Page 150 - MY STORY

GEORGE

I noted earlier that we all experience, at some point in a
long career, the best and worst in managers. This is one
that’s near the bottom of my list. By this time I had

progressed to Branch Chief of Metals, Ceramics,
Chemical Processing and a number of laboratories
associated with our discipline. When the opening for

Chief Engineer of Materials and Process Engineering
opened up I was hoping that I would be near the top of the
list of candidates. Upper management elected to go

outside the company and hire someone from a defense
electronics corporation (we’ll call him George).

George, now my immediate supervisor, was an
unmitigated disaster. George sounded really intelligent,
seemed really erudite, appeared to be dynamic, and at

first blush made you think that he really had a good grip
on our R&D technology needs. However, he

demonstrated “style” with very little, if any “substance”
and all of us that were subject matter experts quickly
figured that out -- in spite of George telling us how smart

he was.