Feeling old

I was in the hospital visiting my grandmother this weekend. Last week she had fallen while trying to put on her shoes and broke her leg near the hip. Thank goodness it wasn't her hip as that's supposed to be much harder to recover from. So thanks to a metal pin and 3 screws installed Thursday, she's starting the long hard road to recovery.

I was amazed that the physical therapist was able to get her to try a few steps while I was there. She was in a lot of pain and was reluctant to do anything which made it worse, such as moving the injured leg. The thing which was toughest for me to take was the sounds she made when the pain hit her. I was also struck by how small and frail she looks now. I know it's been a long gradual process but it really struck me while watching her struggle with the pain.

It's strange how the roles feel reversed now. When I was small, she used to take care of me while my mother was at work. She was always able to help with anything I needed. Now we've got to do the same for her. It seems kind of strange for all of us and is taking a little getting used to.

Hazmat Modine

A couple months ago, my wife was reading the latest edition of the schedule of entertainment from our neighborhood community center. It's well worth doing because they always have some sort of program which we find entertaining. It turns out they had managed to attract one of my favorite new bands, Hazmat Modine, to perform near our house.

You might have heard them on NPR about a year ago. I didn't catch that program but a friend did and was so amazed by their music that he felt obliged to tell me about it. After listening to his CD, I had to buy a copy for myself.

As much as I like their CD, they were much better in person. I highly recommend seeing them if you get the chance. I can hardly wait for their next CD to be released. Yes, they're really that good.

You can search on YouTube for samples of their performances. Here's one to get you started.

One of Carl Sagan's last speeches

I've just finished listening to a Point of Inquiry podcast featuring Ann Druyan (widow of Carl Sagan). That would have been interesting in its own right but this episode also features Carl Sagan’s last public address for CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal).

While I've always enjoyed Sagan's work, I found this speech particularly interesting. In it, he makes a number of very accurate prophecies about the slow backwards slide America seems to have been taking in its understanding of scientific topics. What I find most amazing is that he could be skeptical of pseudo-science and still be so understanding of people who subscribe to these erroneous beliefs. In this speech, he urges skeptics everywhere to be more understanding of the individuals on the other side. We must learn to separate the erroneous belief from the believers. Education, not ridicule, is the proper response.

He also manages to sneak in a few jokes at the expense of those who believe in alien abductions and crop circles. Why would a race sufficiently advanced to have traveled such long distances waste time making circles in wheat fields? It seems a bit silly when put that way, eh?

Point of Inquiry podcast

I've just started listening to the Point of Inquiry podcast and have consequently been catching up on older episodes. The episode I was listening to today featured one of my favorite scientists, Bill Nye. Bill was making a case for improving the poor state of scientific literacy in this country. He was doing it with his usual enthusiasm and humor.

With all the environmental challenges currently facing us, this is an unfortunate time to have enrollment in engineering and science programs at such low levels. Given the absurd popularity of pseudoscience these days, it's particularly disturbing to see so few new scientists entering the workforce.

This podcast also has episodes featuring interviews with or information about more of my favorite scientists and/or skeptics - Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Phil Plait (AKA The Bad Astronomer), Harry Houdini, and James Randi. I can't wait to listen to those.

The same company which produces this podcast also publishes Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer magazines.

Pitfalls of being the family tech support person

The always entertaining LifeHack has an interesting article about How to Survive as the Family Tech Support Guy (or Gal). Most of us with more than a passing interest in technical matters get stuck in the role of tech support for family and friends from time to time. Sometimes this can be a rewarding experience but often it can be frustrating if expectations aren't set early.

1) This probably isn't your full time job. Even if it is, who wants to work extra hours for free? Let the person seeking your help know that you have other obligations and that their problem will have to fit into your schedule. It's okay to be a bit flexible for emergencies but if you continually sacrifice your own downtime to help others, your resentment will show eventually.

2) Find and/or train a first level family tech support person so you can advance to second level support. Usually younger people are good candidates for this since they seem to inherently understand new technologies better than most oldsters. I've been lucky that my stepfather has taken on this role for me. I'm happy to take his calls because I know when he has questions, he's done a complete job of troubleshooting which means that I've got a difficult problem to deal with. I enjoy a good problem now and then. It's telling someone how to convert pictures to a different format for the 23rd time that annoys me, especially when they can do a Google search just as easily as I can.

3) Learn which people are time wasters and avoid them. Few things are more frustrating than spending some of what should be your leisure time doing research to give someone advice only to have them do the opposite because the sales clerk at the local electronics warehouse has given them a contradicting opinion. Wow, 6 months in the industry at minimum wage gives them the equivalent of all your training and/or experience, not to mention the fact that they probably get incentives for pushing whatever crappy product they've recommended. In this case, I bow out gracefully but resolve never to spend time helping that family member or friend again.

More advice for young engineers

A few more pieces of advice occurred to me since I wrote the last post.

1) Never accept counter-offers. The chances are pretty slim that the only reason you were changing jobs is money. An offer of more money or a change of titles probably won't fix all the problems which caused you to take the relatively drastic step of looking for a new job. While it's quite flattering to hear how your old company can't do without your valuable contributions, usually none of the promised changes are permanent aside from a raise in salary. Once you get used to that, and sadly it never takes as long as you'd think it would, you'll probably be dissatisfied again. What's worse is you may have burned a bridge with the company which made you an offer by accepting your old company's counter-offer. It rarely pays to burn bridges.

2) Don't go back to an old company unless you really loved it the first time. This is for much the same reasons as the point above. No matter how much a company claims to have changed, the truth of the matter is company culture rarely changes. Companies with glaring flaws usually never correct those fundamental problems.

3) Socialize with your co-workers on a regular basis. You'll be surprised at how a few lunches or the occasional happy hour can build stronger working relationships which is good for everyone involved. Keep up those relationships once you change jobs. That's the best way to build a wide network of friends. Your network can help you with finding new jobs, recommending ways to solve problems, as well as giving you someplace to do a little venting about workplace frustrations.

Advice to young engineers

A long time ago I was given a bit of advice that has served me well over the years. An engineer with much more experience than I had at the time made the simple statement that "your company doesn't love you". What he was trying to say was there's only one person you can really count on to look out for your best interests and that's you. Over the years, I've refined that simple statement into a philosophy which has helped me make some small amount of sense of how engineering companies work.

1) Never trust head hunters. These paid recruiters have a list of jobs to fill. They'll always try to steer you towards their least attractive positions since those are the hardest to fill. The rare "dream jobs" require almost no work to sell. Recruiters will lie to you about lots of things, including what contracting rate is equivalent to a given full time salary. If you do decide to work with a head hunter, make sure you tell them you want to be informed before they submit you on any job. That will help prevent misunderstandings where you apply to a company only to find out the head hunter has also submitted you. This is especially important if you ever decide to work with multiple head hunters at the same time. Being submitted by several agencies may lead to disputes about which should get paid if you want to accept the job. Companies don't like dealing with that sort of ambiguity and may decide against hiring you altogether to avoid the potential conflict.

2) Rarely trust Human Resources. Their job is to hire and retain workers at the lowest possible cost to the company. The best HR representatives will realize that if they can keep employees happy, the company will benefit in the long run. That's as rare as a car salesman who realizes that if he works with you to find the car that best meets your needs instead of one which offers him the best commission for the least amount of work, he might be rewarded with your return business and referrals. In my 30 years in the computer industry, I've met just two HR reps who I felt were true advocates for employee satisfaction and as a consequence might work to see I was treated fairly. That's not a terribly encouraging percentage.

It probably pays to do some negotiating when you're faced with a job offer. They're probably walking the tightrope of seeing how cheaply they can hire you without being too insulting. That's why they look for hints about how much you were making at your last job. You would think that a job has a specific worth to them which would be easy to calculate which would dictate what they'd offer you but you'd be wrong.

3) Salary increases are almost never fairly distributed. Companies tend to pick company wide target percentages for raises and those percentages tend to remain unchanged as they pass down the line though the executive staff is almost never restricted to such tiny percentages. So the person in the mailroom who has precious little impact on a company's bottom line may have the same target percentage raise as engineers working extra hours. What's frequently worse is when they create a raise pool by giving a first level manager this same target percentage for all the employees who report to him/her. A manager with an outstanding team of workers will either be forced to give the same percentage to everyone or worse yet, to attempt to steal from some employees to correct past salary inequities. Meanwhile there's no incentive for managers to return part of their pool should they have mostly average or below average employees working for them. Keep an eye on what you're worth to other companies in the industry and always make sure your salary measures up.

4) You're only as good as how well your last project or assignment was perceived. The minute you're not viewed as contributing to the bottom line well in excess of what it costs to keep you employed, you're no longer an asset to the company. That puts you at risk of making the list for the next lay-off. Sometimes this is exceptionally unfair because the perception may have been caused by you getting assigned to a project doomed to failure by factors outside your control. Keep an eye out for signs of project failure and explore transfers if things start looking bad. Always keep your resume up-to-date because we've already seen that HR cares more about the company's needs than yours.

5) Strive to give the company good value for their money. It's really your best hope of getting glowing referrals from your manager and co-workers. Part of this requires that you make sure they know how good a job you're doing. Suffering silently doesn't serve anyone except for a boss who isn't interested in trying to reward good workers.

6) Network with former co-workers. No job lasts forever so it pays to always be thinking about what you would do if circumstances were to suddenly change.

7) (courtesy of my friend Chard) A company never treats you any better than they do when they're trying to recruit/hire you. So if they're unresponsive, evasive, or misleading during the recruiting and interviewing process, you should see that as a preview of how things will be when/if you're hired.