Getting to know the Members of the Technology Department

Starting from this week, instead of making a wrap-up post of the whole week, I’ll change things up and provide more focus on each of the notes.

In this note, I’ll be writing about my interviews with Park-san and Iwata-san in the Technology Department. To give a bit of background on these two individuals, Park-san is the team leader of the device team in the technology department at GMS, and Iwata-san is part of the car analysis team, also in the technology department.

Why I wanted to interview these two individuals:

Given my personality of being interested in a large variety of things, I was interested in the hardware aspect of the MCCS device developed by GMS and wanted to know more about how it works and as well as the aspects of the security and risks of the device.

Interview with Park-san:

My first interview of the day was with Park-san.

To be honest, my first impression was a slight bit of surprise at how good his Japanese was. I was originally informed that Park-san was Korean so in all honesty, I didn’t expect such a fluid and high level of Japanese (reiterating that I’m not trying to be offensive). Going by experience, I’ve met and known quite a few Koreans who’re way better at Japanese than me, a Japanese person, so you know it's always been a surprising experience for me.

Maybe that's how the world is going to be going forth, with the high level of connectivity that we have around us in this day and age. Maybe one day we’ll live in a world where it's not an expectation for a person of a certain nationality to be able to speak in their mother tongue. I’ll be happy to see that, given my so-so level of Japanese.

Going back on track, I started the interview by getting straight to the point and asking the questions I had about the security aspect of the MCCS device. Since we live in a world where everything is interconnected, I thought that it's a legitimate question to ask about the risk of putting a device inside a car that can remotely stop the engine.

As for the details of the answers to these questions, I don’t think I’ll be able to get into detail, since they may be trade secrets, but I was told by Park-san that, given the technology that they use in the MCCS device, it would be exceedingly difficult for an unauthorized individual to access the capabilities of the device.

After I was done with my curiosities, I went on to ask about Park-san’s life story.

One significant point from this conversation was how he originally majored in biology during college but started his career in another field. He mentioned how he felt that college isn’t just about learning your subjects but is more about the various experiences that you can have in the process.

I guess I had presupposed that college is about learning what you’ve chosen to study and that it generally correlates with your career. In that way, I had always thought that you have to study what you were going to do for your job. So seeing how Park-san’s way of a college education is an option, gave me a potential route that I could follow as I enter college next year.

Interview with Iwata-san:

Moving on to my interview with Iwata-san, I also started by asking questions about the hardware aspect of what GMS does.

Since he’s part of the car analysis team at GMS, I asked him about the overall process, like how they chose which car to analyze and what kind of criteria they use during said analysis.

I learned that they first start by checking the blueprints of the wiring in the car to check whether the MCCS device is compatible in the first place. After-which, they will then go on to find how and where to place the device both through research and testing on the actual car itself.

During this conversation, Iwata-san also expressed his deep passion for automobiles and their technical aspects. He mentioned that his interest in the hardware aspect started at a young age and studied how to become a car mechanic by going to a vocational school rather than college.

However, he went on to tell that since his first job didn’t meet his expectation, he slowly started to become put off and lose his drive, which eventually ended up with him quitting that job and going on a hiatus for roughly 5 months.

Listening to his life story, and getting to know the extent to which he became dissuaded from not only his job, but his passion, made me feel a huge amount of respect for him. Considering the extent to which he was dissuaded, the fact that he was able to take one foot back but still be able to come back on a stronger note, really showcased the dedication and effort that he’s putting into his craft and his life.

If I were to be put in the same situation as him, I don’t think I'd be able to push myself back up in such a short amount of time or even push myself back up in the first place.

Key Takeaways 

I would say that these two interviews provided me with deep insights into who they are and their story, while simultaneously giving me a substantial amount of knowledge regarding the MCCS device.

I want to thank these two individuals, Park-san and Iwata-san, for taking time out of their busy schedules to take part in my interview. They were extremely useful and helpful for both helping me understand more about the company that I intern in, and giving me advice on how I should try to traverse my own life.

However, on a slightly different note, through these interviews, I also did realize that the overall causal and unprepared style of my interview was slightly making the interview poorly organized and at times, out of focus. I don’t think that it's a critical issue per se, but I feel that it may have made it difficult for the person I was interviewing and difficult for me to compile this note. Therefore, going forward, I plan to make a ‘slightly’ more concrete plan instead of veering towards just asking what came to my mind as the interview progressed.