I Decided to Go With John Deere

I was really focusing on the next 18 months to three years and I finally thought what about five or ten or twenty years? When I project several possible alternatives for my career into the future, Deere became the better option of the two. There is simply a greater diversity and volume of opportunity in the long term.

This decision was not easy. I will be sitting in the same seat, working on the same projects, and [bonus dependent] making the same money. I will have the perceived quality of being a direct employee. In other words, perhaps this move will allow my voice to be heard more.

One of the things that Deere does to encourage productivity is try to create Shareholder Value Added (SVA) which is operating profit minus cost of capital. Greatly simplified that means that they are taking more money in than spending. There are typically three ways to increase value: quality, service, and price. Deere financial and the salesmen work on the price aspect, and we have a service department that work on service. Engineers on the other hand work on quality. I feel I have some unique capabilities that can improve both the quality and communicated quality of equipment. Being a direct employee allows me to profit from those skills on a performance basis. Even though my percentage of the bottom line is honestly insignificant, I still bring some skills to the table that no one else in my division has as far as I know. At least if they do have my skills they do not have the same combination.

I was entirely comfortable where I was but to progress I must make changes. Thank you for reading and thank you all who gave me suggestions the last few days regarding this choice.

Developing Patience

My dead grandmother wrote down that as an infant I was "easily discouraged". A college advisor once described me to an employer as one who "gets in a rut". All too often I desire rewards immediately. I do feel the pressures of deadlines and fears enhance my productivity. I was (and to some extent still am) most productive post-Pakistan because I felt death was imminent. Yet without exercising some amount of patience, I would have been the one left on that mountain.

I have much room to grow in the patience area. One of the things I do to develop my patience is to gather more data about a problem before making a decision. Typically the decisions in life to be made offer more information than we care to analyze. By taking time to consider other data we can make more informed decisions.

Nothing worth having comes easily.

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. 

I Live in Iowa: Week 45

Let me tell you there is a lot of heavy stuff in the process of dropping. More specifically, one big thing happening. If there is no resolution by Monday, and I don't expect there to be, I'll blog up my thoughts.

In the working world I had a moderately productive week. I made progress on my main project and worked on several smaller projects. It's amazing how one project can take a few hours, and another can take a few weeks, or even months even though they have many similarities.  I worked 42 hours. On the social side of work seven of us went out to Buffalo Wild Wings Thursday. I always enjoy getting people out of the office because people act differently in the office versus out of it. Seriously, once we went somewhere during the working day and five seconds after we were out the door the language changed and the topics changed. It is very interesting. I'm not entirely sure where the dichotomy of personality develops or what causes it to happen.

In the running work I ran a mediocre 64 miles. I had two less than spectacular workouts, one did have a 60.6 s 400 m in it which is actually my second fastest ever. I totally tied up the last 100 meters. I forget that the 400 meter race is hard because even though there is pain it only lasts about 20 seconds. Anyway, there is pain and it is good to experience that so that I can relate to the sprinters on the track team, which constitute the majority of our team, and certainly the most successful members of our team.

On the coaching side we had the IIAC Indoor Track and Field Championships. The results were good. Our top male sprinter was first in the 60m and 200m, 5th in the 400m, and on two point scoring relay teams. We had two male throwers go over 14m in the shot put for the first time. Our distance runners learned a lot. None of them ran particularly amazing times, but every one that raced had some sort of setback in the last three months. To go into a little bit of detail, our top female distance runner ran equal to her PR in the 800 with a huge positive split, which basically means she is in shape to run a few seconds faster if she would hold back the first 400 meters. In other words a good learning experience. On the men's side one athlete ran well, and he has only been running for about a month so I think we will see big things from him in the 800 in the weeks and years to come. Of the others, two of them have had setbacks this winter which have prevented them from having the base to race well through an entire season so I feel that both have run out of gas and need to do some longer stuff to get ready for outdoor track. We did have a few sprinters step up and run distance races and I think that at least one enjoyed it enough to go out for cross country next year.

On the investing side DHT closed Friday at $1.24. You're welcome. For me that is a 4.2% increase, in what three weeks? If you are skittish I advise putting in a limit order on Monday for $1.26 to sell everything and you can then put that in a saving account and remember that one time when you made more interest in one month from investing than you made in two years in a savings account. However, I'm not going to sell because the stock has hit $1.30 on two separate occasions in the last few weeks and I am rather confident that it will be trading much higher in the months to come. Plus, with the dividend, I'm inclined to keep it a long time, at least a year to get the 15% tax rate on long term gains.

I had a good week. I hope that you had a good week as well. Also, keep in mind that heavy things are dropping and if there is no resolution look back here monday night around 8-9PM Central Standard Time for an incredibly honest and revealing view into my life.

I Recommend Eating out of Ceramics

Materials come in three general classifications: metals, polymers (plastics), and ceramics. The differences between the three different materials has to do with the molecular structure.

• Metals are characterized, in part and in general, by electrical conductivity, which means the electrons in the material are able to move relatively freely. Due to the movement, the diffusion, within the metal of the atoms and electrons metals are generally very ductile, bendable. Unfortunately, aluminum has been linked to Altzheimers and iron overdose can be a fatal problem. Metal is awesome but too much of it in your body can be a bad thing.
• Polymers are characterized by chains of mer units, thus the name poly-mer means many mers. The difficulty with polymers is that chemicals are used to join the mer units together. Bisphenol-A which has been linked to a slew of bad diseases caused quite the uproar a few years ago. No matter how stringent the cleaning process, some of the catalyzing chemical, like Bisphenol-A will remain in the polymer. If it was possible to create and isolate a single long chain of a polymer it would be an incredibly strong nano wire. That is in fact how climbing ropes and ropes used for shipping and industrial setting are so strong. The polymer is continuous from one end of the rope to the other.
• Ceramics are something in between. They are very orderly like polymers yet they exist in bulk three dimensional organization like metals. Ceramics are not very electlically conductive at room temperature because the electrons around each atom are not free to move about. That means that ceramics are less ductile than metals. This means that the material also is stronger than metals. Think carbon fibers, because they are ceramic. The advantage for eating is that unless a conscious effort is made to scrape and scratch the ceramic, it will not release atoms as easily as metal and it has nothing to leech like polymers.

I recommend ceramic when it comes to eating. Unless you are anemic in which case using cast iron cookware will help boost that iron in your body. 

Improving Ring Gear Life (Gear Design 101)

We recently had a situation at John Deere where a particular gear failed during testing before it was desired. There were a number of complications with the testing and the gear is just part of the picture. In other words, we caught a number of issues during the normal testing process so that when the product is eventually released with the new modifications it will last years in the field, without a question.

Since heat treating ring gears is my specialty I took the initiative and started asking questions. On a tangent, Google: "heat treating graduate school" with or without quotes and WPI is the only college that comes up in the top ten with a result for a graduate degree. In other words, did I go to the #1 school in the world for heat treating graduate programs? Anyway, as I started asking questions I desired to give my input, even though I am clearly not responsible for the gear or the testing in any way.

Engineers do quite a bit of trying to communicate to other people via presentations, so I created a PowerPoint. It is the best presentation I have made during my working career and possibly ever. Take a look for yourself.

Improving Ring Gear Life

As you can see, there is a significant amount of simplicity. It is only one slide. There are pictures, an equation, color, bold typeface, and quantifying numbers. I just gave you months of education, in the space of about three tweets. This information is not specific to ring gears, but  ring gears are typically expensive and prone to failure.

Lest anyone has the idea that the solution is always this simple, there are often other constraints like the bolts to the ring gear, the manufacturer we outsource the gear from, and the other components in the system (like a pinion gear) that will all be affected by changes to the design or heat treating recipe. Honestly, I would be pretty happy just designing gears and transmissions. Happy engineering!

I Live in Iowa: Week 44

Sorry for the later than usual update. The thing is, I have obligations and priorities above this blog. Examples are engineering, running, coaching, eating, and often enough laying on my couch qualifies too. Since I don't have Internet at home, besides on my phone, it can be a hassle writing anything more than a tweet.

In the engineering world I banged my head against the wall on the same project I was working on last week. I think I have it figured out, but I'll find out tomorrow when I get to work. I worked 42 hours on this this week. Well, perhaps a few hours were on other things. It is a project that is necessary for compliance (safety and ISO standards) so spending extra time on it while the project is still in the virtual stage will save significant hassle later. Due to the size and complexity of the model I am reminded of graduate school when I would work furiously and then wait until I knew if I had succeeded. It can be a frustrating process, but always a good learning experience.

Coaching went really well. I see myself as a positive motivator and this week I was able to interact with several athletes before their races and they turned in season and personal best performances and seeing the satisfaction in them after the races is great! I mean I like setting personal records, but coaching I can be part of dozens of PRs every weekend.

In my personal running I had a good week. I only ran 62 miles but that included a 17 mile long run with pace variation near the end (a 5:50s and 5:40s mile), a really good 3x1000 at half marathon pace, 400 at 800 pace, 2x800 at 3k pace, 2x400 at mile pace, 2x200 at 800 pace, and on Friday I set a new 800m PR! I drove up to UW Madison to run the mile at their Red and White Open. Unfortunately, I had the wrong meet schedule and they ran the mile at 4 PM not 5 PM and I arrived at 4:35 PM. So I talked to one official and suggested I run the 3k, and talk to a second official. The second official said they had already run the 3k. I asked if there were any distance races left and he said there was the 800, and plenty of room in it. So I put myself in the slow heat of the 800 assuming that at a D1 meet everyone would run away from me because I am slow.

So I did the worst warmup I can remember. I was rushed so I did a mix of jogging and strides for a mile and a half or so and then it was time to line up. We started with a two turn stagger in lanes and I was on the outside in lane five. I started and never saw another person in my race.  First 200m in 31, second in 33, third in 32, and final in 33. It was very aerobic and felt somewhat slow until the last 125 meters when I really struggled. It was pretty much a time trial, but I did get a few cheers. Anyway I ran 2:09.54 to PR by 1.8 seconds and finally become a 2:0 guy.

I cooled down in their wonderful full sized indoor turf barefoot. As I was putting my shoes on I watched what makes D1 so catered. A kid came in with an injury, it looked like pulled hamstring, and there were seven trainers around him. No lie, seven trainers to one injured kid.

Seven Trainers, Two Staff Members and One Athlete

On the investing side DHT finished closed at Friday at $1.18. So at that point we are out just the commission. However, I traded in the $1.20s range most of the week with a few hours on Tuesday the 14th above $1.30. I saw that soon after it went over $1.30 and I thought about selling it just so that I could say "I told you so", but I would rather keep it for awhile because I feel it is worth more than $1.30 a share.

On the random knowledge side of things I was watching Contagion, and that brought up the Spanish flu of 1918, which I never really learned about in school so I started reading and learned that Vitamin D can prevent getting influenza. In other words, getting sun, eating mushrooms, orange juice, and milk might keep you from getting the flu. As I continued to read I discovered Cytokine Storms, and the role that antioxidants can play in reducing such a positive feedback loop. In other words, eating your blueberries and pomegranates will likely reduce the severity of a bad fever.

I hope you had a good week as well.