Working at Consilium
It has always been important to me to have control of my time. I have always resisted being tethered to a schedule. Even now that I am retired, I look forward to days that have no defined activities. The number one joy of retirement is gaining back control of my time. I'm sure just about everyone wants that but my experience is that I seem to like it a bit more than most. Friends of mine who have retired often still seem to like to have a full schedule of activities. Of course I have never completely escaped that as I currently do take a couple of classes through The Renaissance Society program at Sac State and also have a regular exercise routine. However I grant myself permission to modify or skip these if I feel like it. The truth is I am pretty regular about it. I rarely had a job that I didn't like. The few times I found work to be unpleasant I changed jobs. The exception was the Air Force where changing jobs was not an option and as a result made me more fully appreciate that freedom. I could blame the Air Force for all this but the truth is I was already highly free time-focused even as a kid. I went to summer camp once. It was on a big lake and had lots of fun stuff to do. At the end of camp I realized I didn't like it. Why? The days were all filled with scheduled activities. Sure, they were almost all fun activities but the restriction of them being required and at a defined time somehow made them less fun.
I was now working at Consilium after leaving a job I disliked. I found I liked working at Consilium. Consilium was chock full of highly educated people. In all the previous Silicon Valley companies I had worked at I was in the minority with my Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science as I was one of the few with that kind of degree, or even any technical degree. At Consilium I was again in the minority but this time I was one of the least degreed/educated. Most had a Masters Degree and 6 or 7 of a company of 70 had PhD's,. The president of the company, Jon, had been a professor at Berkeley and had brought into the company a number of his Engineering PhD students. His area of expertise was in Operations Research (OR). Here's a definition I stole from the Engineering Department of The University of Texas at Austin: Operations research is a mathematical science concerned with optimal decision making and the modeling of deterministic and probabilistic systems. Here's another: Operations Research is an applied science that is concerned with quantitative decision problems that generally involve the allocation and control of limited resources. I know, you probably need a couple of years of college mathematical/engineering training just to understand those definitions...
Consilium was a young startup company. I was employee #68. Everyone was young and as I mentioned well educated. I was also one of the oldest people in the company. Actually, I was on the old side for Silicon Valley tech companies in general. I was in my 30's, heck, I was already 29 when I got my first Silicon Valley IT job.
Consilium had a family feel, a lot like GBS (General Business Systems), my first IT company. Tymshare had that feel too but it was different due to it being so big, over 1000 employees. Consilium people not only worked well together but they also socialized and some even went on vacations together. The main difference between Consilium and GBS was Consilium paid well and treated you well where GBS did not. It was just a fun place to work. Consilium held appreciation parties with gifts for staff after each software release. They brought in pizza and beer on Friday afternoons. Having so many rooted in education they encouraged everyone to develop and present “white papers” on potential new developments. I never took them up on that. Another thing they did was they had each of us do a presentation on our initial designs on all our projects. The whole company was invited, or at least all the technical people were, including Jon. This proved to be invaluable. Everyone in the company was pretty good at doing the necessary design for their assignment. Of course in general, we all knew our area best but we didn't necessarily have a detailed understanding of the other areas that we would need to interface with. Doing the design review in front of everyone allowed for each area to chime in on how you might want to make some tweaks to your own design to work smoother or more efficiently. At first I dreaded having to present my design, but soon I realized how valuable this exercise was. After a few times I learned to just do a rough design in any areas I was not too sure of and let those who had superior knowledge fill in the gaps for me. It really was an enlightened approach and made for a better end product. I would end up taking this idea and using it in my future jobs.
My immediate supervisor, Ken, was one of those few employees who was actually a little older than me. We shared an office and got on well. When he wasn't working in IT he painted. He did surrealistic paintings. I love his work. He had a couple of his paintings on the wall of our office. I have a postcard print of one of his paintings hanging in our house today. I regret that I never bought any of his paintings.
On the social side there was the Friday pizza and beer, group lunches, an annual company picnic and holiday party. There were parties at people's houses. There were organized events like going to Yosemite or to a baseball game. I joined the company co-ed softball team. I participated in the weekly lunchtime “Wallyball” games. Fellow workers became friends both in and outside of the office. Heck, some even married each other.
While I was there, Consilium did not track my sick days or vacation time, as I never took much vacation. When I left they asked me how much vacation time I had. I thought: Aren't you supposed to know? They had been rather lax in that area but it was at that point I realized they didn't track it at all. I told them I didn't know so they just paid me 2 weeks worth of vacation. The thing was, if you were taking a lot of time off you would probably be let go because you would not be producing at the expected level. I suppose they figured the cost of tracking vacation hours was higher than paying out any extra time at the end.
One thing I particularly liked about Consilium was they had flex time, true flex time. I was told I could come in and leave whenever I wanted but in general they'd like me there between the hours of 10 and 3. Cool! I noticed was my supervisor's boss was lucky to arrive by 10:30. He did this to avoid the commute traffic rush so it seemed even the 10 to 3 was a bit loose. I could take a 2 hour lunch, leave in the middle of the day for a doctor's appointment or to just shop. No one cared. What they cared about was production. As long as I got my work done, I could work when I wanted. Of course to keep up with the work load I pretty much had to work about 45 hours a week, sometimes more. I'd been other places with flex hours but bosses tended to struggle with it so you had to at least commit to a particular start and end time, and they really wanted to see you in the office at the normal hours to be convinced that you were really doing your work. I never felt that at Consilium. I did keep a sleeping bag and pad rolled up under my desk because sometimes I'd work very late and it was just more convenient to catch a few hours at the office rather than go home. Perhaps that provided the bosses some comfort, but I doubt it because I don't remember anyone ever seeing me use it. Really, it was so nice to be able to come and go as needed. I couldn't be late to work! I of course would tell my supervisor when I was leaving but I never had to ask permission. As it turned out I was pretty consistent with my hours usually getting to work between 8 and 8:30, that was early in Silicon Valley. I also didn't take coffee breaks, usually ate lunch at my desk while working, and never did take off just to go shopping. I just valued the freedom to do so. Consilium had a healthy work environment, especially for me. I worked a lot but I had some control over my time/schedule. It was my kind of situation, not to mention there was that certain blonde haired co-worker I referenced in the previous post.
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