mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) (05/24/89)
In article <18710@cup.portal.com> bcase@cup.portal.com (Brian Case) writes: >There seems to be a trend in the microprocessor world: anyone >who ever worked at the company within a certain number of years >in an engineering capacity was a "designer" of the XXXXX >microprocessor. I mean, I have seen or heard "designer of >the 68000" attached to so many names that I can only guess >that the 68000 was produced by Cecil B. DeMile. This seems >unfair to those who really did have a major part of the action. We certainly see this phenomenon as well. The number of "I was the designer of the 80386" resume's that cross our desks is astonishing; the thing seems to have been designed not by a committee but by a full battalion (whose numbers keep growing as time passes). Some questions that often weed out the pretenders from the designers: (1) How many transistors were there in the part of the '386 that you designed? (2) Are your initials on the silicon? Were they on the Rev 1.0 silicon? (3) Do you know Ms. X? (an employee of the interviewing company who _was_ a '386 designer and whose initials do appear on rev 1.0 silicon.) What did she do on the '386? Did you have the same, more, or less design responsibility as her? -- -- Mark Johnson MIPS Computer Systems, 930 E. Arques, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 ...!decwrl!mips!mark (408) 991-0208
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (05/25/89)
In article <20275@obiwan.mips.COM> mark@mips.COM (Mark G. Johnson) writes: >We certainly see this phenomenon as well. The number of "I was the >designer of the 80386" resume's that cross our desks is astonishing... Gee, if I was hiring someone, I'd be sorely tempted to throw those resumes in the garbage as soon as I saw that line. Not something to be proud of in my books! :-) :-) (Okay, I know the designers mostly weren't to blame for the architecture...) -- Van Allen, adj: pertaining to | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology deadly hazards to spaceflight. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu