Herding Cats, a management and business blog aimed towards the technical, chemical, manufacturing, and R&D industries, comes from Sev Dragomire’s career experiences. Sev has a BS in Chemical Engineering and most of a MS in Polymer Science, and has played a variety of roles in her career, from operator to project leader to plant manager with a lot of stops on the way. Herding Cats is aimed towards engineers, scientists, and managers working in technical fields; often, these types of jobs require a very different context when looking at basic questions — the context that Herding Cats works to provide.

This particular blog was started as Sev became more deeply involved in the management side of the company [called YoSaffBridge Donuts on this blog, to maintain anonymity] and began to get a look at the things that go on behind the scenes and how small things can affect the macroculture of any site. Now, in 2019 – after Sev left the industry for a sabbatical – Herding Cats has been updated and rejuvenated, to capture a series of thoughts and learnings moving forward.

Herding Cats plans to continually discuss the following concepts, viewed intersectionally and within the context of a technical organization:

• Business Culture: how individual employees feel and what they hear, and how this affects job satisfaction and performance
• Engineering Management: a series of points on how managing engineers and scientists is different from managing others
• People Management: truths about hiring, firing, motivation, development, and all the messy things that happen
• Project Management: what to do, what not to do, things that work, and the time that Sev accidentally spent half a million dollars
• Management Surprises: how to become an accountant, an IT systems administrator, a technical writer, and a therapist
• International Business: what’s good and what’s bad about the “one team” approach globally
• Process Design: no, really, it’s fun
• Female Engineers: considerations about being a woman in a mostly-male industry; concerns about being a female manager of men
• Disability: the extra concerns of the disabled and chronically ill in a technical environment, and how FMLA plays along

As the blog grows, it may expand into new topics, which will be noted here.

Have a question for Sev? Use the “Contact Sev” page to reach out.