. The difference between our networking and Cisco networking is that we are provisioning for "mobile ad-hoc networks," where the equipment must meet government specifications and run under extreme conditions, including temperatures, pressures, or vibrations. This is where I come in. I've been working for years on software to enable these sorts of networking technologies. I've now changed teams within the networking group and happily work for "systems" where instead of implementing the new technologies, we think of "what's next?" and research the ideas to make sure they're technologically feasible. I've learned so much more about our capabilities and what actually goes on in the military today. I could actually explain it to you now. ;) The average pay grade, or skill level of the teammate I work now with is probably 18-20 (out of 24?) and I'm only a 9. So I'm in a great position and the work has been eye-opening and rewarding. Wanna come work at L-3? If you're a US citizen and have networking hardware or software experience, send me your resume!

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