MOTM

Just to clarify:

I have ZERO plans to "slow down" or "wind down" or "shut down". I DO have
plans to "slow down" and
take a wait-and-see attitude.

This mainly involves not ordering lots of expensive parts (like pots) in the
near term. So kits may
run out 4 months from now, and be out for 3-4 weeks. This is better than
having $30,000 worth of parts
sitting in the garage and having sales be 20% of what they are now.

I run on a 'cash' basis: by the time you see your kit/module, the parts have
LONG been paid for. A plot
of running profit versus time looks like a sawtooth :) You try to anticipate
the 'peak' on the curve IF AND WHEN
the market nosedives.

What is probably going to happen (and I know MANY of you fall into this
category, which worries me) is that
'web authoring' jobs will disappear off the map, along with 80% of ALL
Internet-related jobs. This trickles down
to computers, routers, semis, memory, all sorts of things. Too many people
last year saw too much money to be
made. The bridge could only support so much weight. There is a finite amount
of money to be made. People
were under the impression 'the sky's the limit'. Ha, no one ASKED me! :)

Also, electronics as a whole is a victim of their own 'bullets'. 300mm
wafers at 0.18um can produce 80,000 op amps
PER WAFER, and you can run 20 wafers/day. High-speed Fuji SMT pick-and-place
machines can "stuff" a PC
motherboard in 17 seconds and a DVD player in about 8 seconds. Electronics,
when I was a kid, was a 'gee whiz'
product sector with long lead-times. Factories now make this stuff so fast
it's crazy (this is adjunct to the depressing
fact that of the last 27 years of my career, the first 25yrs has EVERY
product I worked on in a landfill, OBSOLETE).

So, "industry" is just dealing with "overpopulation". American Airlines
doesn't need 12 flights to SFA from DFW a day.
Where can Intel go? Will ANYONE CARE if they have a 10GHz uP? ZZzzzzzzz.

Sorry for the rant (triggered by Nortel laying off 15,000 MORE people
today). Please don't, in ANY way, feel guilty
or remorseful if you can't buy more modules, now or ever. If it all closed
up tomorrow, I would STILL consider MOTM a
FABULOUS SUCCESS. But I still want to ship Module #5000!!! (1/2 of the way
there).

Paul S.

Wow, Paul.  I know that folks have some negative outlooks from the recent events but
this was a bit of a surprise to me (and I work in one of the industries you
mention).  I don't want to tell you how you should run your business and I agree
that you should be conservative about ordering parts well in advance, even if it
does mean a slower turnaround on orders.  [Although, I've been waiting about 5
months for some assembled modules (cough, cough)].

I know this is OT but I really don't see things quite as darkly.  I don't think all
the Internet jobs will disappear.  Sure, we're recovering from a good spate of
"irrational exhuberance" and that is painful.  The pendulum has swung back pretty
hard but it will recover and settle down over time.  This was going to happen
regardless of the events of 9/11.  The economy will adjust, the airlines will adjust
capacity to the number of folks flying, etc. etc.  I actually think that this
tragedy has defined things much better.  We can see "the bottom" on the economy much
better now and I think have much better resolve to work through it.  These events
have actually brought out a much greater sense of community in people and I think
will enhance our national sense of worth.

I find your comments on the electronics industry much like the "no one will ever
want *talking movies*" attitudes of the past.  Just because we can't see any use for
a new technology now doesn't make it any less important.  Faster processors will
beget new applications we haven't yet figured out.  I know that processors are still
not fast enough for the work that I do so we have to resort to the painful process
of developing custom ASICs (I would need 2GHz memory to go with that 10GHz processor
;)

I guess I'm looking at things a bit differently.  The sun still rises in the
morning, I have my health and family (I feel fortunate that I only know of "friends
of friends" that were lost in the tragedy), I have work to busy my hands, and I have
music to soothe my soul.  Of course, my MOTM helps out in that last item and for
that I am thankful to you. 

Call me a Pollyanna but I think the long term prospects look bright.  I know I am
very fortunate but the last thing I think anyone should do is crawl into a hole and
feel like the world is falling apart.  That can certainly become a self-fulfilling
prophecy if you try hard enough...  A very important axiom of life I have learned
recently is "it is not what happens to you, it is how you react to it."

Sorry, enough rambling.  I just found your commentary too depressing to leave alone.

   Eric



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Listen to your Yahoo! Mail messages from any phone.
http://phone.yahoo.com

On Tuesday, October 2, 2001, at 07:51 PM, alt-mode wrote:

> Wow, Paul.  I know that folks have some negative outlooks from the 
> recent events but
> this was a bit of a surprise to me (and I work in one of the industries 
> you
> mention).

Well, just to offer another view. My company (http://www.gobe.com) is 
funded
by Linux Global Partners, based in NYC. Their funding of our company is 
monthly,
and they informed us they can't make payroll due to all that is happened 
in NYC.
I haven't received a full paycheck since 911. We're two months away from 
releasing
a product that:

- Reads and writes all Office formats but is easier to use than Office.
- Renders to HTML, PDF, etc. better than Office (and PDF better than 
Adobe).
- Does image processing ala Photoshop.
- Does vector graphics ala Illustrator.
- Runs on Windows and Linux (you get both with a single purchase)
- Has $12k in preorders (from previous customers on BeOS) that we can't 
charge
until we ship.

So I'm working for free, drawing unemployment ($400 a week with $1500 a 
month rent)
while wondering if when we finish in November (Wired will be running an 
article on
us that month, if they're still in business) whether anyone will have 
money to buy our product.

Six months or a year ago I could post a resume on Dice or Monster and 
get hundreds
of responses. This time: zero. And I've been doing software development 
on every platform know to man for twenty years. Yes, there are a few 
opportunities, but none
include reloc, and the northwest is pretty devastated right now (Intel, 
Sun, HP, etc.)

Of course, talking to friends in the southeast (ATL) they're not doing 
much better.
Out of nine previous office mates (our Cygnus ATL office was closed by a 
Red
Hat purchase), seven went to work for companies that have failed (four 
owing
them money, none giving severance). The other two stayed at Red Hat, 
whose
stock was trading at $150 when  I left. It's under $5 now.

I entered the job market in 1981, I've never seen a worse time for 
programmers.

Tomy

>  Please don't, in ANY way, feel guilty
> or remorseful if you can't buy more modules, now or ever. If it all closed
> up tomorrow, I would STILL consider MOTM a
> FABULOUS SUCCESS. But I still want to ship Module #5000!!! (1/2 of the way
> there).
Yes, definitely a success from my viewpoint, and you with others have
helped take my only real 'creative outlet' (someone called it an
addiction, and that is probably a close description for me) in great
directions.  We'll help you get to #5000.
Jeff