Page 142 - MY STORY

“vertically” meaning one had to lay off people across the

range of high paid managers through lower paid
technicians and young new hires. The “vertical slice” was
mandated by senior management in order to not impact

the average hourly salary (and bid rate) of the company.

Each of us as managers had wide discretion (for the most

part) in the selection of specific people for termination. I
ultimately made the decision to keep people that had the
broadest set of skills and for the most part let personnel

leave that tended to specialize, even though they were
subject matter experts in their fields. I estimated that those

who had a broad capability could always learn to focus
deeply if the need arose, but specialists could not easily
do the opposite. So much for that insipid insight!

“NO, I WON’T DO IT!”
One of my best performers was a fellow – we’ll call him

Bruce for this story. Bruce was a highly versatile senior
engineer with a strong background in extremely
high-temperature materials -- materials used for

re-entry-from-space-systems or hypersonic vehicles
(speeds ≥Mach 5), where temperatures could easily reach
0
well beyond 2,500 F. He had just come off a major
program on ballistic re-entry vehicles, where he played a