Good Employee/Good Boss
My boss at Xerox Eastern Technology Center (ETC) was Bernie Smedley. I learned a great deal from him that guided me though the rest professional career. One of the things he taught were the responsibilities of a “good employee” and a “good boss”.
He explained that a “good employee” has only one job:
- Do whatever it takes to make his boss look good.
And a “good boss” has three jobs:
- Do whatever it takes to protect your employees so that they can do their job,
- Train your employees to take over your job so you can move up in the company,
- Be a “good employee” to your boss.
He was a very “good boss”
.How Got My Plane
The story of how I got the money to buy my plane would be the most interesting of these tales, but I cannot tell all of it because some of it is still classified. Here is what I can tell.
I was working for Xerox Eastern Technology Center and we got a contract from the ███ to build a ███ ███████ to serve as a peripheral to a Sigma 3 computer. To work on the project I had to get a very high-level security clearance (so high the even the name of the level is is classified).
I designed the hardware and after it was built and tested, they wanted me to accompany it to █████ ██████ to install and test it on site. I was to spend 3 months on site and train the people that worked at that site how to maintain the system. They offered to pay me a very large bonus (danger money) to take the assignment. This was my first trip out of the country, so I needed a passport. A person I later learned worked for the ███ provided one to me. I flew first to the capital, then to another city closer to the site, and finally a long car drive got me to the town where the site was located.
The equipment did not arrive for a few days and when it did it was a disaster. Someone had driven a forklift through the hard disk drive (a device roughly the size of a washing machine). Since they could not ship in a new hard drive, I had to fix the damaged one. They brought in the calibration disk I needed by diplomatic pouch and I managed to get the system up and running. Once the system was up and running, I thought my problems were over. Unfortunately the program written at ETC to run my hardware was a too complex and had to long a startup time to be useable by the site personnel. I spent most of my remaining time on site re-writing to code into something that could be used by the people on site.
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Two incidents happened that made me realize why the bonus was called "danger money". The first began at one of these parties hosted by ██████ and his wife ██████. I noticed something that did not seem right and reported it to the site security officer. That lead to them breaking up a KGB cell that was spying on the site personnel. I was told by the security officer that the KGB was "not happy with me" and I should be careful not to be out alone.
A second incident happened when the ███ got an erroneous report that I was in the capital city when I was not supposed to be. I learned later that they had some rather drastic instructions on how to resolve the situation. Fortunately I was on site, where I was supposed to be, and the matter was resolved before the end of my assignment.
I returned for the assignment unharmed and with a significant amount of money in the bank. I used the money to buy an airplane, a Piper Cherokee 180 tail number N7630W.
A Decorative Secretary
Xerox Eastern Technology Center (ETC) was an interesting place to work in the early 1970's. Fashion, work place dress codes, and the concept of sexual harassment were not to same as in a workplace today.
Back when I worked at ETC, our engineering group had a very beautiful secretary. She typically came to work wearing a see thru blouse and no bra. Contrary to the myth that pretty women are dumb, she was the smartest and most competent secretary I have ever met.
Our group worked mainly on government contracts which often required specific government forms to be filled in and a delivered by specific dates. These forms needed to be requested from the correct government agency with enough lead time to have them when needed. Requesting these forms was part of the job of the lead project engineer but often got left to the last minute and need to be rushed to get the form in time to meet the required delivery date.
Once this secretary came to work for our group, we never had failed to have a form when needed. She read all the contracts we were working on, noted the forms needed and associated delivery dates, worst case times to get the forms, and ordered them such that they were in her desk a day or two before the project engineer realized that he needed them and came to ask her to get them.
I suspect that the main reason she was work as a secretary was husband hunting. She found her query in the bachelor manager of shipping. He had recently inherited a horse farm that had been in his family for generations. The farm was a "white elephant". He could not sell it (or give it away) without offending he's extended family and the costs of maintaining it were driving him toward bankruptsy.
The secretary married the shipping manager, quit her job at ETC, and took over the horse farm. Within weeks the horse farm ceased to lose money and started to make money. In less than a year, the horse farm was bring in more income than the shipping manager made at ETC.
I was not surprised. That secretary was one the most competent people I have ever met.
Warren and Kermit
Warren and Kermit were both engineers at Xerox Eastern Technology Center (ETC). Warren looked like the public perception of the typical redneck. Kermit looked like a recruiting poster for the black panthers. When they saw a stranger, they would go into their "act". Warren as the racist redneck and Kermit as the militant black. What made this funny was that Warren and Kermit were actually best friends, lived next to each other, and were deacons at the same church.
The early 1970's was a very racially charged time. Large companies, such as Xerox, were "walking on eggshells" when dealing with race relations. One day a VP from Xerox came to a meeting at ETC. While he was being given a tour of the facilities, he walked by Warren and Kermit who were working on a project on the test floor. Warren and Kermit immediately went into their "act".
The VP was shocked and frightened! He thought that a race riot was about to break out at ETC. The person that was taking him on the tour tried to reassure that him that it was just a joke and there really was no problem.
The VP did not believe his tour guide and immediately called Xerox corporate Human Relation to get a crisis team to ETC. Everyone tried to tell him that it was just a joke but he refused to believe it.
Finally Warren and Kermit invited the VP to visit their families at home. When the VP saw their kids playing together, he finally accepted that it was a joke and that there was no racial problem at ETC.
That was the last time Warren and Kermit did their "act" at ETC, but I doubt it was the last time they pulled it on some unsuspecting stranger away from work.
I Accidentally Became Chairman of a Standards Working Group
Back in 1980 when I was working for Codex Corporation in Mansfield, I suggested that the company use a serial bus instead of a parallel bus in a new product (statistical multiplexor) that they were developing. Everyone in development thought the idea was crazy butt the director of research (Dave Forney) thought my idea might work. He also had heard of a new standards effort, IEEE Project 802, that was chartered to work on local area network standards (virtually the same thing as a serial bus).
Dave thought I should go to the standards meeting in Maryland and see if the work they were going could be used as the basis for a serial bus. I attended the meeting and found that since I had worked with Ethernet on the Alto when I was working for Xerox. I had a lot of ideas on how a local area network should work. May too many ideas. Just before the meeting was over, Maris Graube (the original chairman of IEEE 802) asked me to be the chairman of the Media Subcommittee. I was sure that Codex would never agree to have me take that job since it would require 25% of my time and a lot of travel expense, so I said I would take the job if my boss agreed.
As expected my boss did not agree but he was overruled by Dave Forney. Dave loved standards and thought it would be be in the best interest of the company to have an employee as a chair on a standards committee. And that is how I became involved with what would become one of the most widely used standards in the world.
IEC/ISA SP50 Joint Meeting
There was a time in my career when I was active on many national and international standards committees. Some of these committees had the sort of professional meetings that you might imagine were how standards were created (assuming you had never attended a standards meeting). Most, however, more "heated" discussions. Some of the most "heated" discussions I saw were in IEC and ISA SP50 (Fieldbus) meetings. When these two committees held joint meetings, the results were explosive.
My wife (Amy) often came along with me when meeting were held in interesting locations. She would typically go sightseeing or shopping while the meetings were in progress. One day she got back just in time to catch the end of a particularly "heated" meeting. She, being a graphic artist, drew this picture on the white pad which, I think, captures the true essence of the meeting.
The two raptors at the table represent Bob Crowder (Ship Star Associates, Inc.) and Graham Wood (a consultant for The Foxboro Company). I think that the raptor jumping thru the fiery hoop represents Udo Dobrich (Siemens AG) and the raptor next to him with the briefcase represents David Hewitson (Ronan Engineering Company). The "dead" raptor on the floor may represent Cullen Langford (the committee chairman).
Multilingual Dinner Assistance
Although standards meetings were often contentious, after the meeting committee members who were fighting in the meeting often got together to have dinner. I remember a dinner in London after a joint ISA/IEC meeting (not quite as heated as the one depicted in the raptor drawing) where we went to a wonderful Indian restaurant (Woodlands). Jay Warrior (India) and Uto Dobrich (Germany) were part of the group.
At the next table was an elderly couple from Germany. They spoke very little English and the waitstaff's English was also not very good. What ensued was an example of international cooperation at it's best. Udo spoke with the couple in German then translated their food preferences to English. Jay then discussed their preferences with the waitstaff in some Indian language that he had in common with the staff (Jay also ordered for our table).
When the food arrived it was magnificent, one of the best dinners I have ever eaten. The couple next also seemed to think their food was wonderful. A truly memorable dinner.