Just finished reading the Status Report our Project has to hand in to the Comitee of Big Bosses. Once more I realize that I am only a stupid grad studend who has no clue about the big picture.

This report contains a table of the current manpower situation. It lists the FTE (Full Time Equivalent) for each sub-project and the whole project. A typical line is: Subproject 1: 7.8 FTEs, Subproject 2: 5.3 FTEs, Subproject 3: 3.0 FTEs, Total 26.7 FTEs.

Conclusion from this table: either I cannot do math (as addition of Manpower is nonlinear and synergy effects multiply everything by enormous factors) or we have 10.1 FTEs in Management. Which is too much, and besides that these 10 FTEs are not doing much (at least usefull).

Besides that I do not understand where the numbers for the sub-projects come from. In my counting I only get something like 4 to 5 FTEs for Subproject 1, which I (officially) belong to... So: is 1 PHD-Student (who gets paid for 20h a week) something like 2 FTEs (working 80h a week)?

But maybe I am just too stupid to understand management...