Offending ethics April 12, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, societal commentary, work.Tags: academia, ethics, layoffs, work
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I’ve heard about businesses that decide to cut costs by hiring newer, cheaper workers. They then ask the older workers to train them in, and once that has been completed, the company fires the older workers. On the same note, Fluxor describes a scenario where he is supposed to keep a team moving once they’ve all been fired and their offices have been shut down…despite the fact their product was making oodles of money for the company.
Academia isn’t immune from this. We had layoffs a couple months ago, and several of the people who were let go had to train in remaining people to fulfill their job duties after they left. It didn’t feel particularly kind to do that, but I will say that at least it wasn’t that any of us were happy to see those people go.
And sometimes you get stuck directly in a very morally questionable situation. Mommy/Prof, talked about dealing with faculty candidates from her old department both here and here.
Of course, the list can go on and on with issues like conflict of interest (which can encompass many things) along with many other moral and ethical issues.
Has anyone ever ended up with an uncomfortable spot at work because of an ethical or moral dilemma? Do you take the high road all the time? Do you ever feel justified in not doing so? Is it different if the impact is on someone other than yourself?
If I didn’t need a job, I’d probably… April 10, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, family, grad school, personal, work.Tags: grad school, independently wealthy, work
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I am always amused when listening to people talk about what they’d do if they didn’t have to work. I sort of found out for myself: I’d probably work.
I had a couple years as a stay-at-home mom, where I primarily was homeschooling the older child. I also had a stint doing it when he was a toddler. I sometimes fantasize about staying home with the younger boy, who would be much easier to homeschool than the older boy was.
Then my husband reminds me that’s not a good idea: I was pretty much going batty by the end of it.
I bring this up because Nicoleandmaggie posted about this, saying boredom would be a problem. Oh, was it ever. I cannot spend all day at home with a child. Believe it or not, I had nearly a spotless house (you’d die laughing if you saw my house now), was taking care of getting kids to appointments, homeschooling, even working on an MSEE part-time…
And going completely nuts.
I really immersed myself in dancing during this period because it was one of the best ways to interact with other adults outside of school. Unfortunately, regular training, teaching classes, and spending time outside of structured dance time did nothing to help the boredom. It kept me busy, but not stimulated. My classes (which I was doing pretty much one per semester) were about all that kept me sane.
The year the older boy hit middle school, he decided he wanted to go to public school full time, and I decided it was time to finish my MA. My dancing dropped off significantly, I was working on teaching or research or homework almost every night. And I was much, much happier.
I guess what that made me realize is that I really, really need to have intellectual stimulation, and reading Scientific American just isn’t enough to do it for me. I like working on problems, figuring things out, working towards a goal. If I were to win the lotto, I suspect I would just keep doing the same thing, probably by funding my own research. (Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to find someone to pay you to do it?) I think the biggest difference is that I’d probably be able to go on trips more often.
Let me drop everything and work on YOUR problem March 23, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, engineering, family, grad school, work.Tags: dissertation, schedule, schedules, work, work habits, workplace
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I appreciate the fact that I have very respectful and polite colleagues. I particularly appreciate it when it comes to my schedule. I only work half-time, and most of them have been very good about making sure to schedule things for when I am there. On those occasions where things had to be scheduled when I was supposed to be gone, my supervisor has usually asked me first to make sure there’s no conflict. My hours are pretty flexible, as well, so if I have to stay late one day, I can take time off the following day or something similar.
Still, I hate having things change around too much. Changes in schedule seriously seem to affect my concentration, and changes in routine just don’t sit well with me. I can certainly deal, but it always seems to throw me off.
In the past month and a half, things have gotten much worse, schedule-wise. I’ve had to do a lot of changing schedules because of some PR that the university has been doing both on my research at work as well as my dissertation project. I have gotten to the point that I now am dressing up half the time when I go to work because, more than once, I’ve gotten a call in the morning that they’d like me to talk to a reporter or in the afternoon. Half the time, I wasn’t even dressed like a nerdy engineer – t-shirt and jeans was it. It’s a good thing I live close to campus because I’ve had to make emergency wardrobe trips. However, despite all of the rearrangements, if I’ve said I had a conflict, no one has ever asked me to change anything. People have been willing to work around my schedule, which has been awesome.
The only real problem I hit is when deadlines show up. If the deadline is looming but not close enough that I can adjust a schedule for the week, that sometimes sucks time out of dissertation work (although I am getting more and more protective of that as time goes on, simply because it’s so easy to let it slide). What’s worse is when there are deadlines at work and the kids suddenly have a million and one extra activities as well. And I really hate it when someone gives me ‘vague’ deadlines, like “as soon as humanly possible”. I usually tell them what is humanly possible for me, but I suspect that on a couple of occasions, they felt as though they could do the same thing faster. It’s possible they could…but it’s also possible that, if they had the same schedule constraints I do, they might not. As cliche as it is, I go back to Stephen Covey’s 7 habits book. In it, he says he schedules everything out, and if someone drops something in your lap, you ask them what other thing you should get rid of to fit in this deadline. (Maybe it’s surprising, but my supervisor is very open to shifting priorities when it’s necessary. Other people…not so much.)
How do you deal with shifts in schedule and sudden deadlines?
Wordless Wednesday: Things in my office February 22, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, photography, work.Tags: art, artologica, office space, pictures, work, workplace
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And now they’re gone… February 18, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, engineering, research, work.Tags: layoffs
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Thursday was the last day for our colleagues who’d been laid off. Early in the week, we were trying to figure out what to do for the people in our group when the admin sent out an announcement – they were having a staff appreciation lunch to give everyone a chance to say goodbye.
I was glad they hosted the lunch as it seemed like a nice last gesture. However, part way through, I got so depressed about it that I had to leave and opted not to say goodbye to anyone. I’m not very good at that sort of thing.
This has been hard for two reasons. First, after an awful two years, I came here with the intention of only working for about six months to pay some tuition and then be done. I ended up fitting pretty well with everyone, and it was so nice to work with people who were friendly and communicative…not what I’d been dealing with the two years prior. For the most part, we all got along and clicked well, and I began to enjoy my work again. After my six months was up, I was told I could stay, so I did. And now some of these people, who helped me get on my feet again, are being sent away.
Second, and worse in a way, the news about my research got around and hit relevant industry journals and even some popular press all over the world. Over the past two weeks, I’ve been inundated with calls and emails. It seems so unfair that things can be going so well for me when we’re in the middle of laying people off. I can only hope that the positive press will lead to more funding opportunities so that I can help make sure no one else has to leave.
But now, hopefully, the worst is over. At least I won’t have to sit here and dread when people will be gone because it’s over. I’ll still probably feel rather sad every time I walk past people’s old desks and wonder what they’re up to.
My many hats February 9, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in computers, engineering, gifted, homeschooling, math, teaching, work, younger son.Tags: division, minion, software, work, younger son
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A couple weeks ago, my blog was promoted by a couple of sites and the hits started flowing in. I commented to someone (most likely Gears) how it’s nice to be recognized for my blogging about engineering but frustrating for the lack of recognition for my actual engineering work. Guess I should’ve waited a couple weeks.
Normal work has also been crazy. I’ve been given full control of the Minion and have thrown him in on a new project where he’s learning everything from scratch. It’s similar to projects that I’ve done, but even more complicated and using a different program. So our next couple weeks are going to be real fun as we’re going to be trying to make our way through using this new program and occasionally resorting to the old program for reality checks.
The other serious challenge I’ve been dealing with this week is long division. It’s pretty scary stuff, especially when you have a seven-year-old who is fighting some rather strong perfectionistic tendencies. He’s been getting to the long division portions in his computer math, and he starts to shut down. I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with it, so I decided to put an end to it tonight. I went back and printed out some of the older homeworks so that we could take a couple steps back. I think the problem is that he really thinks he can do everything in his head. I have to admit that his ability to do mental math far outweighs mine: I simply have to write everything down. However, he’s starting to hit the limit of this particular ability, and so he freaks out whenever he has to do a problem where he can’t do it all in his head.
I told him that tonight’s homework was going to be doing some work sheets. With the problems written out on paper, he didn’t seem to have this idea that he had to do everything in his head. The first couple were challenges, but then he started getting the hang of things and was able to execute the last few problems very quickly. By the time we had finished, he was doing 3-digit numbers divided by 2-digit numbers with no problem. We’re going to do some more difficult problems tomorrow and then try heading back to the computer.
We tried a similar approach when he started to get stuck on multiplication a couple months ago. I guess there are some things that really have to be written out to be understood. I just hope he starts to make regular use of his notebook from here on out.
The care and feeding of minions February 9, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, research, work.Tags: minion, students
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Shortly after seeing the movie Despicable Me, the younger son asked Mike if the people who worked for him were minions (like the little yellow guys in the movie) or henchmen (presumably from some other movie he’d seen). When I was in the lab one day, I asked a couple such individuals which they preferred. The one who’d graduated said he preferred henchman, while the undergrad liked minion. After that, we determined that we’d call all the undergrads minions, and once they graduate, they become henchmen.
It turns out that we’ve had one minion who started as a freshman and is the only undergrad working for my husband right now. Because we’re both doing electromagnetics work, I would sometimes get the minion on loan. One of these episodes was during the development of the Widget. I came up with the idea and did a variety of simulations. Once I got to a point where I didn’t feel we could progress much using the simulations, I had the Minion build up some prototypes and test them out. He’s far less concerned about losing brain cells from nasty chemicals more adept in the lab than I am, so despite the fact that what I asked him to do involved a lot of drudgery, he was very willing. What he didn’t realize is that he would make something and test it…then I’d go back and ask him to modify it and test again…and repeat that ad nauseum.
I really hate giving him all the ‘boring’ work but I have to admit that without his help, the project would have gone much more slowly. He was put as second author on the Widget paper, and has also been lead author on a couple other papers as they were his own projects. Now, he will apparently get a bit of publicity for his role as an undergrad who has had an opportunity to do some research. He deserves this as he’s one of those people who you can hand stuff to and rely on them to do a good job and get it done quickly.
In fact, he’s so dedicated to his work, that he’s even willing to risk his own health!
Just kidding.
But seriously, thanks for everything, Layne. We’re glad to have you around.
And so it begins… January 20, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, engineering, research, work.Tags: layoffs, work, workplace
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Yesterday afternoon, two emails came through at work letting us know that about 1/4 of the people working at our center would be dismissed. This morning, the front page of the local paper had the story.
Our center has primarily been funded under earmarks along with some other projects coming through industry collaborations. When congress cut all earmarks, we lost the most significant portion of our funding. (I find this frustrating as cutting earmarks doesn’t actually reduce the budget…it just means that no portions of the existing budgets can be allocated to specific projects by congress. So our center losing most of its funding changed nothing in terms of the US budget.)
Today was surreal. Someone came up to tell me they were one of the ones let go. Another person announced it at the end of the meeting. I had no inkling before they said anything that they were on the list. I didn’t take it well.
Right before Christmas, two people I know let me know they’d been laid off (both EEs in technology industries). I’ve heard of companies pulling such tactics as they approach the end of their fiscal year. I will say that despite the fact we knew things were going to be happening, I was hugely relieved that, in the case of our center, they at least waited until after the holidays so that people could enjoy the time with their families.
And the people that have been let go are not necessarily going because they weren’t smart or hard working. That is both the hardest part and the best part. I know that these people aren’t to blame for their predicament – it was simply a matter of whether their expertise is necessary on some of the projects we have coming in. I’m confident these people can move on and still be successful.
On the other hand, it sort of flies in the face of the “work hard and you’ll always have a job” mentality that so many people put out there. That’s simply not true…and that’s why this is really hard. I’m also feeling a twinge of survivor guilt. I still have my job, as does my husband. It seems unfair that I just happened to luck out to have some of the skills that will be required moving forward.
Most of the people will still be around for a month, but it’s going to be hard to work as though nothing happened. And after they’re gone, the place is going to be uncomfortably empty.
Out standing in their fields December 22, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, societal commentary, work.Tags: farming, kids, responsibility, work
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I was very surprised to learn that FrauTech apparently reads the Bismarck Tribune.
I didn’t think anyone outside of North Dakota did that. (Although I’m guessing this is not a regular occurrence.)
She linked to an opinion piece in the Tribune about how kids who are under 16 may not be allowed to work on farms unless they belong to their parents. I’ve had very mixed feelings about the whole bill. While I think that in places like California, these sorts of regulations are needed lest migrant children be put to work instead of going to school, the culture up here is different. Kids who work on the farm are expected to go to school, as well. Of course, this is partially because there are still vestiges of family farms up here, and I don’t think such things have existed in California for quite a while.
Contrary to what Frau said, I do have students who come from farms. A lot of them come from rural schools, and going into engineering is not easy for them. I was very dismayed to hear that one of my students had taken AP calc in his school, but his class of four students often spent the time doing things that were not related to calc. The internet has done a lot to make the discrepancies between rural and urban less obvious, but it’s still not completely leveled the playing field.
I tend to agree with the original opinion piece, however. My husband was a farm boy. I was didn’t have much experience on a farm, but my dad was expected to spend summers working on his grandfather’s farm. I’m sure that if things hadn’t gone bust in the 80s, I would’ve been out there once I was old enough, as well. And I see a lot of very bright kids who grew up on farms.
There really is a very different mindset in rural to semi-rural areas. Even though I didn’t work on a farm, I got a job when I was 15 because it’s perfectly reasonable to have a job at that age. Kids seem to be expected to take on responsibility a lot earlier, and I think that leads to a lot of positive life experience…something kids don’t get when all they do is go to school. (Some of this, I think, accounted for the large amount of culture shock when I went off to college and found out that most of my classmates didn’t have jobs in high school…and I’d already had two.) I think it also creates a much greater sense of community awareness. Kids who grow up on farms are out in the community, out working. They know their neighbors better, they are expected to interact with adults, and they are expected to behave as young adults. And in the case of most farming communities, they often pitch in to help each other out when someone needs it. You simply cannot substitute that kind of experience with anything else.
Right now, we’ve already lost a lot of ground. If you want to know what urban parents who are very closely removed from the farm do, they try to figure out ways to get their kids back onto a farm. My family lost their farm, and my husband’s family no longer farms…which means we’d really wanted our kids to go spend time with distant relatives or friends if the opportunity presented itself. These laws would prevent that. It’s even more frustrating in light of the fact that there are very few places that will hire kids under 16 any more. Where are kids supposed to learn responsibility as well as what it’s like to be treated like an adult?
But it’s not just responsibility. Kids do learn a lot of hands-on skills. Not all kids who are handy will be great engineers, but I’ve observed that background gives a lot of kids an intuitive notion of how to approach problems…at least in the ones that want to sit down and think it through.
Maybe not all farm kids will make great engineers, but I know a few that it helped. There are a lot of benefits to growing up that way, and it’s too bad more kids aren’t getting the opportunity. I’m not convinced it’s the only way to get those benefits, but it’s one of the best.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
Chores: a microcosm of a relationship April 16, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in career, family, feminism, food/cooking, homeschooling, societal commentary, work.Tags: chores, family, family/work balance, housekeeper, relationships
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It’s been a busy week. I’ve been meaning to respond to a post about chores over at Wandering Scientist, but haven’t had a chance until now. Still, I’ve been parsing it in my head quite a bit. Here’s the gist of it:
This post struck a chord with me because at one point I was Joan but now I’m Janet. Many of you know that I was married before and that it didn’t end well. Part of that is because I didn’t like being Joan any more.
As much as the scenario says that Joan is in a loving, equitable relationship with her husband, I honestly don’t think that can really exist if there isn’t a satisfactory division of labor within the household. My experience tells me that husbands who do not step up to help around the house really view their wives as inferiors: the man’s view of this is very ego-driven. The work that needs to be done is below him, so the wife should do it. I say this because if it’s important for it to be done, then why aren’t they pitching in and helping with it? The answer is that they feel it’s not important enough for them to spend their time on it because their time is worth more than their wives’. And if their wives keep putting up with it, it’s also not really a big deal to them, right?
Unfortunately, wives will very often buy into this. Husband complains about something not being clean, and obviously she’s supposed to take care of it. I don’t know how many of my friends have complained about this exact scenario. What she should say is, “If you want it clean, you have two arms and a brain: put them to work.” Instead she excuses the behavior and comes up with some excuse why he can’t do it…yet resents him the whole time. And there we see the lack of communication: if you want him to do it, don’t give him the silent treatment…tell him to do it! (Although I can tell you that asking nicely is always important…no matter who is doing the asking.)
I think a lot of women put up with it because the alternative seems a lot scarier: leaving the husband and doing it all on your own. (And having done that, I can say it’s pretty rough.) I’m sure a lot of women think it’s worth putting up with because they don’t feel (maybe rightly so) that they can handle that amount of work (although I suspect a lot of them won’t find that it’s THAT much more work). I think a lot of them also don’t see it as a problem with the relationship, so it’s not worth leaving him over. I don’t agree with that view, however, because I see this particular issue as a reflection of how the whole relationship operates.
So my opinion is this: he sees his role as worth more than her being less overwhelmed, and she won’t express how important it is to her or is too insecure to confront him. Quite possibly, this is exactly what they observed in relationships when they were younger. They are emulating that because they aren’t sure how to do it any differently or haven’t gotten sick enough of it to try.
To me, this is just a reflection that making decisions about household work has nothing to do with loving the spouse and more to do with how you view gender roles. Women do x while men do y. If you think a man can’t do x, then you are viewing your spouse through a gendered lens which is likely to override things like honest communication and caring in a relationship. How many times does the spouse who refuses to help with work make a point of saying how much they appreciate the spouse who is? Or do they just complain about things that aren’t done? Do they ever offer to help out when it’s apparent the spouse who is ‘supposed’ to do the work doesn’t get it done? My observation is that they don’t often appreciate the contribution of the spouse who is supposed to do the work, or if they do, they seldom vocalize such appreciation…or offer to help. This is what wives are supposed to do, and there is seldom the question asked, “But is this right for OUR relationship?” And if that question isn’t being asked about the housework, what about the other roles that each has?
Getting specific, we have a fairly inequitable division of labor (strictly in terms of housework) in our house right now, and I am the beneficiary of it. I wasn’t always the beneficiary. When my husband was doing his PhD, I was helping out a lot more than I do now. I had a summer off between my BS and MS, and the house was completely spotless. On the other hand, when I was prepping for my orals, my husband was driving down the Minneapolis and spent the weekend taking care of cleaning and laundry. He still does that right now as he’s ‘only’ doing a full-time job, while I’m working part-time, working on a dissertation, and dealing with partial homeschooling and general running around of offspring. And we’ve both gotten so overwhelmed that we had to hire a cleaner as well as expecting the older boy to help around the house much more. (And, to be perfectly honest, our house is still not in good shape.) We do it this way because, in terms of who has time when, it makes sense.
He has and probably always will make more money than me. Significantly more. And he has never once held that over my head nor used that as an excuse for why he couldn’t do something. I therefore think it has nothing to do with money, although people use that to justify their position.
If it’s an equitable relationship, both parties will look at what needs to be done and try to make sure that the labor is divided evenly so that no one is too overwhelmed. My husband has asked me to do the laundry when he’s had to be gone. Okay…it’s not ‘his job’, but he usually does it. And if he can’t, then I need to. Likewise, if I can’t run a kid to the doctor, he needs to do it, even if that means taking time from work. In an equitable relationship, the work isn’t necessarily based on roles. Very often, it switches. The idea of the relationship is to work together to help each other out. Admittedly, we definitely prefer to do certain things. I do most of the cooking (at least if we’re not grilling something), and he does the dishes. I hate dishes, and he doesn’t like to cook. But he will cook if I’m busy, and I will do the dishes if he’s busy.
The last comment I have to make is that some couples do have different standards: my husband needs things to be a lot more neat than I do. That’s one that can be very hard to communicate sensitively, but it’s important to know when you should just let it go. Maybe having kids has helped both of us to deal with that better. When we weren’t as swamped as we were now, we sat down and discussed things that the other person did or did not do that drove us crazy in regard to cleaning. (I remember he didn’t like that I would put clothes in first and pour soap directly on them. I quit doing that, but now we have a front loader and it’s a moot point.) However, we’ve just learned to appreciate when the other has done something (like the laundry) and not worry so much about specifics (it didn’t get hung up right away and so has wrinkles). We don’t always go about our cleaning the same way, but we’ve come to just be happy that it gets done at all rather than done the way we want it done. If we do it ourselves, then we have the option to do it a specific way, but otherwise it’s just best to appreciate that someone is willing to pitch in and reduce your personal stress level.