Email:	paul@paullee.com
Nationality:	British
Marital Status:	Married

In this frank interview, Dr. Paul Lee answers some questions about himself and his aspirations.

"What did you do at Southampton?"
"Previously, I had studied three A-Levels (Maths, Physics and Chemistry) and took special papers in the latter two subjects; it seemed logical to progress to University. I got a 1st Class BSc in Physics in 1993. I was interested in the Nuclear Physics lectures, and decided to apply for a PhD. On the social side, I co-founded the Doctor Who Society, and became heavily involved in the Physics Society."

"What happened then?"
"My application to study for a DPhil (the new name for a PhD) was accepted and I moved to York University in October 1993. I spent a fair amount of time gathering data in Australia at their nuclear accelerator facility in Canberra, bombaring atoms to try and create a combined nucleus with unusual properties which had been hypothesised but never observed."

"Sounds fascinating...did it have any practical benefit?"
"I always get asked that, usually by taxpayers who want to know where their money goes. To answer your question: no, no benefit, it was pure research. A mere footnote in the grand ledger of knowledge."

"What tasks did you do?"
"Co-ordinated staff, designed the experiments, gathered data, wrote a thesis, and acted as a tutor and lab demonstrator to undergraduates. I also gave occasional presentations to our collaboration members at the Daresbury Laboratory."

"Why did you migrate into computing?"
"I had applied for a variety of post-doctoral roles in England and America but they were taking a long time to process my application, and, being a student, the bills were mounting...I realised that, even though I had worked primarily in antiquated Fortran-77 on Sun workstation (with a smattering of Windows experience), I could easily make the transition into the computing industry."
"Within a fortnight of getting my DPhil (PhD), I was offered a job at a small computer consultants firm in Weybridge, Mackenzie Tribbeck Associates (MTA). They were keen on employing PhDs as it showed their adaptability and their ability to complete a dedicated technical project through to completion."

"What did you do there?"
"I can't detail specifics, as my work is still covered by the Official Secrets Act, but it involved a software demonstrator for a new defence-based Radar concept; the team responsible for the design had mostly disbanded, and someone was needed to turn the flow-charts and requirements into working code. The work was done on Sun workstations and I was principal coder, responsible for about 17,000 lines of code. I also was responsible for mentoring and liaising with other members of staff and an external contractor to ensure compatibility between our software modules. I also designed the factory acceptance tests, and supervised it to a successful conclusion. "

"Did you do anything else but write software?"
"In addition to writing the software, I gathered metrics and statistics to allow (often very interesting) debates on the performance of the Radar model. This often meant running the model over a weekend to gather sufficient data. I also hosted some of our regular face-to-face meetings with our customer."

"What happened then? "
"The project went into limbo due to financial and managerial problems, and all the staff at MTA were laid off for a few months because the company had de-stabilised. A few of us were re-employed a few months later to work on a similar project to the Radar project, but this was merely a conceptual paper design. "

"Why did you leave? "
"It was clear that the company was going into liquidation, and having obtained a job offer from BAE Systems, I accepted that. MTA collapsed less than a year later. "

"What happened at BAE Systems?"
"Again, I can't go into specifics, but it involved a lot of analysis, and writing of software that modelled and analysed military campaigns. I was initially tasked as an operation analyst, and this entailed writing small programmes (usually involving Excel spreadsheets and macros) but moved into the "pure" software engineering domain, covering everything from requirements capture through to design coding, testing, documentation and support tasks (the inevitable bug fixing!) Of course, there was a lot of mundane work to do and BAE would find itself doing any kind of defence related work: I was once on a data input assign for two months, for instance. I relocated to another part of BAE that was trying to become involved in the lucrative simulation market; this involved writing integration software, as well as hardware related tasks (auditing and connecting PCs, for instance)."

"Anything else?"
"BAE did like to invest in its staff, and I was pleased to be placed on training courses in UML, Java, Visual C++, C# etc."

"You worked for a few months at the Science Museum in London in 2003. Why was this?"
"As you can gather from my website, I have held a long-standing interest in the Titanic disaster. In early 2003, I found out that the museum was hosting an exhibition of artefacts recovered from the wrecksite, and I wrote volunteering my services. After a tedious wait, I was asked to attend an interview, in which I excelled, and I was offered a temporary position at the museum. It was a front of house assistant; officially, I was there to tend to the crowds, offer assistance and so on, but unofficially, I was seen the expert, the person to consult when questions were asked. I often had interaction with the visitors, explaining details about the disaster and the wreck, offering biographies of people on the ship, etc. The joy that I got from seeing people's faces when I explained these details was immensely gratifying. The best job I have ever had, in fact.

"If you liked it so much, why did you give it up?"
The museum only employed me as a temporary staff member, as I said, and were concerned that working at BAE for 5 days a week and then spending my weekend at the museum was excessive, so they limited my time to saturdays only. 6 day weeks eventually caught up with me, and despite the fact that I loved the job, after 2 months I was sadly compelled to resign.

"You took a sabbatical after leaving BAE Systems. Why?"
"My fiancee (now my wife) had accepted a position at the nursery in Cambourne (Cambridgeshire), and, as a devoted partner, I agreed to move. This also coincided with a selfish desire of my own - namely, to write a book, which has been positively received. It's called "The Titanic and the Indifferent Stranger" and is available from Amazon and Lulu"

"The book was released in 2009. What happened then?"
"To be honest, I found it difficult to get back into the job market, so I started doing small tasks for private customers, usually writing software to allow someone's CD and DVD collection to be catalogued. Most of the work was done using Java, but I did one project in C# (when I was still using Windows at home, that is)."

"What are you doing at present?"
"Nothing. I was temporarily employed by Cambridge University Press but was laid off in the summer, 2011 when my project ran to completion. The Press are in the process of converting their printed books into electronic format; my job was to compare the actual output with the expected output. In practise, there are many mistakes, which I had to correct. Metrics collected also assisted in the QA process. Since losing this job, I have engaged my mind in writing articles for my website - and applying for jobs, of course, with no luck yet! I have also been involved in negotiations to have my old book restocked as a Kindle and Epub electronic book. This entailed many hours of agreeing formats and signing contracts with external suppliers."

"So, you are available for work right now?"
"Absolutely. I am eager and enthusiastic to learn new skills, and I certainly am not one to be complacent in my own accumulation of knowledge. I'd be disgusted with myself if I thought that my own knowledge had reached a plateau and was not likely to improve. If I don't know something – so what? I'm clever and I can learn. I've never been afraid to experiment. To give an example; a product requirement at BAE was to provide Word and html copies of our documentation, with 100% matching formatting. The in-built hypertext converter in Word turned out to be pathetic, so I learned enough Perl to parse the html and convert it into a good replica of the original document. Sounds a little sad, but I found this little diversion to be exciting. At home, I like to dabble in php, Ajax and Java applets, and learning how to use the Gimp graphical tool, so I have not let my technical prowess stagnate. Unfortunately, my website is lacking some of the more recent html and css capabilities (I am trying to pander to the lowest common denominator as many people still using MSIE 6 still visit my pages), so its probably not a good advertisement for my software and web design skills. Writing and research yes, but, software and web, sadly not."

"Are you available for interviews?"
"Yes I am. However, sometimes I don't think that interviews always elicit the best information about a candidate. For example; I went for an interview c. 1999 and was asked to solve a differential equation. Now, I hadn't even seen such an equation since about 1993 so of course I failed as I was "out of practise". But if you're sat in an office environment, you have colleagues to ask, and the internet and books to consult if you're stuck on a problem. Many interviewer's attitudes are: "If you don't know it now, you never will." Interviewers should look beyond this and think of potential."

"Any last messages to potential employees?"
"Just give me a chance. What do you have to lose?"

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