人生的职业规划
Dear Colleagues:

I have been thinking for a long time whether I should

send this email to you to share with you my viewpoints

on career planning. I have kept the email for weeks and

now decide to share it with you all.

If you think it may help you, I would encourage you to

read and digest it once, twice, many times, until

you really understand what I meant. As this email is long,

please read it only when you have time or are more relaxing.

The reason for this email is mainly because I have sadly

seen many of our bright colleagues leave SynTest without

good career planning. Often they don’t know what they are

doing but simply driven by higher pay from another company.

After 18+ years of watching the performance of these former

SynTest employees in industry, I can kind of conclude that

those who continue to choose DFT as their

career have excelled much better than those don’t.

Worsely, a majority of them who switched to

other fields have lost or get buried in the sea now!

This statistics is quite discouraging, but there are good

reasons behind. I can give two reasons below:

1. Everyone has his/her own best talents which are best

   trained and developed on their first job. As time passes by,

   we are becoming less focused and creative

   in other fields. Combined with our lack of solid training

   in the past, our performance in other fields

   won’t be as good as in the DFT field. Thus, we can easily

   disappoint our future bosses and employers, when they

   compare us with those solely trained in the new field.

2. Switching field the first time is acceptable in industry, but

   switching field the second time will become a disaster. The main

   reason is no companies or people would trust this person any more.

   Bear it in mind that trust is the only ingredient on which

   people can rely to be your friends or colleagues.  

   Switching field during career move more than once sends a very

   bad signal to people that the person is highly unstable or incapable

   in the DFT field. The worst ever would be - people think

   the person is no longer dependable and trustworthy.

   This would also scare your good friends away as they may not

   believe you would be a good business partner in the future.

This was why I always get very upset when I heard our bright

colleagues would leave SynTest to pursue a career in other fields.

I always wonder why they cannot see the bright future working on

DFT and why they are willing to gamble so much working on a field

in which they have no technical skills at all. Why do they assume

their new bosses and future companies would not find their

weakness out and lose trust in them afterwards?

So, I am writing to show you the DFT paths you can follow

if you have doubt or questions now.

1. Technical Path

   This path is the simplest. For example, if you prefer to

   work on engineering, then you can choose the following path:

     engineer -> senior engineer -> staff engineer

              -> principle engineer -> fellow

   Your eventual goal might be to publish influential IEEE/ACM

   conference and journal papers, become an IEEE/ACM fellow, or

   even return to academia as a professor when you get old.

2. Management Path

   This path is only for those who have management interest and

   feel that life would be more interesting if they can help

   grow young engineers’ careers.

     engineer -> senior engineer -> manager -> director -> VP

   Your eventual goal might be to become an influential VP

   who can put together a team to build a best-in-class

   product that can make significant impact on the company,

   society, and industry. Then, all glories will come after you!

3. Entrepreneurship Path

   This path will be for those people who want to assume profit

   and loss responsibility and become a general manager,

   a president, a CEO, or an entrepreneur in the future.

   This person must have interdisciplinary skills across departments.

   SynTest training would be for the person (either an R&D engineer,

   a corporate AE [CAE], a QA engineer, or a marketing manager)

   to go through the FAE (field AE) path. For example,

     R&D -> CAE -> FAE -> General Manager (this is the path I took)

     QA -> CAE -> FAE -> General Manager

     Admin/Marketing -> FAE -> General Manager

   Your eventual goal might be to lead (1) the company to where it becomes

   a power house in the world and (2) your colleagues to where they all

   become technical competent and financially independent.

   In general, any company is willing to pay high price to an exceptional

   FAE because he or she can help the company win new customers. To win

   new customers, the FAE must have pleasant personality and communication

   skills to work with the prospects, the R&D department,

   the AE/QA department, and the sales/marketing department, and

   complete the task per the deadline.

   Also, the FAE must be bright enough because right decisions

   may have to be made instantly in front of the prospects.

   As these FAEs are so crucial to any company success,

   there is no point for the company not to do whatever it takes

   to keep them. They are becoming the treasures and the next successors

   of the company! Similar reasoning applies to exceptional engineers

   and managers.

So, if you really wanted to succeed in your career with better living

and respect from people, you must at least prove to yourself and

your bosses that you are an exceptional engineer, manager,

or FAE whom the company can trust. Without proving yourself, good

opportunities won’t fall into you and money will always run faster

than you can catch!

You can judge where you are now and see which career path you

want to be. Having been working at SynTest for years,

you may have found SynTest is one of the very few companies that

is willing to train you, pave the path you are choosing,

and sincerely wants to help you grow to reach your goals.

So, why not set a career goal you want to reach in the DFT field

and let your colleagues, Susan, and me help you out before you

are becoming more competent and capable on DFT?

God Bless You!

LT