Job Description(s)

Genome · Apr 3, 2005

<QUOTE>
Our client requires an Electronics engineer - power supply design with
the
following skills: SMPS, power, supply, design, engineer, electronics,
engineering, switch mode, jobs

Definitely not the usual opportunity! For the right individuals this
is a
great chance to work in a highly innovative team looking at new
application
areas and providing customer solutions.

[Snip Company Praise Stuff]

Sought after candidates and skills are: assembly code wizard, C / C++
Expert,
familiarity of microprocessor architectures, Code optimisation,
targetting
parallisation across LINUX clusters, SIMD experience, Real-time
embedded
programming, HPS system performance experience, Strong mathematical
backgrounds, excellent communicators and original thinkers preferred.
</QUOTE>

<QUOTE>
POWER SUPPLY DESIGN ENGINEER

Job Description:
Experienced Photocopier Engineer required with the following essential
skills
and experience:
1.) 3 years minimum experience in a similar role specialising in the
service
of copiers - analogue range - any models. digital range - Up to 75ppm
B & W +
colour.
2.) Experience with Ricoh/NRG/Infotec copiers.
3.) Full clean driving license.
4.) Excellent client liaison skills.
5.) Ideally from a dealer background
6.) Useful but not essential : A knowledge of facsimile machines,
printers
and networking digital print systems would be an advantage.
</QUOTE>

<RANT>
Recruitment agencies, scum more like.

I'm taking a shotgun to my next interview.

'Ask a stupid question and I'll blow your fucking head off.'

'What would you say are your main strengths and weaknesses?' BOOM!
'How do you feel about teamwork?' BOOM!
'How do you work under pressure?' BOOM!
'Where do you see yourself in five years time?' BOOM!
'So you are willing to re-locate?' BOOM!
'Do you prefer flyback or forward converters?'....... nice try
BOOOOOM!

Much of this crap comes down to the other side trying to determine
if I'm going to blow their fucking heads off when they act too stupid.
Either that or the previous employee(s) fucked it all up, probably
with assistance from the employers.

What's wrong with......

'Are you going to fuck it up like the last guy did?'

or

'We're rather crap and will fuck you about. Don't even think that
we're
interested in improving. Do you like dealing with Assholes like us?'
</RANT>

DNA

Jim Thompson · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 15:04:32 GMT, "Genome" <ilike_spam@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

QUOTE
Our client requires an Electronics engineer - power supply design with
the
following skills: SMPS, power, supply, design, engineer, electronics,
engineering, switch mode, jobs

[snip]

Much of this crap comes down to the other side trying to determine
if I'm going to blow their fucking heads off when they act too stupid.
Either that or the previous employee(s) fucked it all up, probably
with assistance from the employers.

What's wrong with......

'Are you going to fuck it up like the last guy did?'

or

'We're rather crap and will fuck you about. Don't even think that
we're
interested in improving. Do you like dealing with Assholes like us?'
/RANT

DNA

Bwahahahaha! Good one!

I flew into Boston a few months ago to be interviewed as a consultant
to a _supposedly_ high tech company.

I should have been wary right off the bat... their per diem rules were
just plain childish (and wouldn't cover my two glasses of wine at
dinner ;-) Also took them six weeks to cover my expenses.

At any rate, I was "interviewed" by six children, who couldn't find
their own assholes, using both hands and a mirror.

I was not hired... "lack of experience" ;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice

480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax

Genome · Apr 3, 2005

"Jim Thompson" <thegreatone@example.com> wrote in message
news

l4051tsjqdcem2sdug06cmthso1pj0ntk@4ax.com...

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 15:04:32 GMT, "Genome" <ilike_spam@yahoo.co.uk
wrote:

[snip]

Much of this crap comes down to the other side trying to determine
if I'm going to blow their fucking heads off when they act too
stupid.
Either that or the previous employee(s) fucked it all up, probably
with assistance from the employers.

What's wrong with......

'Are you going to fuck it up like the last guy did?'

or

'We're rather crap and will fuck you about. Don't even think that
we're interested in improving. Do you like dealing with Assholes
like us?'
/RANT

DNA

Bwahahahaha! Good one!

I flew into Boston a few months ago to be interviewed as a
consultant
to a _supposedly_ high tech company.

I should have been wary right off the bat... their per diem rules
were
just plain childish (and wouldn't cover my two glasses of wine at
dinner ;-) Also took them six weeks to cover my expenses.

At any rate, I was "interviewed" by six children, who couldn't find
their own assholes, using both hands and a mirror.

I was not hired... "lack of experience" ;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |

Did I mention teamwork.....

There were six of them to play 'Find the Asshole'.

First you have to pick one person to be 'IT'. No!..... not the
asshole, the person whose asshole is going to be found. Then the other
five look for it. Of course the picking involves reaching a concensus
so the asshole is never found.

DNA

Active8 · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 15:04:32 GMT, Genome wrote:

QUOTE
Our client requires an Electronics engineer - power supply design with
the
following skills: SMPS, power, supply, design, engineer, electronics,
engineering, switch mode, jobs
[...]

Ok. Be a sub-head-hunter. Get us a good enough price, help me over
the technical and political hurdles, and what ever is left after
expenses (nothing extravagant), we'll split 50/50. I'll do the rest
of the work and slap the shit out of them while you sit back, laugh,
and write the narration. I'd love to meet 'em. Life experience.

An unusual opportunity indeed. WTF does "parallisation across LINUX
clusters" and such have to do with SMPS? And where do you find
photocopier dealers with PS engineers?

RANT
snip nice rant
/RANT

I believe I programmed my mind to make you and Jim show up and make
my day. Thanks for expressing the brutal reality in a way that
probably only you can do.

Jim posted:
I was not hired... "lack of experience" ;-)

...Jim Thompson
I'm really rolling on the floor now. Experience at what, taking the
shaft sans lubricant?
--
Best Regards,
Mike

John Larkin · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 16:19:10 GMT, "Genome" <ilike_spam@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

There were six of them to play 'Find the Asshole'.

First you have to pick one person to be 'IT'.

As in Information Technology?

No!..... not the
asshole, the person whose asshole is going to be found. Then the other
five look for it. Of course the picking involves reaching a concensus
so the asshole is never found.

DNA

John

John Woodgate · Apr 3, 2005

I read in sci.electronics.design that bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote (in
<1112548149.107780.129750@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com&gt

about 'Job
Description(s)', on Sun, 3 Apr 2005:

Strange to find myself agreeing with Jim,

If you stuck to electronics, you'd find a great deal of common ground.
You'll never change each other's politics, so why not relax and enjoy
the engineering?
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
There are two sides to every question, except
'What is a Moebius strip?'
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

richard mullens · Apr 3, 2005

bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 15:04:32 GMT, "Genome" <ilike_spam@yahoo.co.uk
wrote:

QUOTE
Our client requires an Electronics engineer - power supply design

with

the
following skills: SMPS, power, supply, design, engineer,

electronics,

engineering, switch mode, jobs

[snip]

Much of this crap comes down to the other side trying to determine
if I'm going to blow their fucking heads off when they act too

stupid.

Either that or the previous employee(s) fucked it all up, probably
with assistance from the employers.

What's wrong with......

'Are you going to fuck it up like the last guy did?'

or

'We're rather crap and will fuck you about. Don't even think that
we're
interested in improving. Do you like dealing with Assholes like us?'
/RANT

DNA

Bwahahahaha! Good one!

I flew into Boston a few months ago to be interviewed as a consultant
to a _supposedly_ high tech company.

I should have been wary right off the bat... their per diem rules

were

just plain childish (and wouldn't cover my two glasses of wine at
dinner ;-) Also took them six weeks to cover my expenses.

At any rate, I was "interviewed" by six children, who couldn't find
their own assholes, using both hands and a mirror.

I was not hired... "lack of experience" ;-)

Strange to find myself agreeing with Jim, but my experience is that
nobody in personel has a clue about what electronic engineers do, or
what their CVs mean. I don't think that this is specific to electronic
engineers - I doubt if personnel departments have a clue about what any
tertiary-trained professional does. My father ended up forbidding the
personnel department to talk to university graudautes at all - or at
least those that were candidates for work in the paper mill's research
lab where he was the research manager.

The worrying thing is that personnel doesn't seem to have clue how
clueless they are, and blithely reject wonderful candidates. At
Cambridge Instruments we managed to hire a Chinese mechanical engineer
(who had got a Ph.D. at Cambridge working on electron microscopes) only
because his wife played badminton with the wife of one of our
electronic engineers, and was able to smuggle his CV past personnel,
who had rejected it no less than three times without referring it to
anybody in engineering.

We were only able to hang on to the guy for three years before KLA
poached him away with a guarantee of American citizenship for himself
and his family, but in that three years he revolutionised the way
Cambridge Instruments assembled their electron microscope columns -
using shrink-fit assembly of precision machined parts, rather than the
previous tedious manual alignment, which was not only cheaper and
quicker, but gave an extremely robust column that never had to be
realigned.

--------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Well, I had a different experience being interviewed at Cambridge Scientific Instruments in 1970/71.
I had been interviewed by a couple of technical guys who I would have worked with, and stayed on past lunch to meet with the
technical director. He spent approximately 1 minute with me, made an incorrect assertion about the acidity of pH=3 (I had been
working in QC at Cadbury Schweppes in Histon where the correct pH is required for jam to set) and that was it. I didn't get the
job.

Active8 · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 10:10:18 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 16:59:59 GMT, Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 15:04:32 GMT, Genome wrote:

QUOTE
Our client requires an Electronics engineer - power supply design with
the
following skills: SMPS, power, supply, design, engineer, electronics,
engineering, switch mode, jobs
[...]

Ok. Be a sub-head-hunter. Get us a good enough price, help me over
the technical and political hurdles, and what ever is left after
expenses (nothing extravagant), we'll split 50/50. I'll do the rest
of the work and slap the shit out of them while you sit back, laugh,
and write the narration. I'd love to meet 'em. Life experience.

An unusual opportunity indeed. WTF does "parallisation across LINUX
clusters" and such have to do with SMPS? And where do you find
photocopier dealers with PS engineers?

RANT
snip nice rant
/RANT

I believe I programmed my mind to make you and Jim show up and make
my day. Thanks for expressing the brutal reality in a way that
probably only you can do.

Jim posted:
I was not hired... "lack of experience" ;-)

...Jim Thompson
I'm really rolling on the floor now. Experience at what, taking the
shaft sans lubricant?

PLL's (I'm practically one of the first in the field).

I know. I've done a bit of research and read some (2?) of your
patents.

They were all PhD's looking for platitudes about jitter and phase
noise. They didn't seem to like my pointing out that there's no pat
mathematical answer... you have to characterize the parts first.

Well... no sense telling them what they want to hear if they can't

afford to feed you, unless you want to toy with them >-)

I was turned down by those PHB types because of lack of experience
with C++ a la MFC and my loathing of MFC - that's a crappy MS
wrapper around the 'doze API. No matter. The pricks sold dual use
antenna testing tech to China and ate a $650 fine for it. The
position wasn't what the headhunter said he was told it was, either.

My cousin is a Mech E PhD. A Prof at U of Detroit. He consult for
Ford in the summer. He doesn't like to be called Doctor and isn't
even a bit stuck up. His sister... BS in commerce and Engr - worked
as an accountant and thinks she's special. Didn't Genome say he had
a shotgun? >-)
--
Best Regards,
Mike

Active8 · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 3 Apr 2005 18:24:56 +0100, John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote (in
1112548149.107780.129750@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com&gt about 'Job
Description(s)', on Sun, 3 Apr 2005:

Strange to find myself agreeing with Jim,

If you stuck to electronics, you'd find a great deal of common ground.
You'll never change each other's politics, so why not relax and enjoy
the engineering?

I'm with you bro'. Notice how nicely JT and Win play together
despite having opposite political views?
--
Best Regards,
Mike

John Larkin · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 15:04:32 GMT, "Genome" <ilike_spam@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

RANT
Recruitment agencies, scum more like.

I'm taking a shotgun to my next interview.

'Ask a stupid question and I'll blow your fucking head off.'

'What would you say are your main strengths and weaknesses?' BOOM!
'How do you feel about teamwork?' BOOM!
'How do you work under pressure?' BOOM!
'Where do you see yourself in five years time?' BOOM!
'So you are willing to re-locate?' BOOM!
'Do you prefer flyback or forward converters?'....... nice try
BOOOOOM!

Much of this crap comes down to the other side trying to determine
if I'm going to blow their fucking heads off when they act too stupid.
Either that or the previous employee(s) fucked it all up, probably
with assistance from the employers.

What's wrong with......

'Are you going to fuck it up like the last guy did?'

or

'We're rather crap and will fuck you about. Don't even think that
we're
interested in improving. Do you like dealing with Assholes like us?'
/RANT

DNA

I've been on both sides of that particular barbed-wire fence. Now I'm
the guy doing the hiring, and it ain't easy. Nobody presents a bad
resume or bad references; everybody says they're cooperative team
players; everybody says that all their projects were successful and
that they earned $39 million for their last employer (for whom they
worked for seven months before they went out of business.)

Last guy we hired sounded great - everybody loved him in the
interviews, looked like a perfect fit. And things appeared to be
working out OK. It was marketing, so results are hard to quantify, but
"the optics" were good. Then he applied for a week off (with pay) for
"jury duty" which didn't exist. When we checked his pc for an email,
we found they he actually spent most of his time downloading and
viewing asian porn, and burning stacks of dirty CDs. We shipped him
back all his "personal effects", some of which were *absolutely* not
job-related.

The sad truth is that you never know anything about a person (or an
employer, as far as that goes) until you work with them. And there's a
lot of responsibility on both sides of the issue, which is why
employers tend to "over-interview" out of caution, even when it
doesn't do a lot of good. Interviewers tend to pass the prospect
around to a lot of other people, who tend to ask the same dumb
questions, to distribute the responsibility and potential guilt if the
guy is hired but doesn't work out. The worst feeling one gets in this
business is when you hire somebody, maybe move them thousands of miles
to a new place, and six months later come to the horrible realization
that it's not going to work.

Having been on both sides, being the applicant is a lot easier. Which
is not to say that there aren't a huge lot of HR fatheads out there.

Roger agencies being scum.

John

John Larkin · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 17:59:59 GMT, Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net>
wrote:

On Sun, 3 Apr 2005 18:24:56 +0100, John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote (in
1112548149.107780.129750@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com&gt about 'Job
Description(s)', on Sun, 3 Apr 2005:

Strange to find myself agreeing with Jim,

If you stuck to electronics, you'd find a great deal of common ground.
You'll never change each other's politics, so why not relax and enjoy
the engineering?

I'm with you bro'. Notice how nicely JT and Win play together
despite having opposite political views?

Well, politics is just a game. Electronics *matters*.

John

Jim Thompson · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 11:22:23 -0700, John Larkin
<jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 10:10:18 -0700, Jim Thompson
thegreatone@example.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 16:59:59 GMT, Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 15:04:32 GMT, Genome wrote:

QUOTE
Our client requires an Electronics engineer - power supply design with
the
following skills: SMPS, power, supply, design, engineer, electronics,
engineering, switch mode, jobs
[...]

Ok. Be a sub-head-hunter. Get us a good enough price, help me over
the technical and political hurdles, and what ever is left after
expenses (nothing extravagant), we'll split 50/50. I'll do the rest
of the work and slap the shit out of them while you sit back, laugh,
and write the narration. I'd love to meet 'em. Life experience.

An unusual opportunity indeed. WTF does "parallisation across LINUX
clusters" and such have to do with SMPS? And where do you find
photocopier dealers with PS engineers?

RANT
snip nice rant
/RANT

I believe I programmed my mind to make you and Jim show up and make
my day. Thanks for expressing the brutal reality in a way that
probably only you can do.

Jim posted:
I was not hired... "lack of experience" ;-)

...Jim Thompson
I'm really rolling on the floor now. Experience at what, taking the
shaft sans lubricant?

PLL's (I'm practically one of the first in the field).

They were all PhD's looking for platitudes about jitter and phase
noise. They didn't seem to like my pointing out that there's no pat
mathematical answer... you have to characterize the parts first.

...Jim Thompson

Hey Jim,

I need a phase/frequency detector that I can toss into an FPGA. It's
just to lock a 10 MHz VCXO to an external input... not outrageously
demanding. I could just crib the detector out of the old 4046, except
that it tends to have some deadband (which the external resistor trick
can fix); or I could copy the logic of the Analog Devices 9901, except
that they patented the damned thing.

Any ideas?

John

480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax

Ben Bradley · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 15:04:32 GMT, "Genome" <ilike_spam@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

...

{ some really odd job ads snipped }

RANT

...

'What would you say are your main strengths and weaknesses?' BOOM!
'How do you feel about teamwork?' BOOM!
'How do you work under pressure?' BOOM!
'Where do you see yourself in five years time?' BOOM!
'So you are willing to re-locate?' BOOM!
'Do you prefer flyback or forward converters?'....... nice try
BOOOOOM!

One I got a few times was "which do you like doing better, software
development or hardware design?" Doesn't matter, the position is for
maintenance of already-in-the-market hardware and software.
Then there was the "which do you like, the 8051, 68000 or {third
processor their product used]?" and I said the 68000, then they
explained it was the 8051 they were looking for someone to do some
code enhancements on. Since then, all my 'preference' answers are
non-committal: "Oh yes, I'd be just as happy to work on a Pentium as
on a Pic or RCA 1802 for your next Nuclear Power Plant Controller..."

What's wrong with......

{ snip }

C'mon now, not even Scott Adams can say these things...now I
wonder, has he ever mentioned Vaseline in the context of employment
relationships?

/RANT

DNA

-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley

Jim Thompson · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 18:59:24 GMT, Ben Bradley
<ben_nospam_bradley@frontiernet.net> wrote:

[snip]

C'mon now, not even Scott Adams can say these things...now I
wonder, has he ever mentioned Vaseline in the context of employment
relationships?

480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax

Jim Thompson · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 12:08:00 -0700, Jim Thompson
<thegreatone@example.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 18:59:24 GMT, Ben Bradley
ben_nospam_bradley@frontiernet.net> wrote:

[snip]

C'mon now, not even Scott Adams can say these things...now I
wonder, has he ever mentioned Vaseline in the context of employment
relationships?

Come on, Ben, you need to me more up-scale... the "in thing" is K-Y
Jelly (self-warming ;-)

...Jim Thompson

480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax

Jim Thompson · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 17:59:59 GMT, Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net>
wrote:

On Sun, 3 Apr 2005 18:24:56 +0100, John Woodgate wrote:

I read in sci.electronics.design that bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote (in
1112548149.107780.129750@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com&gt about 'Job
Description(s)', on Sun, 3 Apr 2005:

Strange to find myself agreeing with Jim,

If you stuck to electronics, you'd find a great deal of common ground.
You'll never change each other's politics, so why not relax and enjoy
the engineering?

I'm with you bro'. Notice how nicely JT and Win play together
despite having opposite political views?

480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax

Walter Harley · Apr 3, 2005

"John Larkin" <jjSNIPlarkin@highTHISlandPLEASEtechnology.XXX> wrote in
message news:soa051d5edr5vc6e3c1j72mb3kgmaa0cep@4ax.com...

The sad truth is that you never know anything about a person (or an
employer, as far as that goes) until you work with them. And there's a
lot of responsibility on both sides of the issue, which is why
employers tend to "over-interview" out of caution, even when it
doesn't do a lot of good. [...]

Here's the flip side of that: a buddy of mine was just complaining to me
that he's been interviewing for a position in a different group, in the same
large software company he's been working with for 15 years. Fifteen years
of happy bosses and excellent performance reviews (I used to work with him
myself, at the beginning of those fifteen years; the reviews are
well-deserved). And yet, the first thing they want to do is put him up at a
whiteboard and ask him the same pointless generic questions they'd ask
someone they never met.

At some point, and I think that point is about 3 months after the start of
employment, you've got to think that another interview is not the most
efficient way of finding out whether someone's up to the job...

richard mullens · Apr 3, 2005

bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

richard mullens wrote:

bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 15:04:32 GMT, "Genome" <ilike_spam@yahoo.co.uk
wrote:

QUOTE
Our client requires an Electronics engineer - power supply design

with

the
following skills: SMPS, power, supply, design, engineer,

electronics,

engineering, switch mode, jobs

[snip]

Much of this crap comes down to the other side trying to determine
if I'm going to blow their fucking heads off when they act too

stupid.

Either that or the previous employee(s) fucked it all up, probably
with assistance from the employers.

What's wrong with......

'Are you going to fuck it up like the last guy did?'

or

'We're rather crap and will fuck you about. Don't even think that
we're
interested in improving. Do you like dealing with Assholes like

us?'

/RANT

DNA

Bwahahahaha! Good one!

I flew into Boston a few months ago to be interviewed as a

consultant

to a _supposedly_ high tech company.

I should have been wary right off the bat... their per diem rules

were

just plain childish (and wouldn't cover my two glasses of wine at
dinner ;-) Also took them six weeks to cover my expenses.

At any rate, I was "interviewed" by six children, who couldn't find
their own assholes, using both hands and a mirror.

I was not hired... "lack of experience" ;-)

Strange to find myself agreeing with Jim, but my experience is that
nobody in personel has a clue about what electronic engineers do,

or

what their CVs mean. I don't think that this is specific to

electronic

engineers - I doubt if personnel departments have a clue about what

any

tertiary-trained professional does. My father ended up forbidding

the

personnel department to talk to university graudautes at all - or

at

least those that were candidates for work in the paper mill's

research

lab where he was the research manager.

The worrying thing is that personnel doesn't seem to have clue how
clueless they are, and blithely reject wonderful candidates. At
Cambridge Instruments we managed to hire a Chinese mechanical

engineer

(who had got a Ph.D. at Cambridge working on electron microscopes)

only

because his wife played badminton with the wife of one of our
electronic engineers, and was able to smuggle his CV past

personnel,

who had rejected it no less than three times without referring it

to

anybody in engineering.

We were only able to hang on to the guy for three years before KLA
poached him away with a guarantee of American citizenship for

himself

and his family, but in that three years he revolutionised the way
Cambridge Instruments assembled their electron microscope columns -
using shrink-fit assembly of precision machined parts, rather than

the

previous tedious manual alignment, which was not only cheaper and
quicker, but gave an extremely robust column that never had to be
realigned.

--------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Well, I had a different experience being interviewed at Cambridge

Scientific Instruments in 1970/71.

I had been interviewed by a couple of technical guys who I would have

worked with, and stayed on past lunch to meet > with the technical
director. He spent approximately 1 minute with me, made an incorrect
assertion about the

acidity of pH=3 (I had been working in QC at Cadbury Schweppes in

Histon where the correct pH is required for jam

to set) and that was it. I didn't get the job.

That was way before my time - in fact I only made it to England in
March 1971. and didn't get to Cambridge Instruments until November
1982, when it was a very different company. Horace Darwin's original
company was taken over by George Kent Ltd. in 1968, who asset-stripped
the business and floated off the money-losing electron microscope part
as Cambridge Instruments in 1984, by which time I was working for
George Kent Ltd. at Kent Instruments in Luton.

Cambridge Instruments then merged with Metals Research in 1985 and the
combined firm proceeded to lose even more money until a Welsh physicist
(whose name I have forgotten) bought it for a song in 1988, halved the
work force, raised the prices, and put in some competent managers to
form the company that I joined in 1982. My technical director - Ian
Cruttwell - wouldn't have made an incorrect technical assertion about
pH. He was trained as a mathematician, but was a spectacularly quick
and clear thinker, though hopelessly impatient with details.

--------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Thanks for the background.
I almost certainly no longer have information about who it was who interviewed me - though I possibly have the rejection letter
somewhere !

John Larkin · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 12:08:00 -0700, Jim Thompson
<thegreatone@example.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 18:59:24 GMT, Ben Bradley
ben_nospam_bradley@frontiernet.net> wrote:

[snip]

C'mon now, not even Scott Adams can say these things...now I
wonder, has he ever mentioned Vaseline in the context of employment
relationships?

Come on, Ben, you need to me more up-scale... the "in thing" is K-Y
Jelly (self-warming ;-)

...Jim Thompson

The punch line of an old joke about Vaseline:

Interviewer: And, er, do you use Vaseline in your, uh, sexual
relations?

Housewife: Sure, we put it on the doorknob to keep the kids out.

John

Jim Thompson · Apr 3, 2005

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 14:56:12 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 12:08:00 -0700, Jim Thompson
thegreatone@example.com> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 18:59:24 GMT, Ben Bradley
ben_nospam_bradley@frontiernet.net> wrote:

[snip]

C'mon now, not even Scott Adams can say these things...now I
wonder, has he ever mentioned Vaseline in the context of employment
relationships?

Come on, Ben, you need to me more up-scale... the "in thing" is K-Y
Jelly (self-warming ;-)

...Jim Thompson

The punch line of an old joke about Vaseline:

Interviewer: And, er, do you use Vaseline in your, uh, sexual
relations?

Housewife: Sure, we put it on the doorknob to keep the kids out.

John

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