Face Time

I was talking to Keith a couple of weeks ago. He was telling me about the difficulty in getting face time with university professors. Even when he was a graduate student it was very difficult to get time to speak with a professor. Our company makes a sensor that is of some interest to the scientific community. Getting to talk to people who are actively involved in research where our sensor could be used would be good for us.

Children are wide open to the world, everything is interesting. As we grow we find some things more interesting than others. Some people become more focused on smaller areas. We call them specialists. Professors are one kind of very focused specialist.

Mike Richmond, a marketing manager at Intel, told me a couple of interesting things when I was there (about ten years ago). This was the time of the big flap over the floating point division (FDIV) bug in the Pentium processor. Intel originally agreed to replace the chip for anyone who could demonstrate that their work would be impacted by this bug. Eventually they relented and allowed anyone who asked to get a replacement chip.

Mike said that he could have told them (the board of directors) how to handle the problem, but he did not have the "skill set" to be able to persuade them. I, not being much of a people person, disagreed. I thought they would dismiss his argument out of hand because he was from the systems division. i.e. He was not a chip person, and could not possibly be qualified to make any kind of decision regarding a chip.

I see now that there might be something to what to Mike said. I cannot talk to the owner of the company where I am employed. I am convinced that any time spent talking to him is time wasted. The last time we talked was at the local Olive Garden about eight months ago and the restaurant manager asked me to leave. Evidently I was making a fuss. I could not tell, I was too angry to notice. We have not spoken since then, though we both still come to work. Our desks are in the same room about fifteen feet apart. I think he is a moron.

He is wealthy. While he may not have more money than God, he certainly has more money than Sense. He made his fortune being CFO for Hollywood Video, back in the beginning. He left there about ten years ago. As they say, money changes everything. His house cost more than the annual sales of this company. Why does he even bother with this company? I cannot imagine.

Patrick O'Brian summed it up nicely in "The Reverse of the Medal". In the course of the story one of the characters inherits a large fortune. In a conversation with someone he expounds on the effect this new wealth has on his feelings and perceptions:

Tell me Maturin, do you find wealth affects you?

When I remember it I do: and I find its effects almost entirely discreditable. I feel better than other men, superior to them, richer in every way - richer in wisdom, virtue, worth, knowledge, intelligence, understanding, common sense, in everything except perhaps beauty, God help us.

Being able to talk to the owner could reap great benefits. If we could talk, then I might be able to persuade him of the worth of some of my ideas, and thereby my worth. In other words I might be able to talk some money out of his pocket and into mine. But as long as I am an employee here, I do not think that will happen. We each think of ourselves as superior to the other (I because I am, he because wealth has addled his brain) and so will not listen to what the other has to say.