MegaBux Inc. bought our small ag-biotech firm in 2018. I had developed a high throughput product screening system for natural products against a bunch of animal diseases. The program worked and we identified a bunch of candidates (I also developed the list of things to screen) for botanical/natural solutions to animal diseases. I should have guessed that I was on the chopping block when after finding out some of the things we screened actually worked, I got replaced as PI on the project by someone else much younger. A couple months into 2020 all the folks at the R&D center (including me) got laid off. They did pay severance to us- and mine took me out to October of that year due to my longevity with the firm that was purchased. A couple months after that, a bunch of the junior staff (who were well trained in my methods) got hired back. I was almost 69 at the time, so it was probably time to retire anyway. I was very lucky. This is so familiar! At least I made my stack and can live comfortably on my SS and pensions.
high-tech solution for measuring and promoting old tech efficacy? investors looking at this “How is this supposed to make us more profitable as a company?” CTO in response “…We could sell the information to other companies… or even trade it with third parties like individuals, or even organs of government…”. Investors: “Interesting! We would need to be careful with how we would go about doing that, no?” CTO: “sigh Time to reorganize the department again. and this time I must be sure to purge the lead designer on the software, so they don’t form any attachments to the use cases of the sale or propriety of the resultant information from the project”
MegaBux Inc. bought our small ag-biotech firm in 2018. I had developed a high throughput product screening system for natural products against a bunch of animal diseases. The program worked and we identified a bunch of candidates (I also developed the list of things to screen) for botanical/natural solutions to animal diseases. I should have guessed that I was on the chopping block when after finding out some of the things we screened actually worked, I got replaced as PI on the project by someone else much younger. A couple months into 2020 all the folks at the R&D center (including me) got laid off. They did pay severance to us- and mine took me out to October of that year due to my longevity with the firm that was purchased. A couple months after that, a bunch of the junior staff (who were well trained in my methods) got hired back. I was almost 69 at the time, so it was probably time to retire anyway. I was very lucky. This is so familiar! At least I made my stack and can live comfortably on my SS and pensions.
high-tech solution for measuring and promoting old tech efficacy? investors looking at this “How is this supposed to make us more profitable as a company?” CTO in response “…We could sell the information to other companies… or even trade it with third parties like individuals, or even organs of government…”. Investors: “Interesting! We would need to be careful with how we would go about doing that, no?” CTO: “sigh Time to reorganize the department again. and this time I must be sure to purge the lead designer on the software, so they don’t form any attachments to the use cases of the sale or propriety of the resultant information from the project”