Why do you work where you do?
Living in Alberta whose main economy is based on the oil patch, I assumed I would work for an oil company specializing in welding processes. When I graduated in 1981 there was not a job to be found for anyone. One day I was riding the elevator with one of my professors and he said to me, “how would you like to live in Bassano?”. I had no idea where Bassano was, and I asked him what country it was in?
He had recently spoken with someone from Global Thermoelectric. The thermoelectric generator used on the Apollo missions was called the SNAP-27 and it was designed and fabricated by the 3M company. This is a picture of Apollo 12 astronaut Alan L. Bean removing the SNAP-27 fuel-cask assembly from the Lunar Module. The SNAP-27 converter is shown in front of Bean ready to receive the fuel-cask assembly.
3M and several other companies got into thermoelectrics in a big way when everyone thought that they would eventually compete with the internal combustion engine as a source of power. When that never happened, 3M decided to abandon the technology, but they had developed a very reliable thermoelectric generator that was fueled by propane and used where reliable power was essential such as microwave repeaters in remote locations and cathodic protection on pipelines.
Several of the employees in the thermoelectric group decided to start a company to continue making and selling this generator.
Microwave repeaters, like this one, are often inaccessible during the winter and they need a power source that can go for months with no maintenance. A large tank of propane is flown in on a helicopter and a thermoelectric generator can power the repeater and heat the batteries for years with no maintenance.
The new company was called Global Thermoelectric, and they were located in Bassano because Alberta was their biggest customer, a big rancher in the area chose to invest in them and the Alberta government offered incentives to businesses who set up in rural area’s. I felt strongly inspired to meet with Global and while they weren’t hiring, they met with me and we had a great discussion.
On that same trip we attended the temple in Cardston. During that session I saw a small house in a vision. The house was under a huge tree. It was summertime and the shade of that tree made this house look extremely cozy. I knew that this house was in Rosemary, and I knew that we would start our family in this house.
If not for this vision I would have moved on and given up on Global because they weren’t hiring, but a few weeks later I felt inspired to meet with them again. In this discussion we talked about the possibility of hiring me. After a few more visits I was eventually hired on and given the job of learning about thermoelectrics. They had a room full of files from 3M but nobody knew anything about thermoelectrics. I soon became the world authority on PbTe thermoelectric alloys, and my career had begun.
It was a few years later that we moved from Bassano to Rosemary and bought a perfect starter home that was being foreclosed on by the bank. We offered the bank $23k and we were the proud owners of a new home. One day I was working in the backyard, and I looked up at the house and realized that it was the house I’d seen in my vision. I hadn’t recognized it from the front because it had a small deck but from the back it was almost identical to a drawing I’d made in my journal. I’ll look for that journal and see if I can include the drawing here.
About ten years later I was attending a Thermoelectric Conference in Wales. I was having a discussion with Jack Bass, and I finally told him that he needed to come work at Global. He responded that, no, I needed to go work at Hi-Z. We both laughed and moved on, but I thought about that discussion constantly.
I finally decided to pray about whether I should move my young family 1,500 miles away and to a completely different country. My mind was in such a turmoil that I could never get a clear answer but after a week of this I finally realized that the answer I was seeking was so big that I needed to simplify my question.
I finally prayed and asked my Lord if I should call Hi-Z and open a discussion. This time my answer was a very clear, “yes”, call Hi-Z. The discussions finally led to a job offer and I started work at Hi-Z in June of 1992. My family followed on the fourth of July.
Come 1998 I was struggling. I loved working at Hi-Z, I loved the people, I loved the work, but I couldn’t survive on the pay I was receiving. I asked Norb for a raise, but he told me that I was being paid the “going rate”. At the time I was in a graduate program at UCSD and one of my classmates told me that Qualcomm was hiring and suggested that I apply there. I did and was promptly hired on the spot. When I gave my notice, Norb offered to match my pay but it had been my observations that once you give notice you really can’t go back. You will resent them for not giving you the raise you asked for and they will resent you for threatening to leave.
At the time I was being paid about $45k at Hi-Z and I started at Qualcomm at about $65 and within two years I was being paid $100k. The job wasn’t nearly as much fun, but our lifestyles changed dramatically.
Just to complete the answer to the question, in 2002 Qualcomm was sold to Kyocera. My job and title stayed the same and I continued in the same office, but I now worked for a different company until in 2009 Kyocera moved the bulk of their operations back to Japan and laid off nearly all their American employees. Since they had a battery team in Japan, I was no longer needed. I went back to Hi-Z for more than double what they were paying me before.
A few years after I started at Hi-Z, Norb, the president died and his daughter, Jill, took over. While Jill meant well, she was an accountant and the company continued to go downhill. By 2019 I had been promoted to Vice President but was now down to working three days a week and my pay had been cut drastically. I decided I didn’t want to go down with the ship, so I started my own company. I offered to make Hi-Z a partner in the company, her response was to change all the locks on the doors and she told me to work from home. That worked great for me because I was able to work three days a week for Hi-Z and two days a week for Vulcan Energy. I did that until 2021 when I found other sources of money at which point, I cut all ties with Hi-Z and directed all my efforts towards Vulcan.
Living in Alberta whose main economy is based on the oil patch, I assumed I would work for an oil company specializing in welding processes. When I graduated in 1981 there was not a job to be found for anyone. One day I was riding the elevator with one of my professors and he said to me, “how would you like to live in Bassano?”. I had no idea where Bassano was, and I asked him what country it was in?
He had recently spoken with someone from Global Thermoelectric. The thermoelectric generator used on the Apollo missions was called the SNAP-27 and it was designed and fabricated by the 3M company. This is a picture of Apollo 12 astronaut Alan L. Bean removing the SNAP-27 fuel-cask assembly from the Lunar Module. The SNAP-27 converter is shown in front of Bean ready to receive the fuel-cask assembly.
Microwave repeaters, like this one, are often inaccessible during the winter and they need a power source that can go for months with no maintenance. A large tank of propane is flown in on a helicopter and a thermoelectric generator can power the repeater and heat the batteries for years with no maintenance.
On that same trip we attended the temple in Cardston. During that session I saw a small house in a vision. The house was under a huge tree. It was summertime and the shade of that tree made this house look extremely cozy. I knew that this house was in Rosemary, and I knew that we would start our family in this house.
If not for this vision I would have moved on and given up on Global because they weren’t hiring, but a few weeks later I felt inspired to meet with them again. In this discussion we talked about the possibility of hiring me. After a few more visits I was eventually hired on and given the job of learning about thermoelectrics. They had a room full of files from 3M but nobody knew anything about thermoelectrics. I soon became the world authority on PbTe thermoelectric alloys, and my career had begun.
It was a few years later that we moved from Bassano to Rosemary and bought a perfect starter home that was being foreclosed on by the bank. We offered the bank $23k and we were the proud owners of a new home. One day I was working in the backyard, and I looked up at the house and realized that it was the house I’d seen in my vision. I hadn’t recognized it from the front because it had a small deck but from the back it was almost identical to a drawing I’d made in my journal. I’ll look for that journal and see if I can include the drawing here.
About ten years later I was attending a Thermoelectric Conference in Wales. I was having a discussion with Jack Bass, and I finally told him that he needed to come work at Global. He responded that, no, I needed to go work at Hi-Z. We both laughed and moved on, but I thought about that discussion constantly.
I finally decided to pray about whether I should move my young family 1,500 miles away and to a completely different country. My mind was in such a turmoil that I could never get a clear answer but after a week of this I finally realized that the answer I was seeking was so big that I needed to simplify my question.
I finally prayed and asked my Lord if I should call Hi-Z and open a discussion. This time my answer was a very clear, “yes”, call Hi-Z. The discussions finally led to a job offer and I started work at Hi-Z in June of 1992. My family followed on the fourth of July.
At the time I was being paid about $45k at Hi-Z and I started at Qualcomm at about $65 and within two years I was being paid $100k. The job wasn’t nearly as much fun, but our lifestyles changed dramatically.
A few years after I started at Hi-Z, Norb, the president died and his daughter, Jill, took over. While Jill meant well, she was an accountant and the company continued to go downhill. By 2019 I had been promoted to Vice President but was now down to working three days a week and my pay had been cut drastically. I decided I didn’t want to go down with the ship, so I started my own company. I offered to make Hi-Z a partner in the company, her response was to change all the locks on the doors and she told me to work from home. That worked great for me because I was able to work three days a week for Hi-Z and two days a week for Vulcan Energy. I did that until 2021 when I found other sources of money at which point, I cut all ties with Hi-Z and directed all my efforts towards Vulcan.
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A high proportion of engineers, scientists and mathematicians have aspergers syndrome. It appears that people with aspergers tend to gravitate to careers that are strong in math and science and don't require strong social skills. New evidence suggests (not proves) that the rapid rise in children with aspergers may result in the rapid rise in women entering the work force and in particular careers in math and science. Since people tend to date other people with characteristics similar to their own the increased number of women in careers strong in math and science may have resulted in more couples having children with a double dose of the genes that make them weak in social skills. According to some researchers, aspergers is at least partially a result of genetics.
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