The first thing we do is fire the contractors

Merry Christmas everybody. Note my use of the actual name of the Christian holiday that is indeed celebrated on December 25. It seems that the word isn't used much anymore, for fear that it may offend. At the Mecca, it seems that not mentioning Christmas is about the only inoffensive thing happening.

I do have some news to report. Both good and bad, I guess.

The good news is: Swiper found some more suckers. We will be in business for a while longer.

The bad news: Swiper found some more suckers, and I will have to put up with MNB for a while longer - until I quit, or he fires me.

Despite a supposed hiring freeze, MNB has taken charge and made many several staffing changes. He left it to the Sarcastic Brit and I to serve notices to the Hyena and Mr. Smarmy. Both are capable, efficient, and easy to work with. Definitely not a good fit for the Mecca. Mr. Smarmy has already left. He seemed relieved to be rid of the insanity. I am actually a bit jealous. The Hyena finishes out his contract at the Mecca on Monday. Of course, his part of the project isn't finished, so somebody else will have to pick it up. No problem. I've always been told it's good engineering practice to lay off one of the key engineers before the project is finished.

Also gone are Princess Amidala, and the Vacuum Cleaner Guy. He was almost MNB (my new boss), but he lost the game of survivor, and was voted off the island. They were both friendly and reasonably capable. Therefore, they must be eliminated.

Flyboy has managed to survive thus far, although he is being severely marginalized. Jar Jar, on the other hand, is on vacation for a month, but will most certainly return to perpetrate more crimes against humanity.

As for the replacements, they are what you would probably expect. The first replacement is The Toad. He comes in to work at 6:00 am, and feels that this makes him a superior example of a human being. I get in to work at about nine (who am I kidding - it's usually closer to ten), and feel that this makes me a person who has some semblance of a life.

Of course, the Toad thinks that MNB is the best guy ever, and has followed him from job to job for over ten years. Perhaps that's loyalty. Perhaps it is because the guy is creepy and has the charisma of a fence post, making him unable to get through a even first job interview. He has been billed as many things by MNB, who takes every opportunity to tell us that the original engineering team is incompetent, obstructionist, lazy, and dumb. The Toad seems to have three hobbies (that he has talked about anyway) - making ammunition, drinking in the pub, and finding ways to cause trouble for his coworkers. He routinely tells me that all of the optics shouldn't work. Apparently, he took a course on mounting optics, and that entitles him to make stupid comments on how the optical system works. It would seem that the fact that optics perform well and have never suffered shipping damage is irrelevant. I have patiently explained to him why the design works, but it isn't written in his textbook, so it must be wrong. Nothing annoys me more than people who are UNWILLING to apply their brains to think about a problem.

I don't have much to say about the second new hire. The guy has worked at the Mecca for about four weeks, and is averaging about one word a week. I tried to engage him in a conversation once. It was a big mistake. I have had conversations with walls that were less one sided. Apparently, I do not rank high enough to even be acknowledged as mud on the bottom of his shoe.

The third new hire starts in January. Nobody has even interviewed this guy, who is supposed to be doing integration between the hardware and biology parts of the system. Why then, have none of the engineers (except for probably the Toad, or the Great Wall) met this guy? Why have none of the Biologists (including Jaba) met this guy? Apparently, he is another hanger on who follows MNB from company to company, like a vulture seeking out a new carcass.

Welcome to the new world order.

Where do they find these guys?

First of all, I want to apologize for not writing much lately. Things have been very busy at the mecca, what with all of the time that MNB has spent telling the Sarcastic Brit and I that we are useless.

Truths about the new world order
1) Engineering work that has been done previously does not count.
MNB: I am redesigning the sample holder to add reference holes
Harbinger: We did a holder like that a while ago, so that we could make a large holder that was injection molded together. We aren't using it, but we learned some things.
MNB: I don't care.
Harbinger: Isn't it foolish to discount the work that the engineering team has done to date.
MNB: I have been designing these things for eight years, and I know what I'm doing.
Harbinger: Here is the one that I designed a year ago.
MNB: But this is way too expensive. Why would you do it like this?
Harbinger: To solve a bunch of problems that no longer exist. But there is information to be learned from it. The machine tolerances won't change, since it was made by the same vendor.
MNB: I don't care. I have dimensioned the drawing differently. That will change the machine tolerances.
Harbinger: No, actually you haven't. This one is referenced to the holes, just like yours. Besides, you can write whatever you want, it doesn't change the way the machine works.
MNB: I know what I am doing. What you did before does not matter.
Harbinger: If you say so. Have a nice day.
MNB: Can I keep this sample?
Harbinger: Be my guest. (Of course you just told me that it is irrelevant, so why do you want it?)

2) You can only be good at one thing.
MNB: Sarcastic Brit, you need to step up to the plate and be a better electrical engineer.
Sarcastic Brit: I'm not an electrical engineer.
MNB: But you have a bachelor's in electrical engineering.
Sarcastic Brit: And a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. I haven't done electrical engineering since I finished my undergrad.
MNB: But you know how to lay out a board.
Sarcastic Brit: In theory yes, but I have never even worked as an electrical engineer.
MNB: So you are a jack of all trades. You don't want to be a jack of all trades.
Sarcastic Brit: Actually, I do.

3) Loyalty is not earned
Hyena: I always tell new bosses this: I am a contractor and I am here until you don't need me any more.
MNB: That's right. Your loyalty is to me, and NOT the Sarcastic Brit. You need to understand that.
Hyena: My contract expires in two weeks. Are you going to renew it or not?
MNB: I don't know yet. Maybe I will know next week. By the way... the Toad told me that you used the wrong kind of bolt on the prototype. You worked at BMW - surely they taught you better than that.

4) The best way to get rid of an engineering team is to hire a toady who spies on your other employees, and then tattles on them for everything you can think of.

I have not quit yet. I must admit that after everything that has gone on thus far, I probably should just do it. Just when I was starting to think that things couldn't get worse.

Looking for a few good men

First, I must admit to having a we bit of a narcissistic moment, when I noticed that my hit counter had broken the 200 mark. I don't know who is reading this thing. It may be my wife, trying to boost my ego. Perhaps there are actually that many people who find flaming train wrecks amusing. Perhaps I should get a more sophisticated counter so that I can see who is actually reading. There are not many comments, so it seems that my readers are not overly talkative. Of course, it could be that Swiper has found this blog and all of the hits are the lawyers getting ready to sue me. Don't laugh... If I had something worth taking the jackals would be right there. But enough of that - it has been far too long since I posted anything.

As I have previously lamented, the Biotech Mecca is somewhat heavy with electrical engineers, and bereft of mechanical people. We have had several employees who have either fancied themselves mechanical designers (but have not been), or have been capable but ornery.

At the Mecca, we have been chronically searching for a good mechanical engineer. Mr. Mom pompously said that it needed to be a requirement that we hire somebody who had worked on a successful instrumentation project. This was said when I was sitting in the senior management meeting on account of my boss being absent. My response to that lunacy was "no - the only requirements are that the person be able to design mechanical stuff and that they can get along with the rest of the engineers." I was told that it would be good for the culture. What the hell does that mean? So, I asked that question. "You know, having somebody who knows how to design a product." I will admit that I rose to the bait. "I have worked with many people who were on successful product teams, and you couldn't pay me enough to work with any of them." Thankfully, I didn't have to relate the stories of the amazing Costco and Dr. Fubar from a previous company. I have some material from there too... but that's another story. (Cue the Xylophone and the rodents.)

We all know that a pedigree does not make somebody good, and lack of a pedigree does not make them stink. On the other hand, I would like to think that my 6+ years of university education are worth something. I have also come to recognize that years of experience are also somewhat meaningless. If one is observant and able to learn from their mistakes, experience is a fabulous teacher. Other people... Needless to say, we start with the resumes.

We got five candidates from the head hunter. They seemed alright. We interviewed the first guy - perhaps too much manager and not enough design engineer. Since the last thing the engineering group needs is another manager, we decided to put that guy on the back burner.

The next four candidates had solid resumes - degrees in mechanical engineering, work experience (one had ten years of experience), and a couple even had graduate degrees.

Candidate #2: He asked to be excused from the interview before even talking to me. Probably, he didn't really want the job.

Candidate #3: Somebody Lee. Bruce Lee's long lost Cousin? Perhaps the hand written thank-you card with the Taco Bell coupon was supposed to make up for the fact that he couldn't answer any of our questions. We didn't bother running him through the CAD test. He couldn't answer what we thought were easy questions about mechanical engineering. That's pretty sad, considering the interview was conducted by an electrical engineer, and physicist and a mechanical designer. (Actually, Buffalo Bill is really only competent as a draftsman, but suggesting that to his face would probably make him cry.)

Candidate #4: Cindy Lou Who. She got a couple of our kindergarten questions. We let her do the CAD test. After two hours, she gave us a blank screen.

Candidate #5: Another Lee. Bruce seems to have been busy. This guy was young, but he had a graduate degree, so he's probably smart... right? Why did a series of easy mechanical engineering questions feel like I was giving a first year engineering lecture? Perhaps he was nervous... On to the CAD test. We actually got something from him. It was perhaps the most improbable way one could have done it given the bits that he had to work with. Image giving somebody four wheels, some gears and a car body, and telling them to build a mode of transportation. Then, imagine returning to find that they tried to build a Piano.

OK, so we may not be the most desirable company ever. So maybe we didn't get the headhunter's best candidates. However, I had hoped that we wouldn't get the who's who of Silicon Valley engineering rejects. Wait... We didn't interview Captain Fantastic. I guess that we didn't get ALL of the rejects. I couldn't find the clip that I wanted to describe this set of interviews, but this one is still pretty much dead on..

By the way... the first guy we interviewed - got a job before we offered him one. Apparently, he wasn't holding out to work for the Mecca either.

The Sarcastic Brit did run into a guy in the parking lot that does mechanical engineering on a contract basis. Of course the last guy we pulled in from the parking lot was Jar Jar. This guy can't be worse. When my boss interviewed him, he told the following metaphor: In the engineering world, there are Hyenas and there are Cheetahs. Cheetahs are very specialized. While they are excellent hunters, they often go hungry between meals. Hyenas will eat anything. They never go hungry. The metaphor finished with "I am a Hyena." I hope the Hyena is good, he starts on Monday. He did an excellent interview. He doesn't mind working contract because he intends to quit when it looks like we are running out of work for him. Hmmm... it seems like a match made in heaven. He's willing to eat carrion (of course he may have to fight off the vultures we routinely see circling the Mecca's office), and he realizes that there is no point in sticking around once the work (and/or money) are gone.

Of course, if this guy is good, and doesn't call anybody a Punkass M*otherF^c&er it will be a new experience.