Management Recruiter Buggery

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High on the list of exciting professional experiences is the job interview process.  I just spent the weekend updating my resume. It is good to do this now and then if for no other reason than it forces you to recall just what the hell you’re good for.  As I performed this task, I was flooded with a stream of memories, both good and bad. 

I’ve had great interviews, ho-hum interviews, and a few awful experiences. My greatest interviews were from my stint in academia. Of the 7 interviews, I received 5 offers.  Not bad for a rythmically disabled Iowegian. But a few years later my smug confidence was to be shaken by an whole body dose of reality.

Academia is not reality, it is a sort of intellectual Hollywood. A la la land of frog princes and preening fussbudgets, special effects and make-believe. It is a pageant of grant-writing rock stars and untenured showboats on parade waving their tail feathers at all who would watch. I who had earlier embraced that world would later be out in the catabatic winds of big time management recruiting.

I won’t write a tedious valentine about my slender portfolio of actual talent.  Instead, I’ll tell of an experience with those bottom feeders of the job world- recruiters. 

In the frantic world of job placement, there are several kinds of recruiters. There are the recruiters that place at the highest levels of play, and there is everyone else. In my view they are all shady operators.  They will drop a line with bait on the end right in front of your face. Poachers they are. They’ll feign an excuse to call you at your office and query for associates –wink wink, nod nod- who may be looking for other work.

You’ll send a resume and there will be some back and forth. The recruiter will get to know you a bit.  Then one day you’ll receive an email invitation to interview at their office suite in Watercloset, PA.  You’ll fly to Philly, the city of brotherly shove, and navigate your rental car to their office.  The waiting room will have that dental office smell that’ll make your flesh crawl and your molars throb.

A smarmy receptionist will hand you off to a smarmy executive recruiting specialist. For me, this is where it all went down the toilet.  I sat in an expensive office near the Delaware River while the recruiter reviewed my resume, my buttocks reflexively clenched in the way countless other buttocks have been so clenched in that leather chair while enduring the first 2 hours of detailed questioning- “drilling in” they call it.  All the while, she was quietly building a case for yea or nay.

Here is where I went wrong. It was utterly and comically naive.  I thought that the recruiters job was to get me an interview for a management slot with an international chemical company. Fancy that! As I was to learn, my assumption was wildly and insanely in error. The recruiters, you see, only get paid when they deliver a candidate who gets hired.  So, they prescreen over the telephone and only bring in final candidates for the slot.  I was a final candidate for Sales and Marketing Director, but that is still far from the finish line.

As I sat through the meeting, it dawned on me that I was not being coached to give an award winning interview with the unseen client, but rather, I was being slowly skinned alive. 

Based on earlier conversations with this recruiter, I thought that they would deliver me to an interview with the company looking to fill the position. Instead, I was brought into the recruiters office for a much closer inspection on behalf of the customer. I was to have my professional colon inspected, so to speak, by these savage HR mercenaries.

After the early morning session with the contact recruiter, a real heavyweight was brought in- a partner of the firm. He was apparently an alumnus of HR at Merck and was accustomed to body slams in Big Pharma. He was a sort of “Refrigerator Perry” in the recruiting world.  There were no pleasantries, only an immediate start to some pretty rough play.  There was a long succession of close and bluntly skeptical questions about my experience and abilities. The two recruiters did a bit of good cop, bad cop along the way.  They were a team and played a disciplined game of question and answer, drilling ever deeper to what they were looking for.  The refrigerator lectured me at length like I was some kind of rube from up the holler, giving me the facts of life in Big Business. 

I guess I really was a rube from up the holler.

It didn’t take very long for me to see that not only would I not advance forward in this game, but I would have my head lopped off and handed to me on a greasy wooden plate.  And that is what happened.  After 90 minutes of questions and thinly veiled accusations of weakness, inexperience, and retarded professional development, the Refrigerator stood up and left the room. As the other recruiter fumbled with her notes, I sat there in silence like a stunned carp floating on the lake surface after dynamite fishing. After a moment she suddenly became matronly and bleated out consolation.  I was stunned and shocked from the rapid fire rude questions and the careless dissection of my very being. I had never been treated in this manner before, not even in grad school.

After my “case” recruiter made a brief show of effort to salve the wounds, I put my severed head under my arm and was shown the door. It was a long, depressing trip back home. I have had plenty of time to mull it over and can only conclude that I was treated badly.  As for the chemical company, I have had the chance to shun them as a supplier in subsequent years.  My indulgence in pettiness is one more scar from the experience.

Possible Signs of a Slowdown

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Hmmm. Some early indications of a slowdown are out there in certain commodity markets.  Purchasing people getting conservative and skittish with forecasts. When buyers revise their projections downward or say that they’ll ride on their inventory for a while longer, you can bet that rougher sledding is ahead. Just a question of magnitude.

The signs come a day after Bernanke suggested that a slowdown was possible. Cause? Effect? Hard to say.

The picture will begin to resolve over the next few months. The first quarter of the year often sets the pace for the year in markets that I’m familiar with. The chemical manufacturing market is so global and the dollar is so low that it is hard to determine if some of the latest conservative buying behavior is an actual indicator or not of business slowdown.  Hmmm. 

Toward the Green Manufacturing Ideal

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In the waters that I swim within, the term “Green Chemistry” is often derided as an environmental extremist codeword used by chemical technology Luddites. I’m sure there are anti-chemical purists who view Green Chemistry as a kind of natural alternative to the use of man-made, unnatural substances. Biodiesel is is commonly held as one example of a green alternative.

The merits of Green vs non-Green, or the inherent Greenness of Green technology is a contraversy too large for this blog. Instead, I would rather turn my attention to the merits of Green thinking in chemical process development.

Specialty chemical manufacture begins with relatively simple raw materials and produces more complex and more valuable compounds.  Limiting the topic to synthesis as opposed to formulation, specialty chemical manufacture relies on the application of functional group manipulation to achieve an end product with the desired features and connectivity. 

In chemical manufacture, there are several general ways to improve process economics. The most general term is process intensification, which describes the overall effect of maximizing the conversion of raw materials into product per volume or per dollar of capital equipment.  This can be done by a) running reactions at more concentrated levels, b) the application of heat and pressure, c) the elimination of solvents altogether, d) the use of more reactive species, or e) telescoping. 

a) Of the many kinds of reaction optimization schemes that we learn in grad school, perhaps the least explored is space yield improvement. Space yield is just the kg of product obtained per liter of reaction mixture used.  In manufacturing, the goal is to maximize the number of kg of product obtained per plant man-hour for a given piece of equipment.  Raw material costs are only slightly adjustable, whereas labor hours can often be lowered with the application of better technology. Labor costs are among the highest costs in a plant, so the goal is to produce the most kg of product per man-hour.  

Intensification by increasing space yield simply means that a solution reaction is run at the highest reasonable concentration. The benefit is that a reactor is run at the highest mass yield per batch.  Since the corresponding increase in labor to run the higher space yield is near zero, the resulting labor costs are spread over a greater quantity of mass- the labor $/kg go down.

b) Most people come out of college with precious little experience or appreciation for the benefits of high temperature and pressure in chemical synthesis. Continuous high temperature short time (HTST) reactions are out there, but require specialized equipment and expertise. Engineers love this kind of processing. For an optimized process, HTST systems have comparitively small reaction zones that are relatively inexpensive and take advantage of the economics of continuous flow chemistry. Good examples are ammonia production or Petroleum refining.

c) The elimination of solvents is a tricky thing. Gas phase chemistry is well known and quite mature technology. It is also amenable to continuous flow processing.  Elimination of solvents in condensed phase chemistry is a bit different problem.  Solvent molecules are like tiny sand bags in their ability to absorb energy.  Neat reactions may be prone to exotherms, so the calorimetry of any given proposed neat reaction needs to be examined carefully.

On the plus side of solventless processing, the space yields are at maximum and reaction rates are not diminished by dilution effects.

d)  The use of more reactive materials in a process can have benefits in time savings if a particular step is slow or does not go to completion. If the reactive reagent affects the rate limiting step, then time and yield savings may be had. On the down side, increased reactivity may offer decreased selectivity. Increased hazards will have to be calculated into the value proposition as well.

e) Telescoping refers to the combination of multiple steps in one reactor.  In it’s best incarnation, telescoping may afford the direct reaction of a product in the reaction mixture of the previous reaction. The benefit is in the savings of man-hours in vessel cleanout and preparation time, minimized hazwaste, and minimum handling.  Another form of telescoping would be that pot residues are left in the vessel and reagents from the next step are charged in without extra transfers and new vessels.  This tends to minimize the number of vessels needed for a process and minimizes the opportunity costs of having empty vessels standing by for use.

The goal of green chemistry as I see it is to minimize environmental insult by the reduction of consumables and the discharge of hazardous waste streams from a plant to the outside world of waste treatment.  The reduction of consumables like solvents, reagents, or electrical power reduces hazards and pollution up and down the value chain. The reduction of hazardous wastes minimizes the mass that has to be consolidated for eventual incineration or burial.

The reduction of consumables is entirely compatible with the economic goals of business.  Process intensification points to the same general direction as the goals of Green Chemistry and should be considered a type of Green activity.  If one draws a picture of the ideal state of any chemical manufacturing process, it surely would include intensification with sustainable raw materials and with maximized throughput and minimized risk.

solidarity with hollywood writers

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in solidarity with the hollywood writers strike i have decided to halt my use of punctuation and capitalization all day today no dashes commas exclamation points and just forget ellipsis i might even stop using the spell checker though that has hardly stopped me on this blog before im even thinking about adding more dangling participles split infinitives and improper tense wow is this liberating or what i feel like running through the grass naked and singing show tunes well maybe not isnt that against the law gawd what was i thinking what strange kind of madness is this no good can come from this damn those writers i feel violated    ellipsis

On Company Growth

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As a chemical company grows, organizational changes occur that alter the manner in which things are done. Some changes are beneficial while others are detrimental. A beneficial change is one in which the process of order fulfillment improves in efficiency. Order fulfillment is the core activity of any manufacturing business. Improvements that do not affect order fulfillment may be little more than decoration.

A detrimental change is one in which order fulfillment is negatively affected. Any change that reduces the speed or increases the cost of order fulfillment is a detrimental change.  Some detrimental changes are unavoidable. Improvements in infrastructure due to growth may lead to detrimental changes. Increased overhead expense due to new warehousing, increased regulatory compliance costs due to crossing a volume threshold, upgrading the pots and pans, or any number of other “improvements” may lead to negative change. 

Equipment upgrades can easily lead to unexpected organizational changes. New equipment leads to new procedures and new failure modes.  A new piece of equipment integrated into a system can lead to modes of failure and risks that were unanticipated. New equipment can lead to new manpower requirements and new demands on infrastructure. Suddenly, a new piece of equipment can cause the reorganization of activity around it. Machines may be limited in flexibility, but people can change their work habits to accomodate the device.

On a day-to-day level, a company may not sense that it has undergone growth, but in fact it has. The acquisition of new equipment can change the manner in which a company operates over the long term.  This is especially true if it increases the capacity of the plant. Equipment upgrades that increase throughput will lead to increased sales and, hopefully, increase profit. Soon, more cash is available for more upgrades.

Where a company can go wrong is the failure to tend to the institutional changes that have to occur with increased growth.  A company that grows in the plant but not in the front office (the overhead suite) is one that finds itself slipping behind the power curve.  Suddenly, increased volume leads to increased chaos. Unless institutional changes are made, the system may become dangerously unstable despite rising receipts. 

Japanese Trading Companies

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Selling goods to Asia can be challenging for westerners. End users of chemicals in Asia often use trading companies to do their buying.  Selling to an Asian consumer of chemicals via the usual tools of marketing- cold calls, advertising, etc.- is complicated by the fact that the buyer may not be the end user. A call to an end user, if you can find their identity, may be politely declined. Instead, you might be referred to the allied trading company or just shown the door.

Th’ Gaussling is not an expert in this area of business. But I have more than a passing interest. Under the egg on my face are plenty of black and blue marks from my latest lesson. I should be receiving a certificate for 2 credit hours from the correspondence school of hard knocks.

Outwardly, chemical trading companies often look like end-users of chemical products. If you visit their websites, they’ll promote the manufacturing capacity of their customers and the impressive list of fine chemical products. In reality, they are located in a cramped office suite with fax machines and a server that projects the image onto the internet.  Their activity is limited to buying, selling and arranging logistics. Trading companies are part of the social custom of strategic alliances in Japanese business. They may buy and resell with a markup. They may provide contract buying services. There are numerous ways to do the deed.

For a factory, this arrangement allows managers to focus on manufacturing. Since trading companies only get paid if they hand over their deliverables, there is always a productive stress on the procurement people to look after their cadre of customers. 

One big problem from the vendors perspective is negotiation.  Negotiating with an end-user through an intermediary trading company is complex and time consuming. It’s best to do this face to face. Negotiation over the internet is not the best method. Trust is an issue and one gains trust by direct meetings.

The discussion of technical issues may also proceed through the trading company. This is can be a nightmare. I have wasted far too many precious heartbeats trying to noodle information from the end user through the mouthpiece of the trader. But from their side, this amounts to providing needed service to the customer.

It is difficult for western suppliers to penetrate the mind of customers in the east and discover how to market their wares in that part of the world. The trick for western business development people is to invest time and effort in understanding Asian trading practices.  Pick up some books on the topic. Go to trade shows and talk to Asian exhibitors. Read the trade publications.  Develop personal relationships.  Price wins the day, but trust is part of the calculation.

Comet Holmes

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If your sky is dark enough, it’s worth stepping outside in the next couple weeks to look for Comet Holmes in the constellation Perseus. The comet is somewhat west of Mirfak, the alpha star in Perseus.  Download some kind of reasonable star chart or better yet, dig up some of that money you have buried in the back yard and spring for a copy of Sky and Telescope at the super market- It’s not gonna kill ya. As for Th’ Gaussling, I’m fond of the Norton Star Atlas.

According to the charts, if you make a line between Mirfak and the lambda star, the comet is nearly in the middle of that line as of this date. It’s hard to miss.  It is a fuzzy circular blob lacking a visible tail. It has a striking surface brightness that sets it apart.  Binoculars are a must for the full effect, though is a naked eye object.

For you green horns who are new to constellation work, before you go outside, actually look at your charts.  Find Perseus (between the Pleiades and Cassiopeia) and then find some easy reference stars to make your own pointer stars that will form a line that extends to the approximate location of the object of interest. If you can get two lines that cross at the region of interest, so much the better.  I used the gamma and delta stars in the “W” of Cassiopeia as pointer stars to find Mirfak.

For late linkers to this post, you’re probably out of luck. Check the date.

LunaBank. Off-shore banking on the moon.

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If you knew Th’ Gaussling very well, you would be quite surprised at his increasing skepticism with our approach to manned spaceflight.  I am an aerospace enthusiast. The most thrilling and terrifying moments of my life have occured at 7000 ft MSL with a Cessna strapped to my ass.  It is distressing to go public (well, under my pseudonym) with criticism of our manned space flight effort.

My first question is, what are we getting out of the ISS?  We’re racking up a lot of flight hours and the aerospace contractors are doing good business. The purpose of the ISS seems to be “Learning How to Build an ISS” if you watch NASA TV.  Where are the dividends to society? I’m sure they are there. Where is the tech transfer?

I know that research is being done on the ISS. But, how productive is it?  How close are we technically to going to Mars? The assessment of criteria for a Mars mission is supposed to be one of the work products of the ISS. Has anyone articulated how the big picture is looking? 

Apparently, a trip to Mars will involve a lot of gardening.

Hmmm. I can just hear it-

“Hey Bob! Where d’ya s’pose them sonsabitches at Kennedy put that g*ddamned shovel? ”

“Simmer down, Annie. For the third time, it’s behind the weed-eater next to the inertial navigation unit. Shee-yit!”

Given the commercial interests in building manned-flight rated hardware, are we really being honest with ourselves on the question of man-vs-robot? In other words, could we spend less and learn more from robotic space hardware?

Friends connected to NASA tell me that monies that were once available for activities not directly related to manned spaceflight are drying up. NASA is preparing for a return trip to the moon. We’re going to the moon again, but without any fanfare or sense of purpose. The public is largely disengaged and uncompelled. The public is disengaged because no one has heard the purpose articulated.

A country that has interest in an ongoing moon station will have to come up with more than just stunt or prestige value.  Huge inputs of national treasure will be committed to the enterprise.  Commercial interests should be folded in to produce goods and services in order to recover costs in some fashion.  The return of material products from the moon will have a very large transportation cost per kilogram.

The production of intellectual property, information, broadcasting services, or remote sensing will likely be the most attractive commercial products. Actually, the moon would be a good place for a Bank. Imagine a Swiss-style bank with safe deposit boxes located on the moon.  How much more secure a location for small treasures and damning evidence could there be? 

Similar ideas have been put into practice, starting with pirate radio of all things.  The Principality of Sealand was started as a micro-nation on a retired gun platform off the east coast of England. The plan initially was to have a remote location for pirate radio broadcasts.  Today, Sealand is the location of a secure data sanctuary called Havenco. The idea of a remote, encrypted data sanctuary was the theme of the book Cryptonomicon.

Naturally, other nations have voiced disapproval of the data sanctuary concept, citing potential for money laundering and other criminal activity. Havenco may find itself cutoff from the telecommunication network that keeps it alive.

The moon would be a great site for off-shore banking activity. Nobody owns the moon. It is outside the boundaries of all the jurisdictions on earth.  Funds could be electronically transferred to a remotely operated bank on the moon.  Hell, you could leave the doors unlocked and forget the vault.  At minimum, all you need to do is land a computer, a dish for data transfer, and some solar panels for power.  Once a year a service visit can be made by LunaBank people to service the equipment and swap deposit boxes. 

Aphorism #114. If you want to make money, you have to serve the people or institutions who have the money.

Eventually, though, there may well be jurisdictions on the moon. One day, the moon will be partitioned, so the last thing a LunaBanker wants is to suddenly be a part of the Soviet Union Russia or China on the moon. Or nearly any nationality, for that matter. The Swiss may be preferable, owing to their favorable history with this kind of business.

This scheme is very simplistic.  It will require more thought than that presented here and the criminal potential will have to be prevented. The question of what minimally constitutes a “Bank” and its relation to nationality naturally arises in this discussion. No doubt, there is more to it than my simple scribblings. But the point of this essay is that we as a spacefaring society need to start discussing this kind of activity and not just leave it to a cloister of specialists.

Mandarin Moon

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Apparently, the Chinese have decided to shelve plans for a manned moon landing by 2020.  According to XinhuaNet, there are no plans for activity beyond the landing of a rover and the return of samples by 2017.  Officials state that the technology for a manned program is still out of reach and that the risk and expense are too high for a 2020 landing. 

This is an interesting development.  I think there was some real interst in China for putting taikonauts on the moon.  No doubt, the infrastructure and development needed for such an effort became apparent. There is considerable prestige for any nation that manages to return the crew safely from a moon landing. But the pragmatic characters in the governing party surely recognize that the Giant Leap for Mankind has already been done and that resources are better spent on other “firsts”.

Other than operating a kind of Lunar Ice Station Zebra where a few lonely scientists would bivouac in metal pressure cans out in the hard vacuum and cosmic rays, I can’t think of a compelling reason for anyone to reside there for too long. For the value proposition, it’s hard to come up with any known mineral wealth up (over?) there that would justify the cost of transport. Generally, only pharmaceuticals have the extreme $/kg that might cover the expenses.  Mumbai, Newark, and Shanghai are much closer.  But who knows, maybe they’ll find a big vein of rhodium (US$6375/toz) on the surface.

Planetary scientists and atronomers would make good use of a lunar research station. But funding it would almost certainly require the shutdown of many other kinds of research here on the Good Earth. But what else would we do there? Take pictures? Wave the flag?

Going to a moon station would be like going to jail.  You would be confined to a cramped pressure vessel for the duration and Death could visit in new ways and old. What if you get a toothache? Would NASA have to mobilize a rescue?

What real military leverage would any country get from a moon base other than defending the moon? If you could afford a military moon base, you could also afford a fleet of nuclear submarines that could hammer any patch of real estate on earth you desire, and maybe bounce the rubble a few times.

I suppose there is planetary tourism.  A couple of weeks in the ISS will cost the plutocrat down the street a cool US$20 million.  Imagine what One Small Step on the moon would cost. Maybe Richard Branson is working on a package deal- rountrip space fare (coach seats, Virgin Galactic) and a week in the fabulous Sheraton Green Cheese resort for US$50 million. Some restrictions apply.

The Scariest Stuff- Pu and Phosgene

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Has anyone else noticed how people behave when they describe plutonium?  Invariably, it is described as the most 1) toxic, 2) hazardous, 3) dangerous material on earth. It seems that no matter the context, these adjectives or strings of other adjectives are used in the preamble. (See! I just did it.)  It is though plutonium really is thought of as a manifestation of the dark forces thrusting upward from the underworld. Certainly the name and applications infer some malevolent attributes.

I think this curious attitude to a chemical element exists because most people have no other reference point. In reality, plutonium is a dense radioactive metal, grey in color and sensitive to water and oxygen. It is/was produced by the reduction of plutonium  cation with metallic calcium. Like a number of other metals you can’t handle it in the open or without protective garb and inert atmosphere.

I have never heard a credible comparison of it’s chemical vs radiological hazards.  Is it chemically toxic, or does the radiological hazard drive the issue.  My guess is that the radioctivity dominates.

Its radioactivity (Pu-239) and chemical reactivity render it useless for much of anything outside of fission-related uses. It’s not even a good paperweight. You wouldn’t want to have a criticality accident on your desk when you spilled coffee on it. Think of the paperwork. Blue flash and heat pulse …

The same curious treatment is afforded phosgene.  Any mention of this substance outside of a chemistry journal invariably recalls the early uses in trench warfare.  The one time I used it as a post-doc, the purchase order for one mole of phosgene in toluene came back to me in the perspiring hand of the Dean of the College. He called me to his office and wanted to know precisely what kind of harm was I inviting to the University. Literally, he wondered what the neighbors would think.

This university was in a wealthy and exclusive neighborhood of a large city in Tejas. What would the neighboring plutocrats think of having research done with a WW-I war gas in their neighborhood? What if *gulp* there was a release?  That’s a fair question.

I was requested and required to write a letter describing the proper emergency response to a spill and what procedures I would put in place to prevent a mishap. This was not a memo of understanding, but rather it was CYA for the Dean in the case of an accident. He could wave the letter around in the inevitable investigation after an incident. He would pass it to my one remaining hand so I could read it publically from my hospital bed for maximum effect.

Oh yes, at near-threshold levels, phosgene has a fragrance very similar to lilac.