Shifting Roles inside LG

It’s been almost 6 months since I’ve joined LG.  My roles have shifting around quite a bit.  Having such a wide variety of experiences has given me an edge.  I feel “useful” in the company.

I started off in Thermal engineering because I’ve gained some experience designing thermal systems when i was working at Magna ECar and we were temporarily short staffed.  I did mostly testing there, and apparently my work was appreciated so much I had my name put on a patent!  I’m sure I’ll put a link to it once it gets published :D.

From that experience, I transitioned into more of a testing role.   I learned how to operate a lot of the test lab equipment.  Some people don’t enjoy spending time in the lab, but I like it because its a chance to get up and move around.  Also it’s a great chance to get hands on with the product to see how it behaves.

Currently my role has shifted towards customer interface / technical sales roles.  This is a fun role because I get excited about new technology, and its fun to try to get other people excited as well.  It’s somewhat similar to supervising the Science Outreach camp at University of Toronto.  You try to educate people and make them understand why they should be excited about new technology.  The largest difference is at the end of the day we have to make money.

One of my other roles is that I recruit!  Actually right now, I’m writing this post from a Planet Fitness in Manchester, New Hamshire.  Tomorrow will commence the 2015 Formula Hybrid race, and I’ve signed up to be a mechanical inspector and design judge.  I’m really looking forward to it because I never had the chance to attend one of these races.  I’ve been mentoring the Georgia Tech Hytech racing team (all credit goes to them), and have been trying to get them lots of free technology that they can use to put in their car.  I hope they do well this year, although I may be a little biased if it comes to a tie with University of Waterloo…

Unfortunately, being “useful” to a company also means you’re really busy.  I had to give up my Sunday to get to the race on time.  There are very few flights to Manchester, New Hampshire, and I was forced to take a morning flight.  I’ll be flying back on Tuesday night, and will likely spend Wednesday and Thursday evening in the test lab trying to catch up for lost time.  Anyway, if we get a business contract out of it, it will be worth it.

In the future, I’d like to try and get more hands on with the code.  Coding has something I’ve always been able to pick up, and I think it’s a great (and highly in demand) hard skill.  Most coders can code, but they have no idea how the system can operate.  I’m working from the opposite direction.