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Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:53:54 -0700
From: Andrew Sharp <andy.sharp@lsi.com>
To: "Stark, Brian" <Brian.Stark@lsi.com>
Cc: Cathy Gauthier <Cathy.Gauthier@lsi.com>, Nelson Nahum
 <Nelson.Nahum@lsi.com>
Subject: Re: items for this week
Message-ID: <20091027135354.67856d69@ripper.onstor.net>
References: <20091023202321.35648c78@ripper.onstor.net>
	<E1EC65251D4B3D46BBC0AAA3C0629222AFCB6A5B@cosmail02.lsi.com>
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On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:10:40 -0600 "Stark, Brian" <Brian.Stark@lsi.com>
wrote:

> Andy,
> 
> Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner.  The weekend was stuffed and
> then I traveled to Wichita all day yesterday.  

I understand.

> On the hiring front, I don't want to hire mediocre people.  This will
> bite us eventually and I would rather spend the energy looking for
> better people.  If you already haven't, go ahead and engage with your
> recruiter if you want.

OK.

> I understand your frustration with Bill, but let me worry about the
> management side of it.  I'll talk with Bill this week since he's also
> here in Wichita.  You should focus on TuxStor, which I realize can be
> difficult, but we need to figure out how to make this happen.  We
> also need to get Max engaged, which would then be the 4th person.  I
> don't believe we're on schedule right now, and I want to make it
> crystal clear that LSI's success in NAS (and then ultimately our
> success) hinges on successfully delivering TuxStor.  From my first
> half day of meetings here, I believe TuxStor is the most important
> project within ESG right now.  

We're behind schedule for sure, although I haven't seen the schedule
that contains the last feedback from myself and others.  Not that the
behindness would change.

I'm having no trouble focusing on tuxstor, in fact, that's all I'm
doing.  The reason I'm bringing up the stuff I am is that tuxstor is
getting derailed by Bill's output.  Tuxstor needs his output to be
software engineering, but all that I'm getting is rants and raves and
phony-baloney attacks.  All meant really to deflect from the fact that
he's producing nothing, week in, week out.

> I want to let you know before I publicize to the whole group that
> Bill was just promoted to Distinguished Engineer.  This was largely
> due to his past work in the NAS space, and LSI is clearly committed
> to NAS.  I wasn't confident that it would go through the nomination
> committee because of our limited exposure within LSI.  Whether you
> agree with this or not, Bill will be looked at in a different light.  

Bill Fisher?  You've got to be kidding.  I want to make it as clear as
possible to you as I can: I'm this close to throwing him off the
project, and I am -not- kidding about that.  Maybe LSI would be happy to
have him on other projects, but he's doing nothing but run his mouth and
consume cycles on this project.  He's had one task for 6 months and
still hasn't delivered it, that whole time trying to kick dirt on me
whenever he thinks the opportunity is good for it.  Now you're saying
he's been promoted to the technical equivalent of your position?

It's a bad move in my opinion, completely not supported by his work
history here at Onstor/LSI.  My prediction is that he will take this to
mean he doesn't have to do even the 5% he manages to put in now.  Just
enough to keep from being accused of doing no work at all.  Never mind
him becoming even more insufferable to be around and try to work with.

So this is exactly what's wrong: promoting someone for being an idiot;
doing a tiny fraction of their work; costing other people time out of
their day; being incompetent at the basics of being a software
engineer; attacking others who might be in a position to point any of
this out.

Sounds like a good reason for me to start seriously working on an exit
strategy, because I don't want to work at a company where the do-nothing
morons rule the roost.

> I also want to let you know that this opportunity is open to you as
> well, but it would essentially mean choosing the technical track
> versus the management track.  Although LSI publicizes a dual career
> track, the organization covets Distinguished Engineers and doesn't
> encourage letting them move over to management.

So I have the opportunity to be at the same level as that
non compis menace?  How excited I must feel.

> I attended the IT meeting on Friday and was primarily focused on
> Mightydog.  Other things came up, but I consider those secondary.  I
> found out today that no one in IT has figured out why mktg3 is not
> accessible.  That basically means that we are running a single node
> with no failover support right now.  I sent a very terse email to
> Trinh today saying this was unacceptable. 

I've been keeping notes on the wiki link I sent you of issues; the idea
is that it can be used as an agenda list at these meetings.  If
something gets resolved, I take it off.  So far, nothing has been taken
off.

http://wiki.onstor.net/wiki/IT_Issues_list

> 
> Brian
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Sharp [mailto:andy.sharp@lsi.com] 
> Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 8:23 PM
> To: Stark, Brian
> Subject: items for this week
> 
> Howdy,
> 
> Well, I'm still trying to catch up on all the stuff I missed because
> of today's mishaps, including not having internet from about 2.30 or
> 3.00ish until about 7.30.  Today just completely sucked.
> 
> This boy Bill needs a major, serious attitude adjustment.  His
> continued public disrespect is something I'm not prepared to continue
> to absorb. I'm happy to read him the riot act, but I thought I would
> check with you first before doing so.  On top of that, I feel like I
> have 2.25 people working on tuxstor, the 2 being me and Rendell, and
> the .25 being Bill.  And I need 4.  But the huge management cycles
> Bill incurs might easily erase that .25.
> 
> I need to go over some of the candidates that have interviewed
> recently.  Possibly this is something that we can sit down and do with
> Jobi also in attendance just for perspective.  I need to get someone
> in here, I think this Robert Hudson guy is the best of a mediocre
> bunch, but just barely.  I've gotten a couple of new resumes today,
> but haven't had a chance to go over them, but I'm not holding out
> much hope.
> 
> Sorry about the IT meeting today, I hope you had a chance to attend.
> I *really* wanted and needed to attend, but I was running around like
> a chicken trying to deal with power outage and internet outage
> issues.  If I had planned it, I would have gone to a neighbor's and
> used their car to power my cell phone (battery was practically dead)
> to call in.  I managed to get to a google wifi cell in time to
> reschedule another meeting I was supposed to have this afternoon
> where they were going to attempt to brainwash me concerning
> goglobal.  Then my laptop battery got below 10%.
> 
