Name: Howard Davidson
Title: Distinguished Engineer
Company: Sun Microsystems
Contact Info: hld@sun.com
How I arrived at my present job (academic and other influences): I started by taking apart alarm clocks when I was six. I discovered physics in a science fiction book in second grade. I decided that I wanted to become a physics professor, but discovered in graduate school that I couldn't stand academic politics. I was able to talk my way into a computer hardware engineer job with a startup in Boulder Colorado thrity years ago, and discovered that it was fun. When the startup failed I got a job at Hewlett-Packard. I got bored with product engineeering and moved to research engineering positions at Cray Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Schlumberger, and Sun.
How I organize my day: First thing in the morning is deleting e-mail, and answering those that take very short answers. Then I check my to-do list to see what is pending. I usually talk to many people on my projects and related ones during the day. Those conversations account for about half of the technical work I do. The rest is most often sitting at my desk or computer figuring out how to make something work, or planning what needs to be done, who will do it, and how to make the budget work.
I get to pick my own projects on top of a large amount of fire fighting associated with unexpected problems that people bring to me.
Amount of time spent working daily (at home and office): About 45 hours at the office each week, and unpredictable amounts of time at home. The home time is primarily either meditating on a problem or reading technical literature.
What I do to get myself thinking creatively: I try to visualize how the problem I am trying to solve is related to the general structure of how I internally model the world. This often lets me see the problem from an odd angle where it doesn't look so hard.
If I'm really stuck I do something completely unrelated and try to relax. Science Fiction books are often helpful.
My problem-solving strategy: I still think like a physicist. Keep on abstracting until I am far enough from the problem that I can see it as one piece, and have shaved off all unessential details. I remind myself that apparently intractable problems often have an unstated assumption that makes them appear more difficult than they really are. I apply simple physics to estimate what might be possible, and experience to prune out unrealizable solutions.
What I do to relieve stress: Read. Build things in my machine shop.
My hero, mentor, or person I most admire and why: Richard Feynman for the utter clarity of his physical insight.
What I do to mentor those who work for me: Try to explain how the system really works at our company. Answer any questions that are brought to me. Encourage taking technical risk. Notice things done well.
How a negative event changed my life in a positive way: Getting caught up in an academic power struggle between professors got me out of academia. I think I fit better in industry, but didn't know it at the time.
One event or decision in my life I wish I could go back and change: Taking the New York abrasiveness I was raised with to college.
What values are the most important to me and what I value in others: Being nice to people, being smart, being willing to do something new even in the face of opposition, technical honesty in the face of politics and schedules.
What inspires, motivates, or gets me excited about my job on a daily basis: I've always got something new to learn, interesting people to interact with, and great toys.
Biography: My research interests are in high speed signalling in digital systems, both electrical and optical, and the physical design of computers including high power density cooling.
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Location: www.acm.org/crossroads/dayinlife/bios/howard_davidson.html