OK. I guess I had mostly misunderstood your key irritants. It seems like the main things bothering you are two areas. Lack of any long term planning/efficiency at work from the higher ups, and possibly the tension between perceiving and actually doing, though perhaps the latter is not that much of a factor.
Of course this weakness in your industry is partly why your invention might be successful, and so maybe it's not all a bad thing eh ?
I've decided I am going to spend regular ergs on this. If for no other reason, than to preserve my sanity. Some people say that sometimes you don't chose ideas, but they choose you. This maybe one of them. Maybe it's half-baked and a pipe-dream. But thinking about it does have a calming effect on me.
Have you tried speaking to higher ups about these unnecessary tool changes ? When you say that you have little time to yourself, do you mean that your evenings and weekends are occupied with employer-oriented activities ? ( I'm guessing that you do not mean that. )
If the "tools" were not constantly changed could the automatons be re-used so that a new one did not have to be designed from scratch each time ? ( I'm not sure if I am phrasing the question right, technically; but maybe you see what I'm getting at. ) If the answer to that is "yes", then why not propose a change to mgt. ? ( Unless it is for the reason that I mentioned earlier in the post. That you would benefit from being directly compensated for being the change agent who takes them away from the primitive methods; as an inventor who licenses or sells this solution versus offering it for free in the suggestion box. )
Not only have I brought it up, but many others have as well. Some of the change is necessary, since we switch process technologies every 18 months.
But one thing is abundantly clear to me is that a paradigm shift of some sort will greatly boost efficiency. A lot of people believe there is ample room for automation. Many have tried. I've even read papers from Design Automation Conferences in the 70s that described the "small-description-to-implemented-chip" vision.
It is a dream that has long existed. Lots of tools have been developed. New technologies have emerged. FPGAs were one major incarnation of the dream. Reconfigurable computing another.
The main problem however is in the physical design of the transistors that get made. This has remained an extremely human intensive endeavor, and unfortunately the activities attached to it (like custom circuit design) have also--much more than they logically need to be.
LSI logic and others specialize in the back end implementation of chips, but with the cross-pollination in silicon valley, it seems strange that so much of the industry is still so backward (and I really don't know what LSI's secrets are if they have any).
We can create 3D worlds that function fairly well without glitches on a PC in a $50 video-game, but an Enterprise server tool that costs several $1000 still has problems connecting the dots in a schematic?--something is seriously wrong there.
We have a quarter million dollar CAD tool that does amazing feats of logical and physical restructuring, written by hoards of phd's, but has a front-end that can't read a standard that has been around for 30 years and still in heavy use--a standard that could be implemented by a couple of students with undergrad Compiler Theory knowledge (I wrote a script to circumvent issues, but the fact that I had to is baffling)?
The contradictions of this sort are staggering. It is apparent to almost every new college grad. who enters the industry. But we are at essentially the same level of progress on this front that we had at least a decade ago.
My current theory is that there is even there is plenty of brain power, there is a lack of respect, even militant opposition, to the ideas in software engineering that make designs more manageable (re-factoring, non-duplication of logic, design for re-use, etc.).
I can only believe the lack of respect, and opposition, come about because IC engineers (architects, circuit-designers, etc.), and high-end CAD designers look down upon the average software engineers and as a flaky, less educated group of pseudo-engineers. "The men have ear-rings. They wear sandals, and look like hippies, or beach bums. They don't even have a degree in what they're doing. Why should we take any leads from that industry?"
Hmm. I'll have to think that through. I did have a long talk with my mom about future possibilities.
After responding to your post, it does seem a lot more work related than I had thought earlier.
That in itself is...well. I don't know. I do have interests outside work, but I just feel really embarrassed by believing that something work related could get me this depressed.
It's especially a catch-22 since I can't really make changes (working on an alternative methodology, etc.) without being motivated, and I don't really feel motivated enough to even do the basics (like getting out of bed, and going to work) without having some hope of making those changes.
