Organizational Culture: Part 2 - Laughs Per Hour

How do you measure culture? You can measure it with the rate that people quit (20% at one place), or the rate that people are fired (4% at another place) and laid off (16% at another place), but I think there are other metrics that are helpful. One that I came up with a few years ago, always to be turned down as ridiculous, was laughs per hour. 

We've all had days when we are stressed to come into work, stressed at work, and then have stress when we go home from work. On those days there might not be any laughing. A life without any laughing is sad. But I think for most of us, on most days there are a couple laughs. I'm not sure what a target laughs per hour rate is, but I think in the range of .25 laughs per hour to 2 laughs per hour is probably in the ball park. That means even on the low end there are two laughs in the day. That's still a nice amount of laughing at work, even if that low rate is entirely sarcasm. Of course on the high side, work does need to be done, and comedy can often be making fun of a person or group, so having a lot of laughs per hour is probably not appropriate either because it's bound to marginalize someone in the office.

There you have it, a new metric to measure cultures by: laughs per hour.

Company Processes: The Drawing (Blueprint) Review

All companies have processes, how a company pays it's supply chain, and how it gets paid by it's customers are two big processes that need to go right. There are many different processes, but today I'm just going to talk about one, the drawing review.

As I was thinking about this post, I had the thought that there are probably two general types of companies. Those that have A similar number of inputs and outputs, like a farmer who buys five tons of seed, and half a year later has 500 tons of corn to sell, essentially one input and one output. Obviously modern farming is ridiculously more complicated than that, for example with satellites guiding tractors to make the most use of a field, and whole ecosystem of companies and products designed to make sure those seeds are planted on the perfect day at the perfect depth for their soil, with the perfect fertilizer. Similarly the services industry, while there may be a lot of specialized tools in any given service job, essentially the basic trade is one person's time for the other person's need. The other type of business, where I am far more familiar is where hundreds or thousands of individual parts are put together in order to be sold as a single working thing to a customer. In other words, a huge number of inputs and a small number of outputs, like the automotive industry, where thousands of parts go into a vehicle, and at the end you have three different trim levels, and seven colors, and four wheels to pick from, and that's it. 

A big part of making these complex things like cars, is designing one individual part, making a drawing also known as a blueprint, and having either an external or internal manufacturing group make the part. A drawing is one of the main deliverables from a design engineer. It is essentially, how to inspect the part so that it performs according to it's performance requirements. There is a push to put all of that information into the CAD (computer aided drawing) file, however it's a slow transition, so for the foreseeable future, drawings will continue to exist at most companies as the source of truth for what the physical part should be.

Drawings generally come in two flavors, in work (or draft) and released. There are different softwares to handle the approval process to go from an in work drawing to a released one. In most cases though, there is a human that did not design the part, that will review the drawing, often several humans. It is a way to catch errors, typos, and other things that could result in a nonfunctional part when it gets made. Often there are checklists for drawing reviews, other times it's left totally up to the discretion of the reviewer what he or she checks. Some people look at these as a chance to catch all the wrong things on a drawing, but as I've gotten older, I view them more as a language to communicate a desired function to the person manufacturing the part. Which is to say, most of my comments on drawing reviews these days are suggestions rather than requirements. 

The drawing review is often one of the last steps in the larger design review or design release process. The process that companies use to design an assembly of many different parts, and then release that to manufacturing for it to be made. It can be used as a stop gap, meaning, design reviews run the gamut from every dimension being discussed, to a few slides showing how the product generally works, yet the drawing review can often catch items that would make manufacturing the part impossible, items were not caught in a design review. 

There is no right or wrong for how to do a drawing review. It will be a different calculation for each company of what level of rigor or autonomy they want reviewing drawings. When I made my ultralight ice axe for Kickstarter, I actually made the conscious decision not to make a drawing, and accept any reasonable ice axe from the manufacturer. That is one extreme, since that part does not have to interact with any other parts. However, for assemblies of many parts, getting all of them to come together nicely can be very difficult, and it starts with good drawings. 

Will I write more about company processes? I don't know, but if I do, here is a list that I might write about.

• How to pay vendors.
• How to be paid by customers.
• How to make or do a thing (work instructions).
• How to document an imperfection or nonconformance.
• How to approve a purchase.
• The Design Review
• Meeting a requirement, and what is a requirement?
• How a company validates it's product before selling it.

Organizational Culture: Part 1 - What is Culture?

Every organization has a culture. Culture is the behavior of people in the organization. It’s the worst tolerated and accepted behavior. It's also how a group rewards and celebrates successes. It’s how a group documents things, it’s how they run their meetings, it’s how they communicate and how transparent their finances and decision making is. In the same way that Japan and the United States have different cultures, so to do Apple and Tesla have different cultures, even though their main offices for years were 20 miles apart and they definitely shared workers.

For a long time I thought culture, the soft skills, was something that was harder to measure, but as I get older, you can put concrete numbers to it, I’ll give some examples. A company with a median tenure of 9 months. A company with a median tenure of 12 years. A company that fires 4% of it’s employees. A company that lays off 30% of it’s people in 2020 versus a company that had company wide pay cuts with higher earners having higher pay cuts. It’s a company where the normal meeting is an hour, and typically goes over time, versus a company where the average meeting is scheduled for 30 minutes and it often ends early. It’s a place where only released drawings are used in manufacturing, versus a place that routinely uses unreleased drawings. It’s a place where 100% of people in operations can pick up any part and find the part history using it’s serial number, versus a place where you’re not sure what the part number is let alone the serial number and part history. It may be a place people yell every day, or almost never. It’s a place where someone can question the CEO, versus a place where people are afraid to speak up to middle management let alone the CEO. It’s a place where managers try to build their fiefdoms versus a place where managers strive to give their people the best resources and the best coaching. 

Those are topics you can ask about in an interview to get an idea of what the culture is. You might not get good answers to all of those questions, but some of those questions will have numerical answers you can use to quantify the behavior of the company. There is no perfect place and no perfect culture. And many of the things that make a culture good, or at least fun for some people, are often things with difficult downstream consequences. For example, design engineers can often bristle that they need to release all part drawings and assemblies before the parts and assemblies are made. Having spent more than two years in manufacturing at this point, that’s laughable because without something in black and white (which a printed drawing is) what are we supposed to build? Once, I was in a meeting getting some feedback from a different functional group and my group was being told we built the thing wrong. So we compared the picture of what we built to the work instructions, and they matched. Then we compared it to the CAD model, and it matched again. Then we compared it to the original test article we had built, and it matched too. All of the documentation was in order. Moral of the story is, don’t hold meetings after 5 PM when people are tired, but 5 PM meetings are a cultural thing too.

A friend recently left a slow moving four person startup because the team hit some roadblocks and he realized that his voice wasn’t fully being heard. To paraphrase him, a company is always going to have a little bit of it’s founder in the culture and either you get on board or get off at the next stop. As I get further into the world of startups, I get to hear about more companies all the time first hand from people living those startups. It’s fascinating because there are so many really really cool technologies out there that have the ability to disrupt the world. Yet there are also a whole bunch of people out there making the same people relationship mistakes over and over. To give an example, don’t threaten an engineering team because half of them will just leave in the next few weeks. But then again, if that is your culture, one of threats, and a constant turnover of people, maybe that works for your organization. One of the big companies in my industry published a turnover rate of 21% last year, and given what I know, it’s probably been around that level for years. This company is known as the benchmark, and it’s clearly a market leader, and yet 21% of their people are leaving every year. I haven’t worked there, so I can’t really say, but the stories do seem to be a place that burns people out. Yet another example, an industry incumbent that several of my acquaintances recently left was described to me as having a “terrible culture”. When I asked if it was so bad that it would not be around in 20 years, despite having legendary status and a long customer backlog, the answer was that it might not be, it was hard to say. Surprising to say the least.

So, I’m going to write about organizational culture. Mostly companies, but also non-profits, sports teams (yes there will probably be some Ted Lasso examples), even social groups, all have their behavior norms and what is acceptable without being pushed out of the group. Let’s talk about those things. Let’s dive in and talk for example about how when a first time manager micromanages, how is that person’s manager supposed to know, and quickly, that the new manager is micromanaging? I’ll have to come back to that because I don’t know. 

This series is partly inspired by the Big ERN’s Safe Withdraw Rate series, which is an open ended series where he dives into a bunch of details, and attacks the same problem, how to withdraw money in retirement so that you don’t run out, from a wide variety of angles. Most recently how using a line of credit, like a reverse mortgage or home equity line of credit, could be used to pay for part of a retirement. In short, every person’s retirement is different, so there is no truly one size fits all answer. Similarly, as I write about culture, it’s will be based on my experiences, and how I hopefully lift up those I spend my days with so that we accomplish great things. Yet, in large part this will subjective, as quantifying things like individual productivity and the turnover and firing rate are not things usually published by companies, so I'm not sure how much I can speak to them. To be clear, I’m not actually trying to change that, I’m just trying to articulate and quantify things that could be described as the culture of an organization, so that as people are looking for their ideal culture, they can ask the right questions. 

Again, there is no perfect culture. A culture that is super high performing likely has a fair amount of turnover. A culture that doesn’t document things well, probably is a lot of fun sometimes just doing experiments, but that failure might come to bite them. This is my attempt, between culture’s I’ve lived, those my friends have lived, and those I’ve read about, to quantify organizational culture.

Trust: A Bullet "Proof" Vest

Trust is like a bullet proof vest. It's expensive, it takes a long time to build and if you don't build it well it won't be nearly as strong as you thought it was. A bullet proof vest is big, like a whole organization.

In this metaphor a bullet is poor morals, untrustworthy, the cheap and short-cut path. A bullet is small, reckless and destructive, not just to itself.

The challenge is building the right bullet proof vest for the bullet that comes your way, because there is always a big enough projectile (an Enron sized scandal) that could take you down.

Point being: trust isn't a given, it's developed day after day after day so that when the [Takata airbag or VW emissions] mistake comes you don't go the way of Enron.

Scared of Turning 30: Part 3

Should I leave Dubuque?

Every few months one of my friends leave, and about once a year it is one of my closer friends. The conversation recently among a few of my friends has been that it may be time to leave. We've been here some time, and while life is good, that's why we are still here, there is more to the world. In fact we all all agree that us being here is a big part of why each one of us have stayed this long.

When I came here in the spring of 2011, I thought that my life would go one way, car, house, wife, stability, etc. I didn't voice it, or even articulate that in my head, and had you asked me I would have said that Everest was a higher priority in the short term than those things, but the way I acted that first year in town was certainly one of looking to settle down. Then those relationships didn't really work out, and I grew caught up in coaching, running, mountain climbing, work and now here I am nearly five years later, living in the same apartment, with nearly the same hobbies, making some more money but not tremendously more, and I've never had an actual promotion. What happened to the time?

It's not that Dubuque is bad, on the contrary, it's pretty awesome. For a runner like myself the Mines of Spain and Heritage trail are great facilities! Part of my wanderlust is that I have been here almost five years, and the longest I have ever lived some place is six years. What is home? I will never spend another night in any of the houses I grew up in. Sometimes I feel like life is a one way street, you get to live it once, no u-turns. Perhaps life is more like a jet plane, no reverse, but you can cover a lot of ground going forward. People put a lot of value into sunk costs, those things they have already put time and effort into, while undervaluing the opportunity cost of not taking new opportunities. Making the decision, by not making a decision to pursue new options, sinks more cost into the current situation, and gives up what opportunity may exist in the new endeavor. It's why I keep climbing mountains, what might happen is well worth the time, money and effort I put into it.

At the moment I am being recruited by a different division in my company for a promotion to move to another state. It is an honor to be recognized as a strong candidate for this position. I've been recruited for promotions in the past, but unfortunately they were not in areas that excited me much. While I am on the topic of career, I have realized that responsibility, and authority, do not directly correlate with pay grade. In general they do, but a grade to two grades often means little in terms of actual authority.

I heard once that if you stay five years you are more likely to stay for a very long time. Strangely I feel like I am making that a reality. Am I committing to Dubuque indefinitely? It feels like if there is a time to move, it might as well be now. I don't know.

I don't know. Those sunk costs are really emotional! And opportunity costs are so intangible, we don't know the future.

Bottom-Up Budgeting?

This is an interesting concept. So we recently had an election in the United States and one of the perpetual issues in an election is the budget. How much do we take in in taxes and what programs do we pay for? The trend is toward more taxes and more government services in developed economies. Read Capital in the 21st Century for some nice graphs on the subject. The unique thing about government election is that it is one chance every year or two years to vote for the people that will make financial decisions most closely aligned with your percieved pocketbook. That being said, the Kansas Experiment is interesting to say the least. Makes you want to move to Kansas right?

Budgets, on the whole, are something proposed from near the top, decided on by the top, and then carried out at the bottom. Program managers propose a budget, senior managers decide the budget, and the workers carry it out. The president proposes a budget, Congress decides on the budget, and a bunch of lower level government employees carry it out.

What if there was a different way?

Instead of the vast majority of funding decisions made by a small cadre of old people, what if each person, had discretion to allocate a number of dollars, based on his or her responsibility?

What if you could dictate where your tax dollars went? Would you keep the local school open? Would you repave the roads? Would you plow snow? Would you allow your grandparents to get social security? I realize that in the world of government we basically get a vote now and then otherwise don't get to decide the details. It's a complicated structure.

On the other hand, what about a theoretical engineering company? Instead of a manager getting approval for a $20 million dollar development program over three years and then going and directing 20 people for three years, who in turn have to petition for every cost to the program, each developer or engineer would have a $50,000 to $400,000 budget per year. They would have to band together and align on the goal to accomplish anything big. Yet the decision making would then be in the hands of the people in the trenches working the details. If he or she determined that some expense was worth it, he or she could pay for it.

In other words, if three people decide they have too much work and need to hire another person, they could each chip in some of their budget to make it happen. Of course, every year or so the budgets for everyone would be recalibrated based on various factors beyond the scope of this article like productivity, responsibility, leadership, etc. The idea is that a pet project of any size will only work if multiple people buy into it. Also, bad decisions are often recognized by people who report to the person that made the bad decision, yet due to the nature of heirachy no one says anything.

I don't know how exactly this would work. This is an idea in progress. Plus, I do really like the current system for forcing people to have their ideas reviewed by other stake holders. However, I think we can learn lessons from the $6 billion dollar JP Morgan London Whale. How does one person lose $6.2 billion dollars? How does one person lose a company $10 million? There must be a better way, a sort of superalignment in a team. A team where people trust each other so much you give that person your budget.

Volunteer, Fail, Volunteer Again

This week I spent half of my week in a geometric dimension and tolerance class. It was based on ASTM Y14.5, a 250 page standard. In short, it's not easy to understand GD&T yet it's important that things always fit together the way we intend when they are coming from six different countries and first see each other on the assembly line.

So we were doing a number of examples on the board, and I made the decision a long time ago that I will volunteer, in general for anything. Volunteering gets you farther and into more interesting situations than not volunteering. In the class of about 20 of us, only about three were regularly volunteering. You see, engineers have spent plenty of time in hard classes and we know that it usually takes lots of practice to get things right, and volunteering to demonstrate on the board basically means you are taking a huge chance at getting it wrong in front of everyone. It's embarrasing. I did, at least three times publicly have the wrong answer either on the board or when verbally offering an answer. Near the end of the week the teacher was asking for volunteers and everyone was putting their heads down avoiding eye contact because we didn't want to go up and have the wrong answer in front of everyone. It's painful to sit there in silence. More painful for me than getting it wrong in front of the class. It is ridiculous to be afraid of having the wrong answer because no one cares if I am wrong, each person only cares if he or she can figure it out eventually. Finally I volunteered, again, but the teacher passed me over trying to get another student involved, who did eventually offer an answer, and the correct answer might I add.

This brought to ming a blog post by Seth Godin a few weeks ago titled, "Don't blow it (the secret of b2b)". I work for a very large company. Companies exist so that risks can be taken and the liability taken by the company and not the individuals. I saw in this class of interns and first and second year employees the fear of getting it wrong and blowing it. That, actually worried me. If we aren't brave enough to stand in front of our inexperienced peers in a class, where we are all the student, and take a risk answering a problem, how will we stand in front of our managers, customers, investors, and the world and take a risk presenting an true innovation? 

Women in Engineering and Technology

First of all, my sister is an engineer, and it's just the two of us kids in our family. So if what I say comes off sexist or racist, I'm probably more feminist than my sister, and for the record, being an even mildly feminist man doesn't help at all wooing the ladies. My sister just wrote a blog post on being a woman in engineering and it inspired me to write this. Only about one in seven engineers is female and that has pretty much been her experience.  As for the racist part, you are welcome to call me racist if you want, but then again I'm trying to start Sustainable South Sudan, and you're not helping me. I am afraid that whatever I say as a white American male, anything I say will come off racist and sexist. Hey, I didn't pick my parents. On the other hand, and the reason I am going through with publishing this, if I don't talk about it, how will we ever encourage more women, and minorities, to get into engineering and technology?

I have been thinking about this for some time since Google released it's employment demographics a few weeks ago. When I first heard that Google was 30% female I was stunned! I was amazed! I thought, 'how in the world did they get so many women?!' It was roughly the same for their ethnicity, I thought, 'only 61% white?! Where did they get all the other ethnic groups?' That being said, 30% Asian actually makes a lot of sense between Japanese, Indian, and Chinese citizens or descendants. I think my reaction was actually somewhat opposite the mainstream media's reaction to "diversity" in the technology sector.

Since I originally wrote this post, I was letting it simmer so that I had time to revise it again before I publish. In the last week Yahoo came out with it's diversity numbers. Once again, the details, directly from Yahoo, are not actually that surprising to me. Basically 15% of the technical staff is female.

The company I work at is roughly the same person count size as Google, and from my experience has far fewer than 30% women. In my limited experience it seems we have about 10% women, but my experience is nearly all direct engineering, not marketing or supply management or manufacturing. When I was part of the FEA group, we had one woman, out of like 40 employees. How's that, a 2.5% ratio? For the record, it's a little hard to directly compare statistics at a place of work when accounting for contractors and contingent personal, also for a global company like mine with several working groups split into several countries but effectively reporting to the same person. Now, it's not that 40 people in several different countries actually report to the same person, but effectively they do. Global organizations are complicated to say the least. Yet as W.L. Gore has shown, clear organization is not necessary to stay in business. The point being, of those 40, maybe only 10 (including the one woman) would show up in the official statistics because the rest are contractors or work in a different company and have a different official reporting structure.

In college in my aerospace engineering class of 2008, I think of about 40 graduates three were women. Those are approximate, because I'm not 100% sure who was aerospace versus mechanical engineering with aerospace concentration, but you get the picture. Materials science was very different, maybe 30-40% women, pretty stunning actually. In my graduating class at semester there were only two of us, and the other graduate was a woman. These are all anecdotal of course, your experience in engineering and technology will vary of course.

Why is it this way? Well, first of all, I think that there will never be an equal 50% split between men and women in science, technology, engineering and math fields. I feel that way because I know enough women and their husbands, and a lot of women make the decision to stay home and raise the kids. Yes I know two stay at home dads too, but they are in the minority. Still, why is it not 45%/55% women to men or at least 40%/60%? There were always more girls than boys in my high school advanced classes like calculus and college biology and physics. In fact, in my high school physics class of about 18 people, only two of us were male. Why did the two of us go into engineering while I think all the ladies in that class went into less technical careers? I feel that it has to do predominately with cultural expectations, and to a lesser extent the college support structure. Men are engineers that go to the office and do math, by themselves, and sit at a desk. Women work with people and collaborate in team environments, like a nurse on staff. Honestly, I think that cultural expectations are the major reason for the disconnect. There is also an attitude of competition in science and engineering, not necessarily direct, but the curriculum is tough and teaches you how to solve problems. A lot of people, men and myself included, often dove into the work alone for hours at a time, and while obviously working in teams and getting help from others is necessary, I am afraid that women see the system and don't want to do the solitary number crunching that college presents as "engineering". Now, actually in industry as a design engineer I spend probably 15 hours a week in meetings, another 10 hours a week talking to people informally about my projects, and then maybe 15-20 hours a week actually doing work at my desk. It is so different than college, there is very little on your own technical work, at least in my view. Design engineering is more like art meets sales. We create some art and then try to sell it to the rest of the team, making changes as they recommend until it is very functional art.

On the college support side, classes are not like the real world. There are similarities, but the differences are dramatic. I am afraid that throughout the formal college education process many possible engineers are not supported well enough. In other words, people skills don't get you strait A's in an engineering college, but they might get you CEO in a company.

I should really have high school job shadows now, because some days I feel like all I do is go to meetings and talk to people, Thursdays especially. True story, today I was running a machine in the morning to show a function to some South Koreans then in the afternoon I was running an impact gun changing worn bolts on one of the designs I am responsible for. I always enjoy asking women in engineering how we can get more women in engineering. I mean, I think in some small way I helped motivate my sister into it and I would like to get more women to try out science and technology. The way I think of it is, with an engineering degree, you can teach school, you can go to medical school, you can get an MBA, you can go to law school, you can start a business, and oh yeah, you can be an engineer too. Without an engineering degree, you certainly can't engineer, and chances are your degree will be much more limiting.

A standard argument for a liberal arts degree is that it expands your mind and shows you different ways to think about things, no one says that about a science or engineering degree, but those people obviously haven't sat through Compressible Fluid Dynamics or Intermediate Physics Mechanics II, not to mention studying relativity. I'm biased of course because I have two engineering degrees. I feel that there should be more engineers in the world. We get stuff done. Science is just amazing! Gears for example are simply fascinating.

Looking forward, I won't always engineer. At some point I would like to teach. I also have some other career goals which don't involve engineering. Yet, engineering is fulfilling, and often social, and there is no other education path which I feel would have developed my career and progressed my life like engineering has. For those of you that think, 'people like me don't go into science, technology, engineering, or math.' We want you! We want you to come to our meetings and say something we had not thought of, yet was actually realistic.

Customer Loyalty

This morning I received a "free" white coffee dream latte from Java Dreams. They keep track of how many drinks I buy and every so often I get a free one. Plus, I don't have to carry a card around that I would probably lose. They make good drinks. Most of the best lattes I have ever had. In fact, they sell the only white espresso drinks in Dubuque as far as I know.

On top of all that, they care about each person that comes up to the window. I mean we've had discussions about a number of things from job satisfaction to baseball to the weather to kidnapped and missing kids. They recognize the regulars and are always cordial. I mean, at McDonalds, coffee is on an assembly line, at Java Dreams it's a little piece of art.

They did not make any money from me this morning, but they sure earned a little more customer loyalty.

Executive Compensation and Innovation

It is shareholder annual meeting time of the year. I received a packet from a company I am invested in asking me to vote on a number of issues. This is a company with significant engineering resources so it hits close to home. In fact, knowing more than one engineer that works there is part of the reason I invested. One of the major issues, and actual the first thing to vote on, was executive compensation. Of the about 60 page packet, more than 20 pages were devoted to executive pay. Most of the pages are devoted to talking up the executives, how awesome the company and stock has done since they have been there, and how underpaid they are compared to comparable companies. Then finally 15 pages through the section the last three years of compensation is listed. About $19 million last year, about $18 million the year before and $13 million in 2010. 

Yes, I think CEOs should be compensated more than everyone else in the company. Yes, I think they should have equity in the company so that their interests are aligned with the shareholders. No, I do not think that a non-founding CEO should be paid four times as much as the people directly under him or 300+ times as much as his secretary. 

In 2010, I made less than $5000 for the four and a half months that I worked during the entire year. In March or anytime after I would have taken a full time engineering job (or “internship”) for half of what I make now. The company could have hired 200 new engineers, or 200 of almost any type of people in 2010. Yet it did not hire me. That company and I each wasted 2000+ hours of quality engineering time and the CEO of this company took home more than I might make in a lifetime. Personally, I feel that the difference between $1.9 million and $19 million in terms of actual quality of life or motivation to be nearly negligible. In other words, 900% more money might mean only 7% more effort, from one guy. I don’t see the value created. 

Coming at this from another angle, while I was in Singapore I met the human resources compensation director for an international US company with operations in 17 countries. I took a four hour bus tour of the city and young white guys kind of stick out to each other in Asia so we talked a little. We talked about how in India there are three levels of hierarchy or seniority for every one level of engineering in the United States. It seems like people in India get promotions all the time, but still do the same job. Then I asked about executive compensation. His succinct answer was simple, and completely mind boggling how truly unscientific it was. They look at what comparable companies pay their executives. 

I suddenly felt duped. Instead of a concrete way to measure value, like how I can justify my salary through cost savings and warranty reductions of my projects, executives are paid based on what other executives are paid. Then raises, extrapolating from shareholder documents received above, are determined by corporate profits and growth and with a little bit related to executive experience. This particular CEO who was paid $19 million in 2012 is being proposed a 9% pay raise. I can not justify these expenses, I will vote no. I do not see how one person can be worth more than 1000 times minimum wage, especially after I have worked for minimum wage a number of times. This company should invest in innovation, people, the future, or at least a bigger dividend rather than lining the pockets of such a small group of people. 

What kind of executive compensation innovations do I propose? A salary cap, not based on any government number, but as a ratio to the other employees in the company. Such as perhaps no one could be paid more than 100 times the lowest paid employee. Even at minimum wage that is $725 an hour, which is not terrible. Plus, if the CEO wants $800 an hour, then everyone in the company would probably get a raise. It brings everyone up at the same rate. Another idea, is to give the CEO the raise of the median worker every year. If that is only two or three percent so be it. I say that because the CEO's income is directly tied to the company and the people he manages. Some might say the CEO is the best employee at the company, give him the highest raise, but I say the CEO is the median CEO of the company who's fortune rises and falls with the success of the whole organization. Let his or her compensation reflect that. 

A disclosure of thoughts on billionaires, I do feel that founders ought to be rewarded highly for their innovation be it in business models or products or 100 hour weeks or whatever it is they do to found an organization. Mark Zuckerburg for example started something unique, I say pay the man for such innovation. Same for Bill Gates and other superstar creators. But a CEO that is simply moving into an established role through business school and the 40 year corporate pyramid climb is not the creator or innovator. He didn’t create a new pyramid, he simply got to the top of one of them. I feel there is a difference between founder equity and management equity. One is much harder to gain. 

Congratulations Berea!

My sister just graduated with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Milwaukee School of Engineering! I have to be honest, I had my doubts that we would be here today. Why am I so negative? She struggled! I mean school overall came fairly easy for me, she really had to work at it. I feel that sometimes the struggle gives more value to the final achievement than the results on paper. In other words, the results are what matter more than the effort, but meaningful results are often the product of significant effort and that is part of why the results are meaningful.

I suppose I always thought she would have one more semester or one more class to finish, but apparently, she is done. It is great! Not only has she graduated, but a company that she interned with offered her a job and she accepted. She starts working full time at ABB Monday.

She graduated and has a job. I mean, none of this happened overnight, it took years of work, 4 years and three months to be specific. Yet I feel like her IE degree is a brick wall she broke through. This is a significant accomplishment! Most people only have one bachelors degree graduation. She did it! She is a real industrial engineer! Congratulations Berea!!

My Sister and I at Her Graduation

Positivity Develops Motivation

I just finished reading Charlie Spedding’s book “From Last to First”. I had never heard of him either. The most significant unique achievement that is covered in the book is his run to 3rd place at the 1984 Olympic Marathon. I read more books than the average American, which does not say much, and this book stuck out more to me than most. 

So much of life is mental. I can get an A on this test. I will get an A on this test. I will set a personal record today. Most people define things in terms of “okay”, “not bad”, “pretty good”, and other mediocre, slightly negative, descriptions. Charlie mentions things like giving yourself the opportunity, and focusing on how well you can execute the ideal, the perfect, situation. 

In other words, how was the run today? It was prefect for me. (In fact I did have a perfect for me 11 miler in Singapore this morning.) That is such a huge mental shift from evaluating everything according to the fastest workout or race you have ever had. Sometimes the perfect training is slow and short. 

Obviously the book was about running. But I feel this attitude is probably more applicable toward things like an education and career. I am writing this on a 747 flying from Hong Kong to Singapore. With a measly year and a half with the company and at the young age of 26 I am entrusted with being a good candidate to travel to the other side of the world and spend time in the field. I am the only structures analysis engineer (or I like to think of myself as somewhat of a design engineer) on the trip. There will be  at least four direct Deere employees plus a number of dealer employees and customers/customer employees on this trip. I already wrote about why I have this opportunity, but it still seems strange to me that I am going. Had I been in charge, I would have asked several other engineers if they were interested before I allowed little me to go. Others have more experience. Others work more hours. Others will almost surely still be working for Deere in Dubuque in five or ten years. Honestly, I see myself as a bit of a liability. A liability in terms of the ideal 50+ hours a week quant who works for one company for 40+ years. I have never lived anywhere longer than six years. I don’t know what happens in year seven.

After reading Spedding’s book I have a feeling I am on this trip because I created the situation to give myself this opportunity. That sounds like I did a lot more work than I feel like I actually did. The situation is that engineers travel. How a person in Indonesia uses a machine is almost guaranteed to be different than how a person in North America uses a machine. Thus it helps us create more reliable machines if we can better understand how the customer uses the machine. In other words, Apple realized how much time people spend starring at a 3.5 inch screen and decided a 4 inch screen was a better decision. 

An interesting off shoot of this, since I am reading “Makers” by Chris Anderson, is the long tail effect. One size does not fit all. With the ability to customize, a tailored machine is significantly better than a one size fits all machine. Using a few simple constraints in forestry, european machines must be less than a certain width. Many countries and regions have ground compaction limits so weight and footprint matter. Other areas the loading is so repetitive that stronger structures are needed. In other words, engineers travel to understand usage patterns. I would love to go to Africa to study Internet and cell phone usage. I feel they are really in the midst of defining connectivity. 

So given the world inside my head of the opportunity to travel I assumed that at some point I would travel to other countries for my job. Once I knew I was going sooner or later it was simply a matter of letting everyone else know. Is it naive? Arrogant? Confident? I do not know. Is it arrogant to assume I will do something, then actually follow through with it?

The point of all of this is that I had a goal I was sure was going to happen, but it actually happened because I gave myself the opportunity. Well that’s not the whole story, I am incredibly blessed. But that’s another story...

Why I was Chosen to Go to Indonesia

Quite a few people have reacted with some surprise that I am going to Indonesia. After all, the more exotic trips are typically reserved for those people with more than two years of experience. Plus, I don't feel like the hardest worker or the most effective employee. However, there are a few things about me that do stand out.

1. I volunteered for the last five trips and was rejected. There is something significant to be said for persistence.
2. I did analysis work related to four problems/improvements of this specific customer. No one else (in the world) has as much failure analysis experience with this customer's issues as I do. That sounds more impressive than it is. In two days someone could be brought up to speed.
3. Pakistan and Costa Rica are not two places that most of my coworkers have spent time. I have experience traveling in the developing world. That is a rare skill in Iowa, and the United States to be honest.
4. Strangely enough, I am one of the more experienced people involved in this product line. There are quite a few 2011 and 2012 graduates with only a bachelors degree in this product line. Once they have more experience, I might not get this chance again.
5. The least tangible reason, employee engagement. This does not stand out about me, but applies to me. What employee engagement means is that the employees are excited to go to work. One rather simple way to keep people excited is change the task, even just temporarily. Doing nearly the same thing every weekday for several years may lead to the feeling that no development is happening. This topic is worthy of it's own article.

Lest this exciting situation seem out of the blue there are the reasons. When one goes through the list it actually makes a lot of sense. I am actually the perfect person to go. I can honestly say that no one has my particular skill set. Similarly, I really do not do much with engines so I will not get the chance to do altitude testing anytime soon. 

One week to go!

I Live in Iowa: Week 59

The week that was that will be no more. Never to be repeated. Let us start with the previous weekend. At my relatives in Minnesota, my sister and I tried to go to church, but had the wrong time and showed up half an hour after it ended. Typical miscommunication. Then we drove up to Mountain Lake because my sister had never seen our relatives graves or the old farm, which was sold in the 70s or something. It is as stereotypical as a farm in rural Minnesota comes. Except that they put out a bicycle path recently that goes from town past the farm to the nearby lake, pretty cool.

I spent some more time in the greenhouse getting dirty. The picture doesn't do the dirt justice. I already mentioned the story about the Japanese couple. Then my sister and I drove home, and enjoyed hours of talking of sometimes painful talking with each other. By the way, those awesome $70 Prana pants that I am wearing covered with dirt in this picture I wore up on the Diamond in 2010 and I wear to work and church all the time. Plus, they hem the pants for free at the Boulder store on Pearl Street.

Keepin' It Real

The work week was more or less uneventful, well not exactly. Actually we had a really good example of hesitation to change. One particular aspect of my job will be changing so that it takes perhaps 50-75 seconds to do a task versus the previous 20-30 seconds. However, that  increase in time is offset by a 40-65% decrease in time to do another task. In other words, instead of eight and a half minutes to do the other task now it takes around three minutes. That's huge, and the time savings for the second task scale depending on the size of the task. In other words, I feel the increase in time to do task one is more than offset by the time savings to do task two and thus not really a problem. However, there is some hesitation to change to the task that will increase in time. Also, the hesitation is not from people under 30. Hopefully this will work out so that both task one can remain 20-30 seconds and we retain the 40-65% time savings on task two. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

On the running side I ran 100.4 miles, as I said I would do over 100 so I did. Most of that was pretty slow but I did a workout on Saturday morning that was just humbling. My workout partner M could have been a sprinter. We did 4x200, 4x400, 4x200. We were running 31-32 for the 200s and I felt okay. Then we get to the 400s. We take off through something like 32 at the 200 and I fall way back and run a 67. That's still good in my book. M ran a 63. We get ready for the second one and in 40 meters he's out two steps ahead of me. I just run as well as I can and run a 69... to his 61. At that point I just did 200s and let him run the 400s. Still we were getting out in 30-31, and he is finishing at that pace. 

So I bring up the question, "Did you ever think about breaking four in the mile?"

M, "Yeah, I ran my 1500 PR, 3:51, on a windy day at Augustana pretty much alone. I ran the last lap in under 60. That was my senior year. I was just never in the right race." There is probably a lot of misquoting in there, but that's what was conveyed. I mean, the guy hasn't done any speed work in a month and he shows up at the track and runs 400s in 61s. Who does that?

Getting around to Saturday afternoon, I went rock climbing! For the second time this year! There were five of us. We went to the Palisades State Park just north of Savanna, IL. We climbed on Sentinel Rock, which is pretty cool. I had no idea that there were towers in this part of the country. Then we went to Galena for supper. It was great! I rarely get an hour of uninterrupted comedy when I'm out but between the five of us it was just joke after joke. For example, we ordered a plate of appetizers then two medium pan pizzas at Gobbies. Reasonable for five guys in their middle 20s? Ha! We each only ate one piece of pizza! The slices were seriously two inches high with dense dough! We each took home two pieces of pizza. Seriously, when would five guys in their 20s tired from a day of rock climbing order one medium pan pizza? Nevah happ'n!

There is a lot to organize this week, the next couple weekends I think I will be traveling. Plus, there is demand for more climbing, we might organize some more stuff in advance. It is going to be good. In case anyone is in Dubuque Saturday morning June 9th, come to the Grandview Gallop! It is the highlight of the Dubuque summer racing season and I know that the top competition is in better shape than last year so it should be a good race. 

We have Recruitment, Retention, Retirement, and Education Wrong

I should have called this blog "DOing" so that I could just brag about my accomplishments. Alas, I must discuss the things that I learn, and my failures. There are more similar articles in the pipe along the lines of my personal failure the next few weeks. Okay, here we go with this topic.

I always thought that one goes to school, gets an education, gets a job based on that education, I suppose gets promoted several times, and if one lives long enough, retires. Ah, the simplicity of childhood! Now that I have a few years in the post-formal-education ("real") world I see it is not like that, it's all over the place! If you want to make billions drop of out college and start a company. If you want to make millions go into investment banking, no particular degree required.

First of all, an education is not a guarantee of economic employment. That's a big issue to wrap your head around. It took a fair bit of unemployment for me to understand that. What does that really mean? Employers are not looking for you. The people who stand to economically benefit from your skills aren't searching for you. Day to day business continues and the business is not getting new people to fill new roles, it is producing a product or a service. Instead of education and recruitment being related as it seems wise, they are mostly unrelated. It is ludicrous, that the ability to have a job once you graduate is not based on your education. I mean, what's the point?

In other words, companies rely on resumes of people who have been self-developed and self-motivated coming to a website or the human resources department. That way they can be screened and some of the best ones can be offered an interview. I say self-developed and self-motivated because that is how you get an advanced education. You have to be motivated to struggle for the standard four years in college. Up until about age 22 or 23 the model in society is to, seriously, do what you want. What one does during that time does say something about one's motivation.

Unfortunately, once you join the post-formal-education world an impersonal business economy directs your monetary success and your most possible opportunities. There is still a disconnect between the education that is provided to the next generation, the opportunites provided to the next generation, and a third factor, future economic opportunities. Part of the reason for the disconnect, I feel, is the lack of recruitment from one generation to the next. For example, I came up with a possible model of corporate recruitment. What if companies would offer prospective high school students something like, 'come work for us over four 10-week summer internships and we'll give you $10,000 per year, then work for us two (or three or four) years after you graduate and we'll pay whatever student loans you have left, contingent on satisfactory performance reviews. No contractual obligation, you can leave early if you want, but if you stay that is what you get.' Kids are so influential that over six or seven or eight years you could develop precisely the set of skills that you would want for a promising 25 year old.

That brings us to another issue, retention. How do you get people to stay? After all, I did jump ship twice in the last 18 months and I am sure that both of my former employers would have liked to keep me. Well, amazing 401(k) matching that doesn't vest for three years is one incentive. It is good to have a certain amount of turnover to get new ideas in. Still the cost of losing an employee and all of the extremely relevant experience is not something that any profitable business would look forward to. In the past I feel that compensation, for the most part pay, was all that was needed to retain most employees. In other words, everyone looked at their neighbors and looked at themselves and decided life was good and everyone lived pretty similar lives and nothing needed to change. Unfortunatly for companies, the Internet came along and people's horizons were expanded. It is not that everyone wants more money to be in the 1% or to travel the world or have three months of vacation, but there is a slew of interests and desires that are unfulfilled in the working population. I realize I just alienated everyone over 40 and you are all thinking that I am a lazy free loader, but take an example of a man in his upper 50s. He is a social worker who works with disadvantaged people. He helps several dozen people every week and does pretty well at it. Unfortunately, you can't sustainably help a couple score of people emotionally every week. Half a century ago he might have muscled through it to the detriment of many, especially those close to him, but now we recognize it's an unsustainable situation. So how does his employer retain this employee? Hire another employee?

I feel that one strong method of retention is recognition. I don't even mean public recognition, I just mean letting employees know that they did well on something. I feel that unfortunately, managers often don't know what their employees are doing. That is the consequence of having subordinates, one person can not do all the work or know everything everyone is doing. I am very fortunate that recently I received a three sentence email from a senior engineer I work with complimenting me on my progress the last year. It feels pretty good. On another note I have been trying to take notice of other people who are doing their jobs well and telling them that when I notice. The results are often surprising. People respond thankfully and very graciously, and a little shocked. It is as though people are waiting for a complement subconsciously, but certainly not expecting one.

Another way that I feel employers can encourage retention is to offer diversity, and I don't mean hire people with different skin colors to fill some quota. If that is solely how our culture judges diversity than how shallow are we? No, I mean exposure to experiences that are alien or uniquely interesting to an employee. For example, I work on forestry equipment, I would love to take a trip to the Southeast or South America to visit a logging operation. The people I would interact with would come from a somewhat different background than myself, I assume. Their perspective on the final result of my work would enable me to make more appropriate recommendations in the future, I assume. Plus, it would show them I care about doing the best work that I can.

Switching subtopics we get to retirement. This modern invention is ridiculous! No one is entitled to live 20+ years golfing, eating at restaurants, taking trips, and doing the things we put off the rest of our life. The entire concept of delayed-life makes me cringe. What are you waiting for! One possible solution to the retirement issue and how to afford pensions is a solution that would likely increase retention as well. For example, a 35 hour work week with a retirement age of 75. There is so much knowledge and experience and capabilities wrapped up in the 55-65 year old crowd that more or less disappears from the economy every year. How many thousands of mistakes could be prevented if those people simply listened to our ideas every week and commented?

What I am trying to convey is that I feel it would be possible for people to contribute to the economy at a younger age similar to an apprentice if companies would recognize that future needs 10, 20, 30 years down the road will require the adolescents of today instead of focusing on the next quarter or next three years. At the same time we could have more time throughout our lives with family and friends and pursuing interests outside of work and continue to meaningfully contribute to a much later age, at least well into our 60s and even 70s. I also feel that with more freedom to pursue those topics most interesting to us including at work it will enable greater productivity and to quote a friend from college "revolutionary innovation". It is all just an idea. Take it and run.

Beyond 150 People

I read in one of my books, I think it was Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, that once a company passes 150 people, communication gets complicated. The example company that he uses is Gore, the makers of Gore-Tex, who always start a new location when one of their locations get to be 150 people. That way everyone at the location knows everyone. Another example was the military company. They do not climb above 150 much from what I understand.

I read this blog article by Seth Godin about working for a big company, and it stuck a chord with me. A couple of times I have come up with solutions to problems, and for whatever reason have not been able to follow through with the solution to a production change. Obviously part of business is deciding what needs to change and what does not, and my clout to decide between the two ranks at the bottom of the organization. In other words I desire to fix problems as soon as we find them, but there is a system of checks and balances that keeps people from running off and changing things without verification.

I should note that I don't like the word smart. If you start thinking in terms of "smart" and something else next thing you know you will start using standardized testing as one of the more important measures of a person.

This past week I also read the Valve company "Handbook for New Employees". It's really good, and it makes a lot of sense to me. For example, in a top down organization a few people at the top decide what projects are important enough to have people work on. In a flat organization, people work on the projects they feel are important. In other words, if the website at a top down organization gets redone it is because those at the top decided it was necessary. If the website at a flat organization gets redone it is because the employees decided it was necessary.

From a statistical point of view it makes sense. Instead of four people deciding on projects to pursue, 50 people deciding on projects to pursue are less likely to make mistakes. It is kind of like the financial crisis. A few people realized they could make a ton of money selling CDOs short, and managed to convince everyone else that if they took part in it they could have a larger house or larger paychecks. Of course, that is a huge oversimplification, and we could argue that everyone bought into the idea while it was happening, but giving loans to people that could not afford them seems like an obvious mistake. Remember they were not lending their own money and were thus protected from the potential losses. From the Valve handbook it seems that there is more accountability for value creation to the individual who does the work. In other words, how different would your work be if you were accountable for the value it creates through it's success or failure?

John Deere versus RFA

Rogers, Freels and Associates/Minnesota Engineering also known as RFA is my current employer. They have hired me to provide engineering services to John Deere, and last week John Deere offered me a job as a direct employee. At the risk of ruining my career with both companies, but providing a real life example to scores of others my age who will experience a similar situation, I am going to talk through it. If they do all fire me I have a year of unemployment saved up and I know that I add value in relation to structural analysis. The question stands: do I leave RFA and work for John Deere or stay where I am?

First, my midterm (1-5 years) career goals:

1. Spend time working abroad experiencing at least one other culture. I am particularly interested in China because of it's population and unique governement. However, I will go anywhere. While I was unemployed I applied to jobs in Afghanistan. I have a different risk tolerance than most Americans. You could say I seek out risk, but I digress, I have not gone BASE jumping or tired to raise a kid yet.
2. Work on difficult leading technical problems. This could happen with either company. It is more likely with John Deere if I were to transfer to the Moline Tech Center. It is most likely if I left industry and went back to school.
3. Learn more about business. For that I have applied to UD business school to get my MBA.
4. The invisible gorillia in the room that only I can see... Maybe they will let me have a leave of abscense or sabatical for six months, but realistically I plan on being unemployed again after I suffer in the wilderness. The gorilla actually trumps the first three items on the list, but I feel mentioning it at work is career suicide.

The rundown of positive and negatives for both companies:

• In order to travel and live abroad for months or years at a time, John Deere is the clear choice. However, I feel they are most likely to send someone with years of demonstrated leadership and technical experience. I feel I brag about myself enough so I'll just say that I doubt I would be their first choice for any traveling assignment. Solution: John Deere.
• As far as difficult technical problems, I feel there is a resistance in industry to embrace the most advanced tools or address the most minute details, such as understanding crack propogation in the heat affected zones of welds when the predominate stress are parellel to the weld. Tradition says the crack should propogate perpendicular to the stresses, but if the heat affected zone is soft enough might the path of least resistance be parallel to the stresses? Solution: go back to school.
• Since the actual work that I will be doing in either position for the next year or two will be exactly the same as I am doing now there is a logical question: which has better compensation? The base pay that I will receive with John Deere will actually be slightly less than with RFA. John Deere does offer more vacation days throughout the year, but only a few more. RFA has an incredibly flexible system where you can work unlimited overtime and get paid your strait hourly rate for it. You can build up hours and get a quarterly bonus or take more vacation days. You get paid for the time you put in. John Deere offers a strait salary, and overtime if you work more than 53 hours per week, and a yearly bonus, which can be significant, or it can be 0%.  Both offer similar health and dental plans, but my healthcare cost in 2011 was $0 anyway. John Deere gives life insurance, but RFA charges me less than a dollar per week. RFA has mediocre 401(k) matching, but it is vested immediately. John Deere has fantastic 401(k) matching, but you have to be there for three years before any of it vests. (Three years with no retirement benefits!) John Deere has a pension and RFA does not, but realistically I don't plan to retire. In summary the only financial benefit to joining John Deere is based on the possibility of a large yearly bonus, which depends on the company performance, and thus tractor sales in China, backhoe sales in India, combine sales in North America, and the price of grain being high enough for farmers to afford new equipment.
• The opportunity for leadership experience is strong within RFA because it is growing and expanding rapidly. I have already started helping to train new employees. At John Deere there is a long line of people ahead of me with more years of experience and more connections to management. Although there are more total positions of authority with a company of 60,000 people. Short term solution: RFA. Long term solution: Deere. Mid term solution: uh...
• People often say that one employer or another is prestigeous similar to universities. My experience with RFA and John Deere points to RFA as the more prestigeous. RFA fires people. John Deere I'm sure does fire people but I have not heard of it happening since I have been there. Once you are a Deere employee they have a hard time getting rid of you. Frankly, I feel that if you don't pull your weight after several opportunities to improve you should be out.
• The motivation for success and fear of being fired is strong when one is a contract employee. I went through a 45 week long job interview. I have not yet figured out how that motivation will translate to John Deere. Solution: get a therapist.
• I really like heat treating. I have a masters degree in heat treating steel and I've seen how powerful it is. In the division I work in now we do very little heat treating. However, our major competitior does a significant amount of heat treating. Two PhDs from my lab group (the best heat treating graduate program in the world?) work at our competitor and a friend and associate of mine from Kohler will start working there as well in the fall. Why is any of this significant? Heat treating has the ability to save tens of thousands of pounds from machines and make them last longer. The initial cost is significant, but it saves hundreds of thousands in fuel costs down the road on lighter machines. Solution: go work for the competitior.
• Job security in Dubuque is best with John Deere. It has been around 175 years and is growing. RFA offers the opportunity to relocate in the event of a staffing need change, but Deere is more stable in the microcosm that is Dubuque, Iowa. (I still can't belive I live in Iowa...) Solution: Deere.
• Does loyalty matter? RFA has been amazing to me! I do not think I have been very needy, but RFA has accomodated me very well. I despise the idea of jumping ship for the opportunity to get a bonus and marginally better job security. After all, I applied to John Deere in the first place and they did not offer me a job until over a year after that first application. Solution: RFA. 
• Finally there is the unmentioned, but subtle, difference in respect between contract employees and direct employees. It is minor and people still listen to the things that I have to say, but there is a difference in terms of which meetings you are invited to, the free jackets and shirts for working on a project, and the office gossip you are privy to. Solution: Deere.

So what am I going to do? I am not sure yet. I tried in my too subtle way to get more money out of either side to sway me, but alas my salary negotiation skills are about equal to my ability to sprint 200 meters. To be honest, I make plenty of money now, I feel greedy asking for more.

Stay tunned. 

Does Loyalty Matter Anymore?

Part of "The American Dream" is that by working harder you can get ahead, whatever that means. However, it is a well known fact that switching companies typically leads to a promotion and a raise. I have also been part of many organization that often focus on recruitment, and not retention. While this article is not the recruitment versus retention discussion, it has some of those themes.

This came up a few months ago among some of my friends. The subject came up that people sometimes leave something hanging to go somewhere else to get a bigger paycheck yet those who stayed do not get bigger paychecks at the end of the project. We felt as if loyalty was not rewarded. In hindsight I think that perhaps we were not thinking as long term as we should have. Often times the top management at companies consists of people that have been very loyal to the company for a long time. Additionally people do receive bonuses and raises based on their performance.

Another similar example is coaching a team of "individuals". I do not do much with recruitment because I feel that my time is better spent doing other things. Besides, my coaching salary comes out to about half of minimum wage already. However, I do feel a huge need to be involved in retention of current athletes. I can not coach someone who doesn't show up. Furthermore, I am currently dealing with such a small group of people that losing just one to injury or motivation is a double digit percentage loss. So I regularly ask how everyone is feeling and say thank you to them for showing up and cheer them on not only in running but also in other life events. Part of my job as coach is an attention giver. To some extent all the kids that show up want some sort of attention. Not every day, but at some point they want reinforcement of their perceived success.

In other words, if you can buy gas for $2.99 a gallon at the corporation that funnels money through warlords or buy it for $3.14 next door at the "free-trade" corporation that you have been using for the last three years because the two gas prices used to be the same price, would you still buy the expensive gas?

Loyalty is a finicky thing. Car companies have it, heavy equipment companies have it, Apple has it, Coke and Pepsi have it, cigarettes have it and so do a number of smaller companies, like my family's greenhouse. One of the interesting questions that has come up as a contract employee is, 'does the company that I am at have any loyalty toward me?' They are not providing health or retirement benefits and my timesheet and pay are on a weekly basis. It is quite obvious that if there would be a downturn severe enough, the contract employees would be "let-go" before the actual employees. The contract labor system is becoming more and more common at all levels of pay at a company. It is especially difficult for unskilled and low-skilled workers, the demographic that I feel would benefit the most from enhanced corporate loyalty.

I am learning so much as I grow up and experience life. It is not necessarily that my perceptions of the world are turned upside down, it is simply that a secret door seems to open in one room after another and provide me with a whole new set of ideas and experiences. I wasn't really looking for these doors, but since I now know they are there, I want to see what exists on the other side.

Leave a comment. Does loyalty still matter?

Applying Education

I realized something yesterday, I have had more short term (daily and weekly) consistency for longer in my life since moving to Iowa than I perhaps have ever had. My reasoning is that in school there were semester breaks and class changes and long summers. Considering that, I have been doing somewhat the same thing for eight months.

It is strange because I still feel like it is new and I have not yet arrived at the end of the semester yet there is no clearly defined next semester although some may argue retirement. This is now the application of what I learned through years of school. Lest my discussion be misunderstood as complaining, I suppose I never really explored the concept of acquiring a position of optional complacency.

People often talk about the corporate "ladder" but I feel a pyramid is really more descriptive of the advancement process. The ladder illustration implies that everyone climbs equally in single file which is clearly not the case. Instead many people remain well below the top of the pyramid. Our education system is in fact designed to accommodate this. There is no bachelors of Chairman of the board. I am not saying that anyone's aspirations are misguided. I am suggesting that the dynamic nature of our education system does not adequately prepare entry level employees for the consistent nature of big businesses. The only suggestion I can think of is a multi-semester class such as "Math and Physics for Engineers" which would last for two or three years, at the same time of the day and week with the same instructor for the entire class. (Sure, they can still have four month summer breaks, but that is a different topic.) I think injecting some long term consistency into the lives of young people, who might be missing that consistency at home would help develop better professional manners, long term relationships, and perhaps even some accountability.

In other words, I do not expect to be in the same position in 30 years because I have never had that kind of consistency. However, that is a possibility that would still be considered a huge success in my view. Many people do not use their degree within their career and in that respect I am more fortunate than most. This journey is continually interesting!

My Hexagon Desk

Here in Dubuque we have hexagon shaped cubicles with five people to a hexagon, and a corner left open so that we can get in in the morning. Anyway, I have a pretty sweet set up, two 22 inch wide screens and a 4 core 8GB RAM computer even though I only run simulations through our 256 core 560GB RAM cluster.

Screen Real-estate

People sometimes ask, "are you twice as productive with two screens?" The answer is obviously, "no", but if I am 5% more productive and that screen only costs 2% of my productivity then it's a good deal. The more important question is, "are you noticeably more productive?" The answer to that is, "yes". After using two screens one just seems so unproductive.

So that's my life 8-10 hours a day 4-5 days a week.