Getting a good job

I don't know where this business of a 32-40 hour work week comes from. The only time I got away with 40 or fewer hours was when I was in the military or when I worked for the government at various levels. Other than that, my work week more often than not ranged between 80 and 120 hours, and longer if I was consulting for several clients at once. Moreover, even when I was on a relatively stabile project in the aerospace industry, I had only to wait until 1/4 of my allotted time had passed, for the "powers that be" to pull half my budget for use in a proposal (since R&D and proposals both came out of the same "new business acquisition expenditures" account. That meant that, having burned 1/4 of my personnel budget. I had to dismiss all my help and do the technical and some of the management work myself, keeping only one other fellow, usually a sharp dresser, so he could attend all the meetings and allow me to do effectively all the useful work. Since I took some math in college, I quickly learned that, while it was fun to work on the IR&D, I could get an extra $80 per hour consulting on the outside after everybody was gone from the plant. That compared favorably with the $00 per hour I got for spending my nights working on the IR&D. That's gone up some, I guess, but those were the numbers in '89. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Marvin <marvin(a)rain.org> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2000 9:58 PM Subject: Re: Getting a good job than inconsideration *really* away well