Journal of Susana Reiviki: Hiring the Crew

The strangest thing about hiring is not knowing who we will need.  When I worked for TTAMRI, if we needed a specialist, we would simply hire one.

One of my tasks is to hire the science team.  An elite set of researchers to analysis and understand whatever we encounter out in the space.  It is not hard for me to understand qualifications, to feel out competency, work ethic, etc.  However, I don’t know what we’ll be needing out there, and… well, everyone is specialized.  I am myself specialized into existential threat analysis, with a further specialization into friendly AI theory, and then retrained as a ship engineer after leaving TTAMRI… and then further specialized in life support.  This probably leaves me with a broader base of knowledge than anyone who has applied, simply because existential threat analysis touches on a great number of subjects – anything that could be catastrophically lethal, with risks beyond the intuitive capability of humans to comprehend.

This means, of course, I understand a variety of ways a sun could wipe out a planetary population, along with various theorized countermeasures.  This does not make me an astrophysicist.

So far I have hired:
A biologist
An ecologist
A biotechnologist
A xenobiologist
A physicist
An astrophysicist
A chemist
A biochemist

Will I need all of them?  I don’t know.  Perhaps we will never need the skills of an ecologist.  Perhaps we will.  Perhaps we will need those skills once, and she will sit around on her hands for the rest of the journey, at best being an assistant to her fellow scientists on their projects.

Maria has it easier, at least.  She has some specialization, yes, but there is plenty of overlap.  I was originally hired as a life support engineer, but I spent most of my time doing general ship engineering.  I know that she has a ship circulatory specialist, and a circuit specialist.  A plumber and an electrician, to boil away the complexities involved.  But even if the problem does not involve ducts or fiber-optic cables, they are still just as competent as me.  Every specialist she hires is also a general ship engineer, while every specialist I hire is also comfortable in a laboratory setting.  Such is life.

There are a few more research positions to fill, and then I will move on to the various other positions Zephyr trusts me in filling.  A sociologist, a psychologist, a counselor, a linguist… I have dabbled in societal collapse, sure, but a linguist?  Zephyr may as well have the captain hire the linguist – I haven’t the slightest knowledge about that subject.