Occam’s Razor

Hug an illegal immigrant today!

Here is a basic truth about American history that you are unlikely to find revealed in our history books: our success as a country is due to immigration. Most likely, our country’s decline will start when immigrants decide to go elsewhere.

Immigrants have always been crucial to our country’s success. When we could not get enough immigrants, we captured slaves and brought them over here instead. Yet through much of our history, whether here legally or illegally, immigrants have been scorned. In truth, immigrants are the gasoline that fuels our economy. We say we do not want them in our country, at least the ones who are not here legally. Yet if they were to go, our standard of living would decline precipitously. Inflation would go through the roof. Immigrants make it possible for the rest of us to live the American Dream. My vaunted six-figure salary is directly due to the guy making $15,000 working for Goodwill who doesn’t seem to speak English and who hauls away the trash from my office everyday.

Thankfully, there is little chance that people will stop coming into our country, no matter how impressively we build our barriers. It does not matter how low on the totem pole immigrants will be when they get into this country. Invariably they will be better off than where they came from. Cleaning out toilets in airports may not be your idea of a great job. It is probably not their idea of a great job either, but it beats starvation, or regular dysentery drinking the polluted water back home, or raising an uneducated child in a tarpaper shack.

Thank goodness, we have people willing to clean toilets at any price. How long do you think your local airport would be able to stay in business if they had no one willing to do this disagreeable task? How many restaurants would be in business at all if all the illegal dishwashers and potato peelers in this country suddenly disappeared?

The argument I hear is that, “Well, if they all went tomorrow, businesses would have to raise salaries. Good Americans would fill those jobs. And what’s wrong with that?” As a liberal Democrat, I like the idea of our citizens making more money. I just hope it will actually improve their standard of living. I do suspect though that if there are 200 jobs needing to be filled and only 100 people willing to work for wages businesses can afford to pay, there are going to be some economic adjustments and they will not be for the better. Of course, businesses would do their best to cope. They would try to become more efficient and resourceful. At some point, we would end up with an effective unemployment rate of zero. Then the excrement would hit the fan. I am not sure which businesses would be the first to go under, but I bet people who are asked to do the most disagreeable jobs would be the first to bolt. Dishwashers would become very hot commodities. Those restaurants profitable enough to employ them at higher wages would thrive. Those which cannot, and restaurants tend to survive on tiny profit margins, would close shop. I can even see a new version of the draft, not to fight our wars overseas, but to make sure restaurants have enough people to serve meals, sweep floors and do the dishes.

Perhaps with higher wages more of us who are already employed would be willing to work a second job (if we are not already, trying to keep pace with the cost of living). At some point, that market would exhaust itself too. The likely result would be a phenomenon we remember from the 1970s: stagflation. Stagflation is rapid inflation during a period of recession. We would be lucky though if this were the worst of it. The short-term result would be that as unemployment up the food chain increased from the fallout, more and more people would be willing to work in these relatively low wage jobs. The effect though would be to push down standards of living for all of us. These jobs, while necessary, are simply not as productive as those that generally pay more money. Decreased productivity is one of the major drivers of stagflation.

A workforce of course is the fuel of any economy. We may think we can automate everything using computers, but even if that were possible, someone has to keep those computers going. Goods do not magically get from points A to B. It is our willingness to be employed, and in effect be the lubricant that keeps our complex society functioning, that makes our advanced society possible.

In effect, our economy, much like our social security system, is a great Ponzi scheme. Growth, as is always the case, comes from the bottom up. If we cannot convince lots of poor people to start at the bottom and engage in economic Darwinism to try to ascend the economic ladder, the system eventually collapses. I see signs of it already. My daughter, though she has never held a full time job and just recently graduated high school, refuses to work just anywhere. She has her standards. She has decided that she can work at a Barnes and Noble or a Vie de France, but not at a Bloom supermarket, nor at a McDonalds, nor at a Subway … in fact, her list of places she is not willing to work is much larger than her list of places she would work. Fortunately for her the labor market is pretty tight here in Fairfax County, Virginia so she has the luxury of being somewhat choosy.

Of course, she has to survive. If her choice were between starving and working at a McDonalds, I am sure she would choose working at McDonalds. However, why should she do what she considers demeaning work in a business that she does not like? For example, why work at a Wendy’s when she would likely be the only Caucasian woman working there and she cannot speak more than a dozen words of Spanish? Why get hot and sweaty trying to keep up with jangling timers continually going off on the French fries machines when she can work behind the counter in a nice, cool and air-conditioned Vie de France restaurant instead? Others, who came from a harder school of knocks, are supposed to work at Wendy’s. For them a Wendy’s job probably really is opportunity. She perceives it as a low-grade horror.

Arguably, if all the Wendy’s in America went out of business we would probably be a lot healthier. Still, Wendy’s alone pumps a huge amount of money into the economy. The parent company Wendy’s International had sales of $2.45 billion dollars in 2006, owned 12.7% of the burger market and employed 57,000 people. If it closed because it could not profitably stay in business, more than 57,000 people would be affected. Its suppliers would be laying off people. Cattle ranchers would reduce herds. Grain prices would fall. Perhaps other businesses would pick up its market. However, if we did not have enough people willing to work at the bottom of the labor scale the effect on the labor market would quickly spread across the economy, likely causing a chain reaction.

If there were no more immigrants I would end up mowing my lawn again, which might not be a bad thing either. It would cost me more to get my roof replaced, if I could find anyone willing to do it at all. Either my six-figure income would feel a lot more like a five figure income, or I would be a lot busier incompetently trying to do the things I pay people to do for me. I would have to hope that I would die in my bed. It is unlikely I could afford a nursing home at any price. It would be a luxury only for the richest among us. Perhaps the poor house would make a comeback.

While I do not particularly like the idea of immigrants streaming across our borders illegally, I also understand why it has been in our economic interest to look the other way for so long. That our standard of living is rising at all is largely due to our glorious cognitive dissonance on this issue. If we could actually fully enforce our immigration laws then within a year we would be protesting en-masse on the Mall in Washington demanding the immediate repeal of these laws. The last thing we will give up is our slice of the American dream. Immigrants serve us that slice.

The good news is the immigrants who come to our country choose to come here, often at the cost of enormous peril. They understand the tradeoff. They will do our scut work for us, gambling that in time given their perseverance, luck and circumstance they will be in our shoes someday. They might aspire to be Bill Gates, but even if they only get up half the ladder, they are better off than they were. So are the rest of us.

Therefore, instead of railing against immigrants and protesting at local day laborer sites, as some want to do here in Herndon, Virginia, perhaps, if you speak their language, you should be thanking them for coming instead.

August 8th, 2007 at 10:14pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | one comment

Real Life 101, Lesson 1: Job Basics

Having turned 50 recently, I realized that I have finally mastered some major lessons from the school of real life. I thought I would use the excuse of my birthday to pass on some of these lessons to younger generations. While I enjoy pretending to be a fountain of wisdom, in reality, like most bloggers, any wisdom I have achieved is likely more the result of successful marketing than anything else is.

Today I am starting an occasional series of entries in a “Real Life 101″ series. Maybe you can find these on Motley Fool or in a Dummies Book, but here you can get them free. These strategies have been tried, tested and proven true in the sphere of real life. Unlike a stock market investment, where you earnings are never guaranteed, these principles will work. They have been painfully acquired from navigating through real life for five decades and in many cases through making the wrong choices. They are not always easy to implement, but life never is.

Today’s topic: job basics.

Unless you happen to have inherited a large estate, the most important factor in avoiding misery is a good, steady and well paying job. Ideally, the job will be one that you will also enjoy. While there is no lack of jobs out there, few of them meet all these criteria. Most likely, you do not have one of these jobs. Here are some strategies that will get you there.

When it comes to any job, consistently going beyond the expected almost always reaps rewards. I am amazed by how many workers cannot seem to grasp this basic truth, even after their fourth or fifth job. Strive to be exceptional in whatever you are doing, no matter how menial or mundane. In the unlikely event that your efforts are not noticed in your current job, your attitude will be noticed by some future employer. Save the snarkiness for when you get home. When you are at work, focus on your work. Be the first to volunteer to do difficult or not so glamorous work. Unless your chain of command is full of pointy haired bosses, most likely your work attitude will be quickly noticed, and you will be given more challenging and interesting work as a reward. It is quite possible that you will earn a promotion and/or more money too. Having demonstrated your value you are much less likely to be pink slipped or downsized.

Constantly steer toward jobs that offer the three critical factors: steady employment, good wages and benefits. While I generally do not like debt, I have gladly gone into debt so that I could compete for better paying jobs that advanced my career. Be hard nosed. For example, it is better to go into debt to get a degree than a certification. It might seem a worthy goal to be a Microsoft Certified Software Engineer, for example. Nevertheless, certifications have a limited shelf life. A degree in software engineering though will carry the broad education that you will likely be able to apply for the rest of your career.

Few things have the potential to be more personally catastrophic than unemployment. This means that it you should always do your best to avoid being fired or laid off. Regardless, you will probably get a few periods of unemployment in your career. If it happens to you, expect to feel devastated, but do not think that you are unique. Unemployment happens. You will recover from the experience and reemerge on your feet. In most cases, you can anticipate your termination. If you sense that are likely to lose your job then take action. Start aggressively looking for your next job. Rats know when to desert a sinking ship. So should you.

Another rule of thumb: the best job for you will likely not come from a newspaper or an internet jobs site. It will come through a referral from someone you know. You would probably not pick a doctor out of the phone book. Instead, you will get recommendations from friends. The same applies doubly with jobs. People’s actual experience with employers will tell you a lot. After all, you do not want to waste your time dealing with the trauma of a job that does not fit you. Consequently, you need to develop networking skills.

Recently a contractor I have not worked with in seven years sought me out. We kept in touch and traded occasional emails and holiday cards. We would meet for lunch every year or two when our schedules allowed, which they usually did not. She was interested in applying for a job and wanted to know if I knew anyone who worked at the place where she was applying. It just so happened that yes I did know and worked rather extensively with someone who worked there. Although it had been several years, I contacted the man I used to work with, who I considered part of my own personal network. He gave the background on the culture of the place and what they were likely looking for. It sounded like a good match for her. She has applied for the job and will use me as a reference. I suspect that if she is interviewed she will do well. In addition to having the skills, she will have an understanding of the culture of the place to carry into the interview. We all know people with whom we can network. It could be your friend, a neighbor, a coworker’s spouse, or someone you know at church. By marketing yourself to these people, you are actually marketing yourself to a larger number of people, and they will likely keep you in mind and let you know of opportunities. Make networking a habit and if you are in the position to return the favor, do it.

Since unemployment will visit most of us at least a couple times in our life, devise a proactive approach so you can be prepared when it strikes. If you are chronically low on cash, your backup strategy might be to move back in with your parents for a time. (Please check with them first to make sure they will agree.) Putting your expenses on a credit card is the wrong way to go, so strive to create a nest egg that will play for at least three months of expenses. The current trend, unfortunately, is that while unemployment is happening less often, when it does happen it lasts for longer periods. Most experts are now recommending saving six months of expenses to emerge from unemployment financially intact. Whatever your strategy is, you must be realistic about it. Even if it is to live off your credit cards, you will still need income to make those monthly payments. This means that while being unemployed you will likely have to be underemployed by doing some work that you would normally consider beneath you.

Your first jobs are likely to offer little in the way of benefits. If you are young you may be able to go without health insurance for a while, but it is always risky. Benefits should be a primary consideration for accepting any job. Health insurance in particular is a crucial factor. Granted, the job has to pay enough so that you can afford the health insurance premiums, but you should make it your goal to find a job that offers health insurance benefits.

Another way to judge an employer is to find out how much money, if any, they will contribute toward your retirement. Many small employers simply cannot afford to contribute to a 401-K plan, but will let you contribute your own money into a plan. Others cannot be bothered. A decent employer will match your contributions to at least three percent of salary. An ideal employer would double this amount. If you can find an employer that also provides a traditional pension that would be nirvana, but it is not realistic anymore. If you want this degree of protection, look toward state, county or federal employment.

Of course, if you get benefits like these do your damnedest to take advantage of them as soon as possible. Health insurance is most important, since any condition you may have or develop can leave you financially devastated. Otherwise contribute to the 401-K as much as you possibly can. You will pay less in the way of taxes and, of course, the sooner you start, the more you will reap when you retire. You may not believe that the money will actually be there when you retire. Do not be stupid. You too will age and if you are lucky, you will live to see your retirement. You will not want to eat dog food in your retirement. While social security may be problematical, your 401-K will generally be invested in commercial stocks and bonds. Our financial system has shown extreme resiliency. Even the Great Depression did not wipe out the stock markets. Invest early, invest regularly and invest until it hurts.

More job and career advice will follow in subsequent entries in this series.

February 18th, 2007 at 01:06pm Posted by Mark | Advice | no comments

Unsuited

About a year ago, I wrote about wearing a suit and tie to work again. This happened because I attended an event in downtown Washington D.C. It was my first foray into the city on business after more than a year. I used to have to play dress up every day when I worked in DC. Fortunately, in my latest job, I get to wear jeans, a polo shirt and sneakers every day, despite being a senior mid level manager in the civil service. It was like going to heaven.

Today I was at another meeting offsite, only it was not downtown. It was in Arlington, a few miles from downtown, in a building near the Virginia Square Metro Station. Because I was meeting with thirty or so people from a variety of federal agencies, many of them making more than I do, I knew it was time to dust off the fancy duds again. So it was back into the pressed pants, the permanent press shirt, the matching tie, the shiny shoes and the sports coat. Dave, one of my employees, was attending with me. I felt the need to warn him to do the dress up thing. It does not come naturally to either of us anymore.

So there I was at 8 a.m. in Arlington munching on the continental breakfast and trying to be good by drinking bottled water instead of bottled juices. From our sixth floor “Executive Conference Center”, we had a lovely view, not of the National Mall, but of Wilson Boulevard. It is hard to distinguish the City of Washington from its suburbs anymore; they all blend. It was not long after having had my fill of the compulsory highly caloric carbohydrates that we settled in for our executive conference in, er, the executive conference room I guess. Anyhow, the table was big and there was a large projector mounted into the ceiling with a Powerpoint slide show queued.

This is what executives do, I guess: sit in conference rooms, feel a bit hot in their suits, try to sound interested and most important of all, and refrain from falling asleep. I should not be here. I could have been in San Jose, California in a convention hall doing “outreach”, i.e. showing the system I manage to a bunch of strangers who wander by. That would not be particularly interesting either, but at least it would be 2500 miles away, and was a much more interesting way to get out of the office for a few days. It is nice to press the flesh with real users of our system and hear what is on their mind. I am supposed to do some of that anyhow. The devil is in finding the time. If my booth attracted little interest, thanks to the wired internet connection we paid for, I could at least read email. But alas, two others who would normally attend this Arlington meeting bowed out. One had the audacity to retire. I do not know what the other person’s reason was. Maybe he had to take his daughter on a field trip. Anyhow, I was left holding the bag. So there I was in Arlington, Virginia learning far more than I ever wanted to know about metadata issues relating to ocean observing systems.

I assumed I could not bring my laptop with me, so I left it at home. My last trip on business in that direction was at National Science Foundation. There the laptops were quarantined until the security folks ran it through a comprehensive virus scan, which could take hours. Today’s meeting was in rented space though, and the conference facilitators had an unsecured wireless network available for our use. Not that I was allowed to use their wireless network. Heavens, no! Our official agency policy, put out by our always well meaning and hyper-vigilant IT security folks, is you cannot connect your government laptop computer to any wireless network without an explicit waiver granted in advance. The effort required to actually acquire a waiver is much larger than any benefit it would provide. Yet I still I know many an executive who routinely use the wireless connections on their government furnished laptops anyhow. It may be against policy, but an executive has to get his work done. Even federal employees are expected to multitask. Anyhow, everyone else at the meeting had brought their laptops and were dutifully doing things like taking notes, answering email or surfing the internet when they weren’t passionately engaged in the exciting topic of metadata standards. I was sitting there taking sporadic notes and occasionally kicking myself in the shin to stay awake. Must not fall asleep, especially in front of my own employee!

So as I sat there doing my level best to stay interested in the dry topic of the moment, my subconscious was busy. It was asking me why I felt so uncomfortable being in a suit and tie again. This is how I spent every workday for about twenty years. It should be second nature to me. Yet it was not. I have joined the comfortable side of the workforce. Give me my blue jeans every day to work, please! Just being in a suit and tie makes put on my manager mask. I cannot seem to be just Mark when I am in a suit and tie.

The chairs were nice and cushy but still I was not comfortable. I squirmed. I was hot. Then I was cold. (Their heating and cooling system apparently needed some work.) My neck felt constrained. My underarms perspired. My dress socks had a death grip on my legs. In addition, my bladder was telling me I needed to make a discrete exit from the conference room. The discussion had been going on for two and a half hours with no end in sight. I needed relief.

Nature won. I slipped out of the conference room. And I felt … liberated. The adjoining hallways were empty. The blood moved in my legs again. I took the first full breath of air in a couple hours. After I did my business, I walked outside on the sixth floor balcony … just for a minute. I felt the sun on my face. I felt a gentle breeze drift through my hair. I heard the muffled sound of humanity, buses rounding the corner and the occasional rhythmic chant of a bird. I felt alive. Then guilt recalled me to my duty. I slipped back into the conference room and back into my chair. I squirmed. I tried to take more notes. I succeeded in not nodding off. I was grateful that the topic has shifted from metadata recommendations to transport protocol guidelines. At least it was a different topic

And I thought, only two more days of this.

May 10th, 2006 at 08:09pm Posted by Mark | Life 2006 | no comments

My harried week out west

Occam’s Razor fans will have to forgive my inability to post much lately. I have just finished a weeklong business trip in Denver. Between work and visiting family, I have been kept fully engaged. It is only now on a 777 moving across the country that I have something resembling sufficient personal time in which to order my thoughts.

My work took me to the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, Colorado. This is my third trip out there for the agency I joined two years ago. The trips now have a certain familiarity to them, which will only increase when I return again the first week of June. So far, we have stayed in the same hotels: a pair of Marriott hotels in Golden, Colorado a couple miles away from the Federal Center. They are clean and comfortable and provide an excellent view of the Rocky Mountains. Like most hotels these days, they offer a decent complementary breakfast consisting mostly of foods most sedentary adults should avoid.

On Monday evening, I went to sleep in my room at the Residence Inn at Golden, only to awaken unexpectedly at 1 AM. A fire alarm was putting out a deafening ring. 1 AM must be the worst time for me to have to awaken unexpectedly. I knew where I was but mentally I was on some other planet. For the longest time I could simply not figure out what was happening. Once my foggy mind put the facts together, I was unable to figure out how to do the simplest thing like turn on the light. When after a minute or so I had finally mastered that act, I could not figure out what to do next. Should I dash outside in my underwear? Eventually I decided to throw on my bathrobe, slip my shoes into my sneakers, and grab my room key. I staggered out of my room into the hallway in a dazed state. Fortunately, I was only a dozen feet or so from an exit.

It may have been 1 AM, but one of my employees, Dave, was still awake and in his business attire. Apparently, he is a night owl. Some birdbrain a few floors above apparently hung something on a sprinkler head, causing it to rupture, so there was no actual fire. After a few minutes outside, we were allowed back into our rooms. I went back to sleep, wary of another fire alarm. I could hear the sound of water coming down between the walls and a wet/dry vacuum above me. Needless to say, the rest of my sleep that night was restless. The next day we were all a bit groggy.

Linda, a coworker from my office in Reston, had a rental car. I became both one of her passengers and one of her dinner mates. Fortunately, Linda is an adventurous person. Despite having been to Denver at least twice a year for a decade, she felt there was much more to see. On Tuesday night for example, she took us on I-70 over the continental divide. This was my first time crossing the continental divide by car. The drive fifty miles or so into the Rocky Mountains was quite awe inspiring. For this east coast person, the mountains on either side of us struck me as incredibly steep and high. We made it through the Eisenhower tunnel before turning around. We dined at Beau Jo’s in the small town of Idaho Springs. The restaurant offered something called “Colorado Pizza”. I later asked my brother Tom, a resident of Boulder, if there was such a thing. He had never heard of it. Colorado pizza apparently consists of very thick crusts around the rim of the pizza pan and thin crusts in the middle. Since there is plenty of crust remaining after consuming the pizza, you are supposed to spread honey on the remaining crusts and eat them for dessert. While the pizza itself was okay, by getting dessert “free” it made for an inexpensive meal. It was also the first pizza parlor that I have ever been in where you order pizza by the pound. A two-pound pizza can feed three normal people more than adequately.

There is hardly room for the town of Idaho Springs between the Rocky Mountains. Except for the restaurants, there was little in the “downtown” that remained open after 6 p.m. For someone looking for an authentic small town experience, it seems a great and inexpensive place to live. We passed a realtor’s office and learned we could rent a mobile home for only $250 a month. The town is not big enough to justify a Wal-Mart.

Thursday night Linda took us to Mataam Fez, a Moroccan restaurant in Denver. I had never eaten Moroccan food before. The entertainment was as much a part of the experience as the meal. If you have never eaten in a Moroccan restaurant, be prepared to remove your shoes and sit on cushions on the floor. Expect the table to be about two feet off the ground. We had a five-course meal and shared our food. The food was overall quite tasty (though expensive), but rather elemental too. My Shrimp Pel Pel, for example, came in the shells with the feet still attached. A partner’s salmon was quite good but still had the scales on it. Moroccans apparently dispense with silverware. We ate everything with our hands. Before eating we had to wash our hands at the table. The waiter had us place our hands above a pot while he poured lemon water on them from a pitcher. After trying to eat dishes like creamed spinach with our fingers, I realized why silverware was invented.

The entertainment came in two forms. First, there was the belly dancer, an achingly beautiful and buxom woman half my age who I suspect was a local American co-ed, rather than a Moroccan. No matter, she was excellent at being both alluring and doing impressive things with her abdominal muscles. For example, she was able to balance the edge of a sword on her tummy and work it down her abdomen. Many patrons stuffed dollar bills into her skirt. In addition, the waiters had a unique talent of pouring tea into cups from behind their backs. They also demonstrated they could pour it from a high height into three cups stacked on top of each other. As best I could tell, not a drop landed on the floor. The spiced tea was excellent.

The business part of my trip was intense and exhausting. There were about fifty of us. Most participants were users who were rigorously testing changes to a system we manage. A typical day consisted of three or four formal meetings where they gave reports on the problems they were uncovering. Since these meetings have a critical mass of important users from across the country, it is hard not to have many other ad-hoc meetings too. I was sucked into many of these, and some of these meetings were intense.

While the testing part went quite well for my team (no underpowered web servers crashed this year), discussions with customers about delays in projects closing up and underway were less successful. I am under a lot of pressure to complete a current project, which, by some measures, is a year late. There are good reasons why it is a year late. Inadequate planning was certainly part of it, but it was also late because we spent much of the latter half of last year scrambling to install new web servers to keep up with demand from the public. (Demand is increasing by about a third a year.) However, our customers are wholly inured to operational issues. (They would have cared had the system come to a screeching halt last year, which it did not. Naturally, my team gets no credit for preventing this from happening.) Missing deadlines are perceived as bad management on my part. I am confident that over the next couple of years that most of these problems will be ironed out. Putting in place predictable processes and teaching excellent scientists the discipline of software engineering takes time.

As I told my boss, things will and in fact are already improving. However, given flat funding and a staff that is constant, changes occur in an evolutionary manner only. There is no magic wand to wave that can make long-term problems disappear overnight. Instead, solutions require much up front thought, planning, careful execution, rigorous monitoring, and integrating the many concerns. Bill Gates said managing programmers is like herding cats, and the same is true with my developers. Change is effected by getting their buy in and earning their respect. Over time, new and better practices will become institutionalized, and then plans will more accurately reflect reality.

While struggling with this I had to drop a bombshell on another set of customers. A key contract employee may have to leave us. The new contractor may not pick him up. In the federal government, contracting works in mysterious and often counterproductive ways. Against my wishes, the contracting officer selected another contractor because it bid lower. That makes a certain amount of financial sense if you assume two contractors can provide precisely the same service. Real life, of course, does not work that way, no matter how carefully you write the statement of work. That something like this would result in a six month or more delay in this project was irrelevant to the contracting officer. She had to follow the contracting laws. Apparently, I did not sufficiently plan for this specific contingency, and for that, I came up lacking. At the time, I was busy doing other things that seemed a whole lot more important, like instituting better ways of doing requirements management and system design. I occasionally get miffed by the pointless and counterproductive pressure, but I usually succeed in not taking it personally. I know that my strategy is sound and will prove itself in time.

Therefore, Friday found me glad to put the week behind me. My brother Tom lives in Boulder. The transit strike in Denver made it hard for me to get to Boulder from Lakewood via established means. Fortunately, Kip, a coworker who lives near Denver, drove me up to Boulder. We went along U.S. 93, a lovely road through the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Tom and some of his friends from NOAA do a regular Friday night dinner in a restaurant on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder. I was glad to enjoy their company. The Indian food at the Himalayan Restaurant was quite good too.

Saturday, Tom took me biking. My feet are a bit challenged at the moment, due to a recent toe injury, but I was able to enjoy a bike ride of about twenty miles with him by peddling with care. Boulder is a very bike-friendly city, with numerous wide and well-maintained biking trails. Most roads have extra space for bike lanes. I am impressed by how its residents take exercise and proper eating so seriously. A car is not an absolute necessity in Boulder if you are adventurous and an outdoor type. The prevalent obesity I see in the East is largely missing in Boulder. The cultural values are to be trim, eat organic foods and stay in shape. Boulder is really a model of how a city should be laid out and managed. It also demonstrates a pragmatic way for modern Americans to live healthy and engaged lives. It should be proud of its sensible land use planning and a pedestrian friendly infrastructure. As the age of oil ends, cities like Boulder will prosper while others that depend on hydrocarbons for transportation are likely to whither.

Tom’s girlfriend Beth invited me to spend last night at her house with Tom. Her townhouse was more home-like than Tom’s rather small condominium. It was good to meet Beth again, who I met for the first time in January. She is a skinny, intelligent, attractive, athletic and caring woman, which means she is a good match for my brother. Beth has a 9-year-old daughter named Erica who was fun to get to know. She reminded me of my daughter at that age. Beth must be a better parent than I am though, because Erica seems to be about as well adjusted as a nine year old can be. Beth also has two cats, one of whom is a lap kitty and deigned to sit on my lap for a while and be worshipped. While certainly not as affectionate as my recently departed feline Sprite, it was nonetheless comforting to be in a house with felines again.

In my absence, my wife has had about a dozen friends over for a party. She has also purchased a fish to replace Fred the Ferocious Fish. The fish is another betta and I understand she has named him Sid Vicious.

Tomorrow it is back to the salt mines. Those pressing problems I put on hold Friday afternoon will be back to challenge me again.

April 9th, 2006 at 09:33pm Posted by Mark | Travel | no comments

USGS: a great place to work

For about two years now, I have been working for the U.S. Geological Survey. I work at their headquarters building in Reston, Virginia. I am a civil servant with twenty-three years of federal service. The USGS is actually the fourth federal agency where I have hung my hat. For me there is absolutely no question about it: working for the USGS is a wonderful and stimulating experience. For twenty years, I worked at agencies full of mediocrity. Sometime they bordered on being dysfunctional. Consequently, sometimes my hard work was not appreciated. Now, I look forward to coming to work. There is no reason for me to look anywhere else in Club Fed. USGS is where I will hang out until I retire. The only thing that upsets me is I had to spend twenty years wandering the federal wilderness before I found a home at USGS.

If you take the time to visit the USGS jobs site, you can read exactly why it is a great place to work. For the most part the information on the page would apply to any federal agency. Arguably, these days any one of these standard federal benefits would qualify it as a great place to work. Try getting a defined pension benefit plan as a new employee even at IBM these days.

One of the reasons I like working at USGS is that, of the four agencies for which I have worked, it feels the least like a bureaucracy. It is more than the casual dress. USGS is part of the Department of Interior, and our unofficial department motto seems to be, “We don’t need no stinking suits and ties!” Of course, since we manage federal lands many of us spend our days out outdoors getting very personal with nature. However, many of us are still tied to our desks. Except for some in the Department of Interior headquarters in D.C. and various senior executives scattered across the country, few of us do the suit and tie thing. Even my Associate Director usually arrives in slacks and a button down shirt (no tie). He keeps a sports coat and some emergency ties discretely in his office should the situation warrant. Casual Friday? I am trying to imagine how that would be different. Every day is casual day where I work. I wear jeans to work every day. I generally avoid wearing T-shirts, although many employees wear them routinely. I could wear sneakers too but I prefer wearing modest hiking shoes instead. The only time I have to play the dress up game is when I am going to an important meeting offsite. For example in December, I had to attend a meeting at the National Science Foundation. I still skipped the suit, but I felt compelled to do the dress pants, shiny shoes, long sleeve shirt and tie thing.

Of course dressing casual is more the business norm these days than dressing up. However, those of us who live and work around Washington, DC usually have to play the dress up game. The degree of dressiness is directly proportional to your distance from the White House. Particularly if you reach a certain federal grade level (generally GS-13 or above) the peer pressure to dress up can get quite strong. For more than twenty years, I did the dress up lite routine, which meant everything but the suit. I later years as I advanced to the upper grades I learned to keep a sport coat in my office for those occasions when I had to interact with people more than a grade above me. Needless to say it didn’t fit me. I always felt I was projecting the wrong image of myself when I dressed up for work. I am more of a jeans and polo shirt kind of guy.

So perhaps the casual dress culture is not that much of an asset. For me the most amazing thing about the USGS is that employees are fully empowered. There is of course a top down hierarchy; it is just that most of the time it does not matter. My associate director, for example, is a man named Bob. He expects a relative peon like me to also call him Bob. Everyone I meet feels fully vested in the agency and knows that their work matters. It matters because their work really does matter. USGS is, after all, an institution chock full of scientists. Scientists as a rule are far more concerned about science than they are about politics or hierarchies. Nothing is more precious to us than our reputation for accurate science.

In other federal agencies where I worked, many employees were clock-watchers. It’s not that they hated their jobs, it’s just that their evenings were far more enjoyable than their working hours. At USGS, most of us do not watch the clock. We are too busy happily engaged in our jobs. I trust that all of my employees will accurately account for their time and I am sure they do. Some I know will routinely work many more hours than they can charge for without authorization. They do it because they are involved with their work. They know that their contributions make a tangible difference to the quality of our science and the products that we put out. Consequently, their job becomes fun instead of a chore.

USGS is a very spread out agency. It has to be that way since ours is a big country. We need to be close to where the science is happening. Each state generally has a central office, and most have branch offices. To collaborate you have to work across geographical boundaries. Of course, this means a lot of conference calls and online Webex sessions. It also means a fair amount of travel. I am sure we have employees who never travel anywhere, but I think they are the exception. It is an unusual employee who does not have to travel somewhere on business at least once a year. Last year I was on an airplane five times for my job. I could have likely been on an airplane many more times had I elected it. Mostly I go to Denver, but last year I also visited Helena, Atlanta, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. It is good to get out of the office during the year for a change of perspective and scenery. My job has just the right amount of business travel. Often I have the opportunity to see some unique aspects of the areas that I visit. In my other jobs, I could go years between business trips, if I went on any at all.

No matter where I go though, the people who work for USGS are uniformly friendly, professional and interesting. Despite seeing many of them only once or twice a year, it is as if they are just down the hall from me. The many conference calls between business trips fill in the gaps. We are truly one big team. The only challenging part is dealing with the time zone problems. Invariably for those of us on the East Coasts this means our many conference calls are packed into the afternoons.

As far as I can tell, the only downside to working at USGS is we cannot own certain kinds of energy stocks. Since geology is the best-known part of our business (we also do water resources, biology and cartography), those engaged in geology may have insight into areas that are profitable for oil and natural gas exploration.

I suspect there are other federal agencies that are similar to USGS, but not many. I would bet NOAA and the National Science Foundation share many of our values too. I do know that I feel very valued and engaged at USGS. I appreciate the non-hierarchical culture; it is a perfect fit for me. If you want to impress people at USGS, do better science. For the most part though we are too engaged in our science to care too much about whether our own egos are puffed up or not. We are professionals in the best sense of the word.

March 17th, 2006 at 05:25pm Posted by Mark | Life 2006 | no comments

The Last of the Square Deals

I am in retirement class this week. No, at age 49 (effective tomorrow) I am not quite ready for retirement. However, I am ready to start actively planning for successful retirement. Thus far my strategy has been to throw as much money into my 401-K as I can afford. I need to do better for myself, so I am in two days of learning the ins and outs of federal retirement. It is quite a revelation to me.

I am a federal employee with nearly 24 years of federal employment. I understood when I joined the government in 1981 that the retirement benefits in the government were good, but today they are excellent. My retirement benefits are excellent not because they have improved over the years. They seem better today because many companies have reduced or outright eliminated their retirement benefits. Pensions seem to be going the way of the dinosaur. Even IBM is going to require new hires to consider a 401-K their retirement system. United Airline employees are fighting to retain their pension plans, but it is unclear whether in the airline will even still be in business in a couple years. You can bet Southwest Airlines does not have no stinking pension plans beyond a 401-K. Similarly, GM and Ford are groaning under the weight of their own pension plans and would get rid of them if the UAW would let them.

When I joined the government at age 24, reaching retirement was as otherworldly to me as my setting foot on Mars. I started my career with the Defense Mapping Agency (now the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency). After some months doing boring clerk typist duties I found a job as a production controller. It involved monitoring the production of the agency’s many maps through its printing plant. I was a young buck in an office chock full of Korean War veterans. The veterans in the plant had one big career goal: retirement. There was a ten-year calendar in one of the offices I frequented. Each employee had marked on the calendar his or her name and the month in the year when he was eligible for retirement. I remember looking at it and not being able to grasp even the notion of holding on to the same job for ten years.

Now, turning age 49, those grizzled Korean War veterans from the early 1980s are looking very wise. Yes Virginia, there is more to life than working 9-5 for the rest of your life. Having some time in life to enjoy financial security without the press of work is indeed a noble goal for a human being. We are truly privileged to live in an age where this is now possible for many of us. Rather than the end of something, retirement is looking more and more to me like the beginning of something that quite wonderful.

Staring in 1987 new federal employees had to enroll in a newer and less generous retirement system called FERS, the Federal Employees Retirement System. While most of the retirement benefit depend on building wealth in a 401-K like system called the Thrift Savings Plan, there is still a true pension component to FERS. A federal employee wise enough to save systematically can enjoy quite a comfortable retirement. He also will enjoy partially indexed cost of living raises in his pension and social security benefits. In 2006, this is a good deal.

Because I started federal employment in 1981, I belong to the original Civil Service Retirement System. This system is even more generous than FERS, with fully indexed cost of living raises on its pension. Both plans allow you to maintain your membership in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) in retirement, providing you retire having been insured for a number of years by one of its plans. Even in retirement, the government will keep paying about three quarters of your health insurance costs. As a retiree, you are still free to switch between one of the many myriad health plans during the annual Open Season.

These are just the highlights of a suite of benefits and services that federal employees take for granted, but should not. Frankly, the benefits are so superior to what you can get in private industry these days that you would be a fool not to consider government employment as a career. Certainly as I can attest, being a government employee has its downsides. However, unemployment is usually not one of them. Moreover, the plethora of real and meaningful benefits, many of which continue until the day you die, now seem almost surreal.

Today I find myself grateful that I am a federal employee. At the time, it did not seem like a great career choice but I stumbled on something truly wonderful. Now I feel protected from many of the sad but harsh realities of modern living. I can understand why many in the private sector would feel resentful. However, I wonder if their anger is misplaced. Maybe instead of feeling resentment they should be ask why they are permitting so many of the benefits we used to take for granted to slip away. Maybe they should be demanding that their leaders invest as much energy in the health and welfare of the people as they do catering to the needs of business. It sure seems to me that business has an increasingly unenlightened attitude toward is employees.

I take health insurance for granted. I pay an excellent rate because my employer values me enough to pay most of these costs. The government also buys health insurance for millions of employees at a time, likely garnering significant discounts. The FEHBP is a model for how a health plan should work for all Americans. I do not understand why we cannot open it to all Americans. I think Americans would embrace it, even if they had to pay the full price of the premiums. I also think employers, sick of double-digit health insurance price increases every year, would welcome the relief.

When it comes to my retirement, I can retire on a full pension when I have thirty years of service, which should be in 2012. I am not sure I will actually retire then, since I will be only 55. Yet it is nice to know that I have that option. I have many options. I can buy term life insurance and long-term care insurance. If I want, I can set aside money into dependent care and health care savings accounts and have this money subtracted from my taxable income. Of course, there are survivor benefits should I die, become disabled, or get injured on the job.

It may be that the federal government is the last place where a worker can get a square deal in this country. Perhaps you deserve better too. If you are a private sector employee who feels like you are getting the shaft from your employer, perhaps you should consider Uncle Sam, or your state and local governments as an employer of first resort.

You can view and apply for thousands of federal jobs at the Office of Personnel Management’s USA Jobs web site.

January 31st, 2006 at 10:18pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

Empowered and traveling

One of the weird but nice things about my current job is that I am empowered. In all my other jobs, I was what amounted to a flunky. I was often a well-paid flunky, but a flunky nonetheless. While I had influence over decisions, I had no actual control over them. In fact, more often than not my suggestions were given short shrift. I usually did not usually have the inner ear of the decision maker.

In my current job, I am empowered. Of course, I too have a boss. Sometimes she will put the kibosh on my suggestions. However, increasingly (particularly when there is money available) she will flash green lights. She has chosen to delegate real authority to me. While she controls the overall budget and makes key financial decisions, she largely leaves me and the other managers alone. She does her best to give me the tools (time, money, executive sponsorship) so that I am my team can soar. Even when she is very busy, she will take the time to listen to me.

After eighteen months or so on the job, I still find this exhilarating. I wonder why there is not more empowerment in government and industry. Why are so many managers micromanaging? Why are they not instead putting trust in their employees? I too am learning to empower my employees. I find that empowerment is not always easy for me. It turns out that I am a bit of a control freak. However, I am unlearning my “trust no one” habits. You do not always have to watch behind your back.

For example, I have a team leader. I do my best not to interfere with the way he does his job. I see my role as more of a coach than a boss. As my boss does for me, if he wants something, I do my best to get it for him. I try to use this same strategy on all my employees. I try to let them feel like they have a sense of ownership for their areas of responsibility. I let them know what I expect from them but try not to worry them about how they accomplish it. “Holler if you want an opinion,” is what I tell them. I already have more than enough on my plate with routine work. I cannot worry about their work too. I have to let it go.

My employees do not always want to be empowered. They often want me to make the decisions for them. Why is this? Perhaps not everyone is comfortable with empowerment. Perhaps they want to disclaim responsibility if something goes wrong. I am not always comfortable making these micro decisions. Typically, my employee has a far better understanding of the problem and the solution than I do. Unless I have a strong reason to do otherwise, I will ask for their recommendation and implement that. As much as possible I will ask them to manage it too.

Sometimes I am dinged for actions. Being empowered apparently does not mean not being insensitive to my boss’s needs and concerns. While she wants to be hands off, she needs to be very hands on in a few areas. In those areas, she is not afraid to micromanage. She is legally accountable for how our money is used. As a result, she is aware of subtleties that I am not, such as what the Inspector General might be looking for in an audit. Consequently, she is quite concerned about how and where money is spent. She insists on personally approving every financial transaction. She wants to know down to the penny (if possible) how much money is obligated, whom it is obligated to, and what the obligation means for the future. This becomes an obsession at the end of the fiscal year.

She is also concerned about the image of our department. She does not like mixed messages presented to her management. I have learned that even in innocent emails to her boss it is a good idea to CC her. It is usually better to forward a draft to her first, let her weigh the political aspects, and let her present the situation to her management.

I have also learned through a number of painful lessons to stay on my own turf. I interact with a couple peers who run their own units. Of course, our employees work intimately with one another on a daily basis. It is easy to forget to make their boss aware of these discussions. I have been known to task employees outside my unit from time to time. Tsk, tsk. Apparently my empowerment has limits. After all, I don’t want my employees doing tasks for others if it might impact our commitments.

Last fiscal year our budget was quite tight. My boss was always looking for corners to cut. One consequence of her concern was that travel became less frequent. We held planning meetings via teleconference rather than in person. The result was probably not quite as good as if we had done it in person. As a new fiscal year dawns we find ourselves in a fortunate position. Congress, for the first time in many years, has actually passed our appropriation bill. In addition, the president signed it into law before the start of the fiscal year. Amazingly, there is some, but not a whole lot more money to spend beyond cost of living raises. We frankly did not see this coming. We are now putting our brains together to figure out how to best use the money over the coming year.

With money flowing a bit freer than before, I am finding it easier to get travel approved. This puts me into a small dilemma: do I travel or not? I do not mind a couple business trips a year, but lately my business trips have been nightmares. This is perhaps symptomatic of the stress our airlines are under these days. However, it is also not hard to make a business case that I need to do a lot more traveling than I do.

So more and more I have to decide whether I need to travel on business or not. Tonight I find myself in Cupertino, California. I was invited to attend a customer advisory board meeting for a database that we use. It would have been easy to say no thanks. The conference after all is in California and I am on the East Coast. The conference lasts a day but by the time I travel there and back, it will consume three days out of my week. Cons: a lot of time in airplanes and the usual three-hour jetlag hangover. Pros: having significant influence in setting the future direction of this product we use extensively. Deciding factor: money. Since we have more of it this year, I decided to go to the meeting. It may be a waste of my time, or it may be the start of a closer relationship. It may allow us to get our needs addressed more quickly.

This too still seems strange. I can elect to travel anywhere I want for business, providing there is money to do so. I realize I am fortunate to have such freedom in my job. However, particularly when the travel seems to go back-to-back, or when the airline gods have been especially nasty, I wish I was unempowered again. Eventually the feeling passes.

I am going trying to look on business travel as a perquisite rather than a pain. I am going to try to tell myself that it is okay to empower myself by sending myself across the country to follow a hunch. When I can afford to do so, if the destination has amenities, then I will try to arrive a day early to see a few sites or to do some local hiking.

Alas, it will not happen on the Cupertino trip. It seems I have meetings to run when I get back to the East Coast, and my To Do list will doubtlessly grow longer in my absence.

October 4th, 2005 at 12:04am Posted by Mark | Travel | no comments

Defying Gravity

When life’s thermals decide to take you into the stratosphere you simply have to buckle up and breathlessly enjoy the ride.

For no particular reason that I can pin down, I have been feeling good. Not just good. Great. Exceptional. I feel full of energy. I feel in very high spirits. Certainly, I have both good and bad days, but lately I have been feeling, well, terrific. I am trying to think how long it has been since I felt this way. Years most likely. Decades perhaps.

I am trying to find an explanation but nothing can wholly explain it. It is not as if I have found a new love (the old one is still fine, thank you). It is not as if my sex life has suddenly skyrocketed. Nor has this blog taken on thousands of new hits. In fact, there are many aspects of my life right now that should be downers. My mother is dying. My wife is still chronically underemployed. My daughter still has issues she is working through. I still have some weight I could stand to lose. The yard needs a lot of work. Clearly these are not all huge issues, but they are issues nonetheless that must be groped with and through.

So why do I have this good mood? Perhaps it is a combination of lots of things. Washington D.C. has delivered a lovely summer week, with low humidity and highs in the mid 80s. The skies are blue and the haze is absent. As a result, I can ride the bike to work every day and it was more of a joy rather than a pain. My body really appreciates the extra exercise. Getting my heart rate above 150 several times a day through biking seems to tickle my body.

It also likes the workouts at the gym. Usually I hit the gym more out of necessity and resignation than with any eagerness. Yet I find myself bounding up the stairs to the gym and almost jumping onto the machines. Adding additional weights to a set is not as difficult as it usually is. I like coming home and having my muscles stretched. My body tingles in a healthy, aerobic glow.

A large part of it is doubtless my job, which I seem to enjoy more and more everyday. I have felt optimized for quite a while now. My In basket is generally overflowing in the morning and overflowing in the evening. Rather than get upset over it, I seem to like it. I like the frantic nature of my job. I like its chaos. Moreover, I like its management aspects a whole lot more than I expected. That is because I am empowered. It is lovely after 48 years to finally be able to be in charge.

I feel great being so challenged at work everyday. This is the aspect of my job that I strangely like the best: being pushed to excel. Although my job is sedentary and it seems like nothing much gets done, a lot actually does get done. I am blessed with a dedicated and professional team. Unlike most managers, I have no deadweight to deal with. This leaves me free to lead, and I like to lead aggressively. I do not lead recklessly but I do move confidently and strategically. Fortunately, I have a team full of people who feel exactly the same way. While realistically they know they have limitations too, each employee seems to arrive at work in a similar frame of mind: anxious to get into the tasks of the day and to do things exceptionally well.

If you saw the movie Apollo 13, you may have some idea how my team works. While that flight was a failure, it was also a success. Despite all the odds, the astronauts and Mission Control successfully brought a crippled spacecraft home from the moon. That is what we do. It may not be obvious to you, but the Internet is a big, chaotic environment. Entropy tries every day to bring our distributed system to its knees. Yet we persevere. We keep it going at it full throttle. My team certainly stumbles now and then. Nevertheless, we never give up nor despair. No matter what the Internet gods throw at us during any given day we can work through it or around it.

It is a glorious form of chaos. We juggle dozens of balls in the air at once. Occasionally one drops to the ground. However, what is amazing is that we mostly keep them all in the air at the same time.

It is like this pretty much every day. Yet I seem to thrive in this sort of chaotic environment. I love the asymmetric nature of the job. I love the fact that it is hard and complex work. I also seem thrive in our much-challenged budgetary environment. We always have to pinch our pennies. We are not funded like Microsoft or Google. It is hard to do anything complicated with computer systems, but it is a lot easier when you are flush. When you are not, you have to think outside the box. We think outside the box a lot.

So why am I happy? I am not sure. Nevertheless, many things are going right, or at least feel like they are going right. And for once I feel a sort of synergy from it all that is almost ecstatic. My body seems to be in step with my mind. We are a team. We are moving, we think, toward greatness. We are changing our little corner of the universe for the better.

I feel like Elphaba from the musical Wicked. I feel like I am defying gravity:

So if you care to find me
Look to the Western sky!
As someone told me lately
Everyone deserves the chance to fly
And if I’m flying solo
At least I’m flying free
To those who ground me
Take a message back from me!

Tell them how I am defying gravity
I’m flying high, defying gravity
And soon I’ll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz
No Wizard that there is or was
Is ever gonna bring me down!!

August 25th, 2005 at 09:04pm Posted by Mark | Life 2005 | no comments

Slip Sliding into the Past

For nine years, I worked in the bowels of the Pentagon. Okay, maybe “bowels” is not the right word. I rarely went into the basement, that deep, dark and mysterious place. In the Pentagon basement, rats were not too difficult to find and all sense of direction was lost. It was a dark and horrid place. I worked on the third floor near the A (innermost) ring, which was a challenging enough place to work. Among other things, it was very noisy and constantly about eighty-five degrees. The Pentagon was designed before air conditioning and personal computers. With hundred of PCs on all the time it felt like an oven.

I still find it hard to believe that I spent nine years there. If there is one building in the world where I wanted to work least it was the Pentagon. I had been there before. It was a confusing maze of dilapidated halls chock full of military guys wearing lots of stripes, stars and medals. They had short tempers, short hair and seemed to specialize in rushing frantically from meeting to meeting. While defending the nation was important work, at its core their mission was finding very lethal ways to kill other people. It was not an easy place for this liberal to work.

I ended up in the Pentagon because I wanted the security of the civil service again. I started my career with six years working for the Defense Mapping Agency. Eventually I got restless and decided to try the private sector. I worked for the Democrats but in 1988 during one of their periodic budget woes, I ended rather abruptly laid off. To make ends meet I scrambled and took a contract job. For three months, I worked as a subcontractor at the Department of Labor. However, with a new house I could not afford unemployment or even underemployment for very long. The civil service at least had the virtue of having a steady paycheck. I found the Air Force at a job fair in Tysons Corner. The Air Force in the Pentagon was hiring. It took them less than three months to reinstate me as a civil servant.

Perhaps I should have suspected something. No doubt, my still active security clearance weighed on their decision to hire me. Still, it felt too fast and too easy. By government standards, they filled my position at something approaching breakneck speed. Thus, January 1989 found me everyday boarding the 5N bus from Reston to the Pentagon.

For nine years, I worked in the Pentagon. I shall not name the organization. We directly supported the Air Force staff in the Pentagon with software systems. Our work was mostly classified. My particular niche was to support a decision support system written in a programming language called PL/I. It helped the Air Force figure out where they were going to place all their aircraft over the next five years.

For all the difficulty and hassle of working there, it was quite a learning experience. I sharpened my programming teeth in the Pentagon, working up from journeyman programmer to lead programmer to technical leader. For a civil service job, it could be very stressful at times. Taxpayers have this image of civil servants sitting at their desks tossing paper airplanes around. In this job, at times I was running a system that kept me on call in the middle of the night. I reported to Colonels who did not take any excuses and had very short fuses. I learned a lot about my ability to deal with stress (not very well). I came to both admire the officers running around the place and loathe them. I admired their confidence and ability to get things done. I did not like the way they moved from job to job every couple of years. They rarely understood the culture of our organization. To get good performance appraisals they had to look like they were changing things big time. Therefore, it seemed we were always in constant reorganization mode. Some years it amazed me that we got anything done at all.

Nevertheless, the Air Force in the 1990s was well funded. I got lots of training. Whether I wanted to or not I learned all about software engineering. Moreover, because I was talented, I was eventually assigned to do some cool stuff. In the mid 90s, client/server architectures were all the rage. I was running a hip project written in a tool that now seems as antiquated as COBOL called Powerbuilder.

The military came and went every couple of years but the civilians hung around, like lamprey to the hull of a ship. The civilian workforce there ran the gamut from every taxpayer’s worst nightmare of a civil servant to mediocre to talented to incredibly brilliant. In general, there were those who did and those who did not. Moreover, there were those with talent and those who could only write spaghetti code. Mostly we maintained legacy classified systems that ran on Multics (and eventually) IBM mainframes.

I left seven and a half years ago. Since that time, I have not given the old organization much thought. I’m been busy moving on, working next for the Department of Health and Human Services and for the last seventeen months or so with the U.S. Geological Survey. However, I did find from time to time that I missed certain people with whom I had worked intimately. In particular, I missed my boss John, Steve, Ray and Diane. In the early 90s, we formed a very effective team. We also worked very well together. Moreover, we knew how to kick back together. For example, on Fridays we would escape to a Shakey’s Pizza place in Annandale for lunch. There you could get all the pizza you could eat for less than $5. What a deal.

The golden years were few. We move on and largely lost touch with each other. Ray retired. Diane took another job. Steve and John took jobs elsewhere in the Pentagon. Except for one retirement luncheon six years ago, I had not seen any of them until today.

I was one of the last people to get training in the obscure art of programming Multics computers. Through Multics.org, I found a guy who I used to work with. He kept in touch with others from the Pentagon (he had moved on to the private sector). He passed my email address on. When a former boss of mine announced his retirement, I got an invitation to attend the luncheon.

For about a week, I pondered whether I wanted to open up that part of my life again. I worked with a great team for a few years. I also spent the last few years of my time there working in a different branch. There I was the squeaky wheel. In that new branch, I was not well liked. Eventually the project manager I worked for threw a temper tantrum. I was thrown off her team and sent back to do mainframe programming, which I loathed.

To say the least I was upset and hurt. Not surprisingly, soon thereafter I shopped my résumé around. By 1998, I was out of the Pentagon and working for the Department of Health and Human Services. I knew if I went to this luncheon that I might encounter some of this bad karma again. Did I want to blow them off and lock out that part of my past? Or did I want to venture back after seven and a half years and maybe say hello again to some people I had grown to like?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Therefore, it was with some trepidation that I attended my old boss’s retirement luncheon today. I was a bit nervous. Seven and a half years is a long time. I would remember faces. However, could I remember their names? My worry was specious. I was hardly the only person returning after many years. One man attended who had retired in 1988. For the most part, I also remembered the names of the people who were there too.

My old boss John was there, two grades higher than when I last knew him. That alone justified coming. He now manages hundreds of people in a very demanding job. (Since he ran on adrenaline, I figured he was right where he belonged.) I was amazed for in sixteen years he had not aged a day. Ray was also there. He had retired more than five years earlier. It was as if not a day had passed. We greeted each other warmly. Alas, neither Steve nor Diane was there. Diane had hoped to come but apparently did not make it. I do not know if anyone had even bothered to track down Steve. Yet conversation resumed naturally, as if I had not spent more than seven years of my life elsewhere. It seemed a bit odd.

And my nemesis L. was there too, as I expected. If my stomach was tightening, it was because of her. My most enduring memory of her was her screaming at me when she threw me off her team. Today we greeted each other cordially. In seven years, she had moved from project manager to the director of the whole office. This is an amazing accomplishment. (When I left she had only a high school education.) Her screaming fit at me aside, L. filled the mother hen role in the organization. Her specialty was people. While she obviously failed in establishing a healthy working relationship with me, she had worked her social charms (and hopefully competence) into the director’s job. I complemented her on her promotions and she politely inquired about my current employment.

As for the retiring guest of honor, I was glad to see my old boss Bill again too. Bill is a plainspoken man, and he took the time to take me aside. “Mark,” he said. “You were screwed by this organization.” He told me the story of how the nascent system I had led floundered after I left. To this day, it remains an expensive mess that does not meet the customer’s requirements. He said because I was not available a contractor had to be hired to write a functional description of the system. “You could have written it in a week.” Yes indeed. It was good to hear these words from Bill. I felt validated at last.

I did not hear similar words from my former nemesis L. However, I found her behavior a lot different. Maybe it came from having much more responsibility. She seemed more deferential toward me than I remembered. She talked about the vacancies in the office and encouraged me to stop by the office sometime and chat. With no malice in my voice, I told her I did not think that was likely to happen. Yet I could see her wheels turning. Perhaps she was thinking, “If I could get Mark to come back, he could fill a key role.”

On the drive home, I contemplated the idea of returning to that organization. I must confess after so many years that it felt comfortable jumping back into that culture. The nine years I spent there remains the longest time I spent at any one job in my career. It felt a little like going home to Mom and Dad’s and sleeping in your old bedroom again. Knowing L., I suspect I will hear from her in the coming weeks. If she does I suspect she will be sounding my out on whether I might want to return to working for the Air Force.

I cannot see myself trading in my current job for the hassle of a security clearance and commuting into Arlington every day. Although I am a fairly new employee at USGS, I already realize that I am at last where I should be. Every job has its stresses including my latest one. Nevertheless, USGS feels like the place where I should have begun my federal career. It is at USGS that I want to pour out my talent until I retire. I do hope that I hear from L. anyhow. I think she has regrets for past behavior and wants to tell me directly. Perhaps then, this old wound will fully heal.

July 29th, 2005 at 07:11pm Posted by Mark | Life 2005 | no comments

Professional

What does it mean to be professional? I have been pondering this recently. We can probably all agree that doctors, dentists and lawyers are professionals. Perhaps the definitive idea is captured by ICANN when they set up the .pro Internet domain. It is limited to the above, plus accountants and engineers. (Currently it is only available for people in the United States, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom.) If you want a .pro domain you have to provide credentials to the registrar. But at least your clients have high assurance they are not dealing with a flake.

Professionals have come to be generally understood to be people who have substantial legal liability for the consequences of their work. You don’t want the million-dollar house you had built for you fall apart because of a poor design. In short if you are a professional then the understanding is that you hold a position of trust. Professionals are required to maintain a certain amount of continuing education in their field. If they do not, they can lose their credentials.

So much for what passes for the legal understanding of the word. But in my twenty-five years or so in the business world the world has taken on other contexts. Executives were tacitly understood to be professionals. Senior level managers usually thought of themselves as professionals. At least in the government one sign of a professional was the cut of their cloth. If they wore suits and took care of their appearance they were assumed to be professionals. Another sign was their working hours. Real professionals do not work eight-hour days. Real professionals are in early and stay late. Real professionals are routinely in the office on the weekend or stuffing their briefcases with papers to read in the evenings and on weekends. Real professionals are always on call. Their most important tools are their cell phones and Blackberries. Here’s what I picked up through the ether: professionals were people whose clients always came first. Kids, wives and hobbies were something that professionals dabbled in when schedule allowed. For a real professional every vacation was scheduled provisionally and subject to last minute changes or cancellation.

Actually I sort of felt sorry for them. “Get a life” is what I wanted to tell them. There is more to life than work. For a professional his career is everything. If he were to be graded, his work must get an A. Work is not allowed to be turned in late. You do whatever it takes to meet your client’s demands. To me it sounded dreadful: life in hell.

At least this is what I thought being professional meant before I took my current job. Since then I have had an awakening. Professional doesn’t mean what I thought it meant, at least not in my agency. Ordinary people could be professionals. Professionals could wear jeans and a T-shirt to work. Professionals were allowed to take off time to deal with family problems. What gives? How could I possibly call them professionals?

It turns out that being professional is not about having the image of a professional, it’s actually being a professional. If you are a professional then it doesn’t matter how you dress or how long you work as long as you get the work done on time and meet very high quality standards. Auto mechanics can be and often are professionals. If you are a mechanic and you promise a rebuilt engine by 5 PM and it is ready at that time and it has been thoroughly fixed, inspected, tested and certified then you are a professional too. It turns out professionals are all around us, not just in the executive offices. What matters is the passion for excellence and the commitment to high quality. The suits, the ties, the heels, the shiny shoes and the $200 haircuts don’t matter.

The team I manage has shown me once again what true professionalism is all about. This time it happened over the Memorial Day weekend. The power gods in our building declared a power outage to test some circuits, as required by the General Services Administration. Now I could have said, “Hey team, there is going to be a power outage this weekend. We got to figure out how to keep our system up during this time. I’ll need people to work on the weekend.” But I didn’t. They were way ahead of me.

Keeping a large system serving real time information to the public is a big challenge. In our case we have geographically separated servers with redundant information just to ensure we have backup capability. But there was a wrinkle this year. We were getting unprecedented demand. May is usually our busiest month but we were unable to keep the power gods from taking down one of the nodes of our system anyhow. One third of our capacity would be offline for more than twelve hours. My team got busy.

The mechanics of how they solved this problem don’t matter. The point is they did it. Despite being geographically separated they collaborated via phone, email and instant message and decided who would do what and when. A zillion emails flew around with others we needed to collaborate with whom provided electricity, network support and distributed routing. Admittedly as the time approached for the dreaded power outage we were nervous. I was biting my nails, since I am the system manager and have ultimate accountability. Warnings went out. System messages came up on the web site. Routers switched customers to different servers.

When the power came back on two members of my team were hovering over their consoles and began pounding away at their keyboards. Having the electricity back up is just one part of a complex dance. Are the local and wide area networks working correctly? Did the servers boot up correctly? (It turned out that a test server lost a disk drive during the power up.) Were all the redundant servers serving the same information? When the server was down it lost its feed and there were more than twelve hours of information it needed to digest before it could be reenabled. They were on these details and myriad other ones on a Saturday during a holiday weekend dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s. By mid Saturday afternoon the servers were back up and all was back to normal. Fortunately despite unprecedented demand the other servers were able to keep up with demand. From our customer’s perspective it was like nothing major had happened, except for some old historical data was unavailable for a while. All the critical data needed to safeguard lives and protect property kept streaming through and was served nationally.

This by itself was pretty remarkable. But this is just one part of the chaos these half dozen people dealt with last month. I throw boat anchors at them regularly, engaging them in tedious planning meetings when they were itching to do system maintenance or development. It’s our planning season so I also have members of my team working on planning documents while biting their nails over performance problems from our unexpectedly high demand. And there is a big acceptance test coming next week we are preparing for. Maybe unlike the image of a professional they did not exude perfect confidence all the time. Maybe they were a little terse and crabby from time to time from the pressure. But we were all in the foxhole together. Everyone was focused like a laser beam on our problems.

The irony is that as civil servants if they wanted to they could have disclaimed any responsibility and taken their three day weekends regardless. I had no money to pay them overtime, just the carrot of comp time. It’s not like people on my team don’t have families that need them. Some of them have challenging family problems. But they could and did manage their family problems around their work responsibilities.

This is a small story doubtless replicated millions of times a day across this country of ours. But it is this sort of spirit and fierce determination that truly makes this country such a remarkable place. It is one of the reasons, current administration excepted, I am very proud to be an American and a civil servant. My team may not be in literal foxholes in Iraq battling insurgents, but they are in foxholes of a sort a lot of the time nonetheless, routinely giving 150% of themselves for their country. It’s important for my fellow taxpayers to know that the characterization of your government civil servants as lazy, bureaucratic and spoiled is more myth than reality. Despite shrinking budgets, despite an executive branch more enamored with swords than plowshares, despite sometimes overt hostility by the people who run this country directed at them, they soldier on too and routinely deliver excellence.

Perhaps next to the ubiquitous “Support our troops” yellow ribbons stuck to our car bumpers there will someday be a “Support our civil servants” ribbon too. Yeah, not in my lifetime.

June 4th, 2005 at 02:43pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments