It’s May 2020. You would be forgiven for thinking you are looking at a photograph of someone dressed in full Covid-19 ready battle-gear, standing next to some high tech life-saving equipment in a hospital. I totally understand. But no…
That’s me. Back in 1994, standing in an Applied Materials clean room next to an Endura 5500 – the finest PVD metal deposition tool on the planet, used as part the semiconductor manufacturing process by the likes of Intel, Samsung etc. That’s enough technical chat though as I may lose you otherwise.
The story here isn’t about the products or the company I was working for. It’s about where I was in my life. Well, let’s start with location – I was in sunny Santa Clara, California. It was July 1994, and I was right at the beginning of my career. Myself and 4 brand new colleagues had all stepped off a plane on July 5th, after having flown business class all the way from Edinburgh to San Francisco, climbed into a rental car, and driven 60 minutes to Sunnyvale to The Embassy Suites Hotel. Not a bad first day of work. Oh, and did I mention that we were being paid to do this. For 5 people fresh out of University this was one hell of a ride. We were there to do some product training (yep, that weird looking Endura machine above) before spending a bit of time working in the final test area, so we could get some on-the-job training. Three months in all. In my case it ended being a 7 month gig, and I even got a 6 week trip to Seoul in Korea in the middle of it to get around the three month US Visa Waiver programme at the time.
California 1994. Sunshine. Lollapolooza. Pulp Fiction. The Shawshank Redemption. KOME Radio 98.5 – Home of Grunge music. Half Moon Bay. San Jose. San Francisco. Skiing in Squaw Valley. Wine tasting in Napa Valley. Jumping out of a plane at 14,000 feet. Mountain biking. Did I mention sunshine? Oh it was glorious. We all had such a great time, getting to know one another whilst making the most of our time learning about how metal films are deposited onto silicon wafers. (a fascinating process involving lots of engineering and physics – perhaps a story for another day)
This was also a time when I was still relatively young and with my entire career before me. There was no stopping where I could go or what I could do with my life and career. It was always exciting, every day was about new experiences, be it food, a movie, or just sitting in a sports bar. I had a childlike wonder back then.
Almost exactly 26 years later, I still think back to those times, and what I would consider to be a great start to my career. What’s changed? I’ve grown a little older, a little wiser, a little more cynical, a little bit greyer, and earned a few mental and emotional scars along the way. What hasn’t changed is the person inside. I still have the same sense of wonder now as I have always had. My career has taken me through a number of twists and turns, and I find myself roughly at the mid-point, and looking to try something completely new.
I just need to cast my mind back and picture myself boarding that plane to San Franciso. There’s a whole world waiting out there for me.