Development of Computer Technology 133 



added on to it several times since. We've added on to the computer area about 

 three times, and we've got a request in now to add some more on the back. We 

 were told we couldn't build on, but we kept doing it. I think it's like when you 

 build a house. If you can't afford to landscape itcompletely, you have to plan. If 

 you go ahead and landscape it completely and have to keep digging stuff up 

 and moving it around, then that's a problem. But we had a plan, and every time 

 we incremented, it fitted into the overall picture. That's the reason we were 

 successful in doing it. 



What have been some of the significant management problems you have faced, and how 

 have you dealt with them? For example, training programs, personnel acquisition, etc. 



There were several. I guess the first one was when we moved the people down 

 here from Harvard. They were on the Harvard payroll. It was a contract with 

 the Navy, so they weren't civil servants. Once they moved here, they got 

 switched over to civil service. In the civil service standards, there wasn't 

 anything about computer work at that time. What they tried to do was put the 

 people into positions that they thought were similar, and they called them 

 laboratory technicians. The thing that bothered us and the people themselves 

 was that they'd only been working for the government a few months. If there 

 was a reduction in force, they'd have to compete with lab technicians in shops 

 somewhere else. If they got bumped out, we'd end up with old lab technicians 

 who didn't know anything about computers. So we made an effort — I did 

 personally and several people helped me — to try and get the Civil Service 

 Commission to establish a job series for computer engineers and computer 

 technicians. That took a long time, and we hit some bumpy roads along the way. 

 In fact, one time they actually ordered us to change all the computer people 

 over to per diem. I called the senior civilian in the Bureau of Ordnance, Mr. 

 Werthheimer, and told him it was going to cause a lot of problems if they did 

 that, and he contacted the AWCO, which was the Area Wage and Classification 

 Office promoting the change, and got it stopped. That was a significant man- 

 agement problem we finally solved, but it took an awful lot of time, and there 

 were many people who weren't willing to listen. 



I think the thing that helped eventually was that when everybody started 

 using computers, then there was a lot of pressure in Washington to do some- 

 thing about the job standards. As long as we were the only ones complaining, 

 they didn't pay much attention. In fact, some of the personnel people in the 

 Navy, the old-line personnel people, have a "shipyard attitude." I've always felt 

 the titles they used on the ungraded employees were pretty bad, like 

 leadingman, snapper, and so forth. I asked one of the old Navy personnel men 

 one time, "How would you like to see your kid on television and have somebody 

 ask him what his dad did, and he would say, 'He's a snapper'?" That really made 



