Can You Hear Me Now?

TECH@WORK
BUSINESS
Making a connection ; One woman's path to an engineering career can take her alm
ost anywhere, blending work, school, and a passion for technology.
Sherri Cruz; Staff Writer
1122 words
29 April 2002
Star-Tribune Newspaper of the Twin Cities Mpls.-St. Paul
METRO
You've probably seen the Verizon Wireless commercial: "Can you hear me now? Good
. . . . Can you hear me now? Good." The Verizon Wireless guy travels around chec
king the quality of the phone call.
It turns out there really is a can-you-hear-me-now guy - or in this case, gal.
Fay Huling, who works for Verizon in Plymouth, is one of 60 people nationwide wh
o drives around checking for weak spots in Verizon's wireless coverage. While sh
e's at it, she monitors the competition.
Driving around the rural Midwest and the Twin Cities, Huling and her $280,000 of
phone equipment log about 2,100 miles a month in the company's sport-utility ve
hicle. The reports she produces are sent to Verizon's head honchos in New Jersey
. Reports also go to the network department where she works. The engineers in he
r group fix the problems that she finds.
Someday, however, she'd like to do the fixing instead of the driving. She's lear
ning on the job and is seven classes away from an engineering degree from the Un
iversity of Minnesota.
A careful plan
In Huling's SUV, eight wireless phones sit in the rear cargo area, programmed to
call computers back at the office. The phones act as imitation customers, playi
ng two and a half minute pre- recorded tapes. Huling turns up the volume on the
test phones and then talks about the course of her own career.
Her course has been deliberate, down to targeting an employer that would pay for
college: Verizon pays for her classes and 80 percent of the cost of her books.
It is an investment for Verizon, because Huling is planning to stick around. Ver
izon has plans for her, too.
"Our plan is for her to be an engineer," said Scott Grosz, executive director of
the network department. Every year Verizon discusses career goals with its empl
oyees, then lines them up with the right combination of education and on-the-job
training, he said.
That's one big reason Huling likes working at Verizon: She's always learning. "I
had training last week. I had training the week before," she says. Also, the wo
rkplace is laid back, she says, which matches her easy-going personality.
At school, she's already taken all of her humanities classes and has only hard c
ourses left. That's one thing she'd do over if she could: get the hard courses o
ut of the way.
Right now, she's studying linear circuits - online. This is the first online cla
ss she's ever taken, she says, unfolding her laptop perched between the driver's
seat and the passenger seat of the SUV. Online learning might sound easy, but i
t's not; it requires more discipline, Huling says.
"I have to set a schedule for myself," she says, studying at least 2 hours a nig
ht, a bit on Saturday and nothing on Sunday. But after a day of driving, it's so
rt of nice to just plug into the computer, she says.
Acronym city
Huling is a long way from the Queens borough of New York City, where she grew up
. She moved to Seattle in 1985 and studied civil engineering at the University o
f Washington and interned with the city of Seattle. She learned that she liked t
he drafting that she used on the job, but not the civil engineering. She was loo
king for something meatier, like electrical engineering.
The test phones drone on in the back, and on this short drive neither Verizon no
r the competition are having problems with calls. A glance at the laptop screen
- filled with with bars, squiggly lines and acronyms - assures Huling of that. T
here are FERs, PNs, RSSIs and RFs to look after. But Huling knows what it all me
ans and apologizes for speaking in acronyms. It's not meant to impress; they're
just embedded in her brain.
A career starts

After three years of study in Seattle, her college fund ran out and she declined
another student loan, opting to work as a controller at Nordstrom's. "I just di
dn't want to do any more school loans," she says.
Then she saw that U S West Cellular paid for school. (The company was later sold
to AirTouch, which then became AirTouch Vodaphone and finally Verizon.)
The first thing, she thought, was to get her foot in the door. So she did. She c
ouldn't get into engineering, so she worked in customer service and business ser
vice. Then she was asked to do some training in Minneapolis and that's where she
saw the driving job, officially called "baseline technician." After a grueling
interview process that tested her technical know-how, she started her current po
sition in 1999.
That technical know-how is still being tested today. Her computer screen is divi
ded into eight sections because she's keeping track of Verizon and seven competi
tors.
She can see if any calls have been "dropped." That's when someone is talking on
the phone and then loses the connection. She explains why that could happen: A c
all might drop due to an unsuccessful handoff from one cellular tower to the nex
t. That could mean another tower needs to be built for a better handoff.

Wireless has at least one more trouble spot - reorders. That's when a caller get
s a fast-busy signal and has to hang up and try again, she says. If there is a p
roblem with one of the phone calls, she will be notified visually on the laptop
as well as hear what the trouble is and which company had the problem.
She also monitors interference - when the call breaks up. So what can interfere
with a wireless call? "Oh lots of things," she says, such as cordless phones and
lightning.
"Everybody has their good spots and their bad spots," she says. Wireless compani
es can do two things to fix that: add more towers or more carriers, which is the
equipment that carries phone traffic, she says. That's the point of her reports
, so that the higher-ups can see where to invest more money.
On this day, Verizon and the competition haven't dropped any calls or caused any
 reorders. When she's done driving, she'll head home.
"I like the technical aspect of the job," she says. "It's kind of exciting for m
e." Things are always changing, especially in wireless, she says. "It keeps me t
hinking."