Category: Work

Sounds about right:

Why would a guy like me, retired going on 3 years now, be worried about the job market? It’s because I keep getting calls and emails from recruiters. There must be something wrong if they cannot find qualified engineers younger than 59. Various warnings about the declining STEM (Science, Technology, Enginnering and Math) situation in this country have been bandied about for decades, but the problem won’t go away. It crosses boundaries between issues like immigration, national security and global economics. Kids need to get off the iPhones and on the computers.

Aaaand the plot thickens…

Seems I’ve become sort of a bad guy around town at the customer site the past few weeks. The ball got rolling here, after inept security personnel basically shot me in the foot, despite my strict compliance with their onerous forms of security protocol stupidity. To make a long story even longer, the big boss eventually chimed in, and with the stroke of a keyboard – voila! I’m back – Eight days later.

When will we ever learn that pieces of paper coupled with inexperienced, young worker bees does NOT a very useful system make? So Team-1 kid sends paperwork again (second time, remember the count), incorrectly, or so Team-2 claims, and an hour’s-long runaround for me ensued. Now I don’t mind doing whatever it takes to get the job done, never have, never will, but I’m starting to feel like they are teaming up against me doing this on purpose. So I get the 1-day temp badge after the paperwork creator Team-1 kid disappears early for the day. Seems the coding for certain portions of the system has recently changed and it was submitted in the old format. No biggie, Team-2’s boss assures me it will all be taken care of before I return after another week. I’ll try again next go- ’round…

Fast forward to next trip to the site and guess what? 3rd version of the paperwork still no worky – something about expired signatures. So I’m cool with all this, knowing better than most how these things go, being retired AF myself. But it seems my sheer number of appearances at the VCC coupled with their annoyance at this activity has apparently gotten up the chain. More on that later. Another 1-day badge, work till almost midnight, deposit said T-badge in the receptacle by the door, forgetting to take it to the window and exchange it for my I.D. Boy was that a big mistake. But in fact, it was the the first mistake I actually EVER committed of my own accord in this debacle. At the outset, I correctly recognized the initial PIN problem from 3 weeks ago before anything went wrong, but was DIRECTED by (as I mentioned earlier), inept security personnel to go ahead and fail it anyway. Sheesh.

At this point it has become a matter of principle, to me. Something is fundamentally wrong, I’m just not sure exactly what yet. Appearing at the ECP with yet another 1-day badge from the VCC, I politely ask for return of my I.D. from yesterday. This situation comes about because you get a badge at the ECP if you arrive at the site after the VCC closes. They have a different way of doing things which involves trading an I.D. for the badge they give you. But the T-badge they gave me yesterday is in the return receptacle to which they do not have the key. If I wait around while they call somebody to come open it, I can get my I.D. back. I elect to continue in to work and stop back around lunch time. Great. Everybody is still happy today, or so I thought.

Around the middle of the morning, me and my lead get to talking about things. I am informed that my behavior with the security forces is not appreciated and I might be banned from the facility. Evidently attempting to fix their mistakes is seriously frowned upon. To which I reply, OK by me – I have enough vacation to make it to the end of August at which time I expect to be laid off anyway. Never coming here again would be a welcome respite from this bullshit, which I would certainly accept unequivocally. Whatever. Now for the good part…

The lead elects to accompany me on the next expedition to sort out “my” problem(s). The frustrated bad guy (me) needs help to stay out of trouble. Back at the ECP, the badge box remains locked. It is suggested the guys at the VCC can help with this. Off to the VCC and Team-2, once again. There I finally obtain a more proper extended T-badge, but we are informed, no, they really do have the keys down at the ECP. Back at the ECP, it is believed a patrolman (we’ll call them and the ECP folks Team-3) has keys. Great. Wait some more. SSgt Team-3 patrolman finally shows up, sorry that he only has keys for 2 of the 4 boxes and mine’s in the wrong one. Really? Now By this point I suspect even a relatively normal, rational person might be inclined to go postal. But they have guns, so, maybe later. A call to the VCC, and after about 15 minutes a very annoyed-looking Team-2 member shows up, recovers my T-badge from the night before and the I.D. is soon safely back in my wallet where it belongs. You’d think it was starting to look like a happy ending at this point, right? Don’t be silly.

I now have what is supposed to be a correct, extended 30-day T-badge. But it does not open any doors. SRR informs us it is a Team-2/VCC issue. Back to the VCC, and unsurprisingly, their stance remains: incorrect paperwork. No SCIF doors for you, sonny. Alot more waiting around later, and Team-1 higher-up has a stern conversation with somebody from Team-2 while I stand by utterly nonplussed. At the end of the day it turns out Team-2’s system is incorrectly coded for the new area format. So everything will be good next time I return. Fool me once, shame on you…

Through all this, over the course of more than a month now, not one person apart from me has made the slightest effort to solve this problem. I must be some kind of idiot. Let’s just send him on the run-around and point fingers at others. Because don’tcha know, making somebody else look bad is the easiest way to make yourself look good! This bastion of corporate America’s customer seems to practice that misguided principle almost as systematically as my employer. The company culture revolves around a high-intensity PPP (Pricks, Poseurs and Primmadonnas) environment. I am just so, so sick of it. Less than 2 months to go…

Epilog: The more I think about it, that banning idea is starting to sound like a great idea! With only 8 weeks to go and >250 hours of vacation time banked, it’s really just a tax liability at this point. Hmmmmm. Seasoned managers are very predictable when it comes to covering their own asses. And as expected, when the Sr. Manager saw this she was furious. Would she be so predictably short-sighted and self-serving as to bite? Damn straight – hook, line and sinker! They can kiss my rosie red rectum goodbye. Funny thing was, she didn’t seem to realize she was only screwing the program itself. That’s just the way knee-jerk reactions go, I suppose. I am now in fact, banned from BOTH customer facilities by my boss’s boss. Yay!

All anybody had to do to avoid this whole episode right from the start was make a conscientious effort to get the job done and treat people fairly with decency and respect. But instead, it turned into screwing over an employee for no good reason. The proper approach does not appear to be in the corporate repertoire any more (if it ever was). Understanding how strongly the prick instinct is nurtured in these corporate buffoons goes a long way towards using it against them, when necessary. I’m circumspect taboo now – guilty of no wrongdoing, yet for reasons their willful ignorance prevents them from understanding, obviously disposed to sharing very embarrassing program information on the Internet. I’ll be enjoying the hell out of taking Mondays and Fridays off, going home early every day while accomplishing very little before I go on vacation until the end of August – during the most critical time of the delivery evaluation test phase. They always intended to lay off me and many others anyway, so no love lost there. I’ve learned to be good about not letting people get away with screwing me over.  Blissful unemployment awaits for any news on this steaming pile of a program in the coming months. “We’ll see” about the last Word:

The Customer has a problem with security. It’s a different government customer this time. But the theme is very similar to that noted almost a year ago here.

How do I know there’s a problem? Pretty simple:

1) Worker bees are distributing slips of paper with proximity badges

2) The visitor Control Center parking lot is full of cars and trucks all day long with people trying to get in (many sitting waiting in their vehicles)

3) The top boss needs to process/approve another piece of paper after somebody forgets or mistypes their PIN.

What does it say about your operation when you cannot manage an automated proxim card system without pieces of paper? Extreme micromanagement is a very poor substitute for training and discipline.

Last week management held a big meeting to inform us that somewhere around 20% of the Boulder SBIRS staff will be gone by the end of the year. The briefing was peppered with typical buzzwords like “lean operations” and “new opportunities,” but to co-opt an old Zeppelin title, the song remains the same: People holding the 160-some targeted positions can probably expect to be canned.

Apparently the cuts are already in progress with some people in “panic mode” now. We expect the process to accelerate towards the end state quickly around the August time frame after Block 10 delivery is complete.

Yay.

It gets better. Just when I was starting to think the confusion factor in managing our procedure documents couldn’t get any worse, the Verification Lead announces she’ll soon be out for a minimum 1-month leave of absence. Oh, I forgot to mention – we are on the cusp of one of the most critical stages in the delivery: Formal Verification. Timing is after all, as they say, everything. Hopefully we’ll see her back soon in good shape with no ill affects from whatever the problem is. But considering the timimg thing, I have to wonder if work itself was/is the problem. Hmmmm…

Looks like the chosen successor Jonna, gets a big opportunity to step up and Rock the Casbah, as the Clash lyrics go. It’s going be a really fun spring season on the program here – stay tuned!

Submitting to the onerous drudgery of IKONOS satellite operations for almost nine years was both a blessing and a curse.  On the one hand, it was easy.  OTOH, it was boring.  Sure, learning the new system and meeting new people was fun for the first couple of years.  But after that it settled into a never-changing routine of mind-numbing repetition.  Integration engineering on the SBIRS program is a night and day difference – interesting, fast-paced and actually fun for someone with the inclination to do it.

SBIRS is an incredibly complex system of systems.  So much so, it almost defies comprehension, to me at least.  As such, helping to integrate the bits and pieces to form a seamless product we can use to effectively exploit this amazing ISR asset for our national command authorities and warfighters can obviously be a challenging endeavor.  It’s important work and still early in the new environment for me, but I’m already certain I’m going to like it much better.

The best part for me so far is just having the opportunity to work with a larger, more diverse group.  Sitting in a room full of computers with one or two other guys for hours on end babysitting a little space-faring camera robot gets old real quick.  This program should not have that drawback.

Lockheed has a ton of business going on in the greater Denver Metro area: United Launch Alliance, Coherent Technologies, Space Systems, SBIRS, DISA and numerous other commercial and government contracting activities – not to mention the one I just left -a tiny drop in the Lockheed bucket, as t’were. SBIRS is one of the larger DoD programs, exceeded only by GPS in terms of government dollars budgeted to the space world.

After a week on the new SBIRS job in Boulder, all I can say is I am sooooo glad to be back!

The Ikonos program proved to be a very successful, pioneering advance for the country’s space imaging business, not surprisingly originally named “Space Imaging,” as it was spun off from Lockheed.  Despite the 1st vehicle’s launch failure, Ikonos2 went on to produce imaging products for hundreds of customers around the world and provide an invaluable source of ISR material for our nation’s warfighters.  It was a key enabler for recovery efforts in countless man-made and natural disasters among many, many other successful endeavors utilizing it’s products.  Ikonos continues in that role now approaching 15 years on orbit and for that, everyone ever involved with the program can be proud.  My only reservation is leaving a very viable asset going to waste as DigitalGlobe shuffles it into the background of low priority and neglect.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. That old saying rings true for me today during one of my last few day in the customer facility on the Ikonos program. Back in the day, systems security and the people running those programs were generally seen as impediments to be tolerated, humored and avoided at best, productivity killers and adversaries to be vanquished at worst. These days, with all the advanced security technology available – encryption, monitoring, vast databases of security-relevant information on all nature of things – we still have not attained the ability to effectively manage security. Case in point…

The 3-letter business customers (NGA & DSS) have recently become alarmed at an increasing frequency of violations reported to them for carrying personally owned electronic devices into the closed areas. Additional training was ordered, cheesy audible warnings appear at the doors including clumsy keypad covers and of course, the threat of harsher consequences including device confiscation, ostensibly for the purpose of examination to clear the electronic violator of any wrongdoing. Swing-and-a-miss, strike one.

A portion of the training contains a missive from the local DSS rep about how staffing and budget issues prevent addressing the problem from a technical standpoint. There are too many different dangerous devices out there and they just don’t have the time, people or money to come up with a real technical solution to this problem. So the only way to deal with it is just say no. Put the onus on the users once again, and make it hurt. Strike 2!

In all the hubbub surrounding this fiasco, I wonder who considered the simple fact that for every violation reported to them, probably 10 or more go unreported? How often do you think Joe Blow or Suzy Schmoe is tapping away at their workstation in there when they realize their cellphone is still in their pocket and they suddenly feel the urge to go to the bathroom? Strike 3 – you’re out!

The more things change the more they stay the same. That’s one reason why I’m getting out of the security business, professionally at least.  I have the background to be the safest, most secure user any white-hat could ever wish for.  But I’m taking the hat off now.  Won’t be needing it in my new job and it will very likely be my last.  Interestingly enough, today the Supreme Court ruled on some cellphone cases that now make the Government’s cellphone security quandary even more controversial:

(Justice) Roberts noted in his opinion that cellphones “are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.”

One thing that will never change in the security business is the simple fact that the most dangerous security vulnerability is the one that goes undetected.  Think about that next time you consider punishing users for your inability to get the job done.

Woo-hoo!!  Landed a spot with the SBIRS SEI&V group.
Back to the mother ship…

So Marty’s gone to SBIRS and I’m back on planner shifts covering schedule backfill for the next three weeks.  Nice change of pace.  Still no takers on my job applications.