It's about controlling the message. Siemens discussions get political guy and sock puppet. Bec discussions get disgruntled Miami guy. Anything to push topical discussion off the front page. You see similar stuff on glassdoor where the overall ratings are low but all the recent reviews are positive.

I sympathize, but the political talk here is so much more fun, and I did actually work for Siemens for a spell, when I needed the income.

this is supposed to be an international forum for the biotech industry, not for US national politics. Can you find somewhere else to discuss your national, political issues please?

"Those are not talking points, they are facts"

I am seriously curious; which specific ones do you consider facts and not simply talking points or propaganda?

I have finally realized that responding to the conservative, reactionary babblings only feed the already overblown sense of important that this person has. He has nothing positive to offer and his knowledge is so thin it only has one side. He simply feeds off of responses and dives into his right-wing news and commentary bag of platitudes. If we just ignore him or yawn, we will sink back into the cesspool of his ugly thoughts.

'You liberals just cannot see the obvious can you? So I will have to assume that you consider your posts both "civil" and devoid of "taking points"????!!!

Do I have to list the very, very obvious talking pts?'

Those are not talking points, they are facts. And the republicans refusal to admit what the rest of the country knows is why they are a party dying a slow and painful to watch death.

Please stop. I can no longer afford the tongue depressors I use when you make me YAWN !!!!!!!!!!

Can't you see you no longer have an audience or are you blind to that too?

YAWN !!!!! (Now I have to economize and get two yawns/depressor.)

"In addition, the House bill would impose a 2.5 percent excise tax on medical devices. The tax
would be imposed on the “first sale” of such devices by manufacturers to health care providers.
The term medical device is broadly defined in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and
includes a wide range of products such as tongue depressors, medical thermometers, blood sugar
meters, defibrillators, and X-ray machines. This provision is expected to be hotly contested.
Proponents see the surtax as a way to require the highly-profitable manufacturers of medical
devices to pay their fair share of expanded health care coverage. Opponents view the surtax as an
impediment to innovation by such manufacturers and fear that the tax will be passed on to
consumers through increased costs."

Might be passed through? --- try WILL BE PASSED THROUGH.

All I have heard here the past year is BIG LAYOFFS. But nothing has materialized. What gives ?

Jog my old memory; Isn't one of Obama's new taxes on medical equipment. Some crazy tax.

And the absurdity grows.

YAWN !!!!!!!!

"After months of attempting a civil discussion.................He is a bag of talking points ................."

You liberals just cannot see the obvious can you? So I will have to assume that you consider your posts both "civil" and devoid of "taking points"????!!!

Do I have to list the very, very obvious talking pts?

Bush is dumb

Bushnearly collapsed the entire banking system in his 8 years in office

Bush lied about WMD

The unfunded wars he started, the tax cuts, and Medicare prescription benefits bill guarranteed a recession and broke the financial system

Republicans created most of our deficit prblems

Increased tax burdens do not increse unemployment

The rich pay no taxes

Clinton left Bush with a thriving economy

Most of the high ranking Democrats' new there were no WMD

The high cost of gasoline is because W. was tied in w/ the oil companies

That global warming is caused by civilization, is a scientifically proven fact

Etc, etc.

Lets not even argue if these "facts" are valid or not. But are they talking points? I'm sure you will say they are not, but I surely beg to differ. And while not every single one was used in your posts, a great many were, and the ones you didn't, I'm sure you would have been glad to use.

Kinda like the pot calling the kettle black?

Actually, I do know how these things work. I was assuming best case. Show it at AACC next year and launch 18-24 months later. I also used the term revenue, because I am well aware of ramp up periods, slow or limited rollouts, expert evaluators, endorsements, etc. that occur before actual sales really pick up. And that could be another 6 months to a year. The system won't be profitable until there are sufficient systems in the field to increase reagent batch sizes etc. With the recent history of Siemens that you cited so well, this process will probably be slower than the industry average due to a large amount of skepticism and caution on the part of custoemrs. I just wonder if they were smart enough to ask someone about this process or if it will just be another shock to upper management. It sure doesn't seem that they made the wisest decision to develop the system at multiple sites, especially having never developed a clinical analyzer in the past.

'2-3 years away from generating revenue and a year or 2 away from being revealed. '

You obviously have no idea about new instrument timelines.
It is a good 2-3 years away from being introduced at an AACC type show, and at least five years away from actually bringing in any revenue. And by any revenue I mean a very small amount from early adopters. Even the most diehard siemens customers were so disappointed with vista that you won't see any of them being an early adopter.
Mikey knows this which is why he's willing to try anything at this point to cut costs while trying to stop the massive loss of customers they are seeing.

No one has seen the new platform because it is still under development which probably 2-3 years away from generating revenue and a year or 2 away from being revealed. From what I hear, there is not a cohesive functioning among the several sites involved in the development effort. I would also assume that Siemens has had outside evaluators in to look at the new system or at least its features, but on a confidential basis. They will probbly be very tight lipped about it since any unmet expectations in the final product, from features to performance to launch date would look extremely bad in the investors' eyes. If nothing else, MR is doing a good job of managing the secrecy behind the new system.

6.5years and counting.
The amount of capitol lost from inception truly is staggering. How many CEO's have they gone through already! They foolishly thought that MR, homegrown Siemens, would take care of the mistakes. They are actually still in an integration stage almost 7years later. That says a lot about a company.
New platform? No one I know has seen it.
They need to shutdown several sites and stop having manufacturing for any particular platform done in several countries. What happened to the 1600 layoff schedule?
No wonder many analysts have given up on Loescher. He can't even have one of his CEO's (MR) do what needs to be done.
The competition just loves DX. Roche continues to cleanup with customers leaving dX every quarter.

Let's face it. When you buy three companies with overlapping products and personnel, many people have to go during the consolidation phase. Unfortunately for Siemens, they are sill in that phase. They are still operating at multiple sites. They are developing their new system at multiple sites which is a big gamble. Siemens should have consolidated to a single site years ago plus manufacturing, warehouses, sales offices, etc. And whatever and whenever this next layoff is, it doesn't sound like a step forward to achieve the consolidation they need. And the longer they keep multiple sites, the longer a culture of Bayer-Dade-DPC will exist rather than a culture of Siemens. It is just very puzzling that Siemens has taken so long.

Agree. They need to get rid of their liabilities-pensions and the high cost employees..

The STIP is your bonus. You'll get about the same as last year.
Yes, Siemens as a whole did well. DX didn't despite the propaganda you read from Management. All their eggs are in Agenda 2013. They still are far car from 2009 revenue.
No Director nor Manager I know expects any major increase in revenue and business within the division. Agenda 2013 primarily deals with lowering prices and contract costs for instruments many labs don't want in the first place. Centaur, Vista and Immulite have been around, in some cases, 20years already.
The competition is eating up Siemens customers with newer, faster platforms and much better customer service.
Siemens needs to lean out DX and the sooner the better.

Bonuses are based on this year's performance and come out of this year's budget. Raises, in contrast, are based on next year's expectations. If that assumption is correct, it means that Siemens did relatively well this past year, but doesn't expect to do as well on the revenue side next year and the delay in raises helps with expenses. Perhaps that explains what appears to be a contradiction.

DX raises are typically between 1-3%. In 2013 you lost half of it already.
It's true layoffs are based on numbers and accountants.
What is surprising is that it hasn't happened in a larger scale already. The amount of redundancies and sites no longer needed is still the biggest financial drain on this division.

Decisions about bonuses, pay raises, and timing are made by the accountants. Much of it depends on the tax situation and, given the uncertainty about taxes in the US, it should not be surprising that many unfair things happens. Who do you think decides the head count in a layoff? The accountants again. Managers just get to pick who will get laid off once they are told how many heads they need to contribute. It is a cold mathematical process. Even MR's hands are tied. He is given numbers to achieve from Germany and the accountants are there to tell him what he needs to do to meet the numbers.

Not really a nice picture.

DX bonuses will be huge, December 14th.
END QUOTE

Silly dweeb.
You were already told your maximum STIP amount months ago.
If you're in the US you already lost 6 months of your pay increase as well. All in the name of paying outside QA companies for helping DX with FDA issues. It's called "a punishment" and only the US raises are being held back till July 2013.
It's going to get a lot worse than this.

If bonuses will be paid on Decembefr 14, can layoffs be far behind? Do pink slips come in coal?

DX bonuses will be huge, December 14th.

http://themachoresponse.blogspot.com/2011/03/guess-where-this-is-no-seri...

The ending is: seriously-it-is.html. Somehow this site won't fit the whole address.

http://themachoresponse.blogspot.com/2011/03/guess-where-this-is-no-seri...

YAY. Ignorance deserves ignoring. It seems to be working. Even John Boehner can't seem to get it up any more to fight the restoration of fairer taxes. Maybe he needs to take a trip to Toronto:

http://themachoresponse.blogspot.com/2011/03/guess-where-this-is-no-seri...

At least our neighbors to the North have a sense of humour.

"Don't even get me started you sanctimonious rube."

I suggest you don't waste your time either. After months of attempting a civil discussion of issues, it is clear we have a no-nothing in this room. All you will get from him are the highlights from Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, et al. He is a bag of talking points who is incapable of explaing a single of his half-baked ideas. He rejects facts and data and won't comment on anything you present that contradicts what he just 'inherently' knows (maybe through some religious revelation .... or bad LSD trip ... who knows). All you do by arguing with him is to feed the beast. So please don't egg on a person with no ears and, at best, half a brain (the half that can parrot slogans, but not the half that can think).

Just do what I do. Just read what he says, feel a bit embarassed that he is a fellow countryman (although he won't give you the same consideration --- he thinks you and I are the enemy), and offer up a big YAWN. Since you can't expand his mind, at least you can expand your lungs.

Hard to imagine Siemens being sold soon. Who would buy it without some promise of a successful new system and Siemens just isn't far enough along to convince an interested party in future potential. They might be able to find a buyer if the new system is close to release and the buyer is as naive as Siemens was when they did their due diligence. Of course, the other option is a big loss compared to what they paid. No one in their right mind would believe that Siemens has added value to DX as a business since their acquisitions. Siemens would probably have to lay off alot of people in the lead up to any sale just to make the numbers look better. Almost impossible to imagine a sale, for instance, with LA still around.

"Why is it that liberals are always asking for something from conservatives and conservatives simply ask to be left alone as much as possible? "

You have got to be kidding me!
Conservatives are the most intrusive, selfish and self serving individuals on the planet. They love big government and butting into our lives so we have to follow their principles.
They want to decide whom you will marry, and what god you will worship.
They want to be taxed at lower rates than those earning much less and fall back by playing the 'punishing success' card.
They have no concern for the common good, unless it is good for them.
They allow their president to finance a war with credit and then blame the next president for the huge deficit.
They allow their president to bring us to the brink of financial chaos, let him pass a financial stimulus package and praise it. But when the next president sees what amazingly bad shape our finances are in and tries to get a financial stimulus package passed it is labeled a 'giveaway'.
Don't even get me started you sanctimonious rube.

By the way, there dose not seem to be much movement in the big Siemens lay off plans, so what gives? Maybe all of you guys left still working at LA and elsewhere in DX don't have that much to worry about. After all, cutting more of the talent that is left will leave an empty DX division devoid of any promise. And who would buy those assets? Maybe you guys are safe because they do indeed intend to sell at some point in the near future.

What happened to the caps and exclaimation points?

If you want to talk about yourself as an insect, be my guest.

Otherwise, just another big yawn.

Why is it that liberals are always asking for something from conservatives and conservatives simply ask to be left alone as much as possible? Could it be as simple as each group having basic agendas and beliefs and each side living their lives as such, with the conservative side always seeming to end up with more and being better equipped to navigate life?

You know I like simple analogies, and ants and grasshoppers are great one for humans. Ants prepare, store, organize and even cultivate their food resources, while grasshoppers are opportunists that simply hope to find what they need when they need it. Grasshoppers often find themselves in great die-offs when food resources are no longer easy to access, as they will devour everything in site with no advance preparation, collection or storage allotments. The ants however, can lose the same kind of easy access food resources and many will survive for the next rainy season. Both strategies obviously work, because while the grasshoppers have great die offs, they also are genetically programmed to breed so fast and heavy that enough survive the die-offs to continue the species. Ants plod along and breed at a much more controlled rate, and even protect their larvae and carry them to higher ground when flooding threatens the colony. Their group, work together mentality also allows them to defend themselves as an organized army against threats, and they do so rather than simply fleeing their enemies like grasshoppers.

The analogy is very comparable to humans with liberals and conservatives playing their respective insect rolls. Everything equates well except for one great exception; we humans allow the grasshoppers (liberals), to require the conservatives (ants) to give up and "share" some of their hard earned reserves. In the animal kingdom this would equate to an all out assault by the ant armies against any grasshopper who attempts to "share" the ants resources. This equates to conservative humans in the American political colony, to ask that they be allowed to keep more of their resources, while still GIVING UP the majority share of donated resources to the grasshoppers.

I know you will laugh "it's the Disney Antz film!", but I still think this is quite cute and clever, eh?

As the idiocy incereases, so do the yawms. We are starting to enter the uncharted territory of psychobabble. The most appropriate responses to his paranoid rantings is to ignore them and yawn. If done properly, it also helps to expand the lungs.

Funny how the yawn is capitalized and with multiple exclaimation marks.

Been reading both of your comebacks, you guys need to get a life.

YAWN !!!!

"I will no longer serve as your educator or foil or whatever purpose I seem to serve in your life...."

By the way I am not the one responding to the Dr. Tyson posts. I am assuming it has to do with the "cosmos" rants.......I am not interested in these arguments. They are science/ religion and the philosophical all rolled into one and have no definitive answer. A place where a lot of "smart" people can gather, butt heads together and no one is really 100% right or wrong........a lot like what happens in the courts everyday, thanx to the morally broken law profession.

I know you do not see it this way but I deal with facts/ knowledge/ financial & world events and try to make my own judgments of it all, and not following any single guru.

As for what purpose do people like you serve for conservatives like me? Since your posts are condescending I'll return the favor. For me communicating with an articulate liberal, is like observing / studying the criminal behavior of a very accomplished convicted felon. They may have all the tools; smarts, education, looks, social awareness, etc., yet they persist in doing evil or morally wrong activities. The way the synapses have to fire in order for these people to do what they do is fascinating and instructive to those of us boring people who like to simply live responsible, self sufficient lives. So I guess a back and forth with a rabid liberal, is for me a learning experience, kinda like watching chimpanzees in their native environment.........a different but similar species that I haven't quite figured out yet.

When was the last time you heard of bonuses having a tight relationship with how well a company is doing? How many times have you heard about companies that actually lost money in a given year still giving out large bonuses? I don't know what goes through the minds of people who decide on these bonuses, but if I bought a company and was then number 1, and then, for whatever reason, fell to number 4, I couldn't imagine giving out a penny in bonuses until the company at least got back to number 2.

I realize that many companies give out bonuses based on performance vs. plan. If the plan is easy, people make alot and when it's impossible, people get nothing. So clearly, the degree to which the plan is realistic determines bonuses. However, ;I was under this strange impression that people were employed and paid to meet certain goals and objectives. Bonuses should, therefore, be reserved for those who measureably exceed their annual objectives. And if there is still 'leftover, it can go into higher raises.

I find it amusing that so many of the managers and executives who get large bonuses talk so negatively about those who they feel are 'takers' and resent their 'sense of entitlement' and, yet, somehow feel it is perfectly acceptable to feel entitled to a bonus without having done anything specific to deserve it. Can anyone say 'double standard'?

DX bonuses will be huge, one week from tomorrow

We now have both extremes. The people who are so well educated and so advanced in their field and thoughts that they can't relate at all to the average person.

On the other hand we have the total no nothings who don't know or want to know ANY facts whatsoever, and yet they go babbling on as if they know it all.

I will no longer serve as your educator or foil or whatever purpose I seem to serve in your life, and continue to correct every mis-statement you make or your lack of understanding of things such as the function of lawyers. Your ongoing assumptions about things shows only one positive attribute about you: you are a very creative person, uninhibted by realites, not being limited by a line between fiction and non-fiction and who can always remember to throw in a few of dozen or so talking points you've memorized over and over and over again, whether relevant to a given issue or not.

Just wondered why you assumed that Dr. Tyson is a liberal or politcally inclined at all? I guess it's like a disease with you ... you just can't help yourself.

YAWN !!!!!!!

This is why arguing facts with a liberal is pointless. You can equate things/ numbers in your head and wrap them around your agendas and come up with a viable conclusion in your head.

Facts and numbers mean nothing in the larger scheme of things, if the person with all the facts interprets them incorrectly.

A great example is a liberal lawyer defending an obviously guilty "suspect". Even with DNA evidence and eyewitness accounts, there can be no guarrantee the jury will convict, because the truth can be cleverly manipulated to lie.....it happens every single day. I see this all the time in financial decisions that all of us ecounter in our investmment endeavors. We all see the same data, summations, reports, etc. and ten people can have ten different takes on if something is a great investment or not. There can really only be a basic yes, no or perhaps a maybe but one of these has to be more correct than the others, right? A color cannot be blue, red and yellow all at once if they are not physically blended, it has to be one or the other. The trouble is everyone can detect the right color of one of these three but in investments most people have trouble getting the right answer. Otherwise we would all be filthy rich, correct? So once again I see you getting the wrong deduction from the simple tabulations of the debt contributions historically, from each president.

Interpretation, interpretation.

"Hate to break it to you, but the debt limit was raised many times under your 'god', Reagan. "

Yes, but throw in his deficit, add it to that of Washington's, Adam's, Lincoln's, Roosevelt's (both of them), Carter's, Clinton's, Harding's, Truman's...........hell, throw them all together including that big devil George Bush's and guess what? By the end of Obama's term his contribution to the debt will surpass ALL OF THE PREVIOUS PRESIDENTS put together.

For you and the Dem's to equate Obama's debt situation with any previous president is like saying I have credit card debt and so do you, so why don't we just say we are even on this one thing?
Never mind that you may have $7,000,000,000 in credit card debt, while my whole family tree has a total of $1,000 in credit card debt.

If I say my kids/ grandkids will someday inherit more than $1,000,000 while my sister's kids will inherit $150.00, you would consider this much the same situation, correct?

My original question still stands: What do you mean by 'purpose'? It could mean intent or it could mean function without intent of the object such as a tire having a purpose on a car but the tire itself has no intent. It could have a religions meaning as in God's purpose.

Without clearer definition or framing of your question, discussion becomes fairly meaningless.

You will have to forgive the poor doctor. He is a product of the Harvard culture, known to the rest of us mere mortals as overrated. You know the old joke about how many Harvard students it takes to screw in a light bulb? Just one to hold the bulb while the world revolves around him. At Columbia it takes 101: One to hold the lightbulb, 50 to hold a protest about the light being too bright and 50 more to hold a counterprotest.

Come join us here on earth, Dr. Tyson. It's alot of fun down here in the real world. Join in some more as you probably have alot to contribute. But, please try to remember two of the basic rules of your audience: Communicate at a level consistent with their understanding, and never talk down to people. Even Ronald Reagan who imfamously said that trees cause pollution understood those basic concepts.

And he is calling the rest of us mentally ill?

I just looked at Dr. Tyson's bio on Wikipedia and it is quite impressive. I'm just surprised at such a response from someone who is known as a 'science communicator'.

I just hope that Carl showed him the view of Fall Creek from his house. Alot nicer than 'beautiful downtown' Cambridge.

Oh, this is getting good. So many options to choose from.

I could go into a lengthy discussion of each of the good Dr.'s elaborate response. I could just as easily lampoon him and discuss why his response is the perfect example of why so many people get turned off by intellectuals who appear to speak in tongues. But I won't. I will let the good Dr. speak for himself.

I could also simply state that a 'purpose' would have to be finite and since the universe is infinite, it cannot possibly have a purpose and argue that this discussion is over. But I won't make that trivial argument either.

Rather than the above, I thought I would share an item that was not reported in the news about a recent meeting between God and the Devil. They both decided to put their differences aside for an afternoon and play a round of golf. God, being the gentleman that he is, allowed the Devil to tee of first. The Devil drove the ball 300 yards down the fairway; a perfect lie for his approach shot. God teed off and sliced the ball into the adjacent woods. As they were walking down the fairway in search of the ball, a field mouse came running out of the woods with the ball in his mouth. Just then, an hawk swooped down and grabbed the field mouse with his talons. As he was flying away, a nearby hunter took aim at the hawk, but missed. The hawk was startled and dropped the field mouse in mid air. By now the poor field mouse was completely freaked out and dropped the ball. It fell onto the first green, took two bounced, and went right into the cup. The Devil looked at God and said: "Did you come here to play golf? or to f#$^%&K around?"

I ask the same question of you who wish to discuss this subject in an earthly manner rather than some inter-planetar(ium) fruitless effort to communicate between or among those of us who might have been educated in, but no longer reside in an ivory tower. Anyone who has followed politics at the national level can tell you that the candidate who can relate (communicate) with the 'common man' has an huge advantage. Both Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama are evidence of that despite the big difference in their beliefs.