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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. 17133. concerned - 10/22/2005 5:07:50 AM These are terms which discussion of my situation with an attorney whose specialty is employment litigation garnered, btw. 17134. ScottLoar - 10/22/2005 5:11:48 AM Then you need allies, not adversaries. If your work is genuine and contributes to corporate profitability and shareholders' returns then it cannot be neglected for long unless you willingly allowed others to misrepresent you. If your work is so advanced and detrimental to the status quo of corporate politics then the ambitious are eager to have you on their side. Somehow I don't feel this is you crusading against the many oppressors; corporate politics are just too complicated and the most political always want to glom onto the successful. 17135. concerned - 10/22/2005 5:13:02 AM Re. 17131 -
In the interests of full disclosure:
'Magnitude' here is defined by that assigned to stellar intensity.
Heh. 17136. ScottLoar - 10/22/2005 5:17:11 AM Based on what you've written here and having seen a number of persons try it I can predict you won't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning suit against a team of corporate lawyers committed to litigation. "Defamation"? Who called your character into question? "Retaliation"? I don't even know the legal context to use such a word. But, you choose. I'll bet your lawyer thinks he can be such a pain in the ass the corporation will likely settle out of court. Fat chance if the corporation's legal team is committed to litigation.
17137. concerned - 10/22/2005 5:18:33 AM SL -
In as far as Yankee trading is respectable, I figure that if properly exploited, I offer(ed) A****** several million dollars of value. If they want to shit in their own bed instead, it should not be any matter of conscience to me to extract a couple out of them in exchange for their destroying my career, right? 17138. concerned - 10/22/2005 5:25:40 AM The case for retaliation is clear. By investing the reputations of APS line management in an inferior and overly costly alternative to the easily demonstrable preferred solution, the obvious next step for such a degraded management sensibilility would be to first destroy the reputation of and then eliminate the messenger of the preferred solution. I have hundreds of pages of documentation attesting to precisely this course of action which has been embarked upon wrt myself. 17139. concerned - 10/22/2005 5:36:21 AM Based on what you've written here and having seen a number of persons try it I can predict you won't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning suit against a team of corporate lawyers committed to litigation.
You might be right. Yet, without decent employment prospects but with some financial resources and with an attorney on contingency (a distinct possibility to my best knowledge), it could certainly be a worthwhile hobby for several years. 17140. ScottLoar - 10/22/2005 5:57:10 AM "If they want to shit in their own bed instead, it should not be any matter of conscience to me to extract a couple out of them in exchange for their destroying my career, right?" This was never part of my argument nor have you proved you even had a career let alone "they" are destroying it.
"The case for retaliation is clear." You're sure you're right, but what was presented to me sure seems flakey and I am a most disinterested party.
I've given you good advice and good insight, especially #17134; I've no further comments. 17141. concerned - 10/22/2005 6:36:28 AM Re. 17140 -
This response discounts the proper evaluation of the avaricious machinations of the ilk of David Sarnoff of RCA who illegally stole many of Edwin Armstrong's, (a far better human being), major inventions, including that of FM radio and ultimately drove him to despairing suicide because of RCA's legalistic roadblocks, or of the political maneuverings that subsequently stifled the career of William Friedman in the wake of his breaking Japanese encryption codes during WWII.
I will wager any amount of funds you are willing to put up, SL, that my technical competence far outweighs, by the judgment of a competent agreed upon outside agency, those who have opposed the ideas I have presented at A******. Be a man and back up your assertions, or retract. 17142. concerned - 10/22/2005 6:49:23 AM Btw, SL, I appreciate your comments & I won't think worse of you if you don't accept my wager. 17143. jexster - 10/22/2005 7:09:34 AM Hello TD..welcome to hell
Glad UR here...I was about post UR fave topic - Islam,the Straight Path - in Religion..so I will do here
JC and I were talking today about dar al islam when I mentioned that carrying these books around people kept asking whether I planned to convert. Even my EyeRabian former Tudeh ME history professor, when I had finished my presenetation on Arkoun's Rethinking Islam told me "John, I am not the best Muslim but I could put you on the straight path"
Of course I begged off - shop keeper's petit bourgeois collection of Satanic Verses!.
JC said "Well I can speak about Maziar's faith but Arkoun once told me he didn't even believe in God so I am not sure the conversion would take"
Oh JC = Juan Cole...Unlike BUsh I don't have the Big Guy on my speed dial
Welcome again to HELL
17144. jexster - 10/22/2005 7:16:50 AM ""Do you think New Orleans should be rebuilt? sso hard to protect from Acts of Me - should we rebuild NO"
"Oh Holy One a thousand pardons but they protect Holland. They can proitect New Orleans."
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