Re: test or ping

[Jeremy N. E. Proffitt]

Bob,   I can understand and symphaize with you, I was fired from my job after only two years and bringing the company I worked for farther ahead than anyone else ever.  (I am a computer tech/web and application programmer/Unix databaser).  Atleast the occassional e-mail I still get from time to time from my former clients asking questions about my software nobody could answer still put some icing on the cake.   As for me, I know work for almost nothing at Lowe's in the Electrical Dept.  Need some wire cut?   Cheers Jeremy   BTW- JOB stands for Just Over Broke.  Myself, I'm paying off my bills and setting myself up to go independent - and eventually put my former employeer out of buisness. ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Multiple recipients of list CHIPDIR-L Sent: Monday, October 21, 2002 8:49 AM Subject: Re: test or ping Bob, Sorry to hear about your situation. We have the same outlook where I work. Our engineering force has shrunk to a Field/Design Engineer, two Mechanical Engineers and myself as PCB Jockey/Design Engineer. We are not doing any software design unless is a bug patch. We are mostly surviving on military contracts and a few academic research grants. I blame our situation to the economy to some degree, but mostly to stupid management and unreasonable forecasts. 1. In gearing up for large production that never happened, we spent over $300K in fancy custom-made aluminum shop furniture. 2. Somebody decided to outsource everything and fired most of our skilled technicians. 3. Contract houses suggested redesigning all our PCBs with high surface-mount content for volume production. A year went by and the only two units we ever made were the ones we sent to KEMA for certification. Now we are sitting on piles of surface-mount components we can't use, because we are back stuffing our own boards. The $180K/year marketing guru that forecasted the numbers left with a nice parachute, no questions asked. Worse that making a crappy product is making a good product that no one buys. My two cents. Tony