Page 219 - MY STORY

return to. The functional departments served as a technical

discipline “home” and the functional department heads
determined the rankings, pay raises, promotions, and
layoff lists. The sense of panic was everywhere. What

would happen to our best and brightest if a program went
belly up? How would we manage to keep the “good
guys?” Since, without the functional departments, there

would now be an excess of managers and overhead staff
our president called for all of us to resign our positions
and reapply for them in a more competitive environment.

When filling out the form to reapply for my existing job,

I did not fill in the blanks identifying my second choice of
assignment. Human Resources caught my omission and
instructed me to fill in the banks for my second choice. I
informed HR that I had no “second choice” and that if I

did not get my job back, I would be gone. More history.

CONTRACT ON A VP?
One penultimate story related to assignments at MDMSC.
We had received an RFP (Request For Proposal) to study

and define concepts for an advanced missile-size target
vehicle. There would be multiple winners of this study
phase and it was to be a fixed price, level-of-effort