“Anything that has exact measurements, I love. The fact that you can use Math and Statistics (especially Econometrics) to formulate solutions to economic problems amazes me.”
For Edward See, a Sr. Economic Analyst on the Infotech Consulting team, there is great beauty in precision.
“I love to test things in the kitchen – baking and cooking. You know, cooking requires exact measures; if you screw up the measurement you don’t know what the outcome will taste like or look like.”
Finding the accuracy in carefully cultivating his yard, in framing the right shot for his photography, or, yes, while creating in the kitchen, there are few places where Ed cannot apply his love of precision. This attention to detail brought him to Gainesville almost six years ago when he was recruited by Infotech Consulting and asked to move back to the hometown of his alma mater.
“I didn’t find Infotech, they found me, actually,” he said. “I was [working as a Labor Economist and Consultant] in Tallahassee and when I heard about the job I was like, ‘It’s in Gainesville? Sign me up.’ I mean, I’m a Gator. It was like a homecoming for me.”
It wasn’t quite that simple of a decision, but it almost was. While evaluating if Infotech Consulting was the right fit, Ed did what he did best and looked at the data around service years. Everyone had around 10 years of experience, at the minimum.
“The fact that everyone stays that long means there’s something really good going on. It means people only leave because they retire,” he said.
Firsthand experience has shown him the thing he loves most about the team of consultants: they take care of each other, always checking in, especially when the hours are long and the reports are due. And the hard work is something Ed doesn’t mind. In fact, he rather enjoys the more challenging parts.
“I’m always the one saying it’s nice that our work is hard, because if it were easy then our clients wouldn’t need us. So the more complicated it is, we should love it,” he said. “That should be the thinking for everyone; the reason why you’re hired into a job is because you’re suited for the job. So always hope that your work is hard, because anyone can do it if it is easy.”
Hard work requires a way to unwind, however, and over the last year, if you were to find yourself on a Zoom with Ed in his home office, you might see one of his favorite pastimes hanging on the walls – rows of guitars.
“It’s my oldest hobby from way back when I was in high school. Music is in my veins,” he said, leaning back to show off the instruments. “It’s easier nowadays because there’s YouTube, you can find a tutorial to replicate whatever people or bands are doing. But way back when I was learning, I didn’t have that. We saved the music from FM radio to a cassette tape and then we played it back and listened to the guitar and figured it out.”
Most of the time, Ed plays metal or classic rock songs from Bon Jovi, Metallica, ACDC. But sometimes he ventures into a very different genre.
“Every now and then, here comes my daughter and she will ask me ‘Daddy, can you play Frozen 2?’” he said. “And sometimes I learn, because she loves to sing along.”
There’s not a lot of down time, being a parent, a consultant, a chef, a gardener, a photographer and a musician, among other things, but that’s not stopping Ed from always looking for more challenges to solve with beautiful precision.
“I’m like a jack of all trades, I would say. I can learn quickly and adapt to many situations. The more confusing or harder the situation is, the more I love it because I’m learning.”