A bad modern innovation

Undoubtedly, by now you've heard this story (via the New York Times): 

Better.com’s mercurial chief executive, Vishal Garg, faced swift backlash for his decision to fire more than 900 employees on a Zoom call last week. The mortgage lender’s board announced in a memo sent to staff on Friday that Mr. Garg was “taking time off” after the “very regrettable events.”

“I come to you with not great news,” Mr. Garg had said to about 9 percent of his staff, in a recording since shared widely online. “If you’re on this call you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effective immediately.”

Something that bothers me about this (and likely why the CEO has been put on leave) is that someone within this organization thought that a mass firing via Zoom was an acceptable idea. Bluntly speaking, that's pretty shocking; someone with some amount of humanity or should have recognized it as A Bad Idea. 

The other thing that I am really bothered by is that Mr. Garg was clearly extemporizing what he was saying to these employees. Not that a prepared speech would have made it better, but not taking the 3 minutes to plan out remarks speaks to his judgment as well. 

Times are good in private sector chemistry employment right now, and at some point, the Fed will take away the punch bowl, and the layoffs will start. There is no good way to perform a layoff, but the remote mass layoff is a bad one, and I hope that it will not enter the chemical/pharmaceutical industry. 

Best wishes to the laid-off employees of Better, and best wishes to all of us. 

The Layoffs Will Be Projected

A grim tidbit from the New York Times about the work environment at Nike (amidst an article about sexual harassment by Julie Creswell, Kevin Draper and Rachel Abrams):

...The callousness that some women experienced extended at times to the work force at large, employees said. By the summer of 2016, for instance, Nike had decided to stop making golf balls, golf clubs and other equipment. Members of the division were summoned to a meeting inside the Clubhouse, the nickname for one of Nike’s buildings. 

There, horrified employees watched their names appear on a large screen, directing them to different rooms, where some would be laid off, according to one person who attended the meeting and two people who were told of it. The person said it left employees with the impression they were being let go via PowerPoint presentation....

(Emphasis mine) I suppose I understand the need for some level of efficiency in the case of layoffs of multiple people, and the logistical difficulty in separating large groups of people in a corporate headquarters. But this just seems rather cruel - surely envelopes (all the same size, all the same color) or some other paper-based mechanism would be less horrifying? 

Ask CJ: What should a new employee do about layoffs?

From the inbox, a question about what new graduates should do about layoffs, especially when they fall within a year or two of your hire date?

First, there's not much you can do about it - you can prepare your resume, you can work on your resume and your research summary. You can try to find people to act as your references, and start networking and brushing up your LinkedIn profile.

Other than that, I can't think of anything that you can do. The ax is gonna fall (or not), and there's not a lot that you can do to control that. Readers, any advice? I'd like to hear from people who have been through layoffs, especially those for whom the layoffs came early in their time at the relevant company. 

The cruel rituals of layoffs

In Science magazine, a sad essay about the perfunctory ways that layoffs are announced by Regina L. Ruben: 

...My introduction to this new type of tissue culture came after 19 years in a job I loved at a small pharmaceutical company (although in this first case no one actually offered me any tissues). Having been at the company for such a long time, I felt I had some job security. But I found out how wrong I was when the company was sold. Part of me understood that losing my job this way was “just business,” but I still felt a deep professional and personal loss. Nevertheless, I determinedly set out to find a new job, where I hoped I would have an equally long and satisfying tenure.  

I landed a job that I was excited about, a director position at a large pharmaceutical company. I genuinely enjoyed it and was looking forward to my future at the company. But, late one afternoon, about 2 years after I had started, the medical director and human resources (HR) representative escorted me to the HR office. The walk, in silence, felt funereal. When we arrived, the HR rep pushed a box of tissues across the desk in my direction. I knew this was going to be bad. She explained that my position was being eliminated in a reorganization....

There is a funny aspect to grief, emotion and the American workplace. The HR people don't really want you to use the tissues - they don't want you to start crying there, nor do they want you to scream aloud. Rather, the tissues (just like the whole [redacted] ritual) are saying "We are pretending to care about your feelings, even as we are cutting you off from your living and our community of fellow workers."

(NB I don't know what the right way to do layoffs is - I've heard lots of different stories and they have all seemed rather humiliating, some more than others.) 

"Private employer screws up, taxpayers foot the bill"

In an article titled "Facing skills gap, employers send workers to college" at Marketplace, a wonderful example of the sweet deal sufficiently large manufacturers can wring out of localities: 

This is Cambridge-Lee Industries, in Reading, Pennsylvania. For nearly 75 years, this plant on the Schuylkill River has produced copper tubing, mostly for plumbing, heating and refrigeration. 

[New vice president of human resource] Fischetti is facing a challenge a lot of manufacturers in the area have: an aging workforce. During the long manufacturing downturn in the 1990s and 2000s, the factories that survived had no trouble finding skilled workers, he said, and many didn’t invest in training younger ones. 

“Over time that has now hurt our organization, where we have a population that are very far along in their career that are really good,” he said, “but we have this population that we recruited but we never developed.” 

With the economy growing and about a quarter of the area’s manufacturing workforce set to retire in the next 10 years, employers like Cambridge-Lee now find themselves scrambling for skilled workers. 

Gee, seems like quite a problem - maybe you need to train some more people?

“We said, 'If you want to increase your skillset, pick a class, pay for it, go to it. If you pass, we’ll reimburse you,'” he said. “So I asked, 'How effective was that? How many people did that?' And the answer was none.” 

Why would they go to class in their spare time, he said, when they were working 60 or 70 hours a week? So Fischetti started a new program to send workers to Reading Area Community College. One day a week, they work a half shift and then spend the rest of the day in class, learning how to troubleshoot and repair mechanical breakdowns. The company pays them for their time and travel, and covers the tuition. 

That sounds great! I wonder who is paying for it.

The training isn’t cheap. It’ll cost about $62,000 for the first crop of 16 workers, but Cambridge-Lee will be reimbursed more than half of that with state and federal funds. The company is one of about 20 local employers receiving funding through the Berks County Workforce Development Board to train existing workers.

Something tells me that if Cambridge-Lee lays off workers or closes the plant, neither the state of Pennsylvania or the federal government will get reimbursed. 'Twas ever thus. 

Is there a medicinal chemist generation gap?

Via Twitter, Kyle Serikawa makes an interesting suggestion regarding biomolecules and small molecules (emphasis mine): 

...I think we should trade the 12-year exclusivity period from biologics to small molecule drugs. 

Why would this help? Because small molecule drugs are far easier to copy and far easier to produce than biologics. Extending the exclusivity period for small molecules at the expense of biologics might provide the incentive needed to get biopharma to ramp up their chemistry departments again. And in the long term, more small molecule drugs could not only address a lot of serious illnesses, but would also mean more drugs will eventually be made available at extremely cheap prices once they become generic, rather than the more modest 20-50% discount expected for biosimilars (the generic version of biologic) drugs.... 

...There are practical reasons to try to do this now. In the world of biopharma, small molecule approaches have been losing favor to biologics because biologics can command higher prices, are harder to copy, face less severe competition, and tend to have much longer product life cycles. Given the attractiveness of biologics from a business standpoint, the industry has curtailed its discovery efforts around small molecules. A generation of expertise in medicinal chemistry is growing older and the few scientist replacements aren’t being trained quickly enough in all that institutional knowledge. Persuading biopharma to go back to small molecules would help stem the loss of knowledge, which would increase the odds of creating great, eventually generic small molecule drugs.

Is it really true that "the few scientist replacements aren't being trained quickly enough"? Is there a demographic gap between soon-to-retire medicinal chemists and their younger replacements? I could believe such a thing, but I'd like to see some data.

Dr. Serikawa suggests that this would be a good long-term idea for the country; I'm inclined to agree (seeing as how the point is "employ more medicinal chemists".) Somehow I doubt biopharma management and their shareholders would agree, though.

Would a President Trump agree to this? It scratches his "drugs are too expensive" itch, and that might be worth something. I can't imagine that pharma-oriented senators would be excited, though. 

"We just cut what we're going to pay for in the future; we hope you don't mind."

From Delaware Online's Jeff Mordock, a depressing/important bit of news that all current DuPont employees will no longer have access to a company pension (as opposed to a 401k) nor health care nor dental care in their retirement dotage*, this whopper of a statement (emphasis mine): 

Ari Jacobs, a senior partner, global retirement solutions at Aon Hewitt, the company that manages DuPont's benefit programs, said moving from pension plans to defined contribution retirement benefits has become an industry-wide trend. 

"As workers became more transient in the 1980s, they appreciated the flexibility and access to account balances offered by defined contribution plans," Jacob said. "It's been a broad trend and companies have adjusted accordingly."

The amount of passive voice and assumptions in those two sentences is just stunning. I'd rather Mr. Jacobs have said "We think we can get away with this, and we don't feel guilty."

It's important to note that this particular policy change doesn't affect current DuPont retirees. 

Massachusetts wins, NJ/PA loses

You knew it, I knew it, the scientific community knew it (via the Boston Business Journal's Don Seiffert): 

Recent growth can largely be attributed to Shire plc (Nasdaq: SHPG), which last year added around 1,200 jobs in Massachusetts, establishing its U.S. headquarters in Lexington as well as expanding both research and manufacturing facilities. 

The manufacturing growth is a rare bright spot in an otherwise bleak picture of such jobs in the Bay State. The state has lost about 50,000 manufacturing jobs, or 17 percent, over the past 10 years, according to data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most of that decline came between 2008 and 2010, right after the worldwide recession hit. 

The increase in drug manufacturing in Massachusetts also comes despite a declining number of biomanufacturing jobs nationally. The United States lost more than 24,000 biopharma manufacturing jobs, an 8 percent decrease, in the past decade, according to MassBio’s report. Such states as New Jersey and Pennsylvania have been the hardest hit: Those two states alone lost nearly 23,000 drug manufacturing jobs since 2006. (emphasis CJ's)  

MassBio’s 2016 Industry Snapshot shows that the number of biotech research and development jobs grew by nearly 7,000 since 2007, and continues to make up about half the total 63,000 jobs attributed to the biotech industry.

 Well, it's great for Boston, I guess. 

Illinois economics professor finds lack of skills gap in manufacturing

From a University of Illinois press release (reprinted in the Rock River Times): 

Three-quarters of U.S. manufacturing plants show no sign of hiring difficulties for open positions, says new research from Andrew Weaver, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois. 

“Not a week goes by without someone declaring that a huge skills gap exists in the U.S. workforce,” he said. “A lot of ink has been spilled on this topic, but it’s frequently without evidence. The popular sentiment encourages people to think that employers have high skill demands, but U.S. workers just aren’t up to snuff, and that’s why manufacturing work is being outsourced overseas.” 

However, the results show that U.S. manufacturers are generally able to hire the skilled workers they seek. 

“We estimate an upper bound of job vacancies due to a potential skills gap of 16 to 25 percent of manufacturing establishments – a finding that sharply contrasts with other surveys that have reported figures of more than 60-70 percent,” Weaver said.

This survey was done of 2700 randomly selected manufacturers, yielding 903 responses. The survey was done in 2012 and 2013. From the actual paper ("Skill Demands and Mismatch in U.S. Manufacturing"), an excerpt of the concluding paragraph:

Overall, the results qualify our view of skill mismatch. Three-quarters of U.S. manufacturing plants show no sign of hiring difficulties. We estimate an upper bound on potential skill gaps of 16 to 25% of manufacturing establishments. This finding contrasts sharply with other, nonrandom surveys that have reported figures in excess of 60 or 70% (Deloitte 2011). 

Among the minority of manufacturing establishments that do show potential signs of hiring distress, the relationship between skill demands and hiring problems is not simple or clear-cut. While higher-level math demands are predictive of hiring difficulties, higher-level computer demands are not. Extended reading skills are unexpectedly prominent as predictors of long-term vacancies. Many other skill demands, including those for soft skills and problem-solving/initiative skills, are not associated
with hiring difficulties. 

When we examine the mechanisms that might contribute to hiring difficulties, a mixed picture emerges. High-tech plants, often thought to be hampered by inadequate workforce skills, are not associated with significantly greater hiring difficulties. Beyond higher-level math and reading demands, the two largest and most consistently robust predictors of hiring difficulties are demand for unique skills and membership in an industry cluster. Both of these factors raise questions about the relationship between a manufacturing establishment and other regional actors, including other firms, educational institutions, and training providers. The positive relationship between unique skill demands and long-term vacancies indicates that a number of establishments are unwilling or unable to solve their skill challenges through internal training, even for skills that are highly specific to a particular plant. 

I'm looking forward to reading this paper more thoroughly; I'm also looking forward to the deafening silence on it from all the local business journals and the Manufacturing Institute as they continue to complain about a skills gap, and how local community colleges need to help them out with it. 

"Dow Announces Actions To Pee On Your Leg, Tell You It's Raining"

From the inbox, a truly remarkable press release from Dow: 

Dow Announces Actions to Drive Economic Growth in Great Lakes Bay Region 

MIDLAND, Mich. – June 28, 2016 – The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE: DOW) announced today a series of actions it will take in collaboration with several state and local economic development and community organizations to spur local employment and bring additional economic development to the Great Lakes Bay Region (GLBR). These actions are intended to help offset the impacts from restructuring measures Dow will implement to enable faster and more efficient growth of Dow Corning’s Silicones business....

It's only down below that you get the gist of what they are saying (emphasis mine):

As a result of the Company’s global workforce reduction targets announced today, approximately 700 roles in the GLBR will be eliminated from the combined companies. These reductions will come from both Dow and Dow Corning, and are part of Dow’s overall cost reduction efforts related to the transaction. 

Notifications to affected employees in the Great Lakes Bay Region will start in the coming weeks, and will continue through the end of the third quarter of 2016. Roles will be eliminated on various timetables throughout the two-year integration period.

Here's press coverage from the Wall Street Journal and also C&EN's Alex Tullo. Here's a few other ways I could imagine rewording the headline for this press release:

1. Dow Announces Actions For Employees To Spend More Time With Their Children
2. Dow Announces Actions To Enrich Shareholders At All Costs
3. Dow Announces Actions For Scientists To Consider Bold New Alternative Careers
4. Dow Announces Actions To Help Employees Work For Themselves, Yay! 
5. Dow Announces Actions To Create Hundreds More Independent Chemicals Consultants
6. Dow Announces Actions To Reinvigorate Bored Michigan Area Unemployment Offices

Your turn! 

Can we just say for a moment how offensive it is that the press release can't even say "we're laying off 700 employees" or "we're firing 700 people", but "700 roles"? Corporate America has refined the euphemism to a Michelangelo-like artform. 

Weekend longreads: bosses have no power over phase changes

I have expressed my horror and fascination with the Takata airbag recall, and how it is really deeply about the chemistry of phases of ammonium nitrate (and water content, apparently.) A compelling long article at Bloomberg Businessweek by Susan Berfield, Craig Trudell, Margaret Cronin Fisk and Jeff Plungis is worth your time: 

Ammonium nitrate was about one-tenth the price of tetrazole, according to Upham, who also reviewed industry patents. But ammonium nitrate had a critical flaw that he says led other air bag makers to give up on it: Ammonium nitrate has five phases of varying density that make it hard to keep stable over time. A propellant made with ammonium nitrate would swell and shrink with temperature changes, and eventually the tablet would break down into powder. Water and humidity would speed the process. Powder burns more quickly than a tablet, so an air bag whose propellant had crumbled would be likely to deploy too aggressively. The controlled explosion would be just an explosion. “Everybody went down a certain road, and only Takata went down another road,” says Jochen Siebert, who’s followed the air bag industry since the 1990s and is now managing director of JSC Automotive Consulting. “If you read the conference papers from back then, you can actually see that people said, ‘No, you shouldn’t. It’s dangerous.’ ” 

When Lillie and other Moses Lake engineers met with their ASL colleagues in December 1998 to review a new design using ammonium nitrate, Lillie says they were told the phase stability problem had been solved. He rejected the design nonetheless. ASL wasn’t able to provide documented evidence of the safety of its product, he said in a January 2016 deposition, taken as part of a personal injury suit against Takata and Honda. “Never any evidence, never any test results, never any test reports, nothing to substantiate they had overcome the phase stability problem,” Lillie testified.

Sadly, the bosses at Takata ignored the bad news, and pushed forward. I hope to never be in the situation at the Takata engineers found themselves in, and if I do, I hope I have the courage to speak out.  

A good quote about medicinal chemistry

From J. Jean Cui, a co-inventor of Xalkori in an interview in an Elsevier R&D publication: 

...What is the role of the medicinal chemist in the development of precision medicine and how can younger generations prepare to make contributions in this area of research and development? 

[snip] 

...The adjective “medicinal” already alludes to the complexity of the work and, consequently, the demands on a medicinal chemist. He or she must understand biology, must be a data scientist, must be familiar with the full spectrum of assays and analyses that inform his or her design work. A medicinal chemist must remain up to date on developments, always look for new potential targets, new applications for a candidate drug and new ways of designing molecules to meet often contradictory requirements.  

Looking into the future, as more discovery and optimization work is conducted at smaller biotech companies, the medicinal chemist will also be expected to control development costs, to seek new resources, and to interact collaboratively with a growing number of stakeholders that can inform his or her work. Though perhaps a daunting prospect, this increased responsibility will be accompanied by a greater and more direct impact of his or her work on the well-being of patients. 

For a future career in medicinal chemistry, nothing can replace knowledge acquired through experience. Academic training is only the beginning of the medicinal chemist’s preparation. He or she must continue to learn from the work of designing and optimizing a compound, from the often overwhelming information that he or she must integrate, and from the people with whom he or she interacts. Important to remember is that this chosen profession is at times very frustrating, but also has moments where you advance in solving a problem and that satisfaction is unmatchable. Be always flexible and creative, and strive to do something different. 

One thing that Dr. Cui mentions here is the centrality of the medicinal chemist in a drug discovery project. Derek Lowe mentions this every once in a while when he says that "You are in real trouble if someone knows more about your project than you do." I think about that a lot.

[I do also have to note (whenever anyone talks about this, as Dr. Cui does here) that as medicinal chemistry moves to smaller companies, this comes with lower wages and benefits (combined the lottery ticket of an eventual buyout.)] 

"Graduating"

A sharp, funny critique of Boston software startup culture by a former Newsweek magazine writer named Dan Lyons at Fortune.com. This section about layoffs was really funny, I thought:

Dharmesh’s culture code incorporates elements of HubSpeak. For example, it instructs that when someone quits or gets fired, the event will be referred to as “graduation.” In my first month at HubSpot I’ve witnessed several graduations, just in the marketing department. We’ll get an email from Cranium saying, “Team, just letting you know that Derek has graduated from HubSpot, and we’re excited to see how he uses his superpowers in his next big adventure!” Only then do you notice that Derek is gone, that his desk has been cleared out. Somehow Derek’s boss will have arranged his disappearance without anyone knowing about it. People just go up in smoke, like Spinal Tap drummers. 

Nobody ever talks about the people who graduate, and nobody ever mentions how weird it is to call it “graduation.” For that matter I never hear anyone laugh about HEART or make jokes about the culture code. Everyone acts as if all of these things are perfectly normal.

I have heard of people who have left a company as "alumni", but this is taking it a step further.

Every company has its jargon, but I think folks should be cautious when an organization's internal language tends to obscure unpleasant things. I've never heard any euphemisms during an interview, but if I did, it would instantly put me on guard.

Readers, what's your favorite corporate euphemism?

I hate this game

The combined management of the DowDuPont merger has forced Iowa, Indiana and Delaware to compete against one another to preserve the agricultural chemistry jobs they have. Here's a comparison of the different incentives offered by the states to DowDuPont from the Des Moines Register's Christopher Doering and Kevin Hardy: 

Delaware: Offered a strategic fund grant worth $9.6 million over five years. Part of that amount includes $3.6 million the company will receive for the creation of 400 jobs. Other strategic fund grants were awarded in the form of matching up to 3 percent of the company’s capital expenditures up to $6 million, which would require the company to spend at least $200 million in the state over a five-year period to receive the full amount. 

The new ag company will be headquartered in Wilmington, currently the home of DuPont. 

Indiana: Officials offered no retention incentives up front, instead focusing on performance-based incentives the company could be eligible for if they create jobs going forward. 

Indianapolis will become a "global business center" for the new company though the company has not said what effect the change will have on the 1,400 employees at the existing Dow AgroSciences, which specializes in crop protection and seed products.  

Iowa: Offered $17,238,000 in state, city and county incentives to the company. Officials say the incentives assure that the company will more or less maintain current staffing levels of about 2,600 in Johnston. But much of the state incentives are tied to the 250 to 500 research and development jobs the company expects to retain. 

Johnston will also become a "global business center," keeping research and development, sales and marketing teams, and business support functions. 

I am amused to read that the director of the Iowa Economic Development Commission considered their incentives "extremely modest."

(I sure as hell hope there was some level of collusion between Iowa, Indiana and Delaware to cap the level of incentives they were willing to offer.)

When I was younger, I used to think the use of public funds to attract corporate investment (and jobs) made a lot of sense. Over the past fifteen years or so, I've changed my mind. It seems that the balance has shifted (as has so many things) in favor of corporations, and playing American locality against American locality on who is more willing to drop their property taxes just doesn't seem wise anymore. I am not exactly a "there oughta be a law" type, but it'd be pretty wonderful if there was a federal law that discouraged this sort of race to the bottom. 

Business guy to former coworkers: I ain't running a charity here - as we have already demonstrated

Kind of an unfortunate angle, I feel
Credit: DelawareOnline
(JENNIFER CORBETT/THE NEWS JOURNAL)

Via DelawareOnline, a recent entrepreneurial event filled with laid-off DuPont employees (article by Scott Goss) was graced with a current DuPont employee: 

Bill Provine, DuPont’s director of science and engineering global operations, provided the group with additional information on how they can apply for permission to access the company’s intellectual property for their commercial ventures. 

DuPont on Friday issued a memo to current and former employees with an email address where they can submit nonconfidential requests related to patent use and product data.
“Looking at our legacy in Delaware, we’re obviously very proud of what we’ve done here and proud of what you’ve done with us,” he said. “We want to be able to support you as you move to those small business enterprises.” 

Any deal of DuPont intellectual property is expected to take the form of licensing or some other arrangement that would effectively turn its former workers into customers. 

“At the end of the day, it’s got to be a mutually beneficial outcome,” Provine said. “Convince us that you’re credible, serious and want to do something.”

He indicated DuPont would not be interested in proposals that seek to resell intellectual property. 

“What we don’t want is for this to be a fishing expedition,” he said. “What we’re trying to enable here is people who have worked on something or are associated with something and want to spin it out into an enterprise.”

There was a response from one of the laid-off technical folks:

Michael Brown, who spent 35 years working in DuPont’s various polymer divisions before being laid off in December, is interested in starting a company based on intellectual property from his former employers. Like many ex-DuPonters who attended Tuesday’s seminar, he declined to discuss his details of his future venture to avoid attracting potential competitors, including former co-workers. 

But Brown did said he wasn’t thrilled by what Provine had to offer. “I’ve got a half dozen patents with DuPont,” he said. “And what I heard here today was the concept of selling the technology to us is not their intent.” 

Brown, meanwhile, said the rest of the program was useful for guiding him to become entrepreneur.  

“I’ll definitely attend a few more of these,” he said. “I’ve always been interested in starting a business of my own. Now have the severance package and lots of time on my hands."

I suppose that I should be somewhat grateful to DuPont that they are offering this opportunity to their former employees, but like Mr. Brown, I'm somewhat skeptical of it all.

Best wishes to the former DuPonters - and to all of us.  

I wonder if layoffs inspire disloyalty...

In the midst of an absolutely phenomenal read by Del Quentin Wilber in Bloomberg Businessweek about a plot to steal DuPont titanium dioxide processes by a Taiwanese businessman, Walter Liew, (in association with a Chinese chemical firm), something that sounds pretty darn familiar...:

They found Tim Spitler, a 49-year-old former DuPont engineer living in Reno, Nev...  

According to the FBI documents, the relationship between Liew and Spitler lasted for years. Liew flattered Spitler, who was bitter about DuPont’s business strategies and its decision in the ’90s to fire thousands of employees. Spitler also admitted to agents that he felt insecure about not having attended a top university (he got a degree from Tri-State University in Angola, Ind.) and was constantly worried about losing his job. Liew made Spitler feel valued and understood. He sent him a gift basket every Christmas, the FBI reports show, and helped pay for the funeral of Spitler’s daughter, who’d committed suicide in 2006. When Spitler would call to thank Liew for his generosity, the businessman would steer the conversation to business and titanium dioxide. 

Spitler provided Liew with information about DuPont’s processes—even sketches of key components—and allowed him to root through boxes in his house and take whatever records he found. Spitler told federal agents that Liew paid him $15,000 for DuPont-related documents, including a blueprint to a plant in Delaware. The schematics provided details of flow rates, pipeline sizes, temperatures, and chemical compositions. As such, it was considered one of DuPont’s most critical trade secrets, U.S. law enforcement officials contend, and Liew used the documents to prove his bona fides to Chinese executives.

Spitler killed himself after Walter Liew was arrested in 2012.

It seems apparent to me that DuPont's reliance on the law to keep their current and former employees from leaking valuable company secrets was not very effective in the face of someone who was a seemingly talented intelligence officer.*

I wonder if a kindler, gentler approach to layoffs may have inspired a little more fidelity. Maybe some day, some company will run that experiment - I am not holding my breath.

*In case anyone is keeping score, it's apparent that of Money, Ideology, Compromise and Ego, it was a combination of Money, Ideology and Ego...

Raise wages? Are you nuts?!?!

Driving into work the other day, I was amused to listen to a story on Marketplace (the public radio business show) where the reporter was marveling at the 3% unemployment rate in Iowa.* I was also amused to hear the "s-word" about the difficulty in finding workers in The Hawkeye State:

...Swenson said a worker shortage is part of the problem. It’s hard to get people to move to Iowa or keep skilled workers from heading to states with higher wage opportunities. The shortage of workers makes attracting new businesses tougher, too. 

Swenson said one would expect employers to start bidding up pay to compete more aggressively. He said average earnings are about 80 percent of the national average, and many rural Iowans work more than one job. 

But Wells Fargo economist Michael Swanson said there are risks to recruiting with higher pay.  

“If I start raising rates to attract new employees, I have to raise wages for everyone in my organization,” he said.

First, I should say this is one of those things that we who criticize employers for low wages don't often take into account - it's not just the latest worker's pay, it's also everyone else's pay that needs to be calibrated to the new higher amount. That said, I don't think anyone has to worry that managers are losing sleep over how to make their new higher payroll:

Kemin Industries, an agricultural and biotech company based in Des Moines, isn’t raising wages much to deal with its worker shortage. Instead, Amanda Formaro, an HR director, said the company has stepped up recruiting and is looking at ways to help low-skilled workers get training.

Well, it's a good thing they've found a solution. Heaven forfend they'd have to raise rates significantly.

*Truly, that is a remarkably low rate for U3 unemployment. Hard to say what the broader U6 measurement might be.

A chemist speaks out on the DuPont PFOA story

On the other hand, this is probably the wrong
approach. Credit: NYTM

There have been two stunning articles about the history of PFOA pollution in Parkersburg, West Virginia, one from the Huffington Post, another from the New York Times Magazine. Here's a response to the NYTM story from a chemist:

As a chemist and a native Delawarean, I am inspired by the discoveries of the DuPont Experimental Station — birthplace of nylon, neoprene, Kevlar and Tyvek, all a 15-minute walk from my high school. 

Chemistry has revolutionized our lives through drugs to cure our illnesses, batteries to power our smartphones, fertilizers to grow our food and plastics to be formed by our imaginations. Yet with discovery can come unforeseen consequences: thalidomide, algal blooms, DDT, endocrine disruption and ozone depletion. 

Timely safety testing, proper handling and transparency must accompany chemical innovation. Only then can we live up to DuPont’s old slogan: ‘‘Better things for better living through chemistry.’’ Andrew L. Chang, Palo Alto, Calif.

I have more thoughts on the PFOA story, but I haven't quite put them together yet. That said, I find it difficult to disagree with Dr. Chang. Personally speaking, it's very difficult for me to be a chemist and not feel at least partially affected? responsible? tainted? by DuPont's actions. Readers, have you read the articles? Your thoughts? 

C&EN readers respond to DowDuPont

In the letters to the editor, many comments about Dow/DuPont. Here are a few of them: 

...The third critical decision that, in my opinion, cost us dearly was the decision to sell our key polymers and fibers businesses, enormous cash generators (as the purchaser Koch Industries is now experiencing), before we had developed the cash generation strength elsewhere. 

Perhaps, I am just an old man bemoaning a changing world, but there is no doubt that DuPont and its research organizations will no longer have the power and influence within the broader chemistry community that they once did. I believe this will significantly reduce opportunities for chemistry and chemical engineering professionals, reduce the science and technology capability of our nation, and diminish the world in general. 

I had a wonderful career with DuPont and will be forever grateful for the experience of working with many wonderful chemists, engineers, and mentors. Despite my misgivings on the company’s current course, I, with all my heart, wish DowDuPont well and hope for the best for my many friends and associates as the merger proceeds. 

Lou Glasgow
West Chester, Pa. 

I am a retired industrial analytical chemist. I am old enough to know that “savings and synergies” are code words meaning baloney. Any savings in the Dow Chemical-DuPont merger (C&EN, Dec. 21, 2015, page 7) will come by reduction in older employees in the form of some type of retirement incentives. The executives, from both companies, who retire will get massive golden parachutes. The wise guys who came up with the whole scheme will get massive bonuses to pay for their yachts as they sail off into the sunset laughing all the way. 

Frank C. DiLego,
via C&EN’s website http://cenm.ag/dowdupontmerge 

As a former Dow Chemical employee, I watched and experienced the lack of understanding of scientific management slowly erode the infrastructure that had built Dow into a wonderful and strong company. Penny-wise, pound-foolish, short-term strategies to bolster stock prices and company margins resulted in poorly equipped laboratories and depleted ranks of scientific staff that didn’t have the critical mass to achieve innovation. 

The glorious, storied companies of Dow and DuPont have been plundered mercilessly and will now wither and die, resulting in a trio of companies no better fit to survive in the long run than the current shells. Shame on C&EN for celebrating one of the saddest events in industrial chemical history. 

Jeffrey M. Marra,
via C&EN’s website http://cenm.ag/companyof2015 

DuPont’s chief science and technology officer, Doug Muzyka, uses meaningless jargon to cover the demise of R&D at his company (C&EN, Jan. 11, page 5). But we need to recognize that the days of corporate research laboratories are over. 

When I was in graduate school, most large corporations had substantial R&D labs that did high-quality science, but shuttering DuPont Central Research & Development puts one more nail in the coffin of corporate R&D. Now even the Department of Energy’s national laboratories merely have the patina of science rather than real, in-depth science. What good is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education if there are no decent jobs at the end? 

Jeffrey Hylden,
via C&EN’s website http://cenm.ag/dupontrndchief

I like the cut of Jeffrey Hylden's jib. Best wishes to the current and former employees of Dow, DuPont and DowDuPont, and to all of us.

P.S. Does anyone know what the fate of Dow/DuPont pensions will be? Are those moneys held separately? What is the health of the pension fund?

Alex Tullo's long article about the DuPont layoffs

It's a longer article, but pretty devastating: 

Less than a week after DuPont announced its merger with Dow Chemical on Dec. 11, DuPont managers told scientists at DuPont Central Research & Development in Wilmington, Del., to halt all laboratory work. The researchers were to label unmarked samples and leave everything else in place. Severe and unprecedented cuts, the researchers were warned, were coming. 

Between Christmas and New Year’s Day, employees received Microsoft Outlook invitations for 10-minute meetings with their supervisors. On Jan. 4, they took their turns learning if they would be let go. Cardboard file boxes were left in the lobbies at DuPont’s Experimental Station for workers to carry out their personal effects. Delaware state troopers were on-site in case of incident. 

“It was one by one all day long,” a former researcher who asked not to be named tells C&EN. “And it was one of the most miserable days I ever had.” 

There's more; it doesn't get much better.

(I've never quite understood the corporate American need for security during layoffs - I don't think there's been a track record of violence...)

(Also, don't miss this simple cartoon of how one person sees the DuPont layoffs. A generalization, but only a little.)