I keep getting asked what’s happened with the job I got offered at Northrop in December. Here we go:


I started at Northorp a little over a week ago now. It was an interesting experience working there. My first day was all just finding out how complicated things were. I had to get an account
approved to get on my computer, then I had to get an account for
Internet access, an account for email, an account for the payroll
system (who wouldn’t believe it was me; I had to get them to call my
boss to vouch for me), and I found out I couldn’t install software
without getting it approved first.

Anyhow, I was supposed to work there 20 hours a week. Unfortunately, I
have class every day of the week, and on MWF, it ends after noon. It
took me an hour and a half transit time each way, so on those days I
would only be able to work 3 hours and travel 3 hours. This made me
really start to rethink working there. I went in on Thursday and told
them that I would have to drop down to only working Tuesday and
Thursday, and if that wasn’t going to fly then I would be ok just leaving.

Over the weekend I gave it more and more thought, and I decided that I
would rather they just tell me that 10 hours a week on those two days
wasn’t enough. Of course, once I realized I wanted that, I knew the
best thing to do would just tell them I was going to leave. I’m pretty
convinced that my prospects here around Biola are good enough to keep
me going.

I told them my reasons for leaving were just about time, but as it
turns out that was really just what got me thinking about it. The
whole atmosphere was really what made me want to leave once I had
considered it. If it were really a place to work that encouraged
creativity and free inquiry, I think the time issues I had could have
been worked through. But Northrop just isn’t Google. It’s too much for
me; I value freedom and creativity far above job security, as crazy as
that sounds.

An astounding bit of irony: before leaving for my last day at Northrop, I downloaded The Cluetrain Manifesto for reading on the train and bus. I’d looked over it before, and it seemed quite self-important and pretentious. I’d recently seen it recommended by a site that I respected, so I thought I’d give it a look. The thing about sites sounding self-important is that it’s often a good idea to
take a closer look at them. If they live up to their pretentions, it will be worthwhile, and if they don’t it’s usually obvious before too much time has been wasted.

I love this one: “Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.”

Anyhow, it’s an interesting piece. I’m not sure they can quite live up to the great big deal they make about what they are saying, but there is definitely a huge point to be made. The main idea is that corporations try to seperate their employees and their customers by their ‘corporate firewall’—by which they mean much more than just a bit of software but a culture that filters every attempt at communication between employees and customers to make it policy-safe and effectively void of any humanity or actual content.

The point resonated quite soundly in me after my experiences at Northrop. The book features a lot of the same points being repeated over again, but I’d venture to say there’s definitely something to what they are saying. The marketplace is changing, and the Internet is making the old way of doing things deadly. Anyhow, a good read that challenges assumptions.