AnR Pondering

First, I must admit that my RnD progress in corporate life is not nearly as good as in my previous academic life. So, now this note is basically how I leverage the flexibility in academia to achieve my result which allow me to work with blazing speed and how it compare with current situation.

Note: its clearly not an apple-to-apple fair comparison between academic research and corporate research, Where, academic research only focus on the functional performance requirement while Corporate research include all the compliance requirement (functional, mechanical, safety, EMI). Anyway the functional requirement is still largely the same and will be the main focus on this comparison.

1. Within academia, it was complete freedom for me where I can choose whatever method and design steps as I see fit. I was lucky to be working at a lab where the advisor can adapt to different working style of each PhD students. Meanwhile, in company there is always this hierarchy and as a staff we must follow the top-down directive that often have poor research management methodology.

2. Actually in corporate research there are two competing RnD framework:

   • V-model often used in automotive product development.

   • Technology readiness levels -model from 0 to 9 that was introduced by NASA.

Anyway,  unless you are working within a proper research team that focus on developing a design from zero these two models only ended up as theory with little to no practical consideration in the actual working method.

As the title on this article, the 

1. Introduction
   Its a term that I recently learned from ChatGPT where it is used as catch all term to explain many characteristics of toxic leadership. This behavior has cause dysfunctional organization, wasted resource, and tremendous stress to the members.

2. Leadership Behaviors and Patterns

   • Judgment Bias and Authoritative Design Interference:  the manager displays quick, uninformed judgment on team members’ design work. Without fully understanding the underlying logic, he provides a barrage of dictatorial misguided directions that must be followed. These forced interventions often transform sound designs into failed ones, as team members must comply with directives that contradict engineering fundamentals.

   • Micromanagement and Selective Poorly Prioritization Attention: The manager misunderstood leadership as micromanagement by dictating every design decision by member. However, the attention is only focused on the minor design aspect while completely ignoring all the major design due to poor knowledge base.

   • Dismissal of Iterative Development: Insisting an RnD as a complete design to be perfected in one step instead of iterative development.

   • Requirement overpiling / Fear of Appearing Incomplete: Consistently combines all perceived positive features from competitors’ products, instead of focusing on minimum viable product for iterative development

   • Impulsive Decision-Making: Frequent sudden design changes are imposed without adequate analysis, often resulting in failure. Where the manager fixates on imagined advantages and ignores downstream consequences.

   • Communication Style: One way authoritative communication with suggestions from team members are often met with dismissive comments or outright rejection, reducing open communication and collaborative problem solving. 

3. Impact on Team and Work Environment

   • Learned Helplessness: Team members stopped challenging ideas after repeated dismissal and fruitless debates, conserving energy instead of engaging critically.

   • Erosion of Morale and Creativity: Constant chaotic directives, unrealistic expectations, and public dismissal of input have led to reduced innovation, motivation, and engagement.

   • Compounding Technical Debt: Each impulsive change introduced ripple effects across interconnected systems, creating additional rework and inefficiency.

   • Stress and Burnout: Prolonged exposure to this management style has led to mental fatigue, disengagement, and a decision to resign to preserve professional integrity and personal well-being. 

4. Organizational Consequences

   • Low Output Despite High Activity: Massive numbers of projects were initiated within short few years period, all of which were vague, misaligned, or unrealistic and ended up with 100% projects closure.

   • Misalignment with R&D Goals: The internal R&D division was treated as a vehicle for optics rather than genuine exploration or iterative learning.

   • Inefficient Use of Talent: Highly skilled team members were underutilized, with their expertise wasted on impractical directives and chaotic priorities.

5. Lessons Learned and Takeaways

   • Recognition of Toxic Management Patterns: Identifying traits such as ego-driven decisions, impulsive changes, and dismissive communication helps in recognizing similar future risks.

   • Limits of Influence in Dysfunctional Environments: Even highly reasoned, professional suggestions may be ineffective in rigid, ego-driven structures.

   • Importance of Culture Fit: Productive, innovative work requires alignment between leadership style, team autonomy, and respect for technical expertise.

   • Personal Strategy: Protect mental space, establish professional boundaries, and seek environments where contributions are valued, iterative learning is supported, and recognition is tied to impact.

   • Channeling Experience Positively: Experiences of frustration, burnout, and learned helplessness provide clarity on the type of work environment that supports growth and meaningful contribution.

Conclusion

This analysis presents a comprehensive view of a manager whose behavior — including impulsive design changes, requirement overload, micromanagement, dismissal of team input, and focus on imagined advantages — has created a toxic R&D environment. The term insecure leadership perfectly captures the glimpse of the origin of the issue which is largely due to incompetence in technical and managerial aspect which led to overcompensation strategy to justify the managers existence within the organization. cumulative impact on the team includes low productivity, erosion of morale, and mental fatigue. Reflection on personal experience, underscores the importance of aligning career moves with supportive leadership and meaningful, recognized contribution.

So, I turned to GPT to ask whether its common for a lot of people and how career often seems to progress for many of us.

**AI is very good at finding patterns from various sources....so, i like to use it for this kind of question.

Phase 1: Entry / Early Struggle (Years 0–3)

• Environment: First few jobs or rotations, often in companies that don’t align well with your working style or values.

• Challenges:

• Feeling micromanaged or unsupported

• Slow progress despite effort

• Confusion about career direction or expectations

• Frustration from bureaucracy or unclear priorities

• Psychological state: Doubt in self, stress, occasional burnout, sense of “I’m not good enough” even if skills are solid.

• Outcome: Skills are growing slowly; resilience and problem-solving start forming unconsciously.

Phase 2: Plateau / “Stuck” Period (Years 2–5)

• Environment: Still in misaligned roles, or cycling through companies with poor management.

• Challenges:

• Little recognition or feedback

• Career trajectory feels flat

• Might experiment with side projects, skill-building, or different roles

• Psychological state: Fatigue and frustration, but also a subtle honing of self-awareness: you start noticing what works for you and what doesn’t.

• Outcome: Knowledge, adaptability, and soft skills accumulate, even if invisible externally.

Phase 3: Transition / Finding Fit (Variable timing)

• Environment: Move to a company, team, or role that matches your strengths.

• Catalysts:

• Mentor or manager who understands your abilities

• Clear role, responsibilities, and growth path

• Culture that aligns with your working style

• Psychological state: Motivation and confidence increase dramatically

• Outcome: Early successes compound; work feels easier and more fulfilling.

Phase 4: Acceleration / “Boom” Period (After 3–7 years in career)

• Environment: Well-aligned, supportive, and growth-oriented

• Dynamics:

  • Rapid skill application and recognition

  • Visibility to decision-makers and opportunities

  • Career progression accelerates: promotions, bigger responsibilities, leadership chances

• Psychological state: Confidence, engagement, and enthusiasm peak

• Outcome: The contrast with early struggles is stark—what once felt like slow, grinding progress now appears exponential.

>> Key Takeaways <<

Early struggles don’t predict long-term career potential—they often lay the groundwork for later growth.

“Fit” matters as much as skills. The right environment can unlock hidden potential.

Mentorship and culture can make or break early career trajectories. 

Is it exaggerating? Perhaps a bit...

Here are some list of my facepalm moment...

1. I like to make a small scale prototype very quickly to validate the calculation and test the control firmware. So the firmware dev and validation can start earlier and we can minimize the mistake for the full scale hardware.

2. I don't find staring and probing at eval board as actual learning. I instead make a custom board for the particular IC and test the IC on a simplified subsystem of the actual target system.
   
   People comments on 1&2, no time, no budget, no member to do those. Just ask the FAE (who knows nothing more than any generic suggestion).
   
   

3. Zero communication between hardware designer and control firmware engineer. HW guy just throw the board to FW guy, and always try to steer the discussion on any of the control issue as FW issue.

4. So many people assume research is a one shot done deal. This is quite self explanatory.

5. I have worked with people who try to use all the time span on the schedule instead of aim to work faster and have some buffer on the schedule to mitigate for personal ups/downs and actual project hiccup.
   
   *of course, they always miss the target.
   
   

6. Its hard for me to understand that some companies don't have a separate procurement highway for research (for one off consumables).

7. f course, Dunning-Krueger and some of its variations always exist.

Surely, it's by no means being an exhaustive list if my facepalm moment.

Welcome to share your moment... 

Many of my connection in LinkedIn knows that I am a simulation nerd for power electronic circuit, control, and magnetics. And what helps me with my simulation is my bench skill as I continuously refine my simulation to better match the hardware measurement. It has resulting in my design performance estimation to become quite accurate.

Sounds good?... not really

If I talk to the like minded person, I can make a very exciting discussion to refine the design. 

Unfortunately, stakeholder and supervisor have never been some like minded people (at least I never met one in my short career so far).

Stakeholders love quick optimistic answers and promises. Meanwhile, I avoid over promise and much prefer cautious approach. So, my workplan on the surface may often appear as wasting time with many series of validations even though at the end I often save lots of development time.

To prove it, there has been numerous time my suggestion to the supervisors to develop proper design library (collection of working design) gets rejected. They always say no time and no people to handle it. But, at the same time other team in the same division always get caught by their flyback requiring many weeks of rework and tuning.

How to find the middle ground? Perhaps find a healthy boundary between business and technical decision... but I can't say anything too much on this side either...

Haha...

I am a research engineer with main focus on new technology development. When I have a team member I never give big task assignment to my member. Instead I prefer to give small weekly target to myself and to the team.

Meanwhile in most other team the leader tends to give big sub project to the each member. And to the other colleagues, they always feel if my method is very ambiguous.

So, today I have a chance to hold a small meeting to explain about my design and working approach.

To summarize:

1. I give my member small task at the beginning to help learn about the project and as the time goes by I will give you bigger and bigger responsibility until hopefully one year later I can just give you some sub project and I can just review the result.

2. Another important thing when working with me is, I will ensure to always explain the method and reasoning of my decision with the appropriate depth and breath that you can understand. And members are always free to discuss and even challenge my decision. Though, there will be some times where I need to you to do an assignment and I will explain you the reason after. 

3. The member has been working on Rev.1 of the design, while I am newly joining the project and at the beginning I immediately change the design direction and basically almost completely redesign from scratch with perhaps less than 20% design carry over.

Now, the reason:

1. Manager job is to ensure the member can handle the job. Which can be done by means of facilitating the right equipment, training, and providing the task that is appropriate to the members current skill level.

2. People are happy when the meet their milestone. Setting small milestone helps the member to feel accomplished and more satisfied with their progress.

3. We have a limit on how much information we can learn. And there are many knowledge that can only be fully understood after you learned other things first. So, I may need to limit the amount of information to you and give you a chance to learn methodically without making you overwhelmed.

4. So, this is a perfect example of "Sunk Cost Fallacy". But, after explaining the reason from a) expensive design cost, b) unconventional design with high risk, c)technically impossible original requirements. Then they can start to understand why significant change is necessary.

Haha... 😆

I find it difficult to comprehend that when I was a kid back in 90s, humanity was afraid of over population. Yet, now in 2025 the news is all about low birthrate everywhere. With Taiwan leading the lowest birthrate (shared with South Korea, China, and Japan).

Most families now have only 1-2kids and some even choose to be child free. While now 3 kids is now an exception. At the same time so many people choose to remain single until very much later in life.

The most common cited reasons are:

1. child is expensive

2. life is already hard, why more hardship?

3. the couple pursue career

4. wanna have more travelling and adventures.

However, I believe the stated reason are only the symptoms that appears on the surface.

The real reason in my opinion is:

1. House for investment / crazy rent price.

Permanent house is important for anyone to settle and start the next life phase. We need to blend with neighbors to have a sense of belonging and feel safe. Which takes time and difficult to do for family that keeps moving.

I know that many decades ago, almost anyone who can work own houses. Now, with rich people owning multiple houses m, it has become so far out of reach for most new couple.

2. Career instability.

I my parents era, someone who worked for 5 years in a company will says they are new after being there for just 5 years. Now, many don't even surpass 2years in one company.

(Actually I am same, but it was because the two ex companies asked me to relocate to the Capital city and I refuse due to what I believe the lower quality of life).

Constantly moving around increase the stress level and I believe makes it harder to settle down in life.

3. Social media makes us always comparing on many things. even to those in much higher economic class people.

Need to travel to exotic place? I never did that, my parents never did

My job title is not fancy enough? I need to work harder and longer before I can settle down.

Childcare is expensive? well, it's not if you go to public school and don't go to tons of private extracurricular activities.

=========================

I guess that's all the rant....

I am not rich, but I was quite tight on budget throughout my PhD (surely was below poverty line income for a family of three). Now looking back, I often feel that it was a tough struggle, however it was just normal when I experienced it.

Life is not perfect and never intended to be perfect. Evolution is always survival of the fittest not the best nor strongest.

If I mostly tell story about positive things, this time will be quite the opposite. But it literally is what actually happened in companies RnD.

This is how to NOT design a power supply:

1. Receive target spec from client

2. Make an internal debate, and talk (only) on how to achieve the spec with a bit of browsing on IC spec

3. Negotiate with the client on difficult spec, and make deal with client

4. Do basic calculation (only LC selection) and draw schematic

5. Create a very raw placement plan and dump the issue to layout engineers (who knows safety regulations and DFM rules but very minimal about the circuit). Approve the layout for Gerber with minimum review because the HW engineers also never draw their own layout.

6. Send the layout for thermal analysis and uses the max Tj on datasheet for max operating envelope.

7. Apply for components sample to supplier for everything including the cheap RCs and ICs (I can understand for El. Cap, Expensive MOSFETs and custom magnetics). Where the process often take more than 4 weeks from sending sample request until obtain sample for parts that totally cost less than my salary for half day of work.

8. Did I say anything about controller analysis, losses analysis, stress analysis and not to mention simulations? Nope?yes because there is no simulation or calculation at all. So, just trial and error on the hardware. Its a cycle of try-boom-repair-repeat

9. After two months of test, 40 issues have been listed on the note. Time to new design spin? How dare you. Make the existing board perfect with only jumper wires and cutter.

10. Time flies, now has been 6 month for testing with jungle wire board. Time to work on a new layout? Pfffew...finally it's approved.... Go back to step #4 and do this repeat for 3 times.

Did I mentioned that this design uses DC/AC+DC/DC+2xaux flyback+buck for housekeeping? And no subcircuit has ever tested individually before making combined design sch/layout?

Of course time is money, testing is wasting time... Do things quick on the first go.