Dewey, Chetham, and Howe at it again

[Bill Glasheen]

chewy

What you are presenting are hypotheses with anecdotal proof, but no clear proof on the whole.

Here are a few facts.

* Not all groups exhibit "mob" behavior.

* A basic course in Economics will show you that money is not the only motivator either of people or of groups. Otherwise perfectly capable people and organizations wouldn't have missions or mission statements that are not bottom-line driven. And extremely smart people would never accept a position in academia.

* Ethical business is good business.

* Cheating and unethical behavior starts and finishes at the individual level.

The executives jobs and incentives depend upon the amount of value-add they can bring to their share holders. We are talking big $$ Bill... more that most people can actually fathom (just try to picture $1B in your head... really... it's tough).

Believe it or not, I see how billions of dollars go through a system on a regular basis. It's my job to understand that kind of money (actually several orders of magnitude larger...) and all that it entails.

The executives are people like you and I, chewy, who bring their own beliefs to their jobs, and go home to their families, communities, churches, and activities. These executives may or may not have graduated from a place like U.Va.'s Darden School of business (top ten school in the country) were one honor offense (for lieing, cheating, or stealing) means you are permanently dismissed. Most (but not all) have a modicum of emotional intelligence, and those who don't likely never make it to the upper tiers of an organization.

I have been online preaching that folks such as the former CFOs of Enron or Worldcom should be in prison along with rapists and killers. Individuals need to be accountable for their actions. We can never - nor should we ever - blame bad human behavior on a group.

Individual companies sometimes do have selfish, heartless mission statements, and our justice system (along with the SEC and similar government concerns) has rightly put certain individuals in prison for their behavior. Similarly there are companies that make big money with altruistic missions. And most companies handsomely reward executives who can do the right thing while bringing the bacon home.

- Bill

[Panther]

I also have high standards for my work (electrical engineer). I've never had to design a medical device or other life-saving product, but I still make great effort to prevent "known bugs" from entering the field on my watch. I also know several engineers that work at companies that DO design medical equipment and they all work to the same standard. Not just because lives depend upon it, but because, like you and I, they feel a job well done is its own reward.

My last couple of projects were hardware design (electrical engineering chip, board & system design) of products that are used in very specialized medical research. Even though the products were for "research", all of the same care has to be taken to prevent harm to potential patients or research subjects. I spent years designing products where a worst case scenario was a little lose of some data and a reboot. Designing for biomedical research equipment was a whole different ball game. Besides having very strict guidelines on keeping the patient electrically isolated and safe, lose of data/reboots/failures can be catastrophic from the aspect of diagnosis/research/knowledge to help the patient (and others in the case of research). I know lots of folks who feel that "a job well done is its own reward", but the feelings I had while spending ~3 years to perfect these products was far deeper than simply wanting to do the job well.

It's OK to take pride in your work Bill. I do it all the time, but don't blindly believe everything your company tells you and their reasons for doing it. I've said it before and I'll say it again... $$ is king and whereever you see big $$ there is a level of corruption and ethical impropriaties to go along with it.

I get torn on that opinion. Part of me sees things that indicate the corruption and ethical problems at the top of big businesses that you allude to... yet another part of me believes that there are those businesses that can and do make a lot of money while maintaining good, honest, ethical business practices. Businesses that are corrupt should (hopefully) get punished by the free market because people don't want to do business with those who are untrustworthy. And businesses that are fair, honest, and ethical should grow in the free market because people most people will chose to do business with those they can trust. Simple, effective, almost Darwinian from a business standpoint.

PS- An engineering degree guarantees you wealth?!? I'll mention that to some of my unemployed friends next time I see them. It should lift their spirits!

Well, this has been my "1/2 year of forced retirement because of outsourcing". But I'm not complaining... I'm thinking of making major changes in my life which are probably for the best.

PPS- The return on an investment on a Ph.D. is only as good as the field you are in. A Ph.D. in philosophy or theatre isn't going to fetch a lot of cash.

THAT explains why I was so poor with a degree in music!

I know many Ph.D engineers, programmers, and medical researchers, however, and, assuming one can hold your job for 8 years, they've break even. Anything beyond that pays great dividends. BS and MS degrees are also well rewarded in these cutting edge fields assuming you can keep your job long enough to break even. Risk/Reward.

Well, I did better than break even without a Ph.D. But not as good as my friend Rich... During that first decade plus that he was investing and saving, I was travelling with bands and starving! I might not catch up, but you can't change the past either. RICH! Where were you when I was young and impressionable!?!?!

[Valkenar]

And extremely smart people would never accept a position in academia.

So there are no extremely smart people in academia? I find that hard to believe.

Bill:

* Ethical business is good business.

Panther:

Businesses that are corrupt should (hopefully) get punished by the free market because people don't want to do business with those who are untrustworthy.

Ethical business is only good business if the alternative is getting caught behaving unethically. If you can get away with lying, cheating and stealing, you're almost certain to be better off, as long as nobody knows.

Be that as it may, I think the real problem is that people don't really vote with their dolars. Yes, in an ideal world people forget about the things they've been told X company is doing when it comes time to do the weekly shopping. Also, there's a certain amount of self-centeredness that amounts to "I think nobody should buy this product, but I'm an exception because of XYZ" When there's a major scandal, a company can be affected, but for the most part it doesn't seem to matter.

Also a somepeople take the same view they take with voting, that the problem is too big and that therefore there's no point in trying to fight it, even though they'd like for things to be another way.

[RACastanet]

PS- An engineering degree guarantees you wealth?!? I'll mention that to some of my unemployed friends next time I see them. It should lift their spirits!

Unemployment among engineers is typically below 1%. It is is not perfect, but very, very good. A lot of it has to do with your discipline and your willingness to make changes. Had I decided to be a mining engineer or metalurical engineer and only work in my home town of Pittsburgh I'd have had a tough time.

What I did was choose to be an electrical engineer, power systems emphasis, and go where the jobs were. I moved 6 times after graduation in 1974 and was never unemployed until I decided upon a career change. Then I walked into the county school system HQ and said I was a 'retired' engineer with 29 years experience and they asked when I could start. Anything I wanted to teach. Any level. And this county's school district in VA is very highly rated.

My personal opinion is that an unemployed engineer has decided to not make a location or industry change. That is a personal decision. The jobs are around, just not allocated evenly around the country. some 'down time' in any profession can be expected on occasion.

Panther said:

But not as good as my friend Rich...

This was an example of excellent corporate ethics. On the morning of my first day at GE I was sent to see the human resources manager -company policy. He explained all of the benefits available and encouraged me to sign up for max savings, which I did. Then he said 'do not touch it for 25 years and you will thank me'. Boy was he correct. The advice was priceless.

GE, at least in my years with them, was very responsible. Yes, GE dumped PCBs in the river but at the time they did, late 40s to mid 70s, there was no compelling reason to worry about it. PCB was considered a miracle insulator that would prevent injuries and deaths as it would not burn under any circumstances. Before PCBs, a transformer failere tended to be catastrophic as a thousand gallons or so of oil would explode into a fireball. It was like a 1,000 pound napalm bomb went off! To this day PCBs are an emotional concern but they have never been actuall linked to cancers or disease. The concern is how they persisit in the environment. But, thousands of people at GE, Westinghouse... worked in the stuff up to their armpits for decades and retired alive and well. (A few did get an occasional rash.)

As a power and heavy industrial systems engineer, safety was #1. I rarely touched money, but was involved in projects worth $billions. The machinery was/is incredibly dangerous. A 5,000 HP grinder would grab you and spit you out in the wink of an eye! Steam turbines used steam at a thousand psi superheated to a 1,000 degrees. A small leak would gut, cut and cook somone in an instant. A 13,800 volt power line arc would jump out and vaporize you.

My projects never hurt or killed anyone. There was never a lawsuit filed for anything I was involved in. Why? The business/safety ethic was in our blood. People at GE that did not get it were asked to leave or were fired.

There was a study done somewhere recently (might have been in the WSJ or Business Week or some such thing) that studied how reputation was related to shareholder wealth. It turned out that there was a high correlation between the two. Ethical companies were the most profitable and their shareholders benefited the most over time. Investing in a blue chip company really is a good thing.

Rich

[Bill Glasheen]

Justin

I was not clear. Re-read what I wrote with the following edits.

BEFORE
A basic course in Economics will show you that money is not the only motivator either of people or of groups. Otherwise perfectly capable people and organizations wouldn't have missions or mission statements that are not bottom-line driven. And extremely smart people would never accept a position in academia.

AFTER
A basic course in Economics will show you that money is not the only motivator either of people or of groups. Otherwise:

a) perfectly capable people and organizations wouldn't have missions or mission statements that are not bottom-line driven. And

b) extremely smart people would never accept a position in academia.

Does that make more sense, Justin?

My bad.

- Bill

[Gene DeMambro]

Gene, I go farther most in discussions with patients....

And it was most unfortunate thast I implied otherwise. No matter how high test our discussions, it shall not happen again. We discuss sometimes subtle nuances and imperfections in writing and conveying ideas.

if you want to hurt patients

Not me.

hurt drug companies

Why? They create wealth and develop life-saving drugs. As long as they stay inside the lines, no problem. But Merck didn't. Are some of the lawsuits bogus? Maybe. But they are also moving to settle some of them as well. And besides, I like the pens.

terrorize doctors

Not me. I enjoy collaboative relationships with most I've dealt with, and give them great deference to their decision-making.

and go to bed rich

Not on my salary.

But I don't remember saying "sue the makers of abacavir". But I did say I oppose suits based on information that was discovered only post-marketing. But that's not what Merck did here. On this, we are in agreement.

Gene

[chewy]

chewy

What you are presenting are hypotheses with anecdotal proof, but no clear proof on the whole.

Here are a few facts.

* Not all groups exhibit "mob" behavior.

* A basic course in Economics will show you that money is not the only motivator either of people or of groups. Otherwise perfectly capable people and organizations wouldn't have missions or mission statements that are not bottom-line driven. And extremely smart people would never accept a position in academia.

* Ethical business is good business.

* Cheating and unethical behavior starts and finishes at the individual level.
- Bill

Yet you seem to find anecdotal proof acceptable when bashing the government for corruption and subsidising and/or taxing dangerous products (i.e., cigaretts). Your basic attitude seems to be that you can't trust a politician with such large amounts of $$. Why are exectutives any different? Keep in mind many policiticians are former corporate execs and visa versa.

You can't have it both ways. It's not the politicians alone who are subject to abuse when large ammount sof $$ are involved. EVERYONE IS! You, me, the Pope, and anyone else who's well being (and family's well being) depends upon the aquisition of wealth. I'm not saying that communism is a good alternative, but in a capitalistic society greed is the rule, not the exception.



cheers,

chewy

[chewy]

Unemployment among engineers is typically below 1%. It is is not perfect, but very, very good. A lot of it has to do with your discipline and your willingness to make changes. Had I decided to be a mining engineer or metalurical engineer and only work in my home town of Pittsburgh I'd have had a tough time.
Rich

Rich,

I don't want to get too off-topic here, so maybe we can open a new thread or move this off line (PMs), but the 1% rule you speak of when out the door with the internet bust. Unemployment for EE's is over 5% nationally and for programmers the rate is closer to 10%. Some areas of the country (i.e., New England) are even higher.

http://www.ieeeusa.org/communications/r ... 404pr.html

I don't think you can just make a blanket statement that people aren't being flexible enough in their job responsibilities or work location. Many people have kids and a spouse (also with a job) to worry about. You can't just up and move across the county to a new job if your spouse can't find a new job as well.

Also, just how far from FPGA/ASIC/PCB design jobs should my fellow co-worker's stray when looking for a particular job. A company isn't going to hire one of us as a power-engineer or micro-electronics engineer or an analong engineer. These people spend most of their careers finding a nitch in the broad field that is Electrical Engineering. It;s like asking a OBGYN to perform open-heart surgery. Nobody can possibly find the time to master (or even become competent at) every part of the field and not many companies are interested in having you bounce from job skill to job skill (especially across the digital-to-analog chasm).



Pather,

I've just managed to pay off my student debt after 8 years. It feels good . And without a doubt, peoples lives weigh heavily on an engineer in the medical device field. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.


cheers,

chewy

[RACastanet]

First, note that I said 'engineers', not electrical engineers. The need for various disciplines ebbs and climbs all the time. Wouldn't it be nice to be a petroleum engineer in today's environment. I suspect that their unemployment is very low.

I remember in the early 1970s that after NASA discontinued the Apollo program aerospace and aeronautical engineers were dumped on the street. In the mid 1980's oil glut, yes, there was one, petrolium in particular and chemical engineers in general were experiencing higher than normal unemployment. Right now electical engineers in some areas are underemployed. However, EEs in power disciplines are in demand.

It will average out. I'd be interested in seeing total unemployment for all engineers. Exclude Info Techs and Comp Scientists please.

As for the need to be flexible and mobile, I stand by that statement. The job market is not stable. There are still mining and met engineers sitting around in Pittsburgh whining about the loss of the steel industry and mining industry with it. There are no gaurantees. You need to go where the work is.

And I speak from experience. Moving is not easy but I did it six times. Unemployment is worse. Sometimes there are tradeoffs. Sometimes a career change is in order. When I got tired of what I was doing in 2003 and needed a change I did not want to relocate again so I did a career shift and some downgrading in the lifestyle to live within the 'new' means. I wanted a Jeep Wrangler to support one of my part time jobs and instead of dropping $25k for a new one, found a 10 year old one for $5,000 and added elbow grease.

After years of declines in the coalfields coal mining jobs go begging. If I wanted to move to SW VA and dust off my mining knowledge, hard hat and lamp I could get a starting salary around $100,000.

Check it out... I found my gear! By the way, the small brass carbide lamp was the one my grandfather uesd over 80 years ago.



I miss the big paycheck and bennies but we are managing to eak out a living and are pretty happy too.

Rich

[RACastanet]

Gene said:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and go to bed rich
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Not on my salary.

Yes you can. As I recall you are a young man. Adjust your lifestyle as necessary to put away 5% to 10% a year in even a conservative investment and in 25 years you just might be a millionaire! Just do it!

Einstein noted that compounding interest was the most powerful force in the world. And this is from the fellow that came up with e = mcc.

Rich

[IJ]

Bill:

You say that merck had reason to believe the cards risks weren't real, in large part because the data could have been skewed by prescribing pattens and dfifferent risks in those given cox2.

However,

AFTER the VIGOR trial, which was RANDOMIZED and CONTROLLED, showed an increased cardiovascular risk, and a panel of physicians recommended that doctors be made aware of this prelimary data (which is very important because while the incremental risk was small, the population risk was high because of the large numbers of recipients) merck attempted to suppress this information. I posted this before and will do it again:

"On February 7, 2001, the Arthritis Drugs Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) met to discuss the VIGOR study. At this meeting, Merck argued that the significant increase in the rate of myocardial infarction (which further analysis had determined to be a fivefold increase) was explained by a protective effect of naproxen, not by any inherent risk posed by its drug. After the FDA's medical reviewer and others expressed concern about this explanation, the advisory committee voted unanimously that physicians should be made aware of VIGOR's cardiovascular results.

The next day, Merck sent a bulletin to its rofecoxib sales force of more than 3000 representatives. The bulletin ordered, "DO NOT INITIATE DISCUSSIONS ON THE FDA ARTHRITIS ADVISORY COMMITTEE . . . OR THE RESULTS OF THE . . . VIGOR STUDY." It advised that if a physician inquired about VIGOR, the sales representative should indicate that the study showed a gastrointestinal benefit and then say, "I cannot discuss the study with you."

Merck further instructed its representatives to show those doctors who asked whether rofecoxib caused myocardial infarction a pamphlet called "The Cardiovascular Card." This pamphlet, prepared by Merck's marketing department, indicated that rofecoxib was associated with 1/8 the mortality from cardiovascular causes of that found with other antiinflammatory drugs.

The Cardiovascular Card provided a misleading picture of the evidence on rofecoxib. The card did not include any data from the VIGOR study. Instead, it presented a pooled analysis of preapproval studies, in most of which low doses of rofecoxib were used for a short time. None of these studies were designed to assess cardiovascular safety, and none included adjudication of cardiovascular events. In fact, FDA experts had publicly expressed "serious concerns" to the agency's advisory committee about using the preapproval studies as evidence of the drug's cardiovascular safety.4

Persistent physicians who sought additional information about the cardiovascular effects of rofecoxib were directed to send inquiries to the company's headquarters. Merck's response to these physicians highlighted the misleading information from the Cardiovascular Card." --Waxman.

This is not ethical behavior, and if YOUR mom had these data concealed from her, and especially if she then had a heart attack, you would be mad, and rightly so. I bet these executives viewed the safety of these products differently when their families were concerned after they had this information they tried so hard to suppress.

[IJ]

"But I don't remember saying "sue the makers of abacavir".

No, you're quite right, you didn't. Nor do you want to hurt patients, doctors, and drug companies. But you may be missing the point of my hypothetical. Somewhere, you can find a patient who wasn't cautioned that his/her new medication abacavir might have unknown effects or was pushed thru approval fast or didn't hear their doctor explain why restarting a drug after a possible reaction had risks and benefits, when we now know those risks for abacavir are far greater. Find that patient, and you COULD sue and go to bed rich. Our legal system would allow it, juries would sympathize and punish. And we appear to be in agreement that this legally obtained settlement would be wrong to pursue.

"But I did say I oppose suits based on information that was discovered only post-marketing. But that's not what Merck did here."

Actually, this was post marketing data, but I agree that merck should have behaved more properly (see above). See: http://www.thestreet.com/stocks/biotech/10195104.html

[mikemurphy]

I just wanted to go off track here.

Bill states:
-----------------------------------------------------------
* Ethical business is good business.
-----------------------------------------------------------

And so is the complete opposite. Always has been, always will. So long as big business stays hand in hand with government, this will remain true.
Where are those ethical businesses?

mike

[RACastanet]

General Electric Company.

With 300,000 to 400,000 thousand employees worldwide there is an occasional outlier. But, all in all, GE is squeaky clean, and has been for the 30+ years I have been associated with them.

Rich

[mikemurphy]

No offense here Rich, but you have a habit of writing in absolutes when I doubt you could possibly have all the info. For example, how could you know whether or not General Electric is "squeaky clean"? Do have access to all the levels of workings within one of the country's largest private employers? You are speaking about the company in which George Westinghouse helped create right? The man of unspeakable scrutiny .

You may be perfectly correct, but I doubt it here. Again, no disrespect intended.

mike