Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler...
A fun thing happened to me at work today. It started because my boss Henry is out of town for most of this week because his girlfriend’s father died. Henry and I are the two structural analysts working on the wings for Bell’s Quad-Tilt Rotor (QTR) concept bid for the military Joint Heavy Lift (JHL) contract. Henry is the big shot and I am the lackey, but that of course means that I do most of the actual work (as lackeys often do).
Well apparently Mondays are the usual days for the Integrated Product Team (IPT) meetings. IPT is just a fancy term for “groups”, for example I am working on the wing structure, another group is doing the nacelle, another the transmission, etc.. Each Monday all the big shots of the IPTs get together and report what they have done and need to do to the even bigger shots that are in charge of the overall project. As a lackey I never go to these meetings. I’m not even ever really cognizant of when and where they take place.
I was blissfully working away in my little cubicle today when Bob (one of the Henry-level big shots from another group that I have been coordinating with recently) comes up to me and says “Could you come to the IPT meeting? With Henry out we don’t have any structures guys there.” Um, ok. So I quickly grab a pen and a notepad and start walking with him to the conference room. On my way over there I begin thinking that I didn’t really know anything about this meeting. I had never been to one. I didn’t have anything prepared for it as up until this moment I didn’t really know that the meeting existed, let alone that I would be going to it.
So we get to the conference room. It readily becomes apparent that Bob didn’t just stop by my cube and invite me to the meeting on his way over (That was the theory I developed, presumably so that I would be aware and could tell Henry of anything important that came out of it). It was glaringly obvious that the meeting was well in progress, and that Bob, in fact, had been sent to get me. Crap.
All the seats at the main table had been filled, and most the chairs around the perimeter of the room were also taken. I recognized a handful of the people there, and worked closely with a few of them, but for the majority of the people I did not know. Several of the groups there I have never had any reason to ever interact with (drive systems, for example, have nothing to do with my wings). The groups I do work with were represented by their big shots where as I, as a lackey, tend to interact with the other lackeys. So I find an open chair, and as I sit down Tom (le grand fromage) says, “ok young man, tell us about the wings” (oh, and young man was a very apt term since I think the next youngest person was at least 10-15 years my senior, and the average was well above that).
Let me pause to take a moment to put things in perspective. I find that titles can be very confusing, and a better measure of a person’s seniority in the company is their office space. I, at the bottom of the totem pole with the title “Associate Engineer”, have a small little cube with a desk on either side. I have to slide my chair back against one desk in order to open the drawers of the opposing desk. Henry (my boss), who has been working at Bell since the beginning of the Vietnam War, has the title of “Staff Engineer.” Between his title and mine are: Engineer, Sr. Engineer, Engineering Specialist, Sr. Engineering Specialist, and Principle Engineer. I am not entirely sure about the order and it’s possible that I left something out (and I know that there are little sub promotions you go through at each level before your title changes), but those are ranks I know are between he and I and are adequate in showing that there is a fairly large gulf. Henry has a bigger cube that is large enough for three other people to sit in comfortably for a small meeting/discussion. Henry’s boss Bennie, the Chief of Airframe Structures (high enough to show up on some of the more detailed org. charts), has an actual interior office with a door. This is why I often claim that my long-term career goal is to have a door (to help motivate me a coworker of mine once taped a box flap across my cube’s entrance to act as a door, but unfortunately the masking tape failed around the second or third time the door was opened).
I have only been in the Tom’s office once. It was because I was walking with Henry when he stopped by Tom’s office to ask a quick question. To start with, Tom has his own secretary who paused from answering his telephone calls to say that we could go in and see him. Upon entering I saw that the office was roughly a little over twice that of Bennie’s. It had very nice carpeting, and low and behold, a window (maybe two, don’t quite remember). The chairs, even the extra ones he had for other people to sit in, were those fancy high backed leather ones. He had nice wooden cabinets filled with books, framed posters and artwork on the walls, etc.. Very posh. And he’s the one asking me for a status report at this meeting. In other words, if the company was based on a feudal system and he were a Duke or something (presuming that the CEO is king), then that would put me somewhere on the order of being just short of a peasant child’s pet squirrel.
To make matters worse, the wings are kind of in a state of flux right now. I had spent around eight months developing and refining these wings, fine-tuning every little detail to maximize efficiency and minimize weight while looking at a plethora of load cases and crash conditions. I had a pretty good idea of the weight, safety margins, everything. But then, about three weeks ago, we found out that a requirement for the drive shaft and mid wing gearbox interfered with one of my main structural spars and would effectively cut it to Swiss cheese, so we had to take it out. Also, the method of attaching the wing to the fuselage had to change because it was too soft for dynamic stability and handling quality. In essence, a huge design change in the wing had to take place (This coincides perfectly with a major report and presentation for the contract bid being due at the end of August). So I am madly trying to resize all the components of the wing, but with having only worked on it a couple of weeks as opposed to the months I spent on the last one it means I am not near the same level of detail. The redesign is heavier without the spar and since I haven’t had time for an in-depth analysis many my preliminary estimates have had to be conservative, meaning that my first guesses are heavier than what it would actually have to be. Couple this with a miscommunication error between our group and the weights group on the last wing leading them to believe it was lighter than it actually was, we are showing a significant increase in wing weight (note: this is bad). Anyway, with the report being due real darn soon now the weight of the wing is a cause of concern, and here I am having to talk about it completely unprepared in front of a dude with a secretary and a window.
I’m telling Henry he owes me a doughnut or two when he gets back.
Well apparently Mondays are the usual days for the Integrated Product Team (IPT) meetings. IPT is just a fancy term for “groups”, for example I am working on the wing structure, another group is doing the nacelle, another the transmission, etc.. Each Monday all the big shots of the IPTs get together and report what they have done and need to do to the even bigger shots that are in charge of the overall project. As a lackey I never go to these meetings. I’m not even ever really cognizant of when and where they take place.
I was blissfully working away in my little cubicle today when Bob (one of the Henry-level big shots from another group that I have been coordinating with recently) comes up to me and says “Could you come to the IPT meeting? With Henry out we don’t have any structures guys there.” Um, ok. So I quickly grab a pen and a notepad and start walking with him to the conference room. On my way over there I begin thinking that I didn’t really know anything about this meeting. I had never been to one. I didn’t have anything prepared for it as up until this moment I didn’t really know that the meeting existed, let alone that I would be going to it.
So we get to the conference room. It readily becomes apparent that Bob didn’t just stop by my cube and invite me to the meeting on his way over (That was the theory I developed, presumably so that I would be aware and could tell Henry of anything important that came out of it). It was glaringly obvious that the meeting was well in progress, and that Bob, in fact, had been sent to get me. Crap.
All the seats at the main table had been filled, and most the chairs around the perimeter of the room were also taken. I recognized a handful of the people there, and worked closely with a few of them, but for the majority of the people I did not know. Several of the groups there I have never had any reason to ever interact with (drive systems, for example, have nothing to do with my wings). The groups I do work with were represented by their big shots where as I, as a lackey, tend to interact with the other lackeys. So I find an open chair, and as I sit down Tom (le grand fromage) says, “ok young man, tell us about the wings” (oh, and young man was a very apt term since I think the next youngest person was at least 10-15 years my senior, and the average was well above that).
Let me pause to take a moment to put things in perspective. I find that titles can be very confusing, and a better measure of a person’s seniority in the company is their office space. I, at the bottom of the totem pole with the title “Associate Engineer”, have a small little cube with a desk on either side. I have to slide my chair back against one desk in order to open the drawers of the opposing desk. Henry (my boss), who has been working at Bell since the beginning of the Vietnam War, has the title of “Staff Engineer.” Between his title and mine are: Engineer, Sr. Engineer, Engineering Specialist, Sr. Engineering Specialist, and Principle Engineer. I am not entirely sure about the order and it’s possible that I left something out (and I know that there are little sub promotions you go through at each level before your title changes), but those are ranks I know are between he and I and are adequate in showing that there is a fairly large gulf. Henry has a bigger cube that is large enough for three other people to sit in comfortably for a small meeting/discussion. Henry’s boss Bennie, the Chief of Airframe Structures (high enough to show up on some of the more detailed org. charts), has an actual interior office with a door. This is why I often claim that my long-term career goal is to have a door (to help motivate me a coworker of mine once taped a box flap across my cube’s entrance to act as a door, but unfortunately the masking tape failed around the second or third time the door was opened).
I have only been in the Tom’s office once. It was because I was walking with Henry when he stopped by Tom’s office to ask a quick question. To start with, Tom has his own secretary who paused from answering his telephone calls to say that we could go in and see him. Upon entering I saw that the office was roughly a little over twice that of Bennie’s. It had very nice carpeting, and low and behold, a window (maybe two, don’t quite remember). The chairs, even the extra ones he had for other people to sit in, were those fancy high backed leather ones. He had nice wooden cabinets filled with books, framed posters and artwork on the walls, etc.. Very posh. And he’s the one asking me for a status report at this meeting. In other words, if the company was based on a feudal system and he were a Duke or something (presuming that the CEO is king), then that would put me somewhere on the order of being just short of a peasant child’s pet squirrel.
To make matters worse, the wings are kind of in a state of flux right now. I had spent around eight months developing and refining these wings, fine-tuning every little detail to maximize efficiency and minimize weight while looking at a plethora of load cases and crash conditions. I had a pretty good idea of the weight, safety margins, everything. But then, about three weeks ago, we found out that a requirement for the drive shaft and mid wing gearbox interfered with one of my main structural spars and would effectively cut it to Swiss cheese, so we had to take it out. Also, the method of attaching the wing to the fuselage had to change because it was too soft for dynamic stability and handling quality. In essence, a huge design change in the wing had to take place (This coincides perfectly with a major report and presentation for the contract bid being due at the end of August). So I am madly trying to resize all the components of the wing, but with having only worked on it a couple of weeks as opposed to the months I spent on the last one it means I am not near the same level of detail. The redesign is heavier without the spar and since I haven’t had time for an in-depth analysis many my preliminary estimates have had to be conservative, meaning that my first guesses are heavier than what it would actually have to be. Couple this with a miscommunication error between our group and the weights group on the last wing leading them to believe it was lighter than it actually was, we are showing a significant increase in wing weight (note: this is bad). Anyway, with the report being due real darn soon now the weight of the wing is a cause of concern, and here I am having to talk about it completely unprepared in front of a dude with a secretary and a window.
I’m telling Henry he owes me a doughnut or two when he gets back.
posted by boywondre at 7:14 PM
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