job thing, maybe

Yet the difference between a fish processing plant in Alaska and in Eire is remarkable.

In Alaska they process fish at 2am on Sunday if that's when the boat comes in.

In Eire they drop tools at 5pm on Friday no matter what.

[snip]

Same here, 1973... formed my life ;-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I am looking for a job in the US. Care to sponsor? The E3 visa can be turned around pretty quick. As an added bonus i am a programmer :)

On Mon, 01 Jan 2007 16:22:40 -0800, John Larkin wrote in Msg.

Agreed. But as more and more formerly sane companies are being taken over by managers whose only interest is in short-term profitabily, and who have no clue about the stuff the company actually makes, you can only wish for employees to have good contracts.

A sane employee in a sane company indeed doesn't need a contract.

Absolutely. This is the position I've been adopting over the past few years. I think the overprotection of employees is what cripples German economy (actually at the moment the economy is doing quite well -- let's say it cripples entrepreneurship).

The way I see it, there is a certain amount of work being done in a given economy, by a certain number of people. If, all of a sudden, employee protection were abolished, would the amount of available work plummet? Would people simple stop working? I don't think so. I think the work market would experience quite a stir but it would settle at some dynamic equilibrium. Probably more people would have jobs in the end.

But in Germany the prevailing mentality is that you learn to do a certain job, and do it well and thoroughly, for a lifetime. This has initially lead to a highly skilled and effective workforce in a booming economy. But now the sentiment is dominated by pessimism and inflexibility, and it is hard to be innovative.

robert

It sort of sounds like the culture is such that employment contracts are sort of a redundancy.

In most developed countries, fewer and fewer people are doing the primary work of society - actually growing food or making things thet people actually need - and those few are extraordinally efficient, thanks to education and technology. The ones who are good at what they do are unlikely to be fired, and can find another job if they are.

What's a German employment contract like? Does it commit the employee as well as the employer? What if you get sick of the job and want to run away and join the circus?

I've had engineers step into my office, say "I'm leaving", and walk out, that instant, in the middle of a project.

John

an

pay

During my working life I worked for 3 Fortune 100 companies, at each one for in excess of 10 years. I will say without a moment's hesitation that the firm with an implied "job for life" contract (a large photographic firm) had the most poorly qualified work force, bordering on completely incompetent. The firm with the reputation for being "unfriendly to older workers" had by far the best work force (AND the highest expectations and pay scale.) The one in the middle was OK until it was purchased by a french firm, and then it was downhill all the way, as the french management brought the US operation up to french standards.

Which of the three firms is healthiest today? The "unfriendly" one. Which one is on its deathbed? The "job for life" one. The french one? Their manage ment is blaming their problems on the "stupid american customers" who don't understand the inherent superiority of all things french.

The implied "job for life" contract is the kiss of death. When the going gets rough, the cream of the crop leave, because they are otherwise employable. Who stays? Ask GM.

I had just the opposite experience. Dealing with larger European corporations is often a bureacratic nightmare. Then I decided for myself that I'd prefer working for US companies have done so pretty much since I got my degree about 20 years ago.

Often you see baffled faces when a group of Asian or European executive comes over here and there is a certain information needed in a meeting. "We'll have that in a half hour or so". Then a line manager or a regular production worker enters the fancy boardroom and presents the data on the projector screen, in a manner that clearly shows the visitors that he or she does not do that for the first time.

Repeatedly not making a decision can get you fired here, making a wrong one usually doesn't unless you were very negligent.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

One thing to be careful about with a "test engineer" is that the job is often looked down on by others. It tends to let the designer off the hook. "Give it to Mikey (test guy), he'll do anything".

;-) Particualry since you do everything in ASM.

--
  Keith

To some extent, that seems to be true. Entitlement mentality maybe. I've been there (Germany). And there is a reason why I am not there anymore.

It binds the employer and the employee. I had such a contract with my first employer, a US company in Germany. It's the law. My bosses were Americans and didn't care much about such contract stuff. Until they realized on day that I was the only analog guy left because the other one had transferred to, gasp, the software group. So they asked me if a

6-months notice would be acceptable instead of the usual three. No problem, I said. But it also bound them and when they closed the shop they had to pay until the end of that six months which was nice (but in return I did help them a lot after that lab was already gone).

That's called "burning the bridge". Not a good thing at all for any employee to do.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

....

....

Makes me wonder how Airbus manages to crank out any aircraft, at all...

Michael

I suspect that you, like me, are basically unmanageable.

John

Of course ;-)

I used to turn up at Motorola about 10 in the morning... got criticized, even though the rest of the troops screwed off drinking coffee the first few hours anyway (I preferred my wife's company to their's), and I tended to "doodle" even when home, turning out at least twice as many _working_ chips every year as anyone else.

When criticized I suggested they fire me... Motorola never did.

I was fired from Chief Engineer of Dickson Electronics hybrid facility for taking the place commercial (and profitable) away from a near 100% military bent.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Sounds quite familiar. I was never let go but our company was bought by a European one. Just when I had production back to full stability and healthy margins. They made it quite clear that they didn't want to take over any of the old top brass so they let me and the others go. Peacefully though and not before we had finished helping them get started. Then they promptly managed to mess up the place real good. Full blown bankruptcy, shares roaring down from $100+ to a dime or so in just a few weeks. IOW a full corporate kablouie. Luckily the operations is now in good hands again.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

At a much smaller company in Germany - but at a good pay - I was tolerated to turn up whenever (and if) I wanted to (I typically sleep until after 12 PM). The company lived on my products for many years after I quit - which I did in order to start something as mad as what TGI is now in Bulgaria. Because of the location it has been all but impossible to stay afloat but I have managed it one way or the other for about 14 years now... Not that I would not have changed my location if I had had a chance, of course - but I guess this will take some more work and new products.... :-).

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

------------------------------------------------------

Jim Thomps> >

As I noted, we *want* the test department to be sensitive to design or parts problems and to alert us of any failure patterns that might be our fault. And for sure we are going to treat a good test guy with great respect. The idea would be that the test guy would review our designs from the beginning and make sure they are really testable. We also work with manufacturing to make sure they can build our stuff easily.

Our company attitude is "let's do everything we can to make each product insanely good." When somebody points out to us that we're about to make a big mistake, or have already made one, we say "thanks!" That's part of the culture.

John

[snip]

If you compartmentalize the various design/test/manufacturing steps, it relieves design engineering of the responsibility of ensuring that the thing can be built or tested. Worse yet, should the device be marginally feasible, design engineering can't be bothered with someone else's problems (high rates of test failures MUST be the responsibility of test engineering).

--
Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
What if no one ever asked a hypothetical question?

Agreed; I believe that one of the reasons finding good test engineers is difficult is because they generally have to be able to do most everything the design engineers do, and it's the unusual person who would still prefer to test rather than design when the job is slightly denegrated and lacks the glory of being a designer.

Yep... I've known so-called design engineers who honestly believed that, "it compiles!" was the sum total testing *they* were expected to do; the test engineer was supposed to be the one finding all their bugs. :-(

But wait until Mikey gets back with a huge list of issues and a huge grin on his face. A good test engineer will break the unbreakable :-)

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

That may be true, but Mikey will not often get the credit he deserves. Test and manufacturing are too often seen as second- class citizens. I never wanted to do it (though was in design verification for five years), though did my own manufacturing test deign often enough.

--
  Keith