That Thing I Did For A Year

This week we're sharing our final episode of the year. We sat down and chatted about how we got the podcast started, what we hoped to accomplish with it, and some of the common themes we found from 28 awesome interviews! Music, as always, by Shawn Lee IMPORTANT NOTE: We're looking for some people to take over the show and keep it going next year. If you think you'd be interested, we'll post a form on the Facebook page to fill.

This week's episode features Karen Cirillo, a Computer Engineering student who worked at BiblioCommons for her PEY. She had a lot of interesting takes on pushing through academic challenges, injuries, to mental health issues. Enjoy! Music by Shawn Lee

This week we spoke to Mechanical Engineering student Medhaj Athilkar, who shared with us some stories working in a few different kinds of roles, getting into management and consulting, as well as growing a big beard. Music by Shawn Lee

This week, we present to you Robert Bazzocchi, a 4th year EngSci Robotics student who didn't quite do PEY, but instead broke his 3rd year in two so that he could pursue his passion for acting and dancing! He had a lot to share about how he balances the two sides to his life, and going deep into a passion while still meeting the demands of a challenging school program. Cotton Candy Club: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSp0yuHawiYSG8vKTEDgAnA

This week was a first - since it's already March, we decided that we could talk to somebody who is currently in the middle of their PEY year! We spoke to Dhanyaa Sudarsan, an ECE student who is currently interning at AMD about her experiences she's had so far, and looked forward to the remaining months of her work term. Enjoy! Music by Shawn Lee

This week's episode is one we've wanted to do for a long time - we've turned the tables and got a chance to hear from our beloved host, Ilya Kreynin! He had a great year working at RBC, The Poirier Group, and Disney! Listen to hear him talk about his first work experiences and what drew him to studying Industrial Engineering, how he went about looking for work, and what sorts of lessons he took from the work. Enjoy!

This week we spoke to an EngSci Aerospace student, Luke Foster, about his time working at record pressing company Viryl Technologies, as well as some of the other things he got up to during his PEY including archery and Dungeons & Dragons!

This week we talked to Henry, a 4th year EngSci Robotics student who shared his interesting story of growing a lot over the course of his undergraduate studies, from starting a student learning startup and learning from failure. He had a lot of interesting insights he shared with us! 2:00 - coming to Canada in high school 6:25 - differences in how Chinese international students approach internships/career things 8:00 - learning to code 16:10 - What the process of raising seed funding, talking to 100 investors, mostly in China, growing to 60 people 19:00 - Running out of money 28:30 - Going Cali or bust, applying to tech and management consulting 35:43 - technical interviews, and how failing management consulting interviews helped 36:46 - working at Wish, the “typical silicon valley startup”, making data driven decisions 40:30 - 40:30 - seeing old friends and being back at school again

This week we're talking to Adam El-Masri, a computer science student who worked at Orbis during his PEY, which took him to Vancouver and Bermuda. He's also done a lot of work towards trying to engineer for a good cause. He had a lot of interesting stuff to say about working during school, and being a part-time student. Enjoy! https://www.danaproject.org/ Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamelmasri/

This week we have a live episode for you, recorded in the Pit, speaking to Shivani Nathoo from the Engineering Science Energy option!

This week we got to talk to the golden-voiced Paul Seufert about his year at ZS Associates and Sidewalk Toronto, that tied together physics, consulting, and urban design! In this episode: choosing between physics and math, stats & finance; kaggle projects; fractional staffing and working on multiple projects at the same time; what it means to be a fast learner; getting really good at writing emails; the value of human intuition; urban design; learning that it's not all about the money; procrastination. Sidewalk Toronto fellows report - https://sidewalktoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SidewalksTOFellowsReport_Final_webcopy.pdf Paul's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/seufertpaul/ Gift of Education - https://giftofeducation.ca/ Music by Shawn Lee

We kick off the new year with an episode we've wanted to do for some time, talking to Arkady Arkhangorodsky (our producer), a 4th year EngSci robotics student about his time at Google, Rapyuta Robotics, and Shopify, that took him all around the world!

In this week's episode we chatted with Sarah Chang, our first ChemEng student! She spent her PEY at Shawcor in Toronto; hear her talk about pipelines, lifting giant jugs of water, and becoming a beer connoisseur :) Notes 0:41 - Ending up in chemical engineering, growing up in a bunch of different countries, dealing with international cultures 3:20 - Some extracurricular involvements, Skule orchestra, EWB 9:01 - Background on Shawcor, working on pipeline coatings 10:30 - Being among the only women on her team 27:10 - Life outside of work, rock climbing , muay thai, beer 39:00 - Going back to 4th year Links UConnect: https://uoftengineeringconnect.ca Music by Shawn Lee

This week's episode features Sneha Adhikari, a civil engineering student who got to work on an issue close to home, on the King Street pilot with the City of Toronto! Notes 0:46 - Working in Toronto, going towards civil engineering from originally wanting to do life sciences; what they might have in common 7:59 - Civil engineering as a social field 11:45 - Applying to PEY; putting non-engineering things in her portfolio 15:30 - 2 crappy interviews that were good learning experiences 17:40 - Work on pedestrian projects, more on the King St. Pilot 26:45 - Most fun day at work, getting roasted by her teammates 36:20 - Salad club 38:35 - Transportation planning 40:42 - Bringing the urban planning perspective from Toronto to Nepal and back 44:45 - Being on the grad school train 49:00 - Advice Links King Street Pilot: https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/planning-studies-initiatives/king-street-pilot/ Jane Jacobs: http://janeswalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Jane_Jacobs_One_Pager_1.pdf Tuk-tuks: https://c1.staticflickr.com/6/5734/30997492635_dbf0ab2a56_b.jpg Music by Shawn Lee

This week we spoke to Raymond Lam from Mechanical Engineering about his work at Baylis Medical where he worked on developing products used in heart surgeries! Notes 0:19 - How he ended up choosing mechanical engineering; taking shop class in high school and doing the George Brown machining workshop 4:09 - Why he was looking to do 16 months instead of for, some of the things he applied for and why he ended up going with Baylis 7:30 - What Baylis does, minimally invasive surgery 17:45 - Dealing with a quickly expanding team, getting to know people around on other teams and how the company culture facilitated that 29:02 - Getting hired for knowledge that you haven't studied in school 31:05 - Changes people have pointed out to him since doing PEY 38:45 - Contact information Music by Shawn Lee

This is an extra special episode, from a panel that we did for the 7th Conference on the Leader-Engineer, put on by Troost ILead. Ilya handed over the interviewing reins to Cindy Rottman, Associate Director of Research at ILead. We were joined by Deborah Raji (our friend from episode 3!) and Milan Malkjovic, a former engineering student, to talk about our own PEY experiences to an audience of students, engineers, and faculty members! More about ILead: https://ilead.engineering.utoronto.ca Music by Shawn Lee

In this week's episode, hear the person Ilya declared "the coolest person I know": Jenn Dixon (MSE 1T8 + PEY) about her time at Synaptive and also about her motorcycle. Notes 0:20 - Coming from an international school in Oman to deciding to study in Canada 4:58 - Finishing 3rd year feeling very burnt out 5:44 - Her extremely strategic approach to applying, choosing between "traditional MSE stuff" and forensic engineering 9:28 - Interview process at Synaptive, how she stood out with enthusiasm 12:37 - Transitioning into working with just 2 days of rest after her last exam 17:04 - Not having the specific "tribal knowledge" of the field, value of 1:1s with coworkers 22:53 - Things that made the year hectic 29:09 - Rediscovering things about herself, visiting her parents for the first time in several years 31:18 - Questioning the notion that people are closest friends with one another while they are in school 34:55 - Differences in looking for work as an international student, a whole lot more paperwork 37:40 - Motorcycle!!!! Motorcycle!!! 43:27 - Coming back to school, starting to see school more as a means to an end 44:34 - Thinking of yourself as an RPG character with different sliders, "having other sliders"

This week's episode we have Oishe Farhan (ECE) sharing his experience combining his interests in neurotechnology and mindfulness in a year working at InteraXon, creators of the Muse brainwave sensing headband. Notes 0:21 - Going to high school at TOPS and how he ended up studying ECE, discovering neurotechnology through first years at UofT and starting a club for it! 7:40 - Deepening involvement in the NeuroTech club through second and third year, doing somewhat related work Montreal 9:00 - The start of the story of his PEY, not originally planning to do anything for more than just the summer 12:30 - Meeting the Muse CTO at a talk and finding a job just before he would've gone back to school; what Muse is 18:35 - Research buzz around meditation coinciding with working on it 27:14 - His personal experience getting more into meditation, comparing it to Sherlock Holmes investigation 33:01 - Day-to-day type of work, some of the open ended demo projects he got to make, including one that featured at the G7!! 41:05 - New perspectives, related to pacing, on coming back to school, different courses he's taking now 52:39 - The urge to travel, especially during university, and how meditation satisfies that for him Links Wait But Why article about Neuralink

This week's episode features Alison Chow, an industrial engineering student who got to work as a product manager at Microsoft twice, as a developer at NVIDIA, and as a business intelligence engineer at a startup called Stylelounge in Hamburg! She had some interesting stories to share from career fairs, travels, and highly varied internships. Notes 1:15 - Deciding to study engineering (science) because she was good at math and physics in high school, switching to industrial engineering 3:03 - Getting deep into YNCN and the benefits of doing heavy job hunting in first year 5:56 - What product managers at Microsoft do 7:34 - Being sheltered in the first internship, working on a project to grow an app ecosystem 11:18 - Things affecting the decision to do PEY: money, getting a wider set of experiences, trying a "technical" role 14:00 - Getting jobs (Microsoft, NVIDIA) from career fairs, having had experience before that working with her mom at trade fairs 16:44 - Some lowlights from grinding at career fairs 24:57 - Working at Stylelounge, a startup in Hamburg, doing business development; getting a visa herself! 31:21 - A day in the life doing business intelligence - "improving decision making through data" 36:02 - Adjusting to life in a place where she knew NOBODY 39:11 - Being more trusted the third time around at Microsoft and getting more responsibility - 3 simultaneous projects! 41:09 - Traveling with people you've just met 42:58 - Starting to miss school after a long time away 46:28 - Advice, value of early work experiences (e.g. before 1st year) Music by Shawn Lee

We're really excited to share this story - this week we got to talk to Abe Ratnofsky, our first computer science student! He had a really interesting year that took him from one startup to another in San Francisco, where he is still working. Notes 0:21 - Exposure to computer science in high school and not being so into it, but then coming back towards it through first year 2:26 - Co-op terms prior to PEY, working on transit in Los Angeles and on derivatives trading in New York 4:05 - Making the decision to do PEY, going to company info sessions to find something 11:36 - Gaining confidence in technical skills, finding "the dream job" at a drone inspection company through Hacker News 16:06 - Interviewing for a job at a 3 person company 19:34 - Moving to San Francisco and getting settled in 24:40 - Leaving the dream job after just 3 months 29:00 - Setting a deadline to find a new job or going back to school 31:35 - Swiftly, where he currently works as a full-time software engineer 45:01 - Seeing a young company grow up in front of you, watching bureaucracy develop in real time 52:30 - The decision to continue working instead of coming back to school, education being "preemptible" Music by Shawn Lee

In this very eye-opening episode we talked to Olivia Mogielnicki, a mineral engineering student, who spent her PEY around Northern Ontario and Manitoba literally mining for gold! Notes 2:02 - Why she chose to study mineral engineering, some of her previous work experiences 2:58 - Living on the mining site working 12 hour days in 2 week rotations 4:30 - Working at the oil sands as a project coordinator for AECON 6:46 - Maintaining friendships during on rotation weeks; a day in the life doing metallurgy 10:07 - Investment banking for mining, negotiating her PEY contract 13:30 - Deciding to leave AECON and the logistics around that 17:03 - Lessons from deciding to leave a job 19:05 - New job - working on surveying at Vale, pushing for more work 24:00 - How well school prepared her for working underground 26:15 - The high stakes of work inside a mine 27:30 - Learning curve over the first 2 months 31:44 - Things she wishes she'd been taught before going on PEY 34:00 - What changes she plans to make to her courses in 4th year 35:10 - What she likes about working underground 37:30 - Learning to "tone down your Toronto" 41:30 - Playing DnD for the first time!! Music by Shawn Lee

Up this week is Sam Stuart, our first MSE student! She did her PEY at Synaptive Medical and did a research exchange in Liverpool, while also doing some intellectual property consulting on the side. Notes 0:00 - Being picky in applying for PEY jobs, interviewing for Synaptive Medical 1:50 - Canada Wide Science Fair, research background, ending up doing research and getting an interest in biology 5:15 - What Synaptive Medical does - robotic surgery 7:20 - What it means to work in quality: minimizing risk 10:57 - Learning curve working on a high tech product 12:45 - Learning to code 15:32 - Good days, bad days - bad day at work, burnout, learning to meditate 21:04 - Applying for research exchange through the CIE 22:20 - Improving fitting practices for contact lenses in Liverpool, for the BBC reporters! 25:30 - Travelling and travel blogging, hitting 20 countries over the summer, Headspace 28:07 - Learning to do IP inside a company and how that’s different from doing that at a law firm 34:05 - What you have to do to become a patent agent, and how an engineering background is useful for it 38:00 - Changes in plans to go to grad school, design + research based masters 41:15 - Giving a TEDx talk in Collingwood and working on outreach and having engineers share their stories Links Ready Set Zen travel blog! Headspace Isowater Corporation Sam's TED talk! Email Sam at samantha.stuart@mail.utoronto.ca Music by Shawn Lee

This week Andrew Kidd (EngSci Physics 1T8 + PEY) takes us through his time working at two different consulting companies, ZS associates and McKinsey & Company. Notes 0:00 - First summer jobs, politics and government work, volunteering on campus 4:00 - What a consultant does 5:07 - Sales and Marketing consulting at ZS, working with pharmaceutical companies 8:45 - Project lifecycles, what makes a good one 14:26 - "The product is the people" 15:55 - Andrew's technical skillset, how his physics background has been helpful 18:34 - Selling yourself as an engineer, having to prove you're not antisocial 22:00 - Getting the job, how the interview process looks, case interviews 27:10 - Comparing the experiences at Mckinsey and ZS 30:35 - SCHMOOZING 33:28 - Coming back as a more effective person, potentially going back to work in consulting 35:38 - How the value consulting companies provide has changed; expert networks 43:15 - Closing thoughts, getting involved non-academically Links Contact Andrew on Facebook Music by Shawn Lee

In this episode we talked to former Mr. Blue and Gold, David Boroto, about working in civil engineering in Kenya and then Toronto! Notes 1:37 - Getting involved in Engineers Without Borders, taking an interest in international development 7:42 - First 4 months at Kwangu Kwako - building affordable slum housing in Nairobi 13:10 - Innovation in civil engineering - building houses like lego 17:40 - Day-to-day tasks at an infrastructure startup 20:26 - Talking to families in the biggest slum in Africa, a different perspective on poverty 33:39 - How EWB has changed over time, going from being self-centered to human-centered 38:44 - Traffic engineering at IBI Group back in Toronto, working on dozens of different projects 42:30 - One particularly interesting project with Boulder traffic data 47:50 - On civil engineering moving slowly 54:09 - How the work has influenced David going into 4th year, making a career in infrastructure and global development, advice for PEY students Links IBI Group Kwangu Kwako Music by Shawn Lee

This week we spoke to Deborah, who split her PEY between 12 months at Clarifai in New York City and 4 months at the MIT Media Lab! Notes 1:20 - getting into engineering, previous work experience and first jobs at JR Deep and with Project Include, becoming interesting in working in tech 3:45 - developing skills through attending lots of hackathons, attending TechCrunch Disrupt! 6:20 - learning about Clarifai in NYC and computer vision in school, deciding on doing PEY 10:00 - Embarking on a campaign to find a job at a startups, getting a job at Clarifai 13:00 - Work experience at Clarifai, startup work culture 18:10 - Transitioning to a role that felt more like a full-time position 20:05 - Living in Manhattan, moving to Brooklyn 22:20 - Neighborhood culture, comparing Toronto, Ottawa, and NYC, having space for personal growth 27:42 - Summer research at MIT Media Lab, "anti-disciplinary research" 30:45 - Finding out about the researcher through a TED Talk, research in algorithmic/data bias 36:17 - Other things going on at the lab, prosthetics, "do-ocracy" vs a meritocracy 39:58 - Constraints of industry vs. research, justifying research, corporate sponsored research 43:20 - Life outside of work, meeting cool hip musical friends in Cambridge 45:24 - Differences between MIT and UofT, "intersession", alumni relations 52:02 - Coming back and appreciating Toronto in a new way, changes to plans for 4th year 56:00 - Mentorship, machine learning twitter Links Twitter Campaigning for jobs, another one TED Talk on algorithmic bias Music by Shawn Lee

In this second episode we had the chance to talk to Anna, who did 12 months at RBC followed by 4 months at Apple working on the Siri team! Notes 0:00: Intro 2:09 - Working as an analyst at RBC on prediction automation 3:45 - Comparing "technical" and "non-technical" roles and companies 7:05 - Switching to a management role at Apple, getting the job 12:54 - Work culture at Siri, feeling like a startup within a larger company 18:30 - Social life at Apple in California 21:30 - How the people at companies affect decisions to work there 26:18 - PEY changing her thoughts on the finance option and careers in the field, social lubricant 36:20 - Advice she'd give to her past self from before PEY Links Contact Anna - anna.ye@mail.utoronto.com Music by Shawn Lee

We kick off the show by interviewing Mohammed, who has just come back from 4 back-to-back internships at Facebook, Drop, Facebook again, and Microsoft! Notes 0:00: Intro 2:05: Applying for many positions, getting himself to the point where he was ready 12:08: First internship at Facebook in Menlo Park 15:53: Internship at Drop, startups vs. large companies, imposter syndrome, 'big company skills' 23:20: Second internship at Facebook in London, cultural differences in UK vs US 29:09: Internship at Microsoft, this time as a PM 37:00: General takeaways, guiding questions from the year, looking forward to final year of school Links Getting a Gig Github page Cracking the Coding Interview The Hard Thing About Hard Things Contact Mohammed Music by Shawn Lee