I realize that this post will not be relevant to 99.99% of my loyal and wonderful readers but I am at heart an Analog Electronics Geek and RAP is the guy who sits on the summit of my personal Mt. Olympus for Analog Electronics.
From Paul Rako's blog at Electronics Design News:
National Semiconductor lays off Bob PeaseEnd times?
Sorry it is not a joke. I just got an email from Bob.I will see how this plays out before I write a rant that I will regret. I assume National did not really fire Bob, they probably gave him an incredibly generous retirement package like they have with others nearing retirement. All I will say for now is that as far as systems engineering, knowing not just how to design what goes inside a chip but also how to design discrete parts on a circuit board, Bob is probably the best analog engineer alive today. I said as much in my blog about the greatest analog engineers. And the pathos to all this is that National Semi�s new focus is on systems like Solarmagic and hybrid cars. Lets hope that Mr. Halla realizes that the value of his 74 million dollars of exercisable and unexercisable stock options will be far greater if Bob stays on the payroll. Please comment below if you are as outraged as I am and feel free to call or write National directly. I suspect he will stay on in some capacity. Bob is a tremendously loyal person and I am sure he would rather stay at National answering those 200 emails a day rather than go work for a competitor. The louder you howl the more likely National will bring Bob back. They really are a decent company. I saw Dennis Monticelli at the electronic flea market Saturday and you could really see the pain in his eyes when I mentioned the layoffs. And I should also mention that I found out that National really helped my buddy Saurabh get his immigration papers in order. They may have laid him off, but they spent a lot of money helping him out so he could get another job, which he has.I bet you thought that RAP was immune to layoffs. So did I. But the Turk knows where to find me: �The Coach wants to see you; bring your Playbook�. My Playbook weighs several thousand pounds. I wonder how much fun it will be to clean up my Office. Most of the stuff in my office is stuff that I bought and paid for�. Books, instruments�.
One thing that always pleased me about Bob is his personal nature. Anyone who has accomplished what he has would have every right to be self centered and a legend in his own mind.
But not Bob - when I've met him he's always been genuinely interested in others, in helping with their design problems, and poking fun at himself. A true gentleman in the classical sense. That he's a world-class designer for the ages as well is just icing on the cake.
Bob, a (slightly) younger engineer's hat is off to you. May your 'dinosaur' VW ever run, your op-amps be stable, and your TransAmerica building have its compensation capacitors well placed. My thanks always -
Jim Horn, WB9SYN/7 Former HP/Agilent/many others...
Possibly Bob made an enemy of some pencil-neck within NSM. He is rather outspoken, duh.
I think he should go hang with Jim Williams over at Linear Tech. NSM is the loser, not Bob.
All-
I am deeply saddened by this. It IS the end of an era.
If anyone ever needed convincing of the overwhelming victory which Wall Street has achieved over Main Street (i.e. the money-men over the worker-bees) this is it. And yet, our government ("of the people") persists in bailing out "too big to fail" AIG and the other worthless scum in the investment banking cabal, while extending its middle digit to Detroit, and its back to National.
Say what you will about the clueless nature of Detroit management and their "big" ($3-5M) yearly compensation packages. These are laughably pitiful in comparison to Wall Street and the scam-artists we are "bailing out" (i.e. handing over the treasury to). At least the CEO's of Detroit have -- at some point in their careers -- had to deal with the real-world problems of PRODUCING Tangible goods: supply-chain, union, logistical, and distribution headaches.
It appears that the particular investment "banks" and "insurance" firms getting handouts from DC don't even do that -- they only need worry about how to convert other people's money into their own.
And now this.
Bob and National have done more for US productivity over the past decade than ANY of the companies being "helped" by (i.e. "receiving corporate welfare" from) the USG. He and National Semi CERTAINLY haven't actively tried to (and succeeded in) destroying the US economy as the AIG and TARP crowd has. This event shows the irony and underlying injustice of our current "bailout" in a clear, sharp focus for those who have previously not heard the bell ring.
Unfortunately, the only people who care about Bob are a minute, insignificant, rapidly diminishing slice of our population: engineers.
And even a tinier slice within that: Analog, Electrical engineers. And even within that: Analog Electrical engineers who have been in industry long enough to know who Bob Pease is and what he represents in Analog engineering.
And even within this miniscule group, there are those who don't get it.
So I say this to the five or possibly even ten of us left who DO get it: Bob will be missed -- it IS the end of an era.