Throughout undergraduate and graduate school, a postdoc,and my first few years in a tenure track position, I hadnever considered anything other than a career in academicmathematics. The reasons for my eventual decision to joinGoogle as a software engineer are complex, but the processtaught me a great deal about both the professional worldoutside academia and by contrast about the quirks of academiathat were biasing how I approached it. Academiais a small world, and when you spend all your time in asmall world, it’s easy to ignore or forget just how big a bigworld can be. There are a number of things that are easyand seamless in a small world that you need to be muchmore intentional about in a big world. In this essay, I wantto describe three particular ways in which academic mathis a small world and how non-academic job seekers needto adjust to compensate for the larger world.
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