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17108. arkymalarky - 10/21/2005 5:33:34 AM Hi -
Long time no postee - I've been a little down wondering whether I'm going to be fired, but I'm getting my shots in and building a pretty good legal case for retaliation and defamation by management. At my age (50), I figure I may not have too much to lose by hauling Argonne to court if it comes to that, and might get a couple million out of the sons of bitches who thought they could fuck me around for the last two years.
Attached is an email I sent just a little bit ago to the division director at the Advanced Photon Source (largest charged particle accelerator in US where I presently work):
"I attached my email regarding the PSS station warning
sign project which was discussed as one of my
potential '06 fiscal years tasks with GMM recently,
since APS email crashed at a most inconvenient time
early this evening and I did not receive the copy I
sent to myself at Argonne.
John -
Regarding your response to WR19144 that I could not
send at all just prior to 7PM when I went home, I can
say that this project was forwarded to me by Nick
Friedman after he and Steve Ross had done some early
development on it, and that John Katsoudis, the user
at 10BM was unsatisfied with the expenditure and
effort required for a PLC solution to this application
and favors the <$100 circuit to which WR19144 relates
and which his organization is funding the development
of with my assistance. He drew the schematic from a
suggested circuit I had emailed to him of which I had
forwarded a .pdf copy of his schematic to you. Nick
Friedman is in the process of having signed off or has
already had fully signed off the validation procedure
which applies to this WR (for the Remote Shutter
Interface). I am glad to say that, although a first
prototype, the initial circuit design and board layout
appears to be fully functional and useable at this
point, making it the second design in succession I've
created, counting the EVR200 (now working in LEUTL)
which has worked 'out of the box' on the first pass. I
will be happy to discuss this further with whomever
expresses an interest and I look forward to creating
an official set of Argonne documents in full of the
final product.
thanks,
Rather than simply invest big money in dim PDA
backlights (at an estimated $250/sign) that will
have most of their intensity wasted by color filters,
why not consider
using LED edgelighting, or given their low cost,
direct LED lighting
with a semiopaque diffusor between the LEDs and the
front panel
filter/mask? High intensity LEDs are available in
quantity for as low
as $0.10 apiece.
Significantly increased reliability and much more
intensity should
result with a fraction of the expenditure.
Plus, it should go without saying that I have the
resources to lay out
very inexpensive PCBs (which the LEDs can be mounted
on at the most
advantageous possible locations) to create wire-free
low profile
assemblies.
thanks,
'concerned'"
Btw, the organization this beamline scientist works for is Stanford University. It'll be interesting to see how much pressure a lowly staff engineer like myself to exert under these circumstances.
Bes to all -
17109. arkymalarky - 10/21/2005 5:34:34 AM Forgot to tag that 17108 is a repost of Con'd's 17105. 17110. jayackroyd - 10/21/2005 5:35:25 AM Good luck, concerned. do let us know how things go. 17111. Macnas - 10/21/2005 9:24:38 AM Con, you might be too pragmatic and real life for these university trough-fed swine.
Keep your guard up and hit'em where it hurts. 17112. Macnas - 10/21/2005 9:25:08 AM Thoughtful
Nope, I can't do that. 17113. alistairconnor - 10/21/2005 9:36:02 AM So why would they fire you, Con? Are they sick of you designing better, cheaper solutions that make their top guys look stupid?
i.e. have you focused on the actual engineering work at the expense of the political networking?
We could start a club... 17114. Macnas - 10/21/2005 10:44:33 AM Coalface technicians of the world unite! 17115. Magoseph - 10/21/2005 1:30:32 PM Desperate housewives of the world unite!
I am one of them these days, Mac--let me tell you, it is a good thing I can afford cleaning help, because if I could not, I would take a job to pay for it, any job. 17116. Macnas - 10/21/2005 1:38:14 PM Housework is just the fecking pits. 17117. jayackroyd - 10/21/2005 2:06:18 PM Desperate housewives of the world unite!
It's a tought time to be a woman 17118. Macnas - 10/21/2005 2:30:11 PM Cletus ought to get to know this fine Kass fellow. 17119. wabbit - 10/21/2005 2:33:49 PM Funny, I was thinking of concerned this morning and wondering what was up.
...have you focused on the actual engineering work at the expense of the political networking?
Isn't that the truth. So many companies, so many incompetent managers. The best you can do is document everything. Best of luck to you, concerned, keep us posted. 17120. wonkers2 - 10/21/2005 3:02:19 PM Concerned, in the event you are fired don't hesitate to file for unemployment compensation. In Michigan it can be worth nearly $10,000 over 26 weeks while you're looking for another job. 17121. wonkers2 - 10/21/2005 3:03:21 PM Don't let your aversion to government safety-net programs go to your head! 17122. Magoseph - 10/21/2005 4:35:11 PM That is right, concerned—if they fire you and you immediately file for benefits, you establish a monetary need that can only help you in a lawsuit against them. 17123. Ms. No - 10/21/2005 7:02:15 PM Best of luck, Con. 17124. ScottLoar - 10/22/2005 2:37:38 AM The language is dense but I take it you're upset that for the second time your work has not been acknowledged? Why not? Who's your boss? Who's your immediate supervisor? Why aren't you writing this to them?
Your message gives the impression that the genesis of one solution was first sketched out by others ("this project was forwarded to me by Nick Friedman after he and Steve Ross had done some early development on it") and finished by yet another ("he [John Katsoudis] drew the schematic from a suggested circuit I had emailed to him"), which doubtlessy leaves the addresse questioning the extent of your contribution. Yet you claim this is "the second design in succession I've created"? Let's hope your claims to creating the first are stronger.
I can also see you're a real team player as regarded by "the sons of bitches who thought they could fuck me around for the last two years" and the fact you grab this chance to suggest a solution for another application (you're really way out in left field, aren't you?), but from your message and intent to seek legal action I wonder who's trying to fuck who?
Yeah, "best of luck, Con". 17125. arkymalarky - 10/22/2005 4:23:30 AM My time tag (which I haven't adjusted in a while) says 10/22, which is the 22nd anniversary for Bob and me. 17126. concerned - 10/22/2005 4:29:03 AM I'm baa-aack.
Thanks to all for your sympathy, but I want to respond to SL a little, who shares more of the 'conventional' initial reaction to me IRL:
I'm a 6'6" 260lb 50yr old specialist in a largely outsourced (from the US) area of electronic design. Imagine how the uninformed would tend to react to me initially given that I'm definitely not a specialist in office politics, and as I have put it at work, not as 'oral' as the best office politicos....
basically, such people often enough tend to consider me a prevaricator, until and unless I hit them with the facts hard and often enough, at which point the collateral damage has become excessive, for me, them or both....
the email I excerpted was for internal consumption at Argonne - the individuals named have respectively a Phd in Electrical Engineering and probably the equivalent from the Soviet Union, yet I could not overtly offend... they plus others in the my department, had difficulties in reality properly interpret technical data sheets from , say, a standard optocoupler, while I had just successfully completed, on the first pass without any pcb rework being necessary, a redesign of perhaps the most significant design contribution of another EE Phd at Argonne with an excellent career repuations whos design had previously been copied and elaborated upon by a Finnish postgraduate. This is the milieu in which I currently exist, 'undereducated' with a BSEE along with the real pros and the real poseurs.
FWIW, I may be getting 'unofficial' signals from line management that they want to keep me on at the moment, but I put no particular faith in this...
I'm sure that I appear to be an 'original' in my approach - I can see where the difficulty for many would be in determining how much merit there is in how I deal with such issues.
17127. concerned - 10/22/2005 4:36:17 AM Re. 17107 -
Thanks , arky - I really appreciate what you did. As when I posted that, I'm a few brews under right now. If I'm out at A******, I'm looking at mostly contract work or self employment - employers aren't too keen at paying health insurance for 50 yr old guys.
The pictures not precisely bleak employment wise right now
, but not nearly as good as I'd like it to be or as good as I think it should be.....we just had an "all-hands" meeting for the APS where the division director is still going on about how we lead the world in user beamline accessibility - I have claimed my share of credit for our group which is Personnel Safety Systems - so far I have not gotten official management acknowledgement. I can go into details if any interest.
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