The Offer...Finally
Today, I finally got the official job offer from E Ink. I don't know why it took them 2.5 weeks to finally make up their mind, but now I have it. I don't know anything about the compensation package yet because I only had a phone discussion with the guy who was my boss last summer. Besides that, its not exactly what I was hoping for. SInce E Ink is a small struggling company, they try to condense the most amount of knowledge of their product/industry into the fewest amount of people. That way you can reduce payroll costs and invest in the company. So they decided to fill one of the spots with somebody who has more industrial experience and the other spot with somebody from within the company. But, they did decide to create a postion for me. I get to continue working on the same stuff I was doing last summer with a few upgrades. Instead of working in the lab all day with the R&D group on recipe optimization, I get to scale up the production of that ink product. So I get to apply all my basic chem. eng. skills and still work with cutting-edge stuff. The only problem with the information I know about the offer is that it is contract-to-hire. I am not exactly sure how long the contract is, but it may only be 6-8 months. After that time, E Ink will have to decide whether to make me a permanent employee, continue on a contract basis, or lay me off. Apparently, this is because the position is not fully funded, but at the same time they did not want me to get away. I can become an expert on this particular product because I have seen it grow from the drawing board to production. But with this product expertise, they can't afford to just let me walk away, can they? If they apply the philosophy mentioned above about concentrating knowledge within the company, then I am a very valuable person to them for this product line. I think it will eventually become full-time. Now, I just have to wait until the end of this week or early next week to read all the details. So I'll be moving to the Boston area and am looking for roommates.