Richard Petti is president a CEO of Macsyma, a mathematical software company located in Arlington, Massachusetts. As general manager of the company he is responsible for product and marketing strategies and implementation. He also plans and helps implement some of the mathematical software products. "We are a company of about 14 people including mathematicians, software developers, sales and marketing personnel," he says. "Our company tends to have very gifted people, many of whom do not follow conventional career paths."
The people at Macsyma are hired because of their talents, not necessarily their degrees. Although a number of the staff have Ph.D.s in mathematics, there is also a representative group with bachelors degrees who have made major contributions, writing many of the most advanced mathematical codes in Macsyma. The head of the development staff was a computer science major at M.I.T , but dropped out after freshman year to join the staff of M.I.T.'s Artificial Intelligence Lab. "Our office manager has a Ph.D. in English literature and teaches Shakespeare part time in at a local university," adds Richard.
Richard has a B.S. in mathematics from M.I.T., a Ph.D. in mathematics from University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A. in finance and marketing from the University of Chicago, obtained after he completed his Ph.D. and was already working in industry.
He left academia because he was not encouraged to work on the research topic he had worked on in graduate school. "After graduating from Berkeley in 1972, my first job was in research at General Electric Lighting Group," he recalls. "I was the only mathematician in a lab with 100 staff and 40 Ph.D.s. I fielded problems in solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, cost accounting, optics, acoustics, plasma physics. My career zag from pure mathematics to applied research gave me a theoretical background combined with a heavy dose of applications in several fields (including fix-it-in-the-factory emergencies) by the time I was 30 years old. And, while working in industry I pursued my research started in graduate school in the area of general relativity and published the results in 1986."
In 1986 he was hired by Symbolics to run the marketing and sales of Macsyma, one of the earliest computer algebra systems developed. He was promoted to general manager five months later. "In 12 months we doubled the sales, put the business in the black, and witnessed the demise of our leading competitor, SMP," he recalls. "Later Symbolics squeezed all the funds out of the Macsyma business to support their failing A.I. worsktation business, so the Mascyma business started to falter badly, and I left in 1990. In 1992, I became a founder and president of Macsyma Inc. and I have been here since then."
"Working in industry offers variety and breadth" he notes. "Also, industry has a sense of goals and strategy that add dynamism."
"The development jobs in mathematical software are perhaps 80% software and 20% math. To enter this area, take a lot of computer science. Get a lot of experience programming, since this is an art with many heuristic rules and intuitions that will not develop if you have only book learning. If you are math-inclined, keep your math courses a year or so ahead of your science, engineering, economics, political science. Use mathematics to understand applications areas better, such as engineering, physics, economics. Supplement math with applications courses, and supplement applications courses with applications practice."
"One of the most important factors to be aware of is the discrimination you can suffer in some organizational cultures because you are intellectually oriented. If you are in such a place, you are unlikely to get a fair shake based on performance. Mathematical people tend to be bright, but most industry people would much rather hear that you are experienced or that you fit in than that you are bright."
"One of the best measures of the culture of an established organization is to look at the backgrounds of the people in the middle and at the top: education, interests, personality characteristics. Large organizations express their values by promotions, not necessarily by what they say."
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