With ISIL, we almost wish for the old dictatorship. Why, the dictators were actually more sensible, doing things that were sustainable. They were educated and actually manageable. The only thing that can bring stability to the region is bring back ruthless dictators. We need Saddam. QC can fund a dictator with a promise that he installs WCDMA.
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Funny you bring up ISIL. What's the difference between stuck in the 14th century wackjob beheaders of ISIL and the stuck in the 14th century wackjob beheaders of US best friend forever Saudi Arabia? Just some masterful CNN media manipulation.
Goebbels up, everybody. It's review time.
How many of you are in QC? It is a killing field here. I would rather be in Iraq fighting ISIL (the radical group, not the company). At least over there, we know who is the enemy.
@PoliticallyCorrectEngineer, your insights are very good, but you are preaching to the choir (Anon69839). I know the game. Always Be Branding. Always Be Self-Aggrandizing. Manipulate others into doing work that you can take credit for.
@Anonymous69847, do u watch mad men? you (the product) don't need to be a great engineer. some sociopathic levels of media manipulation works wonders, in the form of peers singing your praises, and controlling the message delivered by your line manager. It's all wordplay. Did you "fix a bug" or did you "rearchitect a fault tolerant solution during a customer crisis"?
@Anonymous69839: Forgot to mention one very important thing.If you are asked to do something you don't want to do. NEVER ever say "I don't want to do it because that work sucks". What you want to sayis "Gee Mr. Director, that sounds like a great project. Unfortunately,as you can see from all my status reports, I'm really really busy doing project X. But I really really want to help you out. I will do my best to "try" to do this (shitty) task you are asking, on top of my already committed time. And if you can find me one extra resource, I will be more than happy to work with them to ensure we take care of what you need done..." Of course, you really aren't going to work on that task, and when asked, simply say "I tried to spend some time on it, but my prior commitment was really boggled me down. However, I could really use an extra resource so that I can train them to do my other task (which is shitwork), so I can work on your much more important project."
@Anonymous69839: Frankly, I don't know why I post here. I guess part of me being the geekside learned the hard way and think the rest of you hopefully want have to learn the hard way,and part of me is sick and tired of geeks getting royally screwed over. Or part of me is just sick and tired of people who don't get what they want. Anyway,you really won't like what I have to say.But I'll say it anyway. If you want to "game merit system", the solution is simple. Unlike the 95% other engineers/geeks, talk more and do less work, and strike a better relationship with your director or vp, and it doesn't even have to be work related. It's that simple. See, the problem with many engineers, is that they are really really smart. So what is perceived is something really easy is usually not worth mentioning in a status report, a conversation, to senior management etc. Guess what? You need to talk about what you do. Especially if you get stuck doing some shitwork, you need to make a big deal about it in the most positive light, and send status reports, have meetings, have conversations with about how great you are to save the world. Shit if you're going to get stuck doing some shit task, you better get something out of it. The more people that like you, the more people that reads your pompous status report, and attend your weekly meetings, the more people actually know you and think you are actually doing important work. And when that happens, guess who ends up getting to work on the more important projects? That's right- you. Plan B is to always find someone else to "work with you".There's a reason for that. #1: you want someone to dump that shitty task to so that the moment there is a good project, you are suddenly "available". #2: you want to demonstrate that you do a great job managing resources and running a project, no matter how small it is. You don't demonstrate that if it's a 1-man team. So, even if the task is 1-man, you would be best served trying to get someone else involved and take charge of it, for the two reasons I mentioned above. And that's the problem most engineers have. Their ego gets in their way way they think they are doing themselves a favor by demonstrating how good a 1-man team they are. No, they're demonstrating how good they are in staying stuck with something they really don't want to do. Most engineers make terrible politicians, and whether you want to accept it or not, the ones that typically get the best projects and best merit increases, are usually the ones that are the ones that are better politicians than the majority of the other engineers. There's a joke we have throughout the years of our careers. It goes like this. "A" students make great engineers. "C" students make great managers and directors and vp's. Because "C" students aren't capable of doing the real work, so they end up spending their time telling other people who they should do the work. It's funny, but partly true. So what if you are someone like me who was an "A" student? Easily. You pretend to be a "C" student, because that's not that hard to do, once you realize it's more important than being the one that actually does the grunt work. And you have 1 leg up from real "C" students, because you are smart enough to be an "A" student when you feel like it and when it's difference between getting another better position or not, either inside the company or outside the company. Don't let your "A" student ability get shafted by "C" students. You have to learn how to think like a "C" student to win their game.
@69826,69825: Very insightful, and obviously a man of experience. You point out precisely the strength of startups and the downfall, as well. Engineers staying current and looking for challenges can come up with something great, but no one wants to stay around to debug and make the product survive. So startups rise and get great valuation, and the acquiring company might get lucky to bring the product to the market and recoup investment. But, most of time the product dies with the exodus of the talents, who are on their way to the next startup. This plays out over and over. You can’t argue with what is the best for the employees, because they got the payoff and did not stay around to become stagnant. The risk is pushed off to someone else. So, maybe the game is to avoid risk, but someone will catch the falling knife. While we play startup round-robin, overseas competitors are copying old tech and taking over the market. Not true? Just look at how many companies in China can build mobile chipset. Without licensing to keep things in check, QC would be in a world of hurt, and all the 30k employees would suffer. It is good to look out for yourself, but it might be good to give the collective group some regards.
@Anonymous69839, how do you do that? I am curious to know
HR's most broken record talking point is that everything is "merit based". The best skill to have is working the merit system in your favor, as it is ripe for manipulation.
@Anonymous69825:And lastly,as an engineer, the "shelf life" of your money earning years,in practical terms is about 25 years. You start around in your early 20ies, you reach the peak of your career in the mid-30ies, and then you gradually go into steady decline as you head towards 50ish, if you even make it that far as an engineer. By the time you are 50ish, you better have option B already lined up, because if you are still only a "Senior Software Engineer" by then, you might as well stick a fork in yourself as an engineer. No one is going to hire you. You're too old, you're too slow, you probably picked up too many bad habits throughout the years, and you're probably too expensive for what you can bring to the table. Yes, that's a harsh thing to say, but that's reality too. Either you're in management, your a technical director, or you better find another line of work, because you won't make it as a grunt. So use every one of those years in your 25 year "shelf life" very very carefully. Nothing is worse than an employer pigeon-holing you into a position for 5+years, and then midpoint in your "self life" of your career, you have to "start over" because you didn't stay current. As added advice, you better be good at managing your money and investing too, because you better make sure you make your money work for you when you can't/don't want to work. Again, you have a 25 year shelf life, unlike doctors, and lawyers, CPA's etc, that can easily practice the same thing over and over again until they are 70+years old. You don't have that luxury as an engineer, because you have to always keep up with the latest and greatest, and there comes a point in your life when your age sets in and you don't want to or can't keep up. Time is ticking. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Tick-tock.
Anonymous69739@ That's a bunch of hogwash. The amount of mobility you have depends completely on how good you are and how current your skills are. And that depends on how well you take care of yourself and your career, because no employer like QC or anyone else has your best interest in mind and will take care of you.Companies need employees to have work done, no matter how trivial and useless that task may be towards advancing their employee's career. If you stay complacent and stay "stuck" in a dead-end job and don't acquire the latest and greatest skills that everyone else wants, you will be doubly screwed because your current employer won't value you that much since your skills are outdated, and when you do get laidoff, no one else will want to hire you, because your skills are outdated. You think a company that lays you off is going to take the time and spend the money to train you and keep your skills current so you are more marketable? They aren't. It's in their best interest to pigeon-hole you into a role that makes you the least amount of marketable to every other employer so you have less options to leave, but assign you to tasks that your current employer needs done. If push comes to shove, they won't have a problem laying you off and making you deal with your skills shortfall. So if you aren't looking out for yourself, frankly no one else is. And when you do get laidoff, but your skills suck and can't find a comparable job, don't blame anyone else but yourself, because you were so naive and let your employer pigeon-hole you into a worthless role/position. Your comparison to a self-run business is also hogwash. If you ran your own business, you wouldn't run it doing something you don't like to do unless the money was really good. And then, most likely you would hire someone to do the actual "labor" that you don't want to do. Who would want to do something they don't really want to if the money wasn't there? Running your own business, you won't be very successful if you have to do something you can't stand doing for a very long time. Likewise, you won't be very successful in your career if you're stuck in a job/role doing things your employer tells you to do with no options to move up or into a role/project you want to do. Your salary, your cash bonus,your stock grants are all temporary at a specific employer subject to how well a company does that for the most part has no affect on what you actually do (sorry, you aren't as important as you think in a 10,000+ employee company). Your compensation can come and go anywhere and at anytime, and you have very little control over that while you are an employee. Your skills, experience, abilities that you build yourself is the only thing that really matters and makes a difference for your career's future and your financial future, if you plan on staying in this line of work for a long time.
Think about this, if you owned the company, you would have no one to complain about and you could not leave because you didn’t like the work. This industry allows for a lot of mobility because of abundance of competitors and startups. Consolidation has eliminated many opportunities, and the day of free roaming is no long available. Unlike your cell phone service.
How old are you? Do you have other significant financial responsibilities? If you are young and unattached, and don't own property, you can generally afford to take more financial risks, are free to move to another geographical area, engage in more frequent business travel, or accept founders stock as part of your pay. As several have already pointed out, you need more than some guy with a concept to actually run a business. Look for professional management, a good potential product market, and at least 5 years of VC funding approved by investors who are respected in the industry--e.g.: not just a bunch of doctors and lawyers who figured they'd jump into the tech sector for a profit, and who will insisto on micro-managing.
This is where I think a lot of you folks don't get. Pride in your work and loyalty to a company that isn't yours are two completely different things. Your work and quality of work goes wherever you choose to apply your talent. In many cases, pride in your work may very well be the reason why you leave a company. You either hate what you're doing because it sucks an't can't stand just getting by collecting a paycheck, or the way the manager/project lead runs it is terrible because you can't stand all the corners/hacks/workarounds and other POS short term bandaid they try to pile on. For me, I never left a company because of pay alone. I always left a company because either I wasn't getting what I wanted out of the work experience, I wasn't moving forward fast enough in my career, or I wasn't able to work on the best projects at some point in time, or the team I was working with did a shitty job running the project wrto quality, or the company was going down the tubes and I wanted to jump ship before I went down with the ship or group (Can you say Globalstar?). Reality is that until you get into a C level type position or higher, an extra 20%+ pay here and there really doesn't make that much of a difference on a W2 paycheck after taxes, especially once you factor in all the new taxes levied on upper income people, including but not limited to medicare care surcharge, and AMT which many of you will hit anyway.And wrto to loyalty to a company. That's a bunch of Hogwash from HR. Loyalty to a company ended the moment large companies got rid of pensions, good stock grants+retirement packages, and when as a means to cut cost tried to shaft workers here by going for cheaper outsourced/overseas workers at the expense of fattening executive bonuses for hitting profit objectives by focusing on cutting cost versus truly innovating. Think of it this way? How far does Qualcomm or any company really go out of it's way to take care of employees when they need to lay them off....You don't need to answer that question, because you already know the answer. So, call it being mercenary. It is what it is. Because no one else is looking out for you. Definitely not a company that isn't yours.
I don’t think there is anything wrong in taking pride in your work. When you evaluate companies, you probably value one that recognizes your contribution and pay you for it. And, that makes you feel good. This feeling is pride, unless you are all about the money, in which case go for the best comp. Most people I know that only cares about the comp end up being someone very selfish and have low view of his peer. Not sure if it is correlation or just coincidence.
of course we wouldn't let the less fortunate die!! a dead slave is no good to exploit. we need living slaves to build iphones, etc. thankfully there are nets to catch falling workers who did not have enough pride in their work. I think we're getting off topic now.
pride is a slippery slope. best to just do good work and not pat yourself on the back too much. might pull a metaphorical muscle.
Yes, capitalism is all about profit, and but fight that by selecting people who are socialistic. We give to charity for good cause or just to make ourselves fell better. Based on capitalism or Darwinism, less fortunate should just die, but we would never let that happen, would we?
last i checked, capitalism was about the profit motive, not the pride motive.
QC is laying off people, and some managers might just take this opportunity to get rid of those who don’t believe in QC doctrine. So, if you don’t take pride in what you do, you might just have to pretend.
greed is good. greed works. hubris does not.
Pride doesn't pay the rent, $$$ does...
Hey, don’t you guys take any pride in your work and the products you build. QC makes some good products. These post sound like mercenary.
Uber and Snapchat have combined "valuations" about half of QCOM market cap, if you believe the private equity funding racket. I say join a startup and ride the social media sharing economy BS to its bitter bubbly popping end. Who knew a dik-pik sharing app could be so valuable. Who knew a platform for turning desperate broke millenials into everybody's most hated profession (taxi driver) could be so valuable. Leave the modems and the bit flipping to the risk averse.
This really depends on where you are with your life, where you want to go with your career, what the startup is offering, and how risk adverse you are. Throughout my career, I've worked at both QC and startups. I'm career motivated and have no loyalties to any company that won't give me good work, and would leave if I was stuck doing some mudane task that didn't advance my skills further. At all the startups I worked at, the pace was much faster, and I was given much more responsibility than I was at the bigger companies(QC included). And while my hours were longer sometimes, there is a misconception that they are really that much worse than working in, for example QCT. The biggest drawback of working at a startup will be stability. Many startups don't end up going public or don't have a happy ending, so you have to be willing to deal with uncertainty and risk of having to look for another job. Out of the 6 startups I've joined, only 2 went public, 1 was successfully acquired for $100 million, and 3 folded shortly after I left. So while money was good for me at startups, I got lucky, and I personally wouldn't count on rolling in the big dough as a reason for joining a startup. I'd also avoid any sort of "early stage" startup that us only in the "idea" stage with no real customers yet. Those are a lot more prone to failure for various reasons, not limited to inability to find future funding from investors, inability to get customers, etc. Ideally, if you do join a startup, it would be during the 2nd-3rd round of funding, after the startup already has proven there is a sizeable investor interested AND there are some customers. If they are offering you a position for which you think it will take you to the next level of your career, and you care more about that, and you have a pretty good comp package from then to take a risk with them, and you don't have a huge financial obligation hanging over your head that can't tolerate a job loss (such as a family to feed, a huge mortgage,etc), go for it. Eventually, after you hone your skills or experience, you can always find a job at a large company again. And if you play your cards right, you might even get into a higher level position than all the lemmings that stayed at the big company doing the same thing over and over again without improving his/her career. If you do quit, make sure you do so after you've met any near term vesting, bonus payout, etc. Companies always say they need you now, but in many cases, you need to push back the start date for your benefit. (unless the new company is willing to comp you for whatever bonus/vesting stock that you will lose by starting early). Also, if you close to any paid holidays,make sure you use your vacation days and remain on payroll until after the paid holidays, and then quit after the holidays. Otherwise, while the company will pay your for your accrued vacation, they won't pay you for the holidays unless you're still on payroll during those days. 2 weeks is standard notice, 1.5 weeks is cutting it close. If you participate in medical flexible spending, make sure you exhaust all of it before you leave. The nice thing about medical flexible spending is that if you chose to withhold $3000 last year for that lasik procedure you were planning to do this year,you can spend that $3000 right now, even though payroll hasn't deducted the entire $3000 yet. If you spend it now and quit, the employer is shit out of luck. Good luck with your decision. We've all been there. But the good news for you is having another opportunity lined up while still being employed isn't a bad problem to have at all. It's a great problem to have! In fact, I would use your current good situation to explore what else is out there. Who knows what else you find.