Problem is, demand for my "services" has declined rather steeply since the departure of the last Good Boss (ah, that was a gratifying run: almost nine years of Good Bosses, including the legendary JPL). I have one long-term project that will occupy as much time as I opt to give it over the next couple of years, and it's something the institution will take some benefit from, even if the current generation of managers is indifferent, and if I pull it off I'll have left something significant (in the context of FCT&D/BDS) behind me, which is more than most of my colleagues will be able to say. But times past, I was good for three, four, half a dozen high-profile one-offs each year of the sort that would make my masters say, "Gad, we're lucky to have him!" and sometimes result in a modest Christmas bonus in the pay envelope. I don't see those days coming again, and oddly I find myself rather missing that sense of being useful. Mind you, I keep depositing the paychecks.
I've re-crunched the numbers, and find that retirement at .975x is actually not feasible until early in the second quarter of 2018. It's a long time to keep one's head down.
cordially,
(Twenty years ago FCT&D was saddled with an additional San Francisco office across town, a wholly gratuitous layer of management flab that has since then quintupled in size, and from which not a calories of useful work has ever been observed to emerge. The Big Boss there, a malignant character, retired one Friday and returned in the same capacity the following Monday as a "consultant" at higher compensation while simultaneously drawing a handsome retirement. We always assumed that the guy had a file drawer full of 8 x 10 color glossies that someone in the mothership back east was keen not to see the light of day.)
I've re-crunched the numbers, and find that retirement at .975x is actually not feasible until early in the second quarter of 2018. It's a long time to keep one's head down.
cordially,
(Twenty years ago FCT&D was saddled with an additional San Francisco office across town, a wholly gratuitous layer of management flab that has since then quintupled in size, and from which not a calories of useful work has ever been observed to emerge. The Big Boss there, a malignant character, retired one Friday and returned in the same capacity the following Monday as a "consultant" at higher compensation while simultaneously drawing a handsome retirement. We always assumed that the guy had a file drawer full of 8 x 10 color glossies that someone in the mothership back east was keen not to see the light of day.)