You have my commiserations, Bob. This is probably the worst period that I have seen since I set up my company in 1983 and I am doing better than a lot of others than I know.
A few months ago I had a project involving components from Analog Devices. When I sought support about some problems that I was having, I discovered that they had laid off the only engineer who could answer my questions - they had to bring him back as a contractor for a short period to help me out. I am also getting a lot of flak from design companies in India who are offering design services for as little as $US10 per man-hour. I gather that a lot of US companies are being seduced by this low rate and are laying off their own engineers in favour of "low cost" outsourcing. Actually the "low cost" is not as low as would first appear. I asked one of the Indian companies to give me an estimate on a project that we had completed in 6 months using a team of 2 engineers. Their solution involved a team of 6 engineers, 2 team leaders and a project manager with a development period of 12 months. In this case the "low cost" solution turned out to be about $US100K more expensive than mine. Llew Griffiths ________________________________ Llew Griffiths & Associates Pty Limited Embedded Controller Design Consultants Melbourne, Australia http://www.llga.com.au > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:root@;fatcity.com]On Behalf Of Bob Paddock > Sent: Sunday, 20 October 2002 06:18 > To: Multiple recipients of list CHIPDIR-L > Subject: Re: test or ping > > Forty people (23% of the company) were laid off at the company I > worked for Tuesday. I was one of the 40 people. Anyone need someone with > design and programming skills? I'm about 90 miles north of Pittsburgh PA. > -- Author: Llewellyn Griffiths INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB CHIPDIR-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
