This is the main reason why Silicon Valley is so hard to replicate. The talent density is so massive, jump-started by the military, right in the middle of a bunch of elite universities, with plentiful capital as rocket fuel...
When I started with Weyerhaeuser we moved into the new WTC. Being a Professional Intern, I had a desk, really just a table at the corner of the north office area where everyone passed from the Wood Products R&D divisions. I got to say good morning to everyone and got to know quite a few that way. It came in handy as my career progressed and I got a real cube but still in the same area. I was able to connect with cross functional virtual teams to help me. I didn't hesitate to ask for help and folks were more than happy to chime in. When I got my process control labs 104/106 and a whole bunch of interns, summer hires, technicians and new engineers, we were mostly back there on a daily basis. My style of pointing in the right direction, lighting the fuse, let 'er fly and make course corrections as needed kept those interns going, learning and teaching me! Sometimes I heard about some 'extra' activities like Goelzer-DOS, and programming the VT-100 terminal to act like the VAXmail was busy only to find usernames and passwords logged on a PC! but LOTS got done! And I appreciated that environment! Honda SYSTEMS lived!
This is the main reason why Silicon Valley is so hard to replicate. The talent density is so massive, jump-started by the military, right in the middle of a bunch of elite universities, with plentiful capital as rocket fuel...
When I started with Weyerhaeuser we moved into the new WTC. Being a Professional Intern, I had a desk, really just a table at the corner of the north office area where everyone passed from the Wood Products R&D divisions. I got to say good morning to everyone and got to know quite a few that way. It came in handy as my career progressed and I got a real cube but still in the same area. I was able to connect with cross functional virtual teams to help me. I didn't hesitate to ask for help and folks were more than happy to chime in. When I got my process control labs 104/106 and a whole bunch of interns, summer hires, technicians and new engineers, we were mostly back there on a daily basis. My style of pointing in the right direction, lighting the fuse, let 'er fly and make course corrections as needed kept those interns going, learning and teaching me! Sometimes I heard about some 'extra' activities like Goelzer-DOS, and programming the VT-100 terminal to act like the VAXmail was busy only to find usernames and passwords logged on a PC! but LOTS got done! And I appreciated that environment! Honda SYSTEMS lived!