Archive for August, 2018

A Short Story: Making the Numbers Work

Posted on 08/01/2018. Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Cold War, cold war defense business, Short Stories |

I have written many short stories and now plan to put some of them together to publish a printed and eBook version of a book of short stories. Below is a short story to be included in a book of cold war short stories. This is considered to be a draft and any comments, note of errors would be appreciated.

Jim Fowler settled down in his corner office with his first vendor machine cup of coffee. The coffee was pretty bad but the only alternative would be bringing a thermos. The corner office with a door represented a measure of his success as a longtime employee of the Data Control Corporation, commonly known as DCC. It took a while, over twenty years to reach this position. Fowler started out as a mechanical design engineer and was finally put in charge of all program management for all space systems programs. DCC had a reputation for highly reliable, light weight, miniature sized yet capable computers for use in space for its government customers. Business had been good with President Reagan promoting his Star Wars missile defense system but that could change since the Berlin Wall had come down a month previously.

There had been a lot of pressure with the job and Jim attributed the stress to his overweight condition and loss of hair. Jim had thought about doing some exercise, maybe jogging. Trouble is he should lose some weight before he tried jogging. It was one of those chicken and egg things. There wasn’t much that could be done about the growing bald spot on the crown of his head. Combing what hair he had over the bald spot wasn’t much of an improvement.

Despite the pressure Jim liked his position, head of program management in Space Systems programs with staff of a half a dozen working on proposals, program budgets, scheduling and four program managers in charge of seven multimillion dollar programs between them. He was making more money and wielded more power than he ever would have had as a design engineer and thought he had a talent for the job. He had a reputation as a good negotiator, was liked by customers who were prime contractors for the most part like Lockheed and Boeing. He also became known as a demanding kick ass type by his program and department managers that supplied the engineers, technicians, assemblers and support people that worked on the programs. Like most of the DCC management, his background and training had been technical, not people oriented. As a result the company depended on self-trained or gifts from God type managers for the most part. Jim suspected he had been born with above average management skills.

Jim’s phone rang. He hesitated to answer it. He suspected it might be Gerald Blackstone, director of the Government Systems Division calling about an overrun on the Eagle One program that showed up in the last monthly financial report.

Gerald growled “Good morning Jim.” To Jim, Gerald’s voice didn’t sound like it was going to be a good morning.

Gerald continued, “Say Jim, that Eagle One program is over budget, behind schedule. What are you doing to fix it?”

What Jim heard wasn’t any news to him and shouldn’t be any news to Gerald Blackstone. Alex Jorden, the program manager that prepared the Eagle One proposal had instructed all of the departments doing the estimating to bid it skinny. The procurement would be fixed price and competitive. A potential for follow on programs added value to the current procurement. The systems use would be for surveillance, something not likely to be cut during defense spending cuts. Last but not least, the division backlog had been shrinking and without new business there would be headcount reductions.

Alex had negotiated and cajoled the department managers to cut the bid to the bone and then division management cut the low ball estimates by twenty percent. They were rolling the dice, betting that other division programs could make up any Eagle One losses so the division would be able to post an acceptable profit and level of business during the coming year. Now division management wanted to know why the program was running over budget. This was likely due in part because other programs weren’t taking up the slake and division profit margins were suffering. As a result, division management was under critical scrutiny by corporate management. Jim hesitated to answer, he didn’t want to say what he was thinking; which was, you dumb asses, what were you expecting?

“Hello, anybody there?” Gerald asked after waiting a while for an answer.

Jim faked a small cough to let Gerald know he was still on the line. He was trying to think of ways to stall or dodge the question. No doubt Gerald Blackstone was under pressure from corporate to show a division year end profit to be rolled into the corporate annual report. Jim began fabricating an answer to Gerald’s question. “We are working the problem,” he said without going into any detail. “I’ll have a work around plan on your desk Monday morning.”

After discussing a number of issues on other programs Gerald signed off reminding Jim he looked forward to seeing the work around plan on Monday.

Jim rocked back in his desk chair and stared at the ceiling after hanging up the phone. He didn’t want to work this weekend on the “Plan.” For one thing it seemed to be an exercise in futility and the other thing is that he had better things planned for the week end. He dialed Alex Jorden’s office located several doors down the hall. “Alex, you got a minute or an hour or so to talk about the Eagle One program?”

At the time Jim called, Alex Jorden manager of the Eagle One program, was in the middle of preparing the customer Eagle One monthly progress report. It was good timing for him and he grabbed a couple Eagle One binders and headed for Jim’s office.

Alex had a boyish face with a full head of hair that made him look young for a man about to turn fifty. A lot of activities with his two sons, nine and eleven, helped him stay in shape. Alex like most managers in the company had technical backgrounds. Trained as an electrical engineer, he loved design and was good at it. Like many good design engineers, he had been awarded by making him a manager of other engineers. It took Alex some time to realize he didn’t like managing people, particularly egotistical engineers.

The problem with leaving management and going back to computer design was that technology evolved at a fast pace at the design level and a person away for couple of years could become obsolete. Transistors were packaged individually in cans when he was designing, now they put thousands on a microchip. Instead of doing logic at the transistor level they were doing it at the microchip level. Sure, he could do it but it would be like starting over. He worked around the problem by going into program management where he had to understand the nature of the technology changes but not the nitty gritty of implementing them. In program management he didn’t manage people, he managed things, like proposals, budgets, schedules and was the primary interface with the customer. He could handle that.

Jim waved Alex to sit at a side table where they could spread out program data. “Here’s the problem,” Jim said as an introduction to what they had to do today. “Division management wants to know why Eagle One is overrunning its budget. Apparently, they don’t want us to tell them what they already know. We bought the program, an investment that will pay off someday in the murky future. Apparently corporate wants the division contracts to pay off today, to hell with the murky future. So, all we have to do is come up with a plan to show how we can make a profit from a contract we bought with a bid that we estimated would twenty percent less than cost. How do we do that?

Alex looked at Jim, “Are they serious?”

“We are supposed to come up with a work around plan by Monday morning.”

“We can give them the plan this afternoon,” Alex replied. “It’ll be a note that says it can’t be done. We have technical problems we don’t even know how to solve. A twenty percent overrun could be a low-ball estimate. I’m hardly charging the program. I keep haggling the department managers to keep the cost down. We have put as much pressure on the vendors as the law allows. Some of the vendors are betting on the follow on, just like us.”

Jim, who had been scanning a print out of charges on the Eagle One program looked up, “That’s interesting,” He said.

Alex wanted to know what’s interesting.

“Are you doing any work on Eagle One?” Jim replied. “Don’t look like you are charging hardly any time to it.”

“You know time is charged to what you are working on, a program, a proposal, overhead if you are on vacation, sick-leave.”

“So you don’t spend much time on Eagle One?”

Alex didn’t like where the conversation had gone. Mischarging on government contracts was a no no which could result in heavy penalties for the company and individuals. Alex managed two phases of the Eagle One program; one phase a fixed price contract to develop of a new computer, and a related but separate cost-plus program to manufacture a dozen satellite computers of previous design for use in a NSA program. The production program had been negotiated a year earlier as a none-competitive cost-plus contract. The government had little leverage as no other suppliers had the technology or the interest in competing for the business. As a result, DCC Space Systems loaded up the contract which the prime contractor was only able to negotiate out some the most egregious charges. The result had been a contract with a lot of padding and Jim knew damn well what Alex had been doing.

Alex didn’t answer the question but Jim answered it for him. “Hey,” Jim said, “It’s no big deal; we all fudge project funds given an opportunity and need. Maybe that’s a solution, doing something like this on a bigger scale.

What Jim had just said scared Alex. “What are you saying?” Alex asked, hoping maybe he had misunderstood Jim.

“Well you have two programs, one that is starving and the other one is fat. Same prime customer, same government agency, you just balance things out between the two of them.”

Alex was aware of those kinds of shenanigans went on with cost plus programs where there were two contracts within the same program and two buckets of money and how you filled them didn’t make much difference in the big picture as long as they didn’t overflow. Two programs, one program cost plus and the other fixed price is a different story. People get fired, companies get fined and get a black mark when those kinds of things are mixed together. Alex had over twenty years invested in DCC and didn’t want to risk it in order to make management happy. He pointed out these obvious problems to Jim.

Jim wasn’t impressed. “There’s more than one way to get fired,” he replied. “The quickest way is to mismanage your programs. If you are given an impossible program to manage you have to figure out how to manage it. I’m in the same line of fire as you are. I see a way to fix the problem and everyone will be happy and none the wiser.”

Ales felt the pressure. Jim evaluated Alex’s performance in the annual reviews and made salary recommendations. These evaluations went into his file and stayed there forever. A bad evaluation in his record could affect his future in DCC in a bad way. Besides Alex was not sure how they could accomplish what Jim implied. How could they manage the time card information? Alex couldn’t think of a shuttle way to ask Jim how the manipulation of time card information would be accomplished so laid it out on the table. “How do you intend to modify the time cards?” He asked.

“Hey Alex, as far as we are concerned, this conversation never took place. I expect you will work out the details and I don’t want to know how it’s done.” He said they had accomplished what they needed to do in the meeting and Alex should get busy working on the plan to be completed by Monday.

Alex felt a migraine headache coming on after leaving Jim’s office. Alex had been looking forward to a weekend of canoeing with his two sons. They would be canoeing on a nearby river, leaving Saturday, camping overnight and returning Sunday evening. Now he had this problem hanging over his head, an impossible problem to be solved in any legitimate way.

Alex hadn’t been asked if he agreed with the scheme Jim had come up with. Jim had decided what to do and told Alex to do it. This was Jim’s style. So, Alex knew he would be in trouble with Jim if he didn’t do as directed, and he would be in trouble with the customer if they found out what was going on. There were no good scenarios.

Alex went on the canoe trip with his two boys as planned and he decided he wouldn’t let his work problems spoil the canoe trip for the boys. The first day they were going down river with the current helping them. They stopped often observed the rivers wildlife. They caught a couple nice walleyes that they roasted on a fire for a shore dinner that evening. They did some more fishing from shore that night and caught a few small sunfish that they returned to the river. They got into their sleeping bags early because they would be paddling upstream to return to their put in spot the following day. The following day they didn’t take many breaks as they worked against the current. It was a day devoted to rowing. The boys took turns rowing the bow position. It was evening by the time they had made it back and tied the canoe onto the cars luggage rack. While driving home Alex felt exhausted but felt that he had done a good days work. The boys were also exhausted and were soon sleeping in odd positions in the car.

In addition to having a fun weekend with his boys, Alex had worked out a plan in his mind to satisfy Jim’s order to fix the Eagle One program.

The scheme Alex concocted involved collecting time cards on Friday that would be turned in by noon. He would then close the door to his office and select cards to be modified and replace them with time cards that had been altered. He would forge the employee’s signature on the altered card by looking at the real signature and duplicating it as best he could. He had tried to think of better ways to do it but using white out or cross outs would obviously be spotted.

In addition, Alex decided during the canoe trip that he would begin looking for a new job. The twenty plus years he had invested in DCC had lost its importance after the time card meeting with Jim.

He found the defense business job market had tightened. The USSR was collapsing, the cold war ending and technology people exiting the defense business were crowding the rest of the technology world. Alex spent a month chasing leads, contacting every local business that might need his skills. He didn’t want to move out of the area. He and his family had put down roots that would be hard to extract.

A month went by and the next Eagle One budget report showed remarkable improvement. Jim congratulated Alex on how he had managed to improve the program performance

Alex began calling former associates who had left DCC recently to find out what they were doing and if they knew of any opportunities.

He called Frank Dawkins, a sharper than average engineer who had been lured away from DCC by a startup. Alex found that Frank had left the start up after three months.

“They didn’t know what to hell they were doing,” Frank said. “So, I decided to start my own company. Have you heard about a thing called the internet? It’s starting to go commercial. I’m looking for C ++ coders. Know any?”

Alex said he didn’t know C ++ but was looking for work.

“What happened with DCC?” Frank asked.

“Short story,” Alex replied, “Still working but looking to leave.”

“Hell Alex, you used to do Fortran, you can learn C++ like nothing. But you know I can’t pay you like a Program Manager at DCC and you will be digging in the nitty gritty.”

Frank went on to describe what they were doing with the internet and seemed to get more excited as he talked. The idea began to appeal to Alex, and he liked the nitty gritty. It wouldn’t be hardware but programming was the same kind of thing. “The idea is appealing,” Alex admitted. “I can handle a pay cut as long as it doesn’t last forever. How about some stock in your little enterprise in lieu of a big salary?”

Frank laughed, “All our professional people have gotten stock, don’t cost the bottom line anything and we can all get rich together.”

They agreed to meet the next day and talk some more. As a result, Alex signed on for a substantial cut in the salary he made at DCC and twenty thousand shares of the new company’s stock.

The next morning Alex gave Jim the required two week notice that he would be leaving the company. Jim looked shocked. “You can’t do that,” he yelled. “You know damn well you can’t do that.”

“I did it,” Alex admitted.

“Stay another year; you’ll get the best raise you ever had.”

“If you’re worried about the time cards I’ll brief you on the process. I’ll help you with it for the next two weeks.”

“Dammit, you know I can’t assign another manager to either program. I’ll have to manage them myself. That’s not going to work. I’ll get you a promotion.”

Alex had been focused on his own problems associated with leaving DCC and hadn’t lost much sleep worrying about the problems he might be causing Jim. But being made aware of some of Jim’s problems wasn’t giving him any heart burn either. He made his best effort to sound sympathetic to Jim’s concerns while suppressing a satisfied smile.

Alex soon became immersed in his work in Franks new company and it didn’t take him long to realize the thing called the internet would be transforming the communications world. Franks little company was growing as fast as it could hire engineers, programmers and staff. The stock that had no value when Alex joined the company six months previously now traded on the local market at ten dollars a share.

Through contacts Alex maintained with former DCC associates he learned the government was doing an audit of the Eagle One program, an event that only occurred when something really caught the government’s attention. A couple of months later Alex had lunch with an engineer he had worked with at DCC. The engineer said Jim had suddenly left the company and whole division had been shaken up with a number of directors being replaced. He heard that Jim had been manipulating time cards. “Can you imagine anyone being so dumb?”

Alex shook his head, “Ya, I can imagine it.”

All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author.

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