Ellen Johnson

Associate Staff

Group 99: Advanced Electro-Optical Systems

I started working at Lincoln Laboratory in 2006 on the Space Tracking and Surveillance System as an associate technical staff member of the Space Control Systems Group. From the very beginning, I had a lot of interaction with the project's sponsor. I had worked in industry previously and it was a very different environment, a hierarchy in which the software engineers were separated from the sponsor by what seemed like twenty levels. With that many levels, I never spoke with our sponsor. In industry, we were more like a cog in a wheel: design code and test over and over and over again. We just had to get the code done. It was a very mundane but very safe working environment.

At Lincoln Laboratory, you have to be willing to leave that safety net behind because you are going to be on the front lines! And you should be able to talk to your sponsors to let them know how the project is going. The first time I had to give my presentation to the Missile Defense Agency, I had wished that I was back at industry because I was shy and didn't want to get up and do that. Working at the Lab has enabled me to become more comfortable in public speaking. In fact, I just presented an overview of research in my division for the Lincoln Laboratory Technical Women's Network (LLTWN).

It's been great to have the time and opportunity to become involved with things beyond my technical work. Who wants to come in day after day, sit down, and stare at a computer all day? I don't know many people who want to do that. I enjoy working on projects to better society and working relationships at the Laboratory. For example, I am very active in LLTWN and administer its internal wiki page, and I volunteer on a committee that is designing an exhibit for the Museum of Science. If you want to do different things and interact with a whole bunch of different disciplines, then Lincoln Laboratory is a really great place for that.

Another contrast with industry is that the Laboratory really encourages its staff members to learn. I write software for many different applications, and in order to do good code, you should know something about those applications. But in my previous job in industry, the mindset was more of getting the product out the door. Here at Lincoln, I've never been in a situation where someone has not had time to help me with a theoretical or a practical question. Also, there is an extensive library, numerous classes, and great seminars to help you learn domains beyond your expertise. You can take initiative and learn something new. There are even seminars that aren't necessarily related to our work, like the recent one given by a Tuskegee Airman. There are only so many talks you can go to about missiles or graph algorithms, and learning something outside of what I do on a day-to-day basis was so nice.

I am Ellen Johnson. I am Lincoln Laboratory.