Re: agony over interview



On Sat, 29 Apr 2006, S. 'Trash' Ny Qui wrote:


Straydog wrote:

If I do not win this
position, then this was probably the result of change of the managerial
mood -- they do not want any longer to get me into here. At the moment,
I am banking at conducting the highly-challenging experimental projects
with minimum of resources (which nobody around does), but perhaps this
is a wrong strategy ? Will this get me a higher-level position in the
future ? I see my contemporary colleagues

Are any of them Russians? Or where are they from? This may be a limitation
that you have no control over.

My employer used to have a low proportion of immigrants. It is opening
up, and now has maybe 5% of immigrants in its staff. The necessity to
hire immigrants brought by the fact that there is very little of
competent scientists available in this country. It occurs to me that
the management still does not want to strain themselves to deal with
immigrants; they keep distance from immigrant employees whoo are
culturally different. For example, at the recent restructuring, every
senior scientist got saddled with some beaureucratic or
project-management duty (which they did not want) -- but no immigrant
senior scientist got it.

OK, maybe you should not feel bad if you don't get it, either. I know of cases in the US where the same thing went on as you are experiencing. "Management" is a whole lot of moving hot air around, paper pushing, low density nothing, but you have to have writing/speaking skills (i.e. be able to BS people), personal schmoozing skills, etc., and you would not like that.

Traditionally, Russians were used in R&D industry for coming up with
the new approaches of solving problems. For routine repetitive work,
Chinese scientists were hired. This seems to be the market niche of
scientists of these nationalities. I saw it in the photonics R&D
industry. The Anglo-Celts were the managers. The same structure is used
in our govt lab. Really, it occurs to me that I can either develop some
new technology/product, or I do not get far in advancement on the
career ladder.

You want to be an unhappy overling? or a possibly happy underling? or a unspecified underling with a permanent job?

are placed in the positions
of managing and running the resources (equipment) for the rest of the
lab. This is a mode of existence for them. I am not among them.

A question I would ask is how many other applicants do they have for that
job? And, how do they look compared to you? They have to make a decision
on whether to give you a permanent job and then maybe if they want to get
rid of you later, it is difficult. Maybe they have to think if they give
you a more senior job, that your writing skills are not enough fluent
English and you will be the odd guy there. These are all sad things that
are impossible for you to control. I am sorry.

Funny that you asked me this question. I did not write about it in my
previous posting, but I was going to. Recently, I produced an
industrial report on the outcome of the last (and the only) field
experiment where I was leading a small team of technicians (one needs a
certificate to run some of the equipment). I ran the report several
times through my immediate manager, and took the report to a senior
manager for approval for release. The senior manager (the one who
created the position for me) took a strong interest in this report. Few
days ago, my immediate manager told me confusedly that he received back
the report from the senior manager for corrections because my English
was not good enough. This was odd. This is not that kind of report to
worry about the purity of language.

Hah, I had a similar position to you back in 1968-69 in a Army laboratory. Its is exactly the same. I wrote a draft. It went to my boss, he re-wrote it all. Gave me a lecture about writing. Then, I said, OK, we'll do it your way. He gave what "we" agreed on to his boss, who tore it to bits, and gave my boss a lecture on how to write. My boss came to me with a "long face" and very humbled. At least he was honest. Before the document came out, officially, it was re-written several more times, and lots more names were put on it (I actually did 100% of the work, with a small bit of help from my boss). Nothing has changed in administrivia.

A year ago, I gave a paper to the
same senior manager for release approval, and he complemented me on how
well it was written. I can make either of the two conclusions. One is
that the senior manager thinks that he can rely on me, a fresh blood,
to generate outstanding research results (which he needs to raise the
profile of his department).

And, if you are in his shoes it would not happen to you that you would be in agony over raising the profile of your department?

At the moment, I am involved into his pet
project. The other possibility is that he wants to justify that I have
insufficient skills (e.g. bad English writing) for me to qualify for a
higher-level position. However, he wants to show that I am good enough
to do experiments in the junior positon.

On the whole, I think they will get a good deal by employing me in this
junior scientist position. They already saw that I could generate good
science and successfully complete their tasks. I showed the job
description to my senior colleague experienced in hiring -- he tells me
that it has both modelling and experimental job duties which makes it,
in his opinion, a position of a higher level. From my experience,
junior applicants have either experimental skills or computer modelling
skills, but not both together. And senior applicants will apply for the
higher-level positions, not for this one. Although, anything could
happen.

Again, I wish you luck. I can't tell from what you say what is going on. Just one day it will maybe come; the news that you stay as permanent, or that they could not make a decision and then you don't know but you will maybe have to look out the window again and use your imagination (if you have a chance to stay or you get disgusted and take a vacation of unknown length).

\/


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