Adventures of Engineerman (a short story)
kh...@davidsys.com
Engineerman graduated from a decent university with
decent grades. He was full of ambition. In his interviews
he dazzled everybody with his knowledge of operational
amplifiers and Laplace transforms. In his first job
Engineerman found himself working under another senior
engineer. But Engineerman found that he had no use for
all the fancy stuff he was good at while at school;
in fact, all Engineerman was expected to do was to
debug somebody else's design and take care of parts
lists. Engineerman soon found out that the senior
engineer, who was respected because he was from
Ivy League, did not do a good design, and did not
do any timing analysis on the digital based design.
Engineerman did a redesign, and tried to prove that
he was better than the Ivy League guy. Engineerman
came face to face with something they never teach
you at school: OFFICE POLITICS!
Engineerman went from job to job, learning the career
but never being sure if he was safe in this career.
At a particularly bad time in the industry, Engineerman
got laid off.
During the first month, Engineerman was called for
some job interviews. Engineerman thought he could get
a higher salary than the one he got at his previous job,
and started bargaining with the prospective employers.
Mistake! Engineerman got no response. Three months later
Engineerman was really sorry he did that. He also started
forgetting things about his work. During the 4th month
of layoff, Engineerman thought he had only a few options
left for earning a living in the silicon valley area:
1. Try to become a head-hunter.
2. Try to find a sales position.
3. Go to Oakland, and get into the drug dealing business.
4. Go to San Francisco, and become a male prostitute.
Luckily, Engineerman got a job offer from Taiwantek.
Engineerman revved up his engineering knowledge, and went
headlong into his work. Unfortunately, Taiwantek wanted
its workers to work at least 12 hours a day, and held
their design review meetings in a foreign language.
Engineerman felt stumped again. As soon as he had made
the first prototype, Engineerman was laid off again,
very unceremoniously.
But the economy was beginning to do good. There was
talk of designing huge special fighting systems to be
placed in outer space to fight off space aliens. Engineerman
interviewed with a big defense company, and was immediately
hired. He was supposed to work on a fantastic project,
utilizing all of his technical knowledge and more. Engineerman
felt so proud and confident!
A year later, Engineerman was sitting in a windowless
office, with a yellow marker in his hand, going over a
fat bundle of papers. Engineerman never did anything that
remotely resembled design work all that time. Engineerman
had forgotten so much of his original knowledge, that
now he wouldn't know the difference between setup time
and hold time of a flip-flop! In fact, soon Engineerman
wouldn't know the differenc between a refrigerator and
a transistor. Yet his job seemed permanent, and Engineerman
did not mind that. He had no desire to go to Westech job
fair and face bubble-headed recruiters again!
(Note: The above was all fiction! Don't take it personally!)