Students

A Note from HSU Economics Alumni James Counts

May 28, 2003

Professors Hackett and Eschker:

Greetings from San Diego, I hope you two are well and still hard at work molding the economists of tomorrow. I may have seemed to drop off the face of the earth, but let me assure you that I have been down here in San Diego hard at work in the mortgage industry. Since graduating from Humboldt I have been employed by FNC Inc (www.fncinc.com), a privately held Oxford, Mississippi based company that provides collateral management solutions to clients in the real estate sector. My career at FNC began as a temporary position in the Data Extraction department as a scanner operator. Later I moved into a data entry position, and from there I was able to move to a programming position by leveraging my minor in computer information systems. As a programmer for the Data Extraction department I built customized applications that automated time consuming tasks and saved the department many man hours of labor.

After a few months as a programmer I was promoted to the position of Production Engineer, where I continued to automate the data extraction process. The data extraction system we used slowly transformed from a finicky bug-ridden sinkhole into a smoothly running system requiring little maintenance. This freed up my time to participate in the management of the department, and I soon found myself directing the day to day operations of our Carlsbad office, which has grown from about 15 to 30 people. Our company is growing at an amazing rate, and when discussion began of opening new locations, I was tapped to set up and manage a new office in Chicago.

I was really looking forward to moving to Chicago, but there have been a few bumps in the road. I have discovered that when working with clients in the banking industry, nothing ever happens according to schedule. However, in this case delays were caused by an act of God, as one of the key bank managers in Chicago suffered an aneurism and passed away. In any event, my move to Chicago may never happen now, as the Director of my department was recently dismissed from his position .... I have been named Acting Director in his place.... (At age 24)....

As Acting Director I have a chance to resolve many issues left open by my predecessor. One of these issues involves promoting a great many people he has been stringing along for the last six months. To do so, I am required to write letters of recommendation for them, and this made me think of my two favorite professors, and the letters you both wrote for me last year. I’d like to thank you again for those letters. As you can see I did not make it to the Federal Reserve, but I have landed on my feet. When I see how tough the job market is these days, I can’t believe how fortunate I have been. My education at Humboldt gave me a hybrid background in economics and technology, and fate has guided me to a company that also bridges these two areas (all of our founders were professors at Ole’ Miss, two of them economists, one an accountant, and two of them computer scientists.) I have not yet reached the full potential of what I can offer FNC, nor do I think that I have found the full potential of what FNC can offer me, and I think I will have a fruitful relationship with this company for some time to come.

Thanks again for everything.

Yours truly,

Jim Counts