It鈥檚 all about the money
In 2009 I had to make a choice between pursuing a PhD degree or starting a career outside of the university. I鈥檓 still glad I made the decision to start at IMAU. It turned out to be four wonderful years, with a very interesting and successful research project on the Greenland ice sheet, great trips to conferences all over the world, exciting fieldwork on the Greenland ice and last but not least, great colleagues.
After reading this you could think, why did he leave science after finishing his PhD. The reason is twofold. First of all, I wanted to learn what is going on outside the small world of science. Secondly, progress in science is rather slow. One day you really have fantastic research you want to share with the entire world. However, it takes ages before those results are finally published in a high-impact or lesser-impact journal.
After I left IMAU, I started as a software tester at Capgemini, a large corporate company with around 140,000 employees in over 40 countries. And to be honest, it was not as exciting as I had expected. The program for new employees is really focused on people who have just finished their Master, and not on people who have some more experience. And the first weeks many of my colleagues were mainly talking about the car they would be leasing. (I used the budget to buy a new race bike). So, within a year I decided to look around for a new opportunity.
In January this year I joined Sincerius, a financial due diligence boutique. In other words, we research the financial statements of a company when another company (or private equity firm) wants to buy or take a position in that company. Simply said, based on the annual reports, other financial information and discussions with the management, we try to determine how solid those results are and what can be expected for the near future. Do they rely on one or multiple customers? Are there exceptional gains or losses in the results? Is there capacity for growth, or do they need to make significant investments first? But in the end, the investors just want to make sure that their investment will be profitable.
Projects are most of the time finished within a month, so indeed much faster than an average project in science. Everything is analyzed in Excel, and reports are written in PowerPoint, frustrating every now and then, for someone who is used to LaTeX and NCL.
I really enjoy working at Sincerius. Challenging projects, lots of variation, flexible working times and great colleagues. As an example, I am writing this just after I finished the fietselfstedentocht in Friesland, which I did together with one of my colleagues. So in the end, nothing has changed much.
Jan Lenaerts keeps me up-to-date on the ins-and-outs at IMAU. I hope you are all doing well.
Jan van Angelen