Life time employment (at a firm) and cable installation for a new office

I was born and raised in ex-socialist economy, earned my
first degree in an engineering university built by Russians.
My parents are junior civil servants, that is they had iron
rice bowls. At home, I was taught to be listen to teachers,
loyal to boss and those are values. At college, I was trained
to believe that the role of a university level trained engineer
is to seek government job, climb up the ladder to become
a technocrat. That was how it started, those were backbones
of my work ethics. Later, when local universities were forced
to shut down for some reasons, for I did not have enough
money to study with credit transfer to foreign universities,
I had to seek full time work in private firms start flourishing
in my country early 90s. That was why I earned my system
engineer certification before earning college degree. However,
this is not what I want to talk about. So I started as a PC guy,
a technician in a local technology firm headed by natives who
came back from United States after working for big firms like
TI, Seagate, etc.. So I assembled PC, installed DOS 6.22 and
bad old Window OSes, user support, etc.. Next I moved up
food chain, becoming a LAN network technician. Looking back,
I was happy with my monthly salary which now I can make in
less than a fraction of an hour now. But back then, I thought
I would go back college when reopened to earn the degree,
then will make career with that firm. All was perfect, I was
employed, learning while some of my friends were sitting idly.

But simple experience I learned at work changed my concept
about life time employment and life long learning for mobility.
I was installing a switch box for LAN and PABX for a foreign
owned local firm in newly built plaza in the business district.
So I was learning how to crimp RJ 11 (phone plugs), RJ 45
(Ethernet plugs) and will mount servers into the rack, and
PABX, etc.. There structured cabling was installed.

There I learned about decoupling ploy in cabling scheme.
The decoupling is made there so that let's say Mr. X has
phone extension #117, he sits in a table close to network
plug #0102 and he belonged in an Ethernet switch #3,
if he got moved to another room, he will still be able to
use same phone extension, his PC connected to different
network plug #0304 but his PC network card would still
connected to same port in the same Ethernet switch #3.
Being an electronic engineer, who loves to decouple all
sub systems I love it. Another thing I noticed is that
there were extra phone plugs there.

That was useful when a sales guy quit and if he was with
a direct telephone line connected to his desk, to make
sure that incoming phone calls to him will be answered
by his replacement. That is what was called redundency
and that was another excellent concept in engineering.
All those may not be needed for better network switches
and PABXes, but I was talking about LAN networking
in a low income country which is not even qualified as
an emerging economies and we were using PABX (PBX)
from OEM manufacturer from the far Eastern Asia.

But what stuck in my mind was that people move about
and they do move out. As business owner and manager,
you have to think even before you move into the office
premise, but as an employee one has to be prepared for
such career moves in professional life. After all middle
managers and executives are also employees, even owner
in a public corporation is still an agent for stock holders.

So that was the epoch for life long journey of learning and
upward mobility.

Business Model, Linear Programming

If you are a product manager you have to know
how to break down costs: fixed costs and variable
costs from the Product (platform and derivatives)
from the respective Bill of Materials (BOM). It is
a tricky as it all depends on sourcing, fluctuating
prices, and the way you compute (FIFO or LIFO).
And you have to forecast (lucky you, if you have
historic sales data to build your model). So in short,
as project manager reports to engineering manager
or product manager reports to marketing manager,
you need to know how to model.

In that sense, business models are used to forecast,
or performance benchmarking.

One business modeling tool is Linear Programming.
It is simple, suppose you run a pizza joint, you can
sell 250 Grilled Lamb Pizzas (serving at the tables)
or 600 Kebab Pita (take away) - you are limited by
tables, operating time, kilograms of meat, oven and
man power - you are to maximize your profits and
a pie of Pizza makes 40% profit, while a Kebab pita
brings 30% profit per unit. Now you have to allocate
your Grilled Lamb to make P number of Pizzas and
K number of Kebabs. You have 20 kg of grilled lamb,
to make a Pizza you need about .03 kg of meat and
for Kebab it will take about .01 kg of delicious meat.

You can see LP is all about finding an optimal solution
(for profits) under restrictions imposed on operation
(also by financial constraints too). Equations are :

Maximize .40P+.25K

K <= 600 P <= 250 .03P+.01K <= 20 But if you are limited by Dough to make pita bread and Pizza pie. So one more constraints will be there. How about minimizing cost, not maximizing profit? Please note that the benefit of Business Modeling is to avoid fatal mistakes for business - rotten meat, stale bread, leftover food are not good news for joint owner. There will be more equations in LP formulations if constraints or objectives changes. LP is so simple!

Learn in limelight, also in twilight

Life is full of ups and downs.

Some claim "Treat crowds good on the way up as
you will meet them down hill", but some retorts
back "The crowd you meet going downhill will not
be same crowd you treated nice on the way up".

One can learn while rejoicing success in limelight,
one can also learn while reflecting (retrospectives)
while licking wounds alone in twilight.

Treat people nice, learn in limelight and twilight!

New found love for hassles

I used to feel contempt towards administrative
works. Now I love them - they are important.

I worked as a field engineer- a project engineer
responsible for field operations - before I have
switched career to become embedded software,
systems, solutions for a lot of industries.

As a field engineer after finishing the long and
tiresome job, I have to ask client representative
sign the P.O so that accountants can invoice the
clients. Not only that I have to check do QC of
data, package the data, give unofficial but crucial
field interpretations to the client and logistics
the way back to the base. Engineers have to fill
what tools we used, what services we sold, how
many crew were used for how many productive
hours and loss time, which specific systems or
equipment we have used into the database that
will be synchronize later when we will be back
in the office.

I switched my career to become design engineer,
software engineer for embedded systems based
products development. Then I fill in the tasks
I undertake, estimated time to complete tasks,
and percentage of the completion of those tasks.
I used to think that why should I waste time in
filling in forms while I can use time for real work.

But now, I understand that those are feedback
channels, raw data in to management information
systems. Without accuracy and completeness in
filling those data, no managers make an educated
guess, schedule and shuffle resources, predict and
plan operations, forecast future sales, cash flow to
finance capital and cash reserves, maintain service
quality, etc..

No wonder now I love those administrative works.

Embedded Systems development

Embedded systems development is different
from desktop, enterprise software systems.

I am interested in finding the best practices
in embedded systems product development.

The development projects of the embedded
systems have unique characteristics those
deserve merits to be researched not only from
technology perspective, but also from finance,
project management, marketing perspectives.

I want to research that development processes
from project management, system engineering,
architectural, software, hardware design, and
development approach and integrate with the
general management framework.

I was thinking of doing that as MBA thesis topic
but it may be too ambitious for a MBA project.

How about finding research job in CS department
of AACSB, AMBA and EUQUIS triple accredited
Business School?

The thought of earning a seat to pursue research
while contributing expertise and experience
educating young minds, is really tempting though.

After all, ain't it the agenda of writing my article
published in industry leader "Embedded.com"?

Ideas are endless while life is limited. We will see!

Make or Sell, what do you do for a living?

Sometimes I fantasized myself as a sales engineer.
I asked myself whether will I still be comfortable
to switch from developing products to selling those.

We all have to sell, even hard core engineers have to
sell ideas so I think I will be happy selling technology
products, giving input to new product development.

Perhaps, sales may be a career option worth to look.

Technopreneurship

My first taste of entrepreneurship? Nothing solid yet!

I just started thinking now excited with ChromeOS news,
mobile broadband, HP calculator@iPhone, virtualization,
OSPF and IP routing, TCP/IP stacks, embedded systems,
Skype, hardware/software plug-in, cheaper hardware,
Linux, FSF, Web 2.0 and social networks - all exciting,
all keep me awake until 2 AM - I am not an owl usually.

And I got a template to use for drafting a business plan.

"Title of investment proposal?

First choice for industry classification?

Primary Reason for needing capital?

Amount of capital required?

Minimum investment from each investor?

Short summary. (250 words)

Long summary.(600-3500 words)

Share my proposal?"

Reference:

http://www.scandinavianinvestmentnetwork.com

"Persistence is to the character of man..."

"Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel."

Hill, Napoleon

"We are not retreating but advancing..."

I just want to quote US Marine General OP Smith in the Korean
war who led 1st Marine Division way out of enemies' troops.

"We are not retreating but advancing in the different direction."