Friday Favorites 2/2/2012
It is hard to believe that I’ve been retired from Big Industry for 13 years. That would probably would not have happened if my employer, Hughes Aircraft Company, hadn’t been purchased, first by General Motors, then by Raytheon Company. Hughes was a very nice place to be an engineer, often referred to as a Country Club. That’s probably a reach but it did have no cubicles, excellent benefits and, as part of the nonprofit Hughes Medical Foundation, less of a profit motive. As a result, the work was often interesting and challenging. When I came to Hughes in 1976, I was hired as a Staff Engineer which, in the Hughes parlance, meant Worker Bee. Shortly after I was hired, Paul, who is now my business partner, was hired as a Senior Scientist. He got a private office with wood furniture and his own parking spot. He got to come to important meetings and skip the boring ones. I didn’t want to be Worker Bee forever so I applied for the Hughes Fellowship Program and started my graduate work that year.
There were two kinds of Senior Scientists at Hughes … the highly educated young guns, like Paul, and those who had earned their stripes through experience, perhaps with less formal education. The latter were almost always brilliant, but they didn’t have the mathematical tools to follow the kind of work that Paul did. They would also come up with ideas based on their experience that the mathematical tools indicated wouldn’t work. So, there was often friction between the Old Cronies and the Young Guns. One of the Old Cronies was Sam. Sam was inclined to present his ideas in drawings and simple math, whereas Paul (and later, I) would roll out the heavy mathematical artillery. But Sam was a joy to work with. He almost never got angry and had a great sense of humor which was quite disarming. He had signs with funny slogans hanging over his door. He had a habit of falling asleep in meetings but when asked a question, waking up and giving an answer without missing a beat. One Christmas, he got a remote control car from his secretary. … to try it out, he sent it down the hall and into a customer meeting in the Division Manager’s office. The Division Manager looked out, saw who it was and just shook his head.
Sam had a poster in his office that captured his attitude perfectly. He wasn’t going to argue with you or get that worked up if you disagreed. He was usually certain he was right and most times , he was. I loved that poster and frequently commented on it. The day he retired, he walked into my office and handed it to me, and it still adorns a place on the bookcase in my office. As my Eyes have gotten Older, I’ve tried to be more like Sam. But his sign still works for me, too. And it’s my Friday Favorite.
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Tags: favorites, feeling older, Friday Favorites, friends, Hughes Aircraft, humor, relationships, working. Hughes Aircraft Company
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February 3, 2012 at 9:28 am
I think I’ve mentioned before that my ex-husband worked for Hughes Aircraft Company when I married him. He was an electrical engineer and California native. He was born in Lompoc, CA, graduated from San Jose State and first worked for Lockheed in Sunnyvale. He then went to work for Hughes and moved to Aurora, Colorado, where Hughes had a company. He’s just slightly older than you and has been retired for about the same length of time.
Hughes Aircraft was a great company. The benefits were great. It was never the same once it went to General Motors. We were divorced by the time it became Raytheon.
February 4, 2012 at 8:58 pm
It was indeed. I actually was OK with Raytheon but they closed the facility here and wanted me to move to Rhode Island. Interestingly, that Raytheon facility was where I worked when Muri and I got married. We went back and checked it out again but it seemed a bit too small town for us.
February 4, 2012 at 7:30 am
I can understand why you like that poster! Funny, isn’t it, how sometimes a silly poster can really describe our thoughts or attitude to a tee. I had one about 20-30 years ago that I had hanging on the back of the bathroom door. It was a frog on a lily pad and said “Sometimes, you have to kiss a lot of toads before you finally meet your Prince Charming.” Seems to have been an appropriate mantra over the years for me -especially the “meeting” part! Just keep on looking I guess.
February 4, 2012 at 9:05 pm
There are indeed a lot of toads
February 4, 2012 at 3:10 pm
That cub looks like The Most Interesting Cat In the World. Does he drink Dos Equis when he drinks beer?
February 4, 2012 at 8:59 pm
He doesn’t always eat dry food. But when he does he prefers Purina.