Revealing Too Much

Difficulties working with the Psycho Colleague (PC) is not news to anyone who has come in contact with him. In fact, the architect of the Flying Flux couldn't sleep for a whole night upon learning that the Psycho Colleague were to join the project. In my regular mano-a-mano session with my manager recently, even he let his feelings show regarding PC. It is telling that PC has so frustrated my manager that he divulged more to me than I believe he should have.

Without going into details, let's just say PC has "issues". Futhermore, my manager, to my surprise, mentioned that firing anyone is excruciatingly painful with all the paperwork and justification that's required. He didn't mention PC by name, but it was obviously who he was referring to (better not be me!).

The whole conversation made me rather uncomfortable, like watching William Hung on American Idol. Cringingly uncomfortable, yet strangely alluring.

Oh Useless Me

The Psycho Colleague strikes again. This time, it was as a response to my request for him to do a bit of investigative simulation. A little while ago, I wrote about electromigration and its detrimental effect on silicon circuits. Although we recently taped out a major bug fix to the Flying Flux, we found after the fact that there are indeed a good number of significant electromigration concerns that may limit the part's lifetime. This requires repair of course, but on top of that, I wanted to know whether the new Flying Flux will return to our labs and burn out immediately when the power turns on.

A bit of simulation work is necessary in order for us to both analyze risk and properly set expectations. So what answer did I get from the Psycho Colleague when I, as project leader, asked him to do such an analysis?

Please try not to waste my time with useless tasks.

What's that song again by Aretha Franklin?

Pulling Our Weight

This past Wednesday (Nov 11) was Veterans Day in the U.S. One of my colleagues mass e-mailed to a big swath of the company a patriotic poster depicting a saluting soldier in ceremonial uniform on one side juxtaposed with the head of a bald eagle on the other side, both over a background of a waving American flag. The words "Happy Veterans Day" was written across the front in large, bold, white letters. I replied with another poster (inset), indicating that here in Canada, the same day is celebrated as Remembrance Day.

Later on in the day during a team meeting, my manager asked me what was being celebrated by us Canadians for Remebrance Day. He tossed out the "French Canadian War" (??!) as a possibility. I replied, "World War I, World War II, Korean War ... and others, like Afghanistan." The response from him was one of mild surprise that Canada was even involved in such activities. The fact is Canada has lost a larger proportion of its population to fighting in WWI, WWII, and the current war in Afghanistan than the United States. Canada also participated alongside the US in numerous other military actions such as Yugoslavia (Kosovo) and Somalia. Not only that, Canada was even first to massively violate human rights by interning its own citizens of Japanese decent a full two months before the American did so. The fact that Canada pulls more than its weight hardly makes up for the fact she is 10x smaller than her giant neighbour, making any extra weight it pulls hardly noticeable in the grand scheme of things.

This is not unlike working at the Canadian arm of FluxCorp, where despite the economic downturn and the poor economies of scale of being a small office, the mothership continues to keep us around. The reason? We more than pull our own weight in terms of productivity and profitability to the company. Yet, many colleagues down below the 49th parallel are often surprised to learn of our existence despite the billion dollar revenue that the Flying Flux, designed mostly out of Ottawa, is slated to generate.

My manager may not know much about Canadian military history (and who can blame him, Canadians themselves aren't exactly erudite about their own history either), but at least he knows we're here. And that's a good thing (unless he finds out about our uber-Canadiana perks).

For Shame

For those that haven't heard, Canada has a shortage of H1N1 flu vaccines. And in Ottawa, the H1N1 vaccine clinics are currently restricting the shots to those in the high risk groups. One of my colleagues came to work today and boasted about his wife and child having gotten the vaccine the previous night. I had inquired whether they have any illnesses that qualified them as high risk. 'No' was the answer. But the clinics work on the honour system (to reduce bureaucracy and delay) and to get the shots, his wife simply lied about her and their child's medical history. Not an inch of shame from my colleague. In fact, his reaction is just the opposite, being happy that they cheated the system for personal gain.

If you're on a sinking boat, would you give a swift kick to children in a life raft if it made space for you to get on? And if you did, would you boast about it afterwards and advise people to do the same?

For shame.

First Snow

The first snow of the season has arrived in Ottawa. It's wonderful; it's beautiful. The small nip of the cold air feels refreshing. That is, until I realized my car battery has died and due the recent switch from daylight saving time back to standard time, darkness had come early, thus forcing me to search in the dark for battery terminals under the hood to jump start the car.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

The Stain of Management Jargon

Clear communication is vital in any workplace that requires teamwork, no more so than working across geographic and temporal separations such as we do here in our satellite office. We are coming up to the end of shipping out Version B of the Flying Flux and as the deadline approaches, miscommunication can create costly delays. Thus, I have been assuming nothing and making my thoughts known explicitly. Sometimes, doing so means writing something that may be obvious or redundant in an e-mail. But in order to avoid the risk of the reader feeling patronized, I include a disclaimer at the end indicated the reason I am doing so. However, in my latest e-mail, I inadvertently resorted to using one of those filthy management jargony words -- over-communicate. Ugh... The offending word was used in my disclaimer, that I would rather "over-communicate" at this point in the project.

I could have used any number of descriptions or short phrases to describe the need and my desire to communicate clearly and perhaps even redundantly. Yet, I opted for the buzzword. This is like the epiphany of realizing I was more of a PowerPoint Engineer than a real one. The metamorphosis continues...

I feel so dirty.

The Queue

What would you wait in a long line for? To buy tickets to a sports event? To see your favourite celebrity? To get on a ride in Disney even though you're baking under the hot sun and the kids are crying and the ice cream is melting and damn we're not going to leave this damn line because we've been here for over an hour now and I paid a lot of money for us to come and see Mickey and you kids better start having a good time now or you're gonna get it later when we get back to the trailer park?

Since Monday, what the residents of Ottawa have been willing to wait for is the H1N1 vaccine. Of the five clinics spread around town, each typically have a line of 200 people with a wait time of 2-3 hours. Now this is not surprising. I'm planning on getting my shot as well. After all, the infection rate in the city is rapidly climbing and a child has already succumbed to the virus.

What is surprising is that on Wednesday, the lineup outside the grand opening of a new business equaled the total lineup of all five H1N1 clinics. Yes, about 1000 people waited in line, some up to 3.5 hours, all to get into a new supermarket named T&T (see picture). You'd think that in a metropolitan area of a million people, Ottawans would be used to the sight of a supermarket. But folks, this ain't no ordinary supermarket. It's the first really big Asian supermarket, about half the size of a Walmart, to open here in Ottawa. Sure we got a Chinatown here with a few family-run self-proclaimed 'supermarkets' here, but this is a full order of magnitude bigger (and cleaner).


Being a fan, dare I say connoisseur, of Asian food, I fully welcome this development and the coming of age of Ottawa as a city with an increasing blend of ethnicities. I even signed up to T&T's e-mail list just so I can get a freebie -- a pair of stainless steel chopsticks.

So what would I wait in a long line for? H1N1 vaccine? Yes. Free chopsticks? I think the eventual answer to that question will be another signpost on the road of self-discovery and actualization. Actually, that's just poppycock. I already know I'm cheap.

Women in Engineering

Men will always delight in a woman whose voice is lined with velvet. ~Brendan Francis

During a team meeting last week, one of my colleagues received a telephone call on his other line. It was a woman. She has a sexy voice, as later recounted by said colleague. So he put the meeting on hold as he continued his conversation with her. It turned out she was looking for a job. A cold call for a job; rare, but not unheard of. The twist was that she was at the front lobby using the phone that couriers typically use when they're delivering packages. She just picked it up and randomly dialed an extension. Proactive. Brilliant.

So he set down his phone and met her in the lobby, gave her his e-mail so she can send him her CV, and chatted for a few minutes regarding her career aspirations. As he told us the story over lunch, he opined that she is most probably unqualified for a job in analog design, the field in which she aspires to enter. And yes, he freely admits, he is biased against women, his bias being the result empirical evidence derived solely from his years of observations.

The unforunate irony in all of this is that her success in obtaining at least a face-to-face meeting with a FluxCorp employee had nothing to do with her brain, but everything to do with her feminine qualities, which in this case was a sultry voice (and as my colleague found out later, a pretty face). One can imagine that if the caller at the front lobby was a man, the conversation would have been short indeed. Thus, it appears my colleague's biases towards women are both politically incorrect (women aren't good at engineering) and politically incorrect (only pretty ones need apply).

Engineering, as a profession dominated by men, is not so closed as to refuse entry to women, but neither is it so open that women are always treated as intellectual equals. But as in any other testosterone dominated group, years of training in hard logic and cold analysis is no match for seductive playfulness and enticing curvaciousness. So sex sells, even when looking for a job in engineering. I know all about it as years ago, I was party to hiring someone (The Siren) who's only qualifications can be summed up neatly in Woody Allen's 1973 book Getting Even:

She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak.

A set of parabolas: {y=(x-x₀)², y=(x+x₀)²}. Who knew Allen was such a mathematician.

Corporate Perks

Despite government bailouts, corporate perks continue amongst those on corporate welfare. It's simply disgusting behaviour, unless of course, you're the one getting those perks.

Here at FluxCorp, no government handouts were taken. Thus, I feel perfectly fine taking in all the perks I can squeeze out of the mothership. And let me tell you, these are fiiiine perks. Yes, there's a salary freeze, a hiring freeze, and a travel freeze. There's even a 401k freeze for my unlucky colleagues in the land of the free (as in pension-free). But not here at our satellite office. Not here in the truth north strong and free.

We get...wait for it...wait for it some more...the suspense is building...free food! OK, so it's not like the perks that were given to Ralph W. Babb Jr., chief executive of Dallas-based lender Comerica, which included a new country club membership with an initiation fee and dues of more than $200,000. Nor is it like the perk that GMAC Financial Services chief executive Alvaro de Molina received, totaling $2.5 million from his company to help cover his personal tax bill. But folks, I'm down at the bottom of the totem pole here. And as far as bottom feeders go, I think the perks here are excellent.

Now let's get back to the topic of free food. First, we get free tea and coffee. Not just any free tea and coffee. But 7 types of teas and 15 types of coffees. Add to that hot chocolate, chocolate milk, milk, low-fat milk, Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, ginger ale, rootbeer, diet versions of the above soft drinks, orange juice, grape juice, apple juice, and bottled water.

Second, we get free baked goods. Fresh croissants, muffins, cookies, breads, pitas, and on occasion, bagels. Don't forget the margarine, jam, syrup, and hummus to go with those baked goods.

Third, we get free fruits and vegetables. Apples, oranges, bananas along with a pre-washed pre-cut mixed fruit platter. As a complement, a couple of types of salads and a raw veggie platter to go along with it (veggie dip and a variety of dressings are a given of course).

Fourth, we get snacks. Peanuts (pre-salted or shelled), trail mix, and three types of potato chips. They go well with the bag of pretzels and a few boxes of different types of biscuits and crackers. Shredded cheese, too, to sprinkle on top if you're feeling a little more famished than usual. If you prefer something healthier, there's three types of breakfast cereals in the cupboards as well.

Last, we get dessert. Yogurts, fruit cups, ice-cream tubs, ice-cream sandwiches, ice-cream sticks, hard candies, 8 types of granola bars, 5 types of gum, and at this time of the year, Halloween chocolates (yum).

All this food to feed an office of 15 people. But we're not insensitive to the fact there's a global recession on right now. In fact, we've made concessions. We used to get deli platters and frozen microwave dinners. We've voluntarily given those up and replaced them with cheaper things like ice-cream. It was hard a first, not being able to make a croissant deli sandwich and Lean Cuisine for lunch...but I survived.

To stockpile and process all this food, we have in our common area four refrigerators, four microwaves, and two dishwashers.

I've always considered our receptionist to be the most important person in the office. She's the one responsible for grocery shopping and keeping the cupboards and fridges well stocked. You should see the angst when she's on vacation. The horror...the horror...

I wonder if my problem with gluttony has anything to do with this.

Assigning Blame, er... I mean Credit

Isn't it nice that the Nobel Prize in physics went to two guys that worked on semiconductor analog circuit design? Woohoo! The awarding of the Nobel Prize in peace often creates controversy, as witnessed by this year's honour going to the world's chief optimist-extraordinaire-superstar. Alas, this controversy has unfortunately infected the physics prize as well, as reported by the IEEE Spectrum podcast Who Deserves Credit for the Nobel Prize-Winning CCD.

Assigning credit is a difficult thing to do in the workplace, where everyone plays an important, if not critical, role. Who should get the credit? The guy** with the original idea? The guy who implemented that idea and flushed out its imperfections? The guy who improved upon the original idea? The guy who tried out three other competing ideas so it can be shown that the current idea is the best of the lot? Or, as higher up would like to contend, the guy that pays all the other guys doing the work? Recognitions tend to go to individuals. That's just how it works. And if a few get singled out, there are bound to be those that are left out.

That's why it's important to have a visible profile at work. Don't mistake having a visible profile to being an attention whore. But just as networking is important when looking for a job, it's also important once you've obtained that job so others know what you're doing or just that you exist. Being visible ensures that when credit is being handed out, you're at least given consideration.

Of course, the flip side of that coin is when projects fail, you'll be given plenty of consideration as well, especially by those that you've never heard of until then.

So what should you do if you end up with all the blame but none of the credit? Why not let Dolly cheer you up:



** The word 'guy' is being used in the broadest of terms, synonymous with 'man', meaning all of mankind, including, but not exclusively so, everyone, male and female, named Guy. In no way does 'guy' indicate that engineers can only be men, but in reality, it almost always is, so while it would not be untrue as a generalization, I feel compelled to write this non-sexist disclaimer because as well all know, this blog strives to be politically correct, as long as what's correct is being defined by me.