A New Beginning (or so I thought...)

1998 — Roger from Storage Tek in Colorado hires me. I told Roger before he agreed to hire me I had a “history” with my previous company and that’s why I wasn’t working for the last two years…he says it’s okay — we all have bad days at work. (The real reason I wasn’t working was mostly because I was looking for solutions for my mutilated eyes, but I hate telling that to people and then have to watch their quizzical expressions as the try to understand it, though some of the time was spent looking for a new job.) Good, I think, I’m on my way again.


I was supposed to be the lead engineer on verification, but instead of learning Test Bench methodologies, I find myself learning C and PowerPC code as I write snippets of SW for running on a virtual processor which in turn is testing a new DRAM controller that was under ASIC development. I did learn my C-code and everything necessary to deal with it quite well, however. Now I think I am a great engineer — I can do both HW and SW, how useful was that? (Ans: totally useless to me.)

I also learn to deal with my vision problems, at least I’m better at it, as I take the advantage of relocation and buy a house within 15 minutes slow drive to the StorageTek campus. I still drive deathly afraid of the night and leave every evening in the winter at 4:00 PM for home, but at least it is an easy drive and the occasional night drive is much more tolerable. Plus the company does seem capable of existing in some form or another for at least the next 20 years or so — and I am most relieved to believe that.

1998 — I email Tom (from Netstar/Ascend fame) and exchange contact information. He informs me after I left that “Granite Head” made me E-VIL unto E-VIL unto E-VIL, putting into action his gutless plan for shifting blame from his incredibly poor management skills to his new scapegoat -- me. (Evidently I was what was wrong with everything in the world, biblical and non-biblical alike.) Tom also mentions that half of the engineers quit in the next six months (and he quit sometime later) and also tells me things about the dumb ass engineer trying to debug my card and after he got frustrated, calls it impossible and shit-cans it. Tom wanted to tell me more things, but I waved him off; I’m no longer interested in what happened at Netstar/Ascend. I now wish I hadn’t waved him off like that, as there was more to learn, such as the problem with the ‘bad data' that was happening because “Dickless” code was probably screwing up, not my HW, but I pretty much ignored it as part of my plan for greater mental health.

2000 — The department endures some turmoil as Roger has to lay off several technical people and move several more out of R&D, just to keep them employed. For me, he grants a chance to use both my HW and SW skills for predominately trouble shooting chores he he could find laying around. Very few people, if any, are working on any real R&D. I just bide my time and keep doing a little bit of everything.

2003 — We inherit a new project as part of the reorg of the the department and I am asked to get it simulated and checked-out. But this is all happening way too slow and with way too many problems, so Roger asks me if I can write a special special form of a diagnostic test using C and PowerPC assembly programming that I had just learned along with some i960 programming to boot. The test I did was given the label “Stress Test” by some of the lessor informed at work.  This "little" test took me about two months to write, and had the purpose of acting as a design confirmation or verification test (tad more involved then a standard diagnostic.) To do it you need to take the following measures (and read it at your own risk…it’s boring and useless and might ruin your career too…):

1. Learn all you can about the Device Under Test (DUT) and Components Off The Shelf (COTS), plus all the custom logic holding the product together — you have to be the total coder to the thing and you need to be aware of exactly of how the design itself works at almost all levels functionality. 
2. Use the information you have just learned, brain storm with it and use it to develop circular or repeatable SW cycles, then modify the operational parameters on each each spin of the SW with say…a random number generator or contents of an Easter Egg. Do this with each piece of repeatable/circular/cyclic SW plus any stubbed endings in the code, which could be anything. (Interrupts, for example.) Under stand that you will be learning more about this product then both the SW or HW engineer put together (because you have to use all the SW ability and functionality of this thing which then has to check all the HW dimensions this thing has to it.
3. Learn all the compiler and linker directives — you will need to know and use them as you develop your code base. You will be creating very thorough and flexible code.
4. Develop a Real Time Operation System (RTOS) kernel and use it to directly interpret code and to add “Easter Eggs” — those special instructions that randomly cross over in what you are doing and into something else going on elsewhere in the code. This allows for larger degree of asynchronous activity.
5. Make sure that when an error is discovered, it is done so at the point of actual failure — not several minutes later. Keep a history of what you were doing at the time of failure so you can communicate it back to the HW engineer, things such as register or memory values. Occasionally, you will need to call on your HW skills to modify the DUT so it stops at the exact (or close to that) time of failure. Sometimes that actually works…
6. Use NVRAM, if you have it, to record what you are doing, so if the problem takes out your ability to communicate, a reset of the device will cause the code to check for any errors recorded in the NVRAM and then report it. (Yep, this sucks, but it is necessary.)
7. Create a communication protocol so that when something does happen you can provide a more or less be independent path for the information to get back to your communication screen or similar error reporting equipment and don't need to rely on the perfectly operating system at the time of the failure.
8. Make sure this test always, ALWAYS, runs forever while constantly and randomly changing its behavior until it hits a failure; if you understand that you are using SW and scripts to create and detect any of the bad HW in your system, then you’ll know there is no way to determine if all possibilities of interaction with the HW have been applied in order to bring out a failure — none. This test has no methodology, and even more importantly, no metrics. You can never cross off something from a list when you don’t exactly know what that ‘thing’ was or if it was tested. Too many parts and other functions working autonomously and separately to be able to anticipate their interaction and cross any of it off a list. Just let it run forever and hope you have done a thorough enough test to exercise and catch all errors in the design.

This isn’t actually all of it, but just what I remember (and there was an awful lot to remember.) I do know once the little piggies of StorageTek found out I did this they all wanted me to do the same thing for their similarly badly wired HW designs — they would wire their shit together, throw it over the cube wall, and then I would put together the code to find their bugs. They loved it! And if the bugs weren’t being found, well, that’s my problem wasn’t it, after all, that was my ‘new’ job! The place was being run by idiots who think this test is a good idea...oh no...not this again as I think to myself…

Put succinctly, this test was big waste of time except for it being done in an ‘emergency’ situation when your back was against the wall. For the couple of problems I solved with these tests, there was a fair chance that the next one would and could be a big disappointment. The single, best way to verify HW and HW design is to use good old fashioned simulations while employing total coverage methodologies…nothing better.

What I hated most about this test was how frequently it would come to someones little brain every time we had a project that could have theoretically benefited by it, which was all of them. They never cared that the time, effort and efficacy of such a test was incredibly difficult, time consuming and had an iffy chance of being even half-ways rewarding or effective.

This is also the time that Roger, my manager, quits and retires from engineering. Turns out to be bad news for me, as I needed his confidence and good judgment to save me from what was going to happen next.

2003-2004 — “Brainless Brian” is hired by StorageTek as a something or other, but I don’t think he leaves Minnesota, but I could be wrong. Who and what does he tell about me, if anything, and what bullshit (and I mean “BULLSHIT”) does he recite? And who after more than 7-8 years who would be interested? (Ans. “You’d be surprised, especially with so many gutless managers lying around.”)

2003-2004 — I go to the Tape side of the company (I was on the Disk side) to help them do whatever they need help doing. I’m doing all kinds of shit for them, including another “Stress Test” for “Fuggin’ Chuck” — a big believer of my skills as a programmer (but oddly, not as a designer — do you think someone got to the stupid fuck?) The other stuff I’m doing is scripts and program control, C++ code from a long-gone contractor, Verilog adaptations and such, more verification tests, and etc., etc., etc.

2004 — I’m in the tape group, as I said earlier. It been many years since I last saw “BMOC” and his ugly mug and now I spy him at StorageTek as a “fellow” and he spies my name on my temporary cubicle just as I round the corner but I stop before he sees me; he's wondering if I’m “that guy” he interviewed 8 years earlier. For the next several days he keeps trying to trap me into a spontaneous conversation, but I avoid him at all costs. I note his intrusion and wonder what he’s up to — he’s not trying to disparage my name, is he? Turns out he probably is and in a way to prove how “knowledgable” and “gifted smart” he is. You see, “BMOCs” best trick (and it is a trick, I assure you of that) is to pretend he is a high and mighty technologist working at the convenience of the CEO and senior management, kind of like the way the worlds greatest magician “Merlin” did for King Arther and his Knights of the Round Table, but in this case his greatest skill is technology (and who’s who in technology) instead of magic. I believe he tells and panics all the fucking leaders at StorageTek; anyone that would listen, with his 5th hand, years old news that he hasn’t done a thing to confirm, verify or ensure that it is even true — just repeats it that way as if the news was gospel and perfectly reliable in all and every detail. I’m sure the prick was looking for both praise and recognition for what he’s just done — that’s why he does it. He’s basically calling out someone else’s faults to affirm he would never, ever be like that guy, plus he just loved gossip and trivia — anyone who knows this bastard would confirm that. This is about the time when my abilities would seem to be doubted by management and I would actively be made to be dumber and dumber. These people at StorageTek really, really were mentally retarded. I can’t say this strongly enough, the ‘leadership’ of StorageTek was afraid to the deepest breathes of their own paranoia of their own people and would gladly ruin someone else’s career in a fraction of a second to protect themselves from the weakest, smallest, unsubstantiated rumor. They were, (and some still are), panicky, fucking, morons. 

(You know what a brave and decent manager would do in a situation such as this — come and ask me directly if all this shit they are hearing about me is true. He/She would have said, “…there is this guy named “BMOC” out here who’s talking smack about you — is it true?” And he/she would have waited for me to tell my side of the story. Every kid since the beginning of time has been told “be aware, every story has two sides” by their wisdom instilling guardians, except forn gutless corporate assholes who are so recklessly cautious that they would remove somebody on just the accusation of poor behavior whether real or imagined. These idiot actions can cause premature career death. I know it was for me.)

The one question I’d have for “BMOC” and/or “Brainless Brian”: why would you report the sketchy, unproven, details of long ago incident where you have at best a one-sided, highly politicized, second or even fifth handed collection of information, for which you never tried to ascertain the whole story from the other (my) side, and then to retell it to a company eight years later where that person is doing well and has the respect of the people he is working with? What did you expect to happen? Did you want praise and recognition for doing what you just did? Ohhh…that’s it…I get it...you’re just fuckin’ assholes.... beg yer pardin’ assholes. 

2005 — I’m back in the disk group and I’m doing some verification, but I’m also doing some HW work too. This pisses off “Fuggin’ Chuck” to the max. He doesn’t interfere, but I feel he would like to. The one big project I did was something called a Control Bus rewrite. It’s a Verilog file I dropped from about 140 pages to 115, made it work at 3 different clock speeds and it worked perfectly within the FPGA it was targeted for. Got it done in two weeks too. “Fuggin’ Chuck” never said a thing about it — wasn’t a winner for me, that’s for sure. Same problem I had when I did a set of Verilog Test Bench simulations for another product, and fixed all the broke HW I found along the way — about 75 errors were corrected and entered into the central repository by me. Got pissed at me again for some reason — never said why. I think it was because I was doing hardware, and according to his new friends and trusted confidants, “BMOC” or “Brainless Brian”, I couldn’t do HW at all and “Fuggin’ Chuck” really was stupid enough to not believe his first-hand observations but rather to believe these fuckin’ strangers. And then to use the information to forever ruin my name and career. An indisputable asshole.

2005 — Sun Microsystem buys us, and we have a new Engineering Director: “Big John”. He tells the crew on one project, Ocelot, that they are being laid off — all of them. At Sun Micro, he states (and this is a paraphrase, but essentially true), “We don’t putz around looking for certain people to lay off and others to keep — we lay them all off according to the fate of their product, but be sure to look at the corporate web site to see if you can find another like-job already posted!” And wouldn’t you know it? In the last week a whole raft of jobs came up, perfect openings for certain people who just got laid off! Amazing! And for those whose background wasn’t found in the jobs list? Adios and bye-bye. Most likely this guy knew of the job postings (or he ordered it), making him one of the most disingenuous StorageTek pigs ever.

But there is some good news; there are plans for a new product on the way, something that fills my heart with joy after a very, very, long design drought. They are going to redesign the RAID controller for an additional purpose — Oh for Joy! Happy! Happy! Can’t wait to get my part in the new design! (Reality check, John…nobody is on your side at the shit hole...their all disgusting and cowardly lizards).

2006 — I catch my first strong wind about what has been done to me by either “BMOC” and/or maybe “Brainless Brian”. It occurs at my wedding where my retired manager, Roger, is at the same table with “Fuggin’ Chuck”. My former manager comes to me as he is about to depart, and with his wife standing back behind him with her arms crossed and no expression on her face, he says “best damn hardware engineer I ever hired!” I say “Thanks Roger?” (I expect something more like “live long and prosper”, but I guess not this time.) His wife doesn’t move. He says it again. “OK...” I say the second time. I kinda finally got what he said, and so I now wait to see where all this new information takes me. I really start paying attention to what's going on around me after that..

2007 — I’m keeping busy doing some verification, some design, and some other shit. But sadly, I have been more or less banned from the new project meetings while other people were more than welcome to attend and participate. I send out emails to “Mr. deTurd”, the engineering lead for the project, and ask straight-up to put me on the list for the next meeting. No response of any kind — no “NO”, no “YES”, no nothing or explanation. I do this several times. This is the nasty, classless way StorageTek’s management handled bad news about its employees; say nothing if it’s going to hurt someone’s feelings. Roger was right, but I’m not going to ask “Fuggin’ Chuck”...I already know the answer. More bullshit.

2007 — There are twelve engineers in our group and none are really new to the craft of design: “Buhlcrap”, “Little Girl”, “King Krappa”, “Combover Guy”, “Dave the Toady”, “Toots”, “Vi”, “Big Ed”, “Little Ty”, “Semper Fi”, “Old George”, and me. There’s also the managers and leadership: “Shifty Cliffy, “Fuggin Chuck”, and “Mr. deTurd”. Five people are picked to lead the new group. Really, just five. Only “Bullcrap” and “Dave the Toady” are selected from our group as part of the five person team for the new project. (“Dave the Toady” has almost no logic design experience while I have done more than a dozen successful projects and tons of logic design…fuckin’ A…) The next is a newcomer from Software who hasn’t done HW in ten years named “Mountain Dave”, (who comments in an online email: “Sorry guys, I haven’t done HW in ten years, so I hope you’ll be patient with me.”...and he said it as if we all were waiting for his auspicious arrival…what a dumb mother fucker.) And then they make this clown second in command after “Buhlcrap”. And the two soon-to-be new hires (who eventually turn out to be no better than any of the other engineers we had and who were actually compromises compared to what the leadership really set out to hire, but nevertheless were given the best jobs and assignments as if they were the “very bestest” in the whole world because that’s what “Shifty Cliffy” had sold to his management in order to get around the hiring ban). The rest of us are either pulled into one of the five groups or we are basically fucked.  At the moment and for some time after that, I’m fucked.

One day “Bullcrap” pulls me into his group. (They had groups like softball teams, if you weren’t picked, you didn’t play. This isn’t how engineering was ever run in my experience. In fact, this was a way for shit-for-brains managers to push the responsibility on who was utilized (useful) and who was not utilized (useless) down to the next level of ehrr…management?…real ‘mature’ stuff if you ask me.) “Bullcrap” assigns me the “Clock Back-up and Redundancy Circuit” — says I don’t have a choice, telling “Mr. deTurd” in his own way to go fuck himself (but hey, for me at least it’s real hardware). “Mr deTurd” is clearly bothered by this decision as he pukes up in reverse snake-style a rat he had just eaten earlier in the day. (And is the real first hint that my name had been turned to shit by “BMOC” and/or “Brainless Brian — now it’s 11 years after the fact). The last version someone did of this circuit just sucked and it took the longest time to make it operational. Now, I have to do a whole new one, but I know why “Bullcrap” gave it to me. He was taking the lead from our former manager Roger and trying to get my hardware skills proven and this was the best way for him to do it.

I have to say I really despise what’s going on by now, It’s bullshit and I really am thinking of just quitting (if I had another job in the ready). Most importantly I’m watching my career flame out for no good reason other than a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors believed by self serving assholes and who, most importantly, will be the actually reason this project will (eventually) fail. Morons. Or idiots…I dunno…can’t tell the difference anymore.

2007 — The new project is (finally) ramping up, and I have almost no place in it (almost — just the “Clock Back-up and Redundancy Circuit”); same with most of the other engineers. Third level manager (most likely from Sun Microsystems, I didn’t recognize him from the StorageTek crowd) asks that each engineer provide a list of skills and experiences that they have utilized on past projects. (And without any input from management.) You see, there was a call from upper management for all departments to drop their requisitions for new people and “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin Chuck” had made a strong play for new hires (despite having already a dozen people) by forging the profiles from each existing person, thereby creating a deficit in actual HW talent and inventing the need for two “expert” engineers. When the third level manager asked for each person to provide a profile of their individual skills it made “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin’ Chuck” very nervous, and they acted like it.

To test this theory out, I go to “Fuggin’ Chucks” office, and ask him if we can just provide a resume for my personal profile. (Just a ploy to see how he’s handling all this…I know he has a cockeyed plan of one kind or another a-brewing.) He tells me (while he is stupidly stuttering away) that I don’t have to put in a profile in for myself — he’s gone and done one for me. I say “NO FUCKING WAY! YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE THINGS I”VE DONE — EVER!” Then he starts pulling all the documents he has written from his garbage can. (Garbage can?) He reads each one (about three or four in all) and they’re all negative reports about many of my fellow engineers. I’m in shock; I really don’t believe what is happening right in front of me. The last doc was the only one I remember: its for someone named “Vi”; he evidently can’t deal with vendors very well (and I’m guessing it’s because of his somewhat thick, Asian accent) and lists him as someone with a ‘communication difficulty’ or like similar diagnosis. (Prejudiced, if you ask me.) That’s it. In short, what was supposed to come from each engineer as an individual listing of their own skills and experiences ended up coming from our fucking manager(s) —at least for most of the people. As for me, he tells me in no uncertain terms that he “knows” what I can, and cannot do — like he’s into some super-secret information and he knows everything he needs to know about me. It’s clearly a reference back to what he was told by fucking “BMOC” or “Brainless Brian” about that very one-sided telling of an incident that happened 11 years earlier. What a fucking, cowardly, idiot.

When “Fuggin’ Chuck” is done reciting his insane rationale for doing my profile instead of me, I say to him “You fucking bastard!” and that’s it — he doesn’t move or even look up at me. I look back at him and he is still sifting through his now neatly stacked pile of papers formerly from his garbage can. Like I say, he does not look up at me and then quits acknowledging me entirely. I turn and leave — I’m pissed and want to quit so bad, but I still need more information first.

Before I decide wether or not to turn him in to the third level manager who wanted all this information straight and unpolluted by management, I’ll first get the opinions of my fellow workers. Surely, they must know something and I’m positive they’ll find this information very, very, interesting.

That Friday I’m going off to our weekly co-worker lunch and talk to my…hmmm “friends” about how “Fuggin’ Chuck” and probably “Shifty Cliffy” were rewriting our professional histories and handing them in under our names as if we had actually wrote them or at least, approved of the contents as if they were dictated by us to them. So I wait for an opening in the conversation and tell them about how I caught “Fuggin’ Chuck” in his bald-faced lie. Not one person looks at me. Not one. They all look down at their bacon cheeseburgers and they don’t even acknowledge me or what I’m saying. I repeat what I just said and one of the creeps says “we don’t want to hear about it.” That was the first response — I expect this to be an E.F. Hutton moment, you know, “when E.F. Hutton speaks, everybody listens”, but nothing. I repeat myself for the third time and get a terse “sounds like you got a problem...” and then more silent staring into their food. No one was the least bit surprised about what I said. They knew everything before I said anything. That’s more than I can fathom. Clearly “Fuggin’ Chuck” got their permission to fill in their profiles (as long as he filled them in a positive way), but no one would say anything about the matter. My God, the fuckin’ workers were helping “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin Chuck” plant false skills and abilities in their profiles — the truth meant nothing to these stupid fucking people and especially the leadership that was supposed to operate above all this pettiness. And my coworkers? Douche bags -- fucking douche bags. Pretty much each and every one of them had been at my wedding a year earlier, and now I wished that were fuckin’ choking to death on their fuckin’ bacon cheeseburgers.

Now, I had to make a decision: turn in “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin’ Chuck” and watch upper management (most likely) kill the project, as all the HW leadership would now be demoted or fired for running a fake profile scam (plus I don’t think there ever was a really strong desire for this product); or maybe I should just quit and make my fortunes elsewhere and let them enjoy their really stupid games of deceit and lying. But I wasn't entirely sure, so I wrote (but did not send) an email to John Fowler and the third level manager telling them of my treatment and treatment of other engineers in our group and about the faked profiles. That email sat in my outbox until the day I was layed off, then I destroyed it...stupid me.

Eventually I made my decision: I took the latter course, and skipped the former. Stupid and most senseless decision I ever made. Dumbest thing I’ve ever done. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, stupid. You’ll see why shortly — hang on.

Since I decided to (eventually) quit, I’d be needing a new resume. (My last one was old fashioned pen-and-paper, not to mention, 9 years old). I would use Monster and Career Builder. That weekend I put something up on both sites, but of course I was still working, so I put them on these sites anonymously. I got a call a few days later and it was somebody who had a job for me. Problem was it was on my old landline and old landline answering machine; the resumes I had installed on the sites used my newer mobile cell (when it was revealed, which it wasn’t). Additionally, they were still totally anonymous (and I doubly checked that fact) so nobody should have gotten any phone number or any private piece of information linked to me including my name — NOTHING. So how did this yahoo get my phone number, plus even more curiouser, my old phone number and especially knew of my desire to seek a new job? Well, I called him back and started a conversation with him — best to directly ask, you know. Seems he was a financial consultant and was looking for someone new to join the team. WTF? So I asked him how he knew I was looking for a job and how he came up with my phone number. He sat their quietly for a few seconds, *erpped* a bit, and hung up. I called back and wanted to ask again, but the second time he didn’t even answer. So how did he know I was looking for a new job (my wife didn’t even know I was looking for a new job) and how did he get my number? Answer turned out to be simple: a few days later I went in to work and I looked up my official phone number as listed in the employee system and there it was — my old original phone number. My guess is “Shifty Cliffy” had started looking for my resume on Monster and/or Career Builder after my incident with “Fuggin’ Chuck” and found it. (It’s not hard to find an anonymous resume, it really isn’t if you know what to look for.) When he knew I was looking for a job, he took the old number from the employee system and gave it to his financial buddy, who did the rest.

This was all sickening to me — these management clowns were taking these extra measures because they had written my personal profile and signed my name to it (as well as many of my coworkers). Plus a number of people working at StorageTek had revealed themselves as back stabbers, too. Now my managers had to act on my false profile as if it was real, indisputable truth. There is no way at this point for me to ‘show’ what I could do; I had to be stupid and ignorant of HW design — totally and completely, and “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin’ Chuck” would see to it that’s how it always appeared. And the real ignoramuses, like “Dave the Toady” and “Mountain Dave” got more than just the benefit of the doubt, they got favored treatment and a chance to recover or get a do-over when they fucked up. Bullshit. And the new hires? They got the same treatment; they were literally treated like Gods with superior design skills when compared to the other nine engineers that were there working before them, but they were really no better than most of us. Yeah, time to leave I thought, and as fast as possible. “Keep on looking”, I told myself, “you don’t want to work here”.

(At the time, I thought I knew everything that there was about why things were going bad for me, but now I think I was wrong. I didn’t understand that “Shifty Cliffy” had enlisted the help of the Human Resources/Human Talent Acquisition group to keep my job seeking depressed and unsuccessful. (Human Resources/Human Talent Acquisition, or as I like to call ‘em “Characteristically Useless Non-Talents”, or C.A.N.T.s.) “Shifty Cliffy” needed the underground network of C.A.N.T.s to keep me from getting hired…wait?…you don’t believe there is an underground network comprised of the Human Resources/Human Talent Acquisition of companies that share information on who to NOT hire? Really? This process is called blacklisting, and I will stand in any courtroom in the land and testify to it’s existence. Who, how much, and to what extent the network exists is nearly impossible for anyone to determine because such illegal (and it is illegal) endeavors are very rarely ever documented, they are just sort of “I know someone who heard something about someone” affairs — very informal but very powerful. You’ll here more of it as you read on.)

So why did he do it — blackmail me I mean? Really simple. “Shifty Cliffy” knew I was intentionally misrepresented by “Fuggin’ Chucks” assessment of me in the profiles, and if I had gotten a job as full fledged HW designer somewhere, especially nearby on the front range, the third level manager probably would’ve asked “Shifty Cliffy” and/or “Fuggin’ Chuck” what was going on — after all, they had told him that I had no HW skills or experience at all and now I’m taking a job in something that demands exactly those things. Plus, there was always the chance I'd tell me new manager how things got done at ol' StorageTek, revealing their profile scam. Fast talking might not save you in those circumstances, especially when the 3rd level manager starts asking if everybody’s profile is accurate and actually from the people themselves. Poor “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin’ Chuck” were in a bit of a pickle (of their own design).

Anyways, I didn’t know any of this at the time, and kept trying to escape StorageTek by legitimate methods but absolutely no luck at all (I’m guessing, at least partly, due to “Shifty Cliffy’s” efforts); it’s as if everybody was being warned about me or something. And this was a bad time for engineers in general (well, not that bad, but still bad.) One of the big problems I had is that I still would not drive at night (very rarely and only if there was no other choice), and that meant applying at companies where the drive was close and easy and I ran out of those companies in a hurry.

Soon after this the two new hires were allowed on board. Not stupid but not showcase bright either…kind of what you’d call regular and capable guys in this field. However, one of them, due to his favored treatment, would reach high places in a short time.  (I’m surprised he didn’t complain about his nosebleeds due to his super fast ascension to the top.) Wonderful how good your job is when you get favored treatment to the kind of work that in turn gains you favored status like this guy was getting. Everybody I know thinks success in the corporate world comes from being rewarded for good or superior work, and they believe we all get the exact same chances to do that good or superior work, but there is a big problem with that theory— you many times don’t get superior/good work in first place and therefore you never get to be judged and rewarded for superior/good work. Bullshit if all you are given is the same shit nobody cares about unless you do it wrong, then they’ll notice. This little detail really is the source of who is “thriving” and who is “dying” in the corporate world. And I was fucking “dying” because of the efforts of these two dildos to give me meaningless non-HW work. No matter how good I did the work, no one would notice or reward me, not in any meaningful way.

Sometime in 2008, I was called on to enter the Hardware Design Specification (HDS or whatever it was called) of my assigned work task from "Buhlcrap", the “Clock Back-up and Redundancy Circuit”, into the “wiki”-style pages of the central repository for this project. I was supposed to use the pre-designed template supplied by “Mountain Dave” but he was having trouble writing one, so I was instructed to write my HDS using my a template of my own design. So I did — kind of a ‘kitchen sink’ version with every fact statable about the circuit. Since no official template existed, I put everything you could say about the circuit into my specification using my oversized, covers-everything, template. Finally, a day or two later, “Mountain Dave” releases his template. It looks like it’s structured identical to the specification I just presented, except “Mountain Dave” apologized for his version by saying it had “orthogonal” parts in it...what an asshole.

There were other incidents of amateur hour like this shit. One of the new guys was supposed to look at the Phy/MAC IPs for PCIe (PCI Express), but failed to notice the reference clock between the Phy and MAC was the exact same clock used for the entire MAC circuit plus it required all circuitry outside of the MAC to use it as well— not a good idea when you need your system clock to work at a different clock speed (or multiple thereof) then your Phy component. He spent the next several days arguing with the makers of the IPs endlessly over this design “feature”.

And then there was “Combover Guy”, who was adding an (Ethernet) Phy chip to his PowerPC embedded processor (Ethernet) MAC I/F. (Lots of Phy and MAC chips in these stories...) It was a straight forward MII (Media Independent Interface) connection; a simple, standardized connection that has been around since the mid nineties. It’s a good I/F for a new engineer to start his learning curve with, but he refused to move ahead on his project until the application engineer from the Phy company stopped by to check out his schematic — really? Stop the schematic at this point until the app engineer stops by to see the 20 signals you hooked up were correct? I went home that night and took some of the Sheetrock out of my basement...I punched a bunch of fucking holes in it...my “reputation” was now losing to this guy.

Last of all, (but there are more examples, let me assure you), there’s “King Krappa” and the HBA adapter connector. Doesn’t recognize that some of these adapter signals often have special requirements, especially the clock; looks it up and I’m right. Doesn’t even say “thanks”. 

The reason I outlined these smart moves of these brilliant engineers was to demonstrate that most of these people didn’t have near the experience a good, solid, experienced engineer would of had. Any HW engineer with just a modicum of skill would know how to write a HW specification, or understand how the clocking for a Phy/MAC was supposed to be distributed or how the MII I/F worked or understood how some specialized signals for an adapter card would have have special requirements associated with them. Even more importantly, a highly skilled engineer would have spotted or recognized these issues pretty much immediately and then done another layer of research in order to complete the task and do it correctly. Just a normal day at work, but not for these privileged weasels.  

The worst part of all this is when they took my verification position away from me and gave it to one of the new guys — and he had almost no idea what to do with it. I was the only one slated to be the verification engineer when this all started and I was the only one who coded regularly and understood OOP programming, which System Verilog emulated. It was really getting bad at StorageTek, least for me it did. And when they put the two major players on the design team on a plane to California, to learn the verification techniques of Sun Microsystems, they sent the ex-SW guy “Mountain Dave” and “Buhlcrap”. I should have been on that plane — I was verification. And they brought back nothing to share with anybody.

Anyways, finally the pivotal day had come — I was required by “Buhlcrap” to give a design review for my “Clock Back-up and Redundancy Circuit” so I prepared, made a date, and presented it. (Design reviews were old hat to me…it didn’t take much to get ready.) The results were very positive.  “Mr. deTurd”, the project leader, stopped by that afternoon (or the next day...something like that) and nervously stated his gratitude on my design review. He didn’t stay long because he said all that was necessary — it was the turning point of sorts for me in that fucking awful company, but it still wasn’t enough to save me from the bullshit of “Fuggin’ Chuck” and “Shifty Cliffy”. You see, they had made it seem as if the work I had just done was more or less analogous and not at all related to digital work I was best at. I would find out more later.

After “Mr de Turd’s” praise, then came poor, nervous “Buhlcrap”. He was just so, so relieved, that I had beaten the conventional thinking regarding my assumed abilities that he offered me any part of the design or verification modules I wanted to do. But alas, I declined simply until he talked to “Fuggin’ Chuck” — one of the two lying, cheatin’ managers I had at the time to got his permission first. “Buhlcrap” did that and came back, disappointed and somewhat displeased and said — if I wanted to of course — I could maybe do one of the verification modules, but no design or Verilog work. So much for a company that was supposed to run on and reward the basics: merit, skill, experience and loyalty to the company. It ran on bullshit like: favoritism, implied skills, possible talent and blind loyalty that your shit-for-brains managers needs.  (Well, to be honest with you, most companies work that way…just not that strongly.) And “Fuggin ‘Chuck” wouldn’t even acknowledge the success of the “Clock Back-up and Redundancy Circuit” — he blew it off and wouldn’t even admit to it’s existence. My good work was ruined that day...remember when your manager was delighted to see his employee do good work? Not at StorageTek.

(Quick note on my “Clock Back-up and Redundancy Circuit”: it was the only piece of hardware that made it through the specification and design review stage, all other work “was pending”. Just think about it, the only approved piece of hardware designed for this project that was done first and completely by the guy who was officially recognized to have no HW skills AT ALL...)

Shortly after the award winning design review I got to make an example of my “Clock Back-up and Redundancy” circuit with an experimental card. As I began work on this little task, there comes an announcement some late April morning from our Haiku writing, pony-tail wearing CEO: Sun Microsystems earnings had crashed and burned. Ten seconds after that announcement they said the project — about two and one half years after it was first announced — had met with a fatal demise. It would all be followed by rumors of layoffs, about 20% or so would be axed. All I could think about was that stack of fraudulent profiles the third level manager had been given by “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin’ Chuck”. I knew right away I would be laid off pretty much first — despite my “growth” and proven abilities, my reputation was still an absolute management designed lie. I was still “officially” a HW engineer with no skills whatsoever, and would have to play it that way forever because “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin’ Chucks” own careers depended on it — and they weren’t going to do anything to jeopardize that. 

Until this point, the “game playing” had been operating at a low but insipid level. But “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin’ Chuck” could no longer play for just time and convenience as before, and as such the game playing reached new heights and now they were playing for keeps — mostly in terms of their own jobs.  Boy was that fun!

One of the first games the StorageTek brain trust did in response to the lay off news was to create an “Advanced Development” group. This group was designed for StorageTeks so-called “best and brightest” engineers. (It was total bullshit and did not contain StorageTeks true best or brightest — it listed many of those who had been described as “top rated engineers” in “Fuggin’ Chuck’s” personal assessment disguised as such in that phony pile of personal profiles offered up by “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin’ Chuck”). An example of the people who made it were “Mr. deTurd”, “Buhlcrap”, “Dave the Toady”, “Mountain Dave”, and “New Guy Number 1”. Meantime, “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin’ Chuck” made a whole new project for us ‘lesser engineers’ to do. It was based (I think — not sure though) on a recommendation I had made some time earlier to increase the performance of the old product: by replacing that aging, old, goddam Control Bus and its lame 32 bit transfer per 160ns data cycle and it’s largely asynchronous (an access cycle started out synchronous, but moved to asynchronous, and then was brought back to synchronous again…smart) transfer with a new design more orderly, synchronous, and modeled after the PCI protocol. It really was just busy work and largely useless for us ‘lesser’ engineers — simply a way to keep us busy and employed I guess. 

Despite there only being a few weeks left before the actual layoff, there was still plenty of humiliation to go around. For example, I was assigned to work with a group that had a newly promoted HW manager, “Semper Fi” (who wasn’t very bright but was very much into corporate hierarchy and the usual “reputation by word of mouth” bullshit and I think “Shifty Cliffy” just loved that). So “Semper Fi” has us doing a job that required us to move the assembly work of one of the boards/cards from StorageTek’s assembly house to one certified by Sun Microsystems. But the board was having all kinds of problems from the new assembly house, so “Semper Fi”, (another StorageTek approved idiot cast in the image of managerial dumb fuck), wanted me to do one of my “Stress Tests” on it, and of course, have it done in a day or two. I informed the schmuck such tests take at least 4 weeks and usually up to 8 weeks to do. He stewed and he stewed and he sat there in dead silence, trying to decide just exactly what I was good for — I mean, “Shifty Cliffy” and “Fuggin’ Chuck” had told EVERYBODY in the department (and I suppose, the world), that I had no conventional HW skills at all, and if I couldn’t do this one programming task, what was I good for? He finally gave it up and moved on. Needless to say, I wasn’t invited to the next meeting.

Another incident with “Semper Fi” occurred when I was with “Little Girl”. “Little Girl” and I were talking when “SempervFi” wondered in and she was wondering if she was going to be laid off while on vacation, as she was going to be gone on the days rumored for the lay off. “Semper Fi’ looked at me and said I had to leave before he would tell her. I said “I ain’t leaving — maybe you should tell everyone who asks if they are getting laid off or not.” He just stares at me for a second, and then turns to “Little Girl” and says she isn’t being laid off. He then turns to me and I give him the old “well — what about me?” look. He just shuts up and walks off. Yeah, I know — stupid fucking putz.

The day finally came, and I was ready for it. Dressed up in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt adorned with beer labels rather than flowers, I went in for my last day at what I was affectionally now calling “The Shit Hole”. (I had originally planned to bring in a cooler with a blender and make Pina Coladas for everybody, but then I remembered how much I hated them and left it behind.) Eventually my name was called, and I went in for my last meeting with “Fuggin’ Chuck” sporting nothing but my Bermuda shorts, beer shirt, all while displaying an abundance of gratitude. He made some stupid joke about my shirt, which I ignored. When he was done talking, I finally said something: I said “Thank you with all my heart for having the foresight to lay me off, and I am grateful.” He looked at me with a slack jaw and stuttered out the words “you don’t want to work here anymore?”, to which I just smiled and left.

“Fuggin’ Chucks” reaction wasn’t as cryptic as it seemed. You see, he and “Shifty Cliffy” had a plan to hire me back, but first I had to be laid off as the worst HW engineer in Storage Tek history, you know — so I was in line with my fictionalized “profile” as a zero skilled HW employee. (I was, for the record, probably the most skilled and experienced employee they had at the time having done an even dozen individual products plus a ton of assisting other products before my arrival at StorageTek). They in fact had arranged a strange job and placed it on the company web site that involved HW but didn’t require any of the basic skills…something I can barely remember now but do remember clearly balking at as being anything reasonable or desirable and it was not want I wanted to do for the last 15 years of my life. I was, in fact, eagerly awaiting my next job anywhere else and doing something I really wanted to do rather than doing shit that kept me employed but hating every minute of it. The worst news is I’d still be working for the same scumbag leadership group, still expected to play the role of a lessor, uneducated engineer, still expected to do all the shit considered a joke by the ‘better’ engineers, and still playing at a substandard, submissive position.

What I really wanted I thought I got: freedom to find another job at a place that respected their technical workers and was on a technological ramp up, not withering and shrinking like StorageTek/Sun Microsystems was. Turns out that was harder haul than I thought.

I went home that day and my wife, my neighbor, even my father congratulated me on my recent “release” from hell on earth, part two. I, myself, was quite happy — elated actually. Now it was time to relax (wasn’t much else to do, my attempt to find work prior to losing my current job had pretty much saturated the local market with my name and no one was interested, or the C.A.N.T.’s had been forewarned by “Shifty Cliffy”, but I wouldn’t find this out until spring of 2015, so no reason to hurry back.)

A brief discussion about all of this. When Sun Microsystems bought StorageTek and allowed us to redesign the old product for a new application, it was a chance to get the old employees stale and atrophied skills back to limber and flexible state again, and to do it with a product that was actually viable (at the time). I know I personally represented my colleages and co-workers as stupid, but the real problem is they were -- for lack of a better word -- ignorant on how to pull together on a whole new product and move it forward. If we had decent management that knew what they were doing and respected that everyone on the team needed to "exercise" their intellectual muscles and learn how to do this stuff, they would have managed and moved it forward -- albeit with some trouble but they would have managed. And that would have been with the first installment of the product. I'm positive a second generation would have been needed and everybody would have been much better that second time around, but alas they didn't. They had to convinced themselves that this had to be the greatest product in StorageTek/Sun Microsytem history and that marginalizing almost every one that was already there and to add "geniuses" to the roster was the best way to do it. It took them 2.5 years to gather all these "geniuses" and more importantly to get going -- and then it was cancelled before it was barely begun and those that did not fit into "Shifty Cliffy" and "Fuggin Chucks" idea of "geniuses" were let go. It was an ugly sideshow to watch, to be sure.