“My Transition” #26: Chris Madsen —USAF SATCOM to Stanford and Engineer at Keysight
Chris’ transition itself and his outlook on life are phenomenal. This will resonate with lots of people who enjoy tackling challenges.
The military instilled me with these seemingly simple principles and allowed me to move forward in my career in ways I don’t think I would have been able to accomplish otherwise.
Colorado Springs, CO — Like many of us, Chris joined the military looking for purpose and direction in life. During his 8 years in the Air Force, he found his calling working with electrical engineering. Today, he works for an excellent company, has married the love of his life, and will soon graduate from Stanford University with a MSc in Electrical Engineering.
DJS: Why did you join the military?
CM:
I hate to be the stereotype enlistee, but I honestly had no idea where my life was going. I was 20 years old, not too far out of high school, working a retail job that wasn’t going anywhere.
Even if I had decided to go to college, I didn’t have a clue what I would have majored in. I didn’t do particularly well in high school, so a good school was out of the question at the time. I had a lot of memories of my dad taking me to the annual airshows held at Edwards AFB. I was there when Chuck Yeager took his F-15 flight in 1997 and enjoyed the SR-71s setting off car alarms in the parking lot. The event was inspiring to a 12-year-old, despite the fact my hearing hasn’t quite functioned the same since.
It was because of those shows that the Air Force was always in the back of my mind. After reading others’ experiences, I decided that it would be a good opportunity to learn a skill set, get away from home, and make some new friends.
I was initially going to get into avionics since I wanted to be near the aircraft, but thankfully (and no offense to our maintenance folks), my dad talked me out of it. I say thankfully as I learned in my job as a satellite communications technician how much I enjoyed working with electronics.
The technical skills I picked up doing that job were key later in life when I started on my path to engineering.
I hate to be the stereotype enlistee, but I honestly had no idea where my life was going. I was 20 years old, not too far out of high school, working a retail job that wasn’t going anywhere… Even if I had decided to go to college, I didn’t have a clue what I would have majored in…
DJS: Did you know what you were going to do when you left the Air Force?
CM:
Like many of us, I spent the first couple of years thinking I was going to make it to retirement. My coworkers joked that I was a lifer, and I didn’t disagree. After a few years at the job, I really started to appreciate the internal operations of everything I was working on.
I wanted to break out schematics and troubleshoot everything down to the component level, despite the fact the Air Force had stopped doing that years ago. I wanted to really understand how everything worked, down to the physics of the devices. I thought traveling wave tube amplifiers and klystrons were just the coolest things ever and spent hours reading about the physics governing their operation.
At some point I realized that while I was having fun being a technician, the challenge and thrill was in engineering.
I wanted to really understand how everything worked, down to the physics of the devices.
DJS: Did you face any struggles?
CM:
More than I ever could have anticipated. When I left, I was about 60 credits into my EE degree and attending school full-time with the GI Bill’s housing stipend and my wife to hold us over financially.
Looking back, there’s no way we could have made it work without her. We were very limited on savings, living in a single bedroom apartment and barely making ends meet. There were times I was ready to drop out and settle on a job just to pull us through.
My wife told me in so many words, “You’ve started this, you’re going to finish it. Remember why you did this.” At times the stress of handling the course load and family became almost unbearable. In the service, I often pulled through knowing that the job had to get done. There was no giving up.
Once the opportunity to do so presented itself as a civilian, it was certainly tempting for a while. It took time, but I convinced myself that I still had to do it, but I was doing it for myself and my family.
We were very limited on savings, living in a single bedroom apartment and barely making ends meet.
DJS: Tell me about your initial job search process… how the heck did you end up in Germany working on RF Engineering?
CM:
When I left the Air Force, it felt like I was starting over from scratch. I realized that I had a good chunk of experience as a technician, but very little in the way of engineering.
I heard from other students that internships were a good way to gather experience and make yourself stand out to employers. Many believed that not having that experience would kill you in the job market when you graduate.
I can’t recall now where I had seen it, but I saw a post for the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Research Internships for Scientists and Engineers (DAAD RISE) internship program. It’s a program sponsored by the German government that brought in American, Canadian, and British students to work with German researchers on projects in a field of their choice.
If accepted, you’d spend the next summer in Germany working closely with scientists and engineers. I was contacted by an engineer who was conducting research at the Forschungszentrum Juelich for his PhD. He was doing a lot of RF work for MRI systems, which I found fascinating. I accepted his offer and left for Germany in May.
When I arrived in Juelich, he sat me down and explained what he was doing. At this point I had roughly 2 years of school under my belt. Engineers don’t learn much of anything related to their discipline until their third year. I had physics, calculus, a circuits course, and I think I may have taken logic. He was telling me about PIN diodes, Smith charts, impedance matching, and inductive loops.
I was terrified. How was I going to learn all of this in a couple of weeks and actually produce anything of value? I told my wife about a week into it that I was ready to go home. I was going to be of no help to him. She encouraged me to stick with it. If I had survived 8 years in the military, I could handle a building full of researchers and academics. I ended up sticking it out and learned more in that summer than I had in the several semesters of school following.
I began to understand the idea of internships. I can’t say one way or another if I’d have the job I do now based on just my Air Force experience, but the internships I did take made for interesting conversation at the interview. I honestly can’t recommend the program enough for anyone in STEM. I thought so highly of it, they actually ended up publishing a report I wrote on the internship.
I was terrified. How was I going to learn all of this in a couple of weeks and actually produce anything of value?… If I had survived 8 years in the military, I could handle a building full of researchers and academics.
DJS: How did you apply to and get accepted into Stanford’s MS in Electrical Engineering program? Any tips for fellow vets considering higher education?
CM:
As my undergrad degree was coming to a close, I knew that I wanted to start an MS as soon as I was done. I knew that if I didn’t begin immediately afterward, the thrill of the break would take over and I’d never start.
I compiled a list of schools and went to my professors for recommendation letters. I came to one of them, and he asked where I was applying. I gave him my list and he asked, “Why not Stanford?” I shook my head and told him there was no way I was getting in there.
He encouraged me to look into their program and see if it was a fit for what I wanted. The worst they could do is say no. I went home and found out that Stanford offered a program through the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD) to employees of certain businesses. At the time, I had just accepted an offer from Keysight, who happened to be on that list.
The program was tailored to work with professionals in and around Silicon Valley. You could make the lectures on campus if you wanted to, but the whole thing could be accomplished online just the same. The classes looked to fit the discipline I was looking into, and I recognized the names of many of the professors from papers that I had read as an undergrad, such as Krishna Saraswat and Gordon Wetzstein. It was exciting to think that I’d be learning from the same people who had had a hand in much of the research I was learning about.
I took my professor’s advice and got my paperwork together for admissions. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting a positive response. I had already received acceptance letters from UCLA and a few others and was ready to pull the trigger on the former. Stanford’s Graduate Admissions Committee sent out the letter via email of all places.
Up to this point, I had pretended I didn’t really care, but my stomach turned a bit when I saw the sender. I opened the decision letter and read the first word. “Congratulations!” Holding back the emotion, all I could think to say was “No kidding.” I had about 16 months remaining on my GI Bill and calculated the number of classes I could take every year under the private school tuition cap. My employer would pay for whatever was left over. The decision was settled and I accepted the next day.
The advice I’d have for anyone going after higher education is not to ever undersell or underestimate yourself. Inside the service and out, pay mind only to those who stand to make a positive impact on your life.
For those of us changing careers, our experience as veterans unfortunately seldom carries us completely the rest of the way through life. We owe it to ourselves to continue to work hard and sell ourselves as contributors to whatever project we’ve found ourselves on.
Use your GI Bill until there’s nothing left. The first few months are difficult, but there are resources out there to help vets make that transition into the academic world. I knew several vets going through school, and just being able to sit and talk with them made things easier. They were a bit older, had a lot of the same experiences that I did, and many of the same struggles.
The veteran support office on campus was also a great resource that was always willing to help. Reach out, and there will always be someone there with a hand.
The advice I’d have for anyone going after higher education is not to ever undersell or underestimate yourself. Inside the service and out, pay mind only to those who stand to make a positive impact on your life.
DJS: How did you land your current job at Keysight Technologies?
CM:
I was always really comfortable working with test equipment. Modern oscilloscopes and network analyzers are built with a combination of semiconductors and RF engineering, both of which I had a strong interest in. Naturally, Keysight and a handful of other companies had my attention right off the bat.
Keysight and its predecessors Agilent and HP have always been on the cutting edge of technology, and in fact it was their equipment that I was often using in the Air Force (though we were far from cutting edge). I had applied for a position through their website and days later they had a couple of representatives show up at the university job fair that I was able to talk to.
A few days later, my future boss called me in for an interview. The interview was about 80% technical, with engineers taking shifts coming in to question me on just about everything. Overall, the process lasted 7 hours, with lunch in between. There was a mix of semiconductor physics, RF theory, circuits, programming, and test principles.
A combination of my technical background and education both played a part in getting through it. After a tour of the manufacturing facility, I knew I belonged there.
DJS: Tell me about what you do on a daily basis in this role?
CM:
My daily role is primarily in support of manufacturing. Product engineers are ultimately responsible for a large line of various products, numbering in the hundreds and ranging from full customer-ready devices down to individual components. Our group primarily handles oscilloscope probes and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that go into a number of different devices.
When there are issues with these products in manufacturing, we work to determine what the problem is through failure analysis (FA) techniques and work to resolve it both in the short and long term. It’s a lot of experimentation, group discussion, and process improvement. Customer returns are also examined by engineers within our group to determine exactly what went wrong and ensure it doesn’t happen again.
On a day to day basis, I typically spend my time analyzing failure modes in parts through FA techniques I’ve picked up (and a handful I’ve created) along the way. It’s a combination of technician and engineering work, almost custom tailored to what I love doing. One day, I’ll be running simulations to determine specific failures, and on the next I’ll be building a voltage multiplier to introduce high voltage pulses into a device to test its tolerance.
I take a lot of pride in my work and the products that we produce. If Keysight’s products maintain their reputation for quality, then I feel like I’m doing my job.
DJS: What skills from the military translated into your job and made you successful in your current role?
CM:
My role as a technician taught me a lot that unfortunately many new engineers don’t pick up on in school. Things such as network analysis are taught as elective courses. We take two semesters of electromagnetic fields that teach the fundamentals of RF theory in physics terms, but they provide very little once we hit the ground and don’t understand the concept of s-parameters and the need to de-embed a test fixture. Technicians understand a lot of this need as they’ve had hands on most of the equipment.
In terms of non-technical skills, the military helps with understanding the importance of teamwork and dedication to your duties. I couldn’t function without the engineers in my group to mentor and support me. The team structure is critical to our success as an organization.
If I gave up at every challenge that came along, I’d be useless. Dedication is key. The military instilled me with these seemingly simple principles and allowed me to move forward in my career in ways I don’t think I would have been able to accomplish otherwise.
In terms of non-technical skills, the military helps with understanding the importance of teamwork and dedication to your duties.
DJS: What mentoring resources have you found most beneficial in your transition?
CM:
The Veteran Mentor Network was integral in helping me prepare my LinkedIn page and resume. I spent hours digging through their posts, borrowing ideas from other members. However, I still believe that an individual approach is also important. Getting to know veterans who are in a similar situation as you helps tremendously. A lot of this is at the local level.
The Veteran Mentor Network was integral in helping me prepare my LinkedIn page and resume.
DJS: What one piece of advice do you have for anyone reading this?
CM:
Try. Try, try, try.
Don’t ever tell yourself you’re not cut out for something or there’s no way you can make something happen. Work hard and the world will surprise you sometimes. If all else fails, do it for yourself.
Bio
Chris Madsen joined the Air Force in 2005 and served 8 years as a satellite communications technician and manpower analyst. He served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and was stationed in England, Florida, and Colorado.
After leaving the Air Force in 2014 as a Staff Sergeant, Chris completed a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and began a graduate program at Stanford University in pursuit of a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering. He currently works as a product engineer at Keysight Technologies in Colorado.
Top resources
Veteran Mentor Network — The mission of the Veteran Mentor Network is to help Military Members, Military Spouses, and Veterans establish and achieve job search, career and life goals. Visit the group here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4466143
Are you interested in sharing your story of transition? Or are you a military transition specialist who would like to share some tips? Send me an email at MilitaryTransitionStories@gmail.com
The goal of this series is to bridge the military-civilian divide in three ways: 1) Highlight the incredible skills and value that military veterans of all generations and backgrounds bring into the workplace. 2) Help transitioning veterans understand their true value and therefore aim as high as possible in their employment and educational goals. 3) Discuss the common struggles, pitfalls and indicators of success in veteran transition, in order to provide better transition assistance from both military and civilian sides.
