[JesseK]

I got a small bonus once for performing well at work while also volunteering 700 hours over the course of a year. I've done that for 4 years in a row, but only 1 'bonus'. Interestingly my company gives an award to those who reach 3,500 lifetime volunteer hours, yet last year most of the people who had reached that in recent years were laid off. One year I got 8 hours of paid vacation for my efforts, but that was after the season. We get a breakfast once a year, but we have to stay late to make up the time for the breakfast. Ironic, heh.

So as to support -- other than a "thanks" and a logging system that allows the company to take credit for my hard work, support has never existed for employees.

There once was a corporate initiative to grow STEM education through FIRST, but it fizzled because the corporate guys put guys in charge of it who have absolutely no passion about STEM education in general. Did my one corporate contact listen to me? Hardly. His son graduated from my team and I haven't heard from him since. Corporate gave some money to some teams one year.

I'm sure I sound disenfranchised about it. To be honest, I am. But life goes on and I still do great work.

So I'm head of CAD. Yea, the guy who programs and helps hold together a 17 million line system doesn't program a single word on the robot. But at least I don't have to be at the school to do it; the projects I'm on are less flexible with the FLEX scheduling we get.