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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. 17128. arkymalarky - 10/22/2005 4:42:53 AM Hey, no problem, Con'd. My context of the whole affair is having known you ten years and having seen you go head to head with people without ever taking it to RL or failing to be completely civil and friendly in subject areas where there are no heated arguments. I've also never known you to get personal wrt your job, so it's not like this must be a long-time thing.
I can go into details if any interest
By all means, post whatever you feel ok with that helps give context to what's going on. 17129. concerned - 10/22/2005 4:48:09 AM "
So why would they fire you, Con? Are they sick of you designing better, cheaper solutions that make their top guys look stupid? "
Don't I sound like a fucking liar, AC? Just like in politics. Just consider this without too much prejudice - A****** represents a career move for me from 20 years in of a career of fully competitive commercial electronics design in the global environment where I have been quite successful (one of my relatively recent NIC designs first sold to a Japanese telecom company in the late '90's) to a relatively mere G-job. 17130. ScottLoar - 10/22/2005 4:49:25 AM I had three reasons to write; that on reflection you could perhaps see the extent of your real contributions, that there is distance between yourself, authority, and others which misserves your interests, and that your arguments stand little chance against a corporate lawyer. Nothing in your first message convinces me you're some kind of creative maverick, a true original working outside the norms of we the plodding, ordinary conventionals. That you're impressed by exotic degrees and titles is evident; at your age you shouldn't be (I'm 57).
Oliver Cromwell badly wanted the king’s head yet told the Parliament inclined towards heading, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be wrong.” Why not ask yourself this same sincere question?
17131. concerned - 10/22/2005 5:02:37 AM SL -
Mere ambition has been the predominant characteristic of those who have primarily opposed me at A****** to date. I proposed a detailed migration path to a beamline personnel safety system that featured fully automated validation and event logging not long after I started work here. This was ignored by certain others who had already distinguished themselves primarily by political infighting against others before I started my tenure here and who subsequently demonstrated that they could only implement a system that was nearly an order of magnitude late and an order of magnitude over budget beyond which they had promised, and which offered only the first step of capability compared to what I had proposed. So the professional reputations of a number of others, including one or more of my direct line supervisors, now hangs in the balance here. 17132. concerned - 10/22/2005 5:04:59 AM Hence, the 'retaliation' and 'defamation' potential.
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