Conical inductors--still $10!...

[bitrex]

On 7/16/2020 5:13 AM, Michael Kellett wrote:

On 15/07/2020 20:12, bitrex wrote:
On 7/15/2020 12:15 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Wed, 15 Jul 2020 09:18:11 +0100, Michael Kellett <mk@mkesc.co.uk
wrote:

Found this on \"All about Ciruits\" -

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/micron-digital-claims-to-have-eliminated-drifting-in-imus/?utm_source=All+About+Circuits+Members&utm_campaign=a3e890e124-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_09_11_04_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2565529c4b-a3e890e124-280503221


It takes you here:

http://www.romos.io/index.asp?FPFHFGFHIRJEIJILIG

They claim an inertial measuring breakthrough:

\"Once initialized, ROMOS will experience a maximum of 0.5mm static
variance offset from true position data over its operational lifetime.\"

With a dose of snake oil.

\"Using higher dimensional computations with back-propagation, Drift is
also eliminated from positional data.\"

This sounds like the standard 6-state or 9-state Kalman Filter.  They
do work in big vector spaces.

External references are also provided to this Kalman Filter.

The information to cancel drift is not in the IMU data, so software
can do nothing to cancel drift from IMU data alone.


There is an absurd video too.

It\'s way to good (by many orders of magnitude) to be true - but what\'s
the point ?

How do they make money, are they hoping to trap just one lunatic
venture
capitalist ?

I would think that a direct test would end the game, so I don\'t see
how even a lunatic investor could be fooled for long.

Micron Dynamics claims that the technology is patented, so I sent an
email asking for patent numbers.


Joe Gwinn


I don\'t see what\'s intrinsically bullshit or about claims of an
inertial measurement breakthrough vs. claims of real woo like cold
fusion or machines that run on their own power.

This doesn\'t seem quite in that same vein, and I doubt there\'s anyone
here with the qualifications to make credible commentary as to what\'s
actually possible or isn\'t with whatever machine-learning technique
they say they\'re applying. If they do have patents that\'s some amount
of credibility, I don\'t know whether I\'d trust my own evaluation of
the claims any more than the patent office, they\'re not all just
rubber-stampers who let any old thing fly.

Either they\'ll deliver, or they won\'t, most things in life tend to be
one thing or the other. But it seems like more of a gamble than an
outright \"scam\" that breaks the laws of physics without further
information. it\'s the kind of gamble VC people do day in and day out
and win or lose on, depending.

If they can\'t or won\'t provide references to the patents they claim to
have that would surely make me more skeptical


There are (at least) a couple of reasons to be sceptical:

First the term \"static variance offset\" is not standard IMU talk - if
you Google it you\'ll find one specific hit - under ROMOS !

Secondly, lets take that at face value - they seem to be saying that the
position error over the device lifetime will be 0.5mm.
From school physics you know that s = (a.t^2)/2 (s is distance a is
acceleration.
Lets assume a life of 5 years = 1.576E8 seconds
re-arranging we get a = 2s/(t^2) = 1e-3/(2.48E16) = 4e-20 m/s/s
This level of acceleration bias is not just unlikely but impossible.
Current good parts offer figures like 3ug = 3E-5 m/s/s bias instability.

I see on their site the marketing blurb says \"Unlike conventional
Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), additional external reference
signal(s) are not required to compensate for drift error.\"

\"Once initialized, ROMOS will experience a maximum of 0.5mm static
variance offset from true position data over its operational lifetime.\"

I\'m not entirely sure what the phrase \"static variance offset\" means in
an IMU-context but I\'m guessing it may not mean the same as \"lifetime
absolute position error.\"

I think it\'s good to be skeptical but there\'s the possibility that the
\"scam\" such as it is, is the usual marketing trick, you say the words in
the top paragraph about no required external references one place, and
the 0.5mm figure the other, and assumption is made that what they\'re
saying is that with no external references at all you can have
performance 15 orders of magnitude better than other state of the art.

But note it says the additional reference signals are not _required_,
which isn\'t the same as saying it could never use them.

If Micron Dynamics really had a 15 order of magnitude breakthrough they
would be marketing in a slightly different way.

MK

Sure, I think the possibility is there they\'re not lying, exactly, but
they\'re just not telling the whole truth and perhaps letting people
derive assumptions about what they\'re saying that they never quite said.
Like with a lot of semiconductor products you have to dive 15 pages into
the datasheet to figure out the whole truth.

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/2020 5:13 AM, Michael Kellett wrote:

On 15/07/2020 20:12, bitrex wrote:
On 7/15/2020 12:15 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Wed, 15 Jul 2020 09:18:11 +0100, Michael Kellett <mk@mkesc.co.uk
wrote:

Found this on \"All about Ciruits\" -

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/micron-digital-claims-to-have-eliminated-drifting-in-imus/?utm_source=All+About+Circuits+Members&utm_campaign=a3e890e124-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_09_11_04_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2565529c4b-a3e890e124-280503221


It takes you here:

http://www.romos.io/index.asp?FPFHFGFHIRJEIJILIG

They claim an inertial measuring breakthrough:

\"Once initialized, ROMOS will experience a maximum of 0.5mm static
variance offset from true position data over its operational lifetime.\"

With a dose of snake oil.

\"Using higher dimensional computations with back-propagation, Drift is
also eliminated from positional data.\"

This sounds like the standard 6-state or 9-state Kalman Filter.  They
do work in big vector spaces.

External references are also provided to this Kalman Filter.

The information to cancel drift is not in the IMU data, so software
can do nothing to cancel drift from IMU data alone.


There is an absurd video too.

It\'s way to good (by many orders of magnitude) to be true - but what\'s
the point ?

How do they make money, are they hoping to trap just one lunatic
venture
capitalist ?

I would think that a direct test would end the game, so I don\'t see
how even a lunatic investor could be fooled for long.

Micron Dynamics claims that the technology is patented, so I sent an
email asking for patent numbers.


Joe Gwinn


I don\'t see what\'s intrinsically bullshit or about claims of an
inertial measurement breakthrough vs. claims of real woo like cold
fusion or machines that run on their own power.

This doesn\'t seem quite in that same vein, and I doubt there\'s anyone
here with the qualifications to make credible commentary as to what\'s
actually possible or isn\'t with whatever machine-learning technique
they say they\'re applying. If they do have patents that\'s some amount
of credibility, I don\'t know whether I\'d trust my own evaluation of
the claims any more than the patent office, they\'re not all just
rubber-stampers who let any old thing fly.

Either they\'ll deliver, or they won\'t, most things in life tend to be
one thing or the other. But it seems like more of a gamble than an
outright \"scam\" that breaks the laws of physics without further
information. it\'s the kind of gamble VC people do day in and day out
and win or lose on, depending.

If they can\'t or won\'t provide references to the patents they claim to
have that would surely make me more skeptical


There are (at least) a couple of reasons to be sceptical:

First the term \"static variance offset\" is not standard IMU talk - if
you Google it you\'ll find one specific hit - under ROMOS !

Secondly, lets take that at face value - they seem to be saying that the
position error over the device lifetime will be 0.5mm.
From school physics you know that s = (a.t^2)/2 (s is distance a is
acceleration.
Lets assume a life of 5 years = 1.576E8 seconds
re-arranging we get a = 2s/(t^2) = 1e-3/(2.48E16) = 4e-20 m/s/s
This level of acceleration bias is not just unlikely but impossible.
Current good parts offer figures like 3ug = 3E-5 m/s/s bias instability.

I see on their site the marketing blurb says \"Unlike conventional
Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), additional external reference
signal(s) are not required to compensate for drift error.\"

\"Once initialized, ROMOS will experience a maximum of 0.5mm static
variance offset from true position data over its operational lifetime.\"

I\'m not entirely sure what the phrase \"static variance offset\" means in
an IMU-context but I\'m guessing it may not mean the same as \"lifetime
absolute position error.\"

I think it\'s good to be skeptical but there\'s the possibility that the
\"scam\" such as it is, is the usual marketing trick, you say the words in
the top paragraph about no required external references one place, and
the 0.5mm figure the other, and assumption is made that what they\'re
saying is that with no external references at all you can have
performance 15 orders of magnitude better than other state of the art.

But note it says the additional reference signals are not _required_,
which isn\'t the same as saying it could never use them.

If Micron Dynamics really had a 15 order of magnitude breakthrough they
would be marketing in a slightly different way.

MK

Sure, I think the possibility is there they\'re not lying, exactly, but
they\'re just not telling the whole truth and perhaps letting people
derive assumptions about what they\'re saying that they never quite said.
Like with a lot of semiconductor products you have to dive 15 pages into
the datasheet to figure out the whole truth.

 

[bitrex]

On 7/16/2020 5:13 AM, Michael Kellett wrote:

On 15/07/2020 20:12, bitrex wrote:
On 7/15/2020 12:15 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote:
On Wed, 15 Jul 2020 09:18:11 +0100, Michael Kellett <mk@mkesc.co.uk
wrote:

Found this on \"All about Ciruits\" -

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/micron-digital-claims-to-have-eliminated-drifting-in-imus/?utm_source=All+About+Circuits+Members&utm_campaign=a3e890e124-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_07_09_11_04_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2565529c4b-a3e890e124-280503221


It takes you here:

http://www.romos.io/index.asp?FPFHFGFHIRJEIJILIG

They claim an inertial measuring breakthrough:

\"Once initialized, ROMOS will experience a maximum of 0.5mm static
variance offset from true position data over its operational lifetime.\"

With a dose of snake oil.

\"Using higher dimensional computations with back-propagation, Drift is
also eliminated from positional data.\"

This sounds like the standard 6-state or 9-state Kalman Filter.  They
do work in big vector spaces.

External references are also provided to this Kalman Filter.

The information to cancel drift is not in the IMU data, so software
can do nothing to cancel drift from IMU data alone.


There is an absurd video too.

It\'s way to good (by many orders of magnitude) to be true - but what\'s
the point ?

How do they make money, are they hoping to trap just one lunatic
venture
capitalist ?

I would think that a direct test would end the game, so I don\'t see
how even a lunatic investor could be fooled for long.

Micron Dynamics claims that the technology is patented, so I sent an
email asking for patent numbers.


Joe Gwinn


I don\'t see what\'s intrinsically bullshit or about claims of an
inertial measurement breakthrough vs. claims of real woo like cold
fusion or machines that run on their own power.

This doesn\'t seem quite in that same vein, and I doubt there\'s anyone
here with the qualifications to make credible commentary as to what\'s
actually possible or isn\'t with whatever machine-learning technique
they say they\'re applying. If they do have patents that\'s some amount
of credibility, I don\'t know whether I\'d trust my own evaluation of
the claims any more than the patent office, they\'re not all just
rubber-stampers who let any old thing fly.

Either they\'ll deliver, or they won\'t, most things in life tend to be
one thing or the other. But it seems like more of a gamble than an
outright \"scam\" that breaks the laws of physics without further
information. it\'s the kind of gamble VC people do day in and day out
and win or lose on, depending.

If they can\'t or won\'t provide references to the patents they claim to
have that would surely make me more skeptical


There are (at least) a couple of reasons to be sceptical:

First the term \"static variance offset\" is not standard IMU talk - if
you Google it you\'ll find one specific hit - under ROMOS !

Secondly, lets take that at face value - they seem to be saying that the
position error over the device lifetime will be 0.5mm.
From school physics you know that s = (a.t^2)/2 (s is distance a is
acceleration.
Lets assume a life of 5 years = 1.576E8 seconds
re-arranging we get a = 2s/(t^2) = 1e-3/(2.48E16) = 4e-20 m/s/s
This level of acceleration bias is not just unlikely but impossible.
Current good parts offer figures like 3ug = 3E-5 m/s/s bias instability.

I see on their site the marketing blurb says \"Unlike conventional
Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), additional external reference
signal(s) are not required to compensate for drift error.\"

\"Once initialized, ROMOS will experience a maximum of 0.5mm static
variance offset from true position data over its operational lifetime.\"

I\'m not entirely sure what the phrase \"static variance offset\" means in
an IMU-context but I\'m guessing it may not mean the same as \"lifetime
absolute position error.\"

I think it\'s good to be skeptical but there\'s the possibility that the
\"scam\" such as it is, is the usual marketing trick, you say the words in
the top paragraph about no required external references one place, and
the 0.5mm figure the other, and assumption is made that what they\'re
saying is that with no external references at all you can have
performance 15 orders of magnitude better than other state of the art.

But note it says the additional reference signals are not _required_,
which isn\'t the same as saying it could never use them.

If Micron Dynamics really had a 15 order of magnitude breakthrough they
would be marketing in a slightly different way.

MK

Sure, I think the possibility is there they\'re not lying, exactly, but
they\'re just not telling the whole truth and perhaps letting people
derive assumptions about what they\'re saying that they never quite said.
Like with a lot of semiconductor products you have to dive 15 pages into
the datasheet to figure out the whole truth.

 

[server]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:30:40 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the East
Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

San Francisco was still affordable about that time. Places like South
City and San Bruno and Pacifica, too.

When I moved here from New Orleans, about 1980, I found a flat to rent
in 20 minutes, for $315 a month, more space than I had in NOLA for
$250.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:30:40 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the East
Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

San Francisco was still affordable about that time. Places like South
City and San Bruno and Pacifica, too.

When I moved here from New Orleans, about 1980, I found a flat to rent
in 20 minutes, for $315 a month, more space than I had in NOLA for
$250.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:30:40 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the East
Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

San Francisco was still affordable about that time. Places like South
City and San Bruno and Pacifica, too.

When I moved here from New Orleans, about 1980, I found a flat to rent
in 20 minutes, for $315 a month, more space than I had in NOLA for
$250.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-07-16 11:40, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:30:40 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the East
Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

San Francisco was still affordable about that time. Places like South
City and San Bruno and Pacifica, too.

When I moved here from New Orleans, about 1980, I found a flat to rent
in 20 minutes, for $315 a month, more space than I had in NOLA for
$250.

We lived in San Mateo for about 6 months, in a high-rise at 624 Laurel
Avenue iirc. I was making $750 per month and the rent was $450, so it
didn\'t last long. Fortunately that was the year my IBM fellowship came
in, so my stipend went up to a princely $1100, and we moved into family
housing on campus.

In Vancouver, 1982-83, I paid $225 for a studio in a nice brownstone a
block from the beach. Not so much these days.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-07-16 11:40, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:30:40 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the East
Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

San Francisco was still affordable about that time. Places like South
City and San Bruno and Pacifica, too.

When I moved here from New Orleans, about 1980, I found a flat to rent
in 20 minutes, for $315 a month, more space than I had in NOLA for
$250.

We lived in San Mateo for about 6 months, in a high-rise at 624 Laurel
Avenue iirc. I was making $750 per month and the rent was $450, so it
didn\'t last long. Fortunately that was the year my IBM fellowship came
in, so my stipend went up to a princely $1100, and we moved into family
housing on campus.

In Vancouver, 1982-83, I paid $225 for a studio in a nice brownstone a
block from the beach. Not so much these days.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-07-16 11:40, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:30:40 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the East
Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

San Francisco was still affordable about that time. Places like South
City and San Bruno and Pacifica, too.

When I moved here from New Orleans, about 1980, I found a flat to rent
in 20 minutes, for $315 a month, more space than I had in NOLA for
$250.

We lived in San Mateo for about 6 months, in a high-rise at 624 Laurel
Avenue iirc. I was making $750 per month and the rent was $450, so it
didn\'t last long. Fortunately that was the year my IBM fellowship came
in, so my stipend went up to a princely $1100, and we moved into family
housing on campus.

In Vancouver, 1982-83, I paid $225 for a studio in a nice brownstone a
block from the beach. Not so much these days.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 16/07/20 16:30, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free?  It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\"  relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I graduated.
Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d already taken a
postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken HP\'s, which
was for a permanent position, and wound up working on magneto-optical storage
and living in a hovel in some desert in the East Bay with a monster commute.
(I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

I avoided taking a job at GEC research in Wembley for
the same reason.

I wonder if East Palo Alto, the other side of the railway
tracks[1], would have been preferable

[1] not a phenomenon here. The boundaries are far less
obvious (unless you are buying/selling houses), and much
more fractal.

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an officer of the
American Magnetics Society among other honours and accomplishments.

Most HP people I bumped into were very nice, and wanted
to help you in any way they could.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 16/07/20 16:30, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free?  It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\"  relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I graduated.
Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d already taken a
postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken HP\'s, which
was for a permanent position, and wound up working on magneto-optical storage
and living in a hovel in some desert in the East Bay with a monster commute.
(I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

I avoided taking a job at GEC research in Wembley for
the same reason.

I wonder if East Palo Alto, the other side of the railway
tracks[1], would have been preferable

[1] not a phenomenon here. The boundaries are far less
obvious (unless you are buying/selling houses), and much
more fractal.

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an officer of the
American Magnetics Society among other honours and accomplishments.

Most HP people I bumped into were very nice, and wanted
to help you in any way they could.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 16/07/20 16:30, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free?  It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\"  relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I graduated.
Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d already taken a
postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken HP\'s, which
was for a permanent position, and wound up working on magneto-optical storage
and living in a hovel in some desert in the East Bay with a monster commute.
(I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

I avoided taking a job at GEC research in Wembley for
the same reason.

I wonder if East Palo Alto, the other side of the railway
tracks[1], would have been preferable

[1] not a phenomenon here. The boundaries are far less
obvious (unless you are buying/selling houses), and much
more fractal.

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an officer of the
American Magnetics Society among other honours and accomplishments.

Most HP people I bumped into were very nice, and wanted
to help you in any way they could.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-07-16 12:21, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 16/07/20 16:30, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free?  It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\"  relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the
East Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

I avoided taking a job at GEC research in Wembley for
the same reason.

I wonder if East Palo Alto, the other side of the railway
tracks[1], would have been preferable

[1] not a phenomenon here. The boundaries are far less
obvious (unless you are buying/selling houses), and much
more fractal.

East PA was super sketchy in those days. Mostly it was on the other
side of Highway 101, so it was comparatively isolated. Train tracks are
a whole lot easier to cross.

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Most HP people I bumped into were very nice, and wanted
to help you in any way they could.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-07-16 12:21, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 16/07/20 16:30, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free?  It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\"  relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the
East Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

I avoided taking a job at GEC research in Wembley for
the same reason.

I wonder if East Palo Alto, the other side of the railway
tracks[1], would have been preferable

[1] not a phenomenon here. The boundaries are far less
obvious (unless you are buying/selling houses), and much
more fractal.

East PA was super sketchy in those days. Mostly it was on the other
side of Highway 101, so it was comparatively isolated. Train tracks are
a whole lot easier to cross.

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Most HP people I bumped into were very nice, and wanted
to help you in any way they could.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[server]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:59:07 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 11:40, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:30:40 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the East
Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

San Francisco was still affordable about that time. Places like South
City and San Bruno and Pacifica, too.

When I moved here from New Orleans, about 1980, I found a flat to rent
in 20 minutes, for $315 a month, more space than I had in NOLA for
$250.

We lived in San Mateo for about 6 months, in a high-rise at 624 Laurel
Avenue iirc. I was making $750 per month and the rent was $450, so it
didn\'t last long. Fortunately that was the year my IBM fellowship came
in, so my stipend went up to a princely $1100, and we moved into family
housing on campus.

In Vancouver, 1982-83, I paid $225 for a studio in a nice brownstone a
block from the beach. Not so much these days.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I made $32K as a design engineer at a little company in Fremont. I
took BART from my flat across the street from Mission Dolores. Simpler
times. But AIDS was just starting up.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:59:07 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 11:40, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:30:40 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the East
Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

San Francisco was still affordable about that time. Places like South
City and San Bruno and Pacifica, too.

When I moved here from New Orleans, about 1980, I found a flat to rent
in 20 minutes, for $315 a month, more space than I had in NOLA for
$250.

We lived in San Mateo for about 6 months, in a high-rise at 624 Laurel
Avenue iirc. I was making $750 per month and the rent was $450, so it
didn\'t last long. Fortunately that was the year my IBM fellowship came
in, so my stipend went up to a princely $1100, and we moved into family
housing on campus.

In Vancouver, 1982-83, I paid $225 for a studio in a nice brownstone a
block from the beach. Not so much these days.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I made $32K as a design engineer at a little company in Fremont. I
took BART from my flat across the street from Mission Dolores. Simpler
times. But AIDS was just starting up.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:59:07 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 11:40, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 11:30:40 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-16 10:32, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:42:56 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 14:26, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:28:17 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/07/20 06:32, dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:
E.g., why would someone on the dole ever work for something they
already get free? It doesn\'t make any sense.

True for some people, false for many more.

Many people feel defined by their work, and feel
pointless without it. Such people have a tendency
to \"give up and die\" relatively shortly after
retiring.

You seem to understand Theory X companies, but
have no clue about Theory Y companies, as described
by McGregor in the 1950s.

Long before McGregor, Hewlett and Packard knew the
difference instinctively, and created a rather
successful Theory Y company. You may have heard
of it.

\"Theory Y managers assume employees are internally
motivated, enjoy their job, and work to better
themselves without a direct reward in return. These
managers view their employees as one of the most
valuable assets to the company, driving the internal
workings of the corporation. Employees additionally
tend to take full responsibility for their work and
do not need close supervision to create a quality
product.\"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Or, as famously noted at the time of Princess Fiorina,
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0105/loyal.shtml

Sure, but a company doesn\'t become a Y just with a policy statement.
It requires finding and hiring the right workers, treating them right,
and firing the ones that don\'t work out.

It didn\'t cross my mind anybody could think mere
policy statements could be sufficient.

In HP, the HP Way was continually reinforced and
re-explained by use of Bill and Dave anecdotes,
wheeled out to show how they thought and wanted
things to be done. Apparently when they were setting
up new sites the first hires became a little sick
and tired of them!

OTOH, Princess Fiorina made very animated policy
pronouncements, which nobody could understand.
That\'s one of the things that made me decide
to leave.

I have Packard\'s book, The HP Way. And I have Fiorina\'s book, The
Journey. The contrast is hilarious.



HP did that early on. By about 1980, not so well.

HP was /very/ careful about its hiring process, at least
until shortly before Fiorina ascended in 1999.

I interviewed at HP in about 1980. The guy was obnoxious. He would
have been my boss.

He looked at my resume and said \"The first thing you need to do is
decide if you are an engineer or a programmer.\"

What I decided to do was walk out.

I almost went to work at HP Labs on Page Mill Rd in 1987 when I
graduated. Fortunately a hiring freeze delayed their offer until I\'d
already taken a postdoc at IBM.

Since I had a wife and daughter to support, I\'d probably have taken
HP\'s, which was for a permanent position, and wound up working on
magneto-optical storage and living in a hovel in some desert in the East
Bay with a monster commute. (I\'m looking at you, Pleasanton.)

The manager was a very nice woman named Barbara Shula, who was an
officer of the American Magnetics Society among other honours and
accomplishments.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

San Francisco was still affordable about that time. Places like South
City and San Bruno and Pacifica, too.

When I moved here from New Orleans, about 1980, I found a flat to rent
in 20 minutes, for $315 a month, more space than I had in NOLA for
$250.

We lived in San Mateo for about 6 months, in a high-rise at 624 Laurel
Avenue iirc. I was making $750 per month and the rent was $450, so it
didn\'t last long. Fortunately that was the year my IBM fellowship came
in, so my stipend went up to a princely $1100, and we moved into family
housing on campus.

In Vancouver, 1982-83, I paid $225 for a studio in a nice brownstone a
block from the beach. Not so much these days.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I made $32K as a design engineer at a little company in Fremont. I
took BART from my flat across the street from Mission Dolores. Simpler
times. But AIDS was just starting up.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Gerhard Hoffmann]

Am 16.07.20 um 15:44 schrieb jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 09:55:32 +0200, Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de
wrote:

Am 16.07.20 um 09:20 schrieb Bill Sloman:

James Arthur hasn\'t noticed that when people start dying of Covid-19, other people start practice social distancing of their own accord. Note the Swedish example.

It still kills a lot of people, and even the Swedes aren\'t anywhere near herd immunity yet.

In fact, Sweden was just yesterday removed from the list of dangerous
countries by our (German) government. That has consequences for
insurances etc if you insist to go there.

And herd immunity is a silly idea. It does not even work in Bad Ischgl,
the Austrian skiing resort where they sport 42% seropositives, which
is probably the world record, much higher than Sweden.

And herd immunity does not mean that you won\'t get it if you are
in the herd.

It means that if you get it and survive, you are out of the herd.

No, it means that you are now a badly needed part of the herd by
diluting the danger for the rest.

Some people seem to have serious problems helping others.

Gerhard

 

[Gerhard Hoffmann]

Am 16.07.20 um 15:44 schrieb jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 09:55:32 +0200, Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de
wrote:

Am 16.07.20 um 09:20 schrieb Bill Sloman:

James Arthur hasn\'t noticed that when people start dying of Covid-19, other people start practice social distancing of their own accord. Note the Swedish example.

It still kills a lot of people, and even the Swedes aren\'t anywhere near herd immunity yet.

In fact, Sweden was just yesterday removed from the list of dangerous
countries by our (German) government. That has consequences for
insurances etc if you insist to go there.

And herd immunity is a silly idea. It does not even work in Bad Ischgl,
the Austrian skiing resort where they sport 42% seropositives, which
is probably the world record, much higher than Sweden.

And herd immunity does not mean that you won\'t get it if you are
in the herd.

It means that if you get it and survive, you are out of the herd.

No, it means that you are now a badly needed part of the herd by
diluting the danger for the rest.

Some people seem to have serious problems helping others.

Gerhard

 

[Gerhard Hoffmann]

Am 16.07.20 um 15:44 schrieb jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 09:55:32 +0200, Gerhard Hoffmann <dk4xp@arcor.de
wrote:

Am 16.07.20 um 09:20 schrieb Bill Sloman:

James Arthur hasn\'t noticed that when people start dying of Covid-19, other people start practice social distancing of their own accord. Note the Swedish example.

It still kills a lot of people, and even the Swedes aren\'t anywhere near herd immunity yet.

In fact, Sweden was just yesterday removed from the list of dangerous
countries by our (German) government. That has consequences for
insurances etc if you insist to go there.

And herd immunity is a silly idea. It does not even work in Bad Ischgl,
the Austrian skiing resort where they sport 42% seropositives, which
is probably the world record, much higher than Sweden.

And herd immunity does not mean that you won\'t get it if you are
in the herd.

It means that if you get it and survive, you are out of the herd.

No, it means that you are now a badly needed part of the herd by
diluting the danger for the rest.

Some people seem to have serious problems helping others.

Gerhard