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Links: Employers: The companies I've worked for and the skills I have. SMIC - What it's like to work out there? A warning China: my thoughts on the state of technological affairs. SIL missionary, why Christianity is still western imperialism. Yet amidst the cultural destruction, there is message of hope. 30
years West, 30 years east. - Living on the other side
of the ocean, to create balance. Industry Trends - My take on where the industy is going |
contact me at:
justin (@) deepdrift dot com
GyozaQuest is a non profitable site,
How I got fired from my job.
If you look at my resume,
or try and document my work history. There's a very small company, patched
in there. This company was NVS.
In 2001, I was working for an internet consulting company. I'd learned a lot in the year I was working there. About software development, source control, database architecture, web-design, . However I never really figured out what they were paying us to do. A lot of the projects I was putting in my time sheet were "internal development"
Towards the end, after not really being on a project. Through good timing, or just instinct. I looked for work back in the semiconductor industry, and in particular the semiconductor equipment industry.
I found a job working for this small company called NVS. I'm was definaltely qualified. It was a whirlwind of activity. I liked the startup atmosphere. There was a fridge full of free sodas, snacks, and they bought dinner for anyone who was working past 7PM. Strangely enough, people worked late there.
In those initial weeks in which I worked for them I made two separate business trips. One to Oregon to install a tool, and the other to Santa Clara to go to a big SPIE Photolithography Conference. I learned a lot more about semiconductor process equipment, and the ideas about what needed to be done, and it reminded me what I missed about that kind of work. Wandering through the tradeshow. I remembered the tools I used to work with, and realized that all the SPC charts which I had to look through, and the ability to see real data coming from your tool in a recognizable format was more important than I'd realized in my days at DEC/Intel.
So two things happend in that job. After traveling with the same person for three weeks straight. I got to know a co-worker, who was hired a week after me. they'd also hired a new manager who had no experience in the Semiconductor Industry. The co-worker was cute, but she had a boyfriend. I tried to be be cordial and show him what I knew.
Late in feb, the manager was trying to consolidate an amount of political power. And believe it or not looking at it, I had quite an ego after leaving Adept/Corriva, maybe because I was still patting myself on the back for seeing the writing on the wall and getting out of the internet company. Maybe
There was a snowstorm in March. As it happened one of the air conditioning compressors on the roof failed, and our server room started to get very warm. I think a few hard drives failed, and our IT guy was working frantically to get things back to normal. Since I lived so close to the office, I'd gone in during the snow day and seen this whole thing going down.
Anyhow after a snowstorm I'd decided that the snow was too good to pass up, so called a good friend and we went snowboarding.