Late Shift

Far from the madding crowd

My last day in office, my last day in Milan, my last run to catch the earliest train and make the "scrum" in the underground, my last team stand-up meeting, my last speech and recommendations to my colleagues, my last lesson at the whiteboard, my last watering to my plants, my last packing and my last goodbyes ...

(Made and sent from my mobile.)

What is left

I'm spending the last days of my professional experience in Milan. This is my last week in Vimodrone, where I landed in a hot and humid June 2000 to start a new life with my wife, and I strive to think if I'll ever come back here again, once I'll be out of office next Friday.

Never say never. No one can tell what will happen to me and my family in the coming years. Only one fact is sure: in a few weeks I'll be working abroad, no longer as a business traveler but as a real expatriate. "Man gewöhnt sich daran!", You get used to it! This is what I've been silently repeating to myself in the last weeks.

When I first came here I told to my interviewer that I was going to stay at least for a couple of "seasons". As a matter of fact, I settled and stayed here for sixteen years and I grew up a family. I've dedicated all my freshest and best energies to the company and the people I'm about to salute.

I have no regrets. If I turn back and look at what I'm leaving, everything looks like an old "Cascina" still functioning and full of life when I arrived and left falling apart among the multitude of industrial buildings that covered the countryside in the meantime.

(Made and sent from my mobile.)

Black & White

Today, October 1st 2014, represents an important milestone of my life. After nearly 16 years spent working for Ericsson AB, my first big employer, I have moved under the wings of another company that just acquired the Research & Development site to whom I belong.

I've been asked how does it feel. Actually, it makes a strange effect entering into your offices, sitting at your desk and feeling that it won't be the same anymore. It made an even stranger effect having a new badge, with the same picture depicting yourself ten years ago and a new collar with different colors and brand.

Now the big questions are all about what is there ahead of us and what will it be of myself. New rules, new ways of working, new processes, new contacts and customers, of course and ... who knows. It won't be neither black nor white.

It's a matter of being patient, waiting and seeing. I've been repeating this sentence to myself since the transition announcement was given. And this is the most challenging part of the story.

There will be a time of strong decisions, long nights spent with the eyes wide open in the dark, dreams, great expectations, whispers and long terms plans between me and my spouse. It will be up to us, to stand up and ask for our part and, at last, acting according to the plot we have chosen to play. Whatever the hue of grey it will look like, we will turn it into black or white again.

  

On Protest - II

On Protest - I

Time is up. A new rally for protest against our company intentions and support to our unions representatives is ahead. Few days ago we've crossed Milan downtown to get to the place where the discussion about our future and the way out they would like to arrange for us took place. In few more days the second act, the start of real dealings will be staged. I fear I won't be able to attend the event as I've already planned a trip (could be my last one) in Goteborg. I decided that during my stay up there I'll wear a badge, something to show my "state of agitation" to my northern peers. It's the least thing I can do.

The March

Dealings and discussions between our Unions' representatives and the two Companies' management have started. Next stage is set for Wednesday 28. Our "march" from the old to the unknown has started. Who can tell where we're heading to?

Petrified

Then, one day you open your eyes again and find yourself petrified behind the glass of a display case in a sort of decaying museum, unable to move or speak, unobserved and unheard. But the worst thing is that you can't explain why it happened and how.

Going to work - II

Approching Lindholmen ...

Bandidos! - III

This is the candidate back cover of an album to be. We cheerfully thank the owners of the ugly building for hosting our photo stage. It wouldn't be the same without. 

Bandidos! - II

Sometimes at lunch the Bandidos, in the endless minutes of wait before pizzas are served, are used to talk about the coming dates of their long lasting tour, the next "delivery" committed to the production team, the many arrangements (AKA customizations) of their latest studio recording, sessions plans, deadlines, the crew and the band perspective, issues still open and any other reported trouble. The most debated topics are always around things to be fixed before going to stage, fine tunings, new tools and instruments to adopt, rehearsal sessions and demos: sound perfection is in their mission. The customers (their fans) don't tolerate bad quality!

Later on, once the beers have gone down and the pizzas are still far to come, someone raises the bar of the discussion and talks about the "way out", his personal long term projects. Bands, with some exceptions, are doomes to eventually split up: they always dis-aggregate to set up new and better ones.

Bandidos!

I'm living (and working) in a Babel of digital and analogue hardware designers, verification and test engineers, system and para-systems guys, Galois Space travellers, Karnaugh mappers, Shannon cryptographers and boolean ambulant terrorists, Nyquist and Bode plot practitioners, gurus of the electropolitan bitscape, in other words bad & ugly people who claim to master the art and craft of electronics and forge the worlds that fit into your electronic furniture.
Some of them join together in bands: these are the Bandidos. Stay away from the worst kind of bandits on this World's surface!

Having the right tools

Some pictures are better than others at inspiring deep thoughts or disclosing unexpected mind connections. The strange thing in all this is that you don't know where and when such epiphanies appear. If you're lucky this can occur just a moment before you decide to unveil your work and put it on display. For those, like us blog editors, who aim to put on the shelf both their pictures and inner feelings there can't be anything better.

I was uploading this picture of surgery tools I took last summer while visiting a World-War-I Austrian fortress, in Trentino, now turned into one of the best conserved and most instructive war museums in Italy, when a simple connection with my current job activity came up.

I've been using, let me dare to say mastering for years a design and verification methodology that used to give excellent results in the past time. As it always happens in every field of technical development, this methodology is now obsolete and no longer able to keep pace with the needs of modern electronic design. Having this in mind, years ago, I prepared myself in advance, attending presentations, courses and making short trials but never completed the step and made the grade. I kept on working with my good old methods, leveraging on the fact that mastering with it provided me the same quality levels of a weak grip on a new methodology.

I pushed this condition up to the limits, until I found myself alone in a dead-end, with a design environment that was shouting for something better, easier and safer. All my younger colleagues, although less experienced in "the method", were progressing on a field I was instead fearing to endeavor.

This evening, as I stopped watching again at the tools a surgeon living one century ago had at his disposal to attempt saving the lives of soldiers wounded by heavy artillery, I thought about the low level of self-confidence I had reached some days ago when I realized that my tools weren't good enough to carry on.

In such a situation, shoulders to the wall, I had to look at the new tools with a different sight, as if they were my parachute and, with some chances not to succeed, I started using them step by step although I knew that initially I would have had the same efficiency of a practitioner (incidentally this word, "practitioner", is used somewhere in the world to point out to what we, in Italy, call the family doctor).

After some highs and lows, today I completed my first evolutionary step and felt really happy at the end, when I saw that the system was working as expected. I don't know if this investment was really worth, i.e. if I'll keep on doing this activity in the coming years. I know it's been helpful in any case. Having the right tools is not an easy job. It's tremendously necessary.