harry … the ASIC guy

Our summer has been pretty hectic and full of uncertainty, so we put off planning a short vacation until just this past weekend. We usually go up to Big Bear and stay at this one place that is dog friendly and has a pool for the kids and is close to town. We’ve stayed there 3 times before and have always been very happy.

This past Saturday morning, I Googled the name of the resort in order to get the web address when I noticed that there was a Trip Advisor listing for the place. So, I thought I’d check it out. Much to my surprise there was a slew of negative reviews. I dug a little further and found that many of these reviews were placed around the same date (since we had been there last) by people who only rated this one place and who had very similar complaints. These reviews seemed suspicious, but who knew, maybe some had merit. These could be legit or they could be someone posting them on the behalf of competing resorts to discredit their competitor.

As I surfed a little more, I found comments on some other pages indicating that this sort of negative posting on rating sites had become epidemic for Big Bear. Who knew that the lodging industry in this cozy little town in the mountains was so cutthroat? It’s a good example of a lose-lose strategy. Now I can’t trust any of the ratings!

In the end we ended up booking at a different resort, mostly due to other factors, but admittedly also due in part to the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) caused by these reviews.

On Sunday morning I came across an article  that describes how one PR firm allegedly hires interns “to trawl iTunes and other community forums posing as real users, and has them write positive reviews for their client’s applications.” Now, I knew that this sort of mischief happened, but I thought it was all amateurish behavior on the part of overzealous business owners and their fans. I did not realize it was an actual service one could select from a PR firm. How brazen!

On the other hand, maybe this article I read was actually secretly sponsored by a competing PR firm in order to discredit the PR firm being decried in the article. Who is to believe whom? Hmmm…..

Before you say that I am naïve about all this behavior, I’m not. The verification methodology survey I posted back in February was vandalized by VMM and OVM fans. And more than a year ago, someone copied a blog post of mine onto comp.lang.verilog for the sole purpose of posting in response a personal attack on my credibility. I’ve seen this stuff first hand.

A big part of the problem is anonymity and impunity. When someone uses a fictitious name and email address to post such a review as the one described above, we never know who that person is and he never suffers any consequences. After all, who is Vactioner287 after all? However, let’s say that one could only leave a comment by using his LinkedIn profile. I bet that would kill 99% of the issues right there.

(Actually, it would probably result in a proliferation of fictitious LinkedIn accounts, but then you could tell pretty well from those accounts that they are fakes since they’d be very bare. To some extent, like metastability, you can never totally get rid of the problem … you can only make it less likely.)

Most websites that accept reviews require registration. Although the hassle of registration deters some legitimate people from leaving legitimate comments, it also beneficially deters those with malicious intentions to a great degree. Almost all the online communities in EDA require some sort of registration, the Synopsys blogs being the only one that I can name that does not.

So, who ya gonna trust?

Personally, there are 3 types of people who I trust on the internet and they are as follows:

1. People I already know and trust - These are people who I know personally. Maybe they are current or former colleagues or customers or suppliers or partners or friends. I have reason to trust them because I know them.
2. People I’ve come to trust - These are people whom I have come to know through the internet who have demonstrated over a period of time that they are trustworthy. Maybe it’s a blogger who has proven to be right most of the time. Or whose advice rings true. Or who provides me with valuable information and insight. Hopefully, I am one of those people for you.
3. People I’ve been told to trust by others I trust - This is where social capital and influence come into play. If someone I trust links to someone else, then I gain trust in that person to whom he is linking. If he’s on his blogroll. If he’s a guest blogger. If he’s written a book that is referred to. Not that everyone that is referenced is automatically trustworthy, but it helps.

If you were to look at my Google Reader and see who I subscribe to, they pretty much fall into the 3 categories above. That gives me plenty to read.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t help too much with the situation I originally described, because Vacationer287 doesn’t fall any of these categories. What do you do then? Ask yourself the following:

1. Did he write anything else under this name or did he just join to post this one review. If the former, then he may be legit (you need to look at what they wrote). If the former, that’s suspicious.
2. Did he use a real name? Vandals often hide behind fictitious and non-descript names.
3. Does it pass the smell test? I can smell bad milk without a lab test and you can too. Does it all make sense or does some of the writeup just seem too good or bad to be true?

I don’t know if this post helps you or confuses you more. Probably, it confuses you because now you have to consider why and how you come to trust some people and not others on the internet. That’s good. From reconciling confusion comes understanding.

Trust me, you have my word on it.

harry the ASIC guy

(Photo courtesy J.L. Gray) 

Last year, at the Design Automation Conference, there were only a couple dozen individuals who would have merited the title of EDA blogger. Of those, perhaps a dozen or so wrote regularly and had any appreciable audience. In order to nurture this fledgling group, JL Gray (with the help of John Ford, Sean Murphy, and yours truly) scrounged a free room after-hours in the back corner of the Anaheim Convention Center in which to hold the first ever EDA Bloggers Birds-of-a-Feather session. At this event, attended by both bloggers and traditional journalists, as John Ford put it, us bloggers got our collective butts sniffed by the top dog journalists.

My, how things have changed in just one year.

This year at DAC, us EDA bloggers (numbering 233 according to Sean Murphy) and other new media practitioners took center stage:

• Bloggers were literally on stage at the Denali party as part of an EDA’s Next Top Blogger competition.
• Bloggers were literally center stage at the exhibits, in the centrally located Synopsys booth, engaging in lively conversation regarding new media.
• Atrenta held a Blogfest.
• There was a Pavillion Panel dedicated to tweeting and blogging.
• And most conspicuously, there was the 14-foot Twitter Tower streaming DAC related tweets.

Meanwhile, the traditional journalists who were still covering DAC seemed to fall into 2 camps. There were those who embraced the bloggers as part of the media and those that didn’t. Those that did, like Brian Fuller, could be found in many of the sessions and venues I mentioned above. Those that did not, could be found somewhere down the hall between North and South halls of Moscone in their own back corner room. I know this because I was given access to the press room this year and I did indeed find that room to be very valuable … I was able to print out my boarding pass on their printer.

Here’s my recap of the new media events:

I had mixed feelings regarding the Denali Top Blogger competition as I know others did as well. JL, Karen, and I all felt it was kind of silly, parading like beauty queens to be judged. Especially since blogging is such a collaborative, rather than competitive, medium. So often we reference and riff off of each other’s blog posts. Still, I think it was good recognition and publicity for blogging in EDA and one could not argue with the legitimacy of the blogger representatives, all first-hand experts in the areas that they cover. Oh, by the way, congratulations to Karen Bartleson for winning the award.

Conversation Central, hosted by Synopsys, was my highlight of DAC.  It was a little hard to find (they should have had a sign), located in a little frosted glass room on the left front corner of the Synopsys booth. But if you could find your way there, it was well worth the search. I’m a little biased since I hosted conversations there Monday - Wednesday on “Job Search: How Social Media Can Help Job Seekers & Employers”. The sessions were a combination of specific advice and lively discussions and debates. I was fortunate to have a recruiter show up one day and a hiring manager another day to add their unique perspectives. I think that that was the real power of this very intimate kitchen table style format. Everybody felt like they were allowed to and even encouraged to participate and add their views into the discussions. This is very different from a very formal style presentation and even panel discussions.

Unfortunately, I was not able to clone myself in order to attend all the sessions there, many of which I heard about afterwards from others or in online writeups. I did attend the session by Ron Ploof entitled “Objectivity is Overrated: Corporate Bloggers Aren’t Journalists, & Why They Shouldn’t Even Try”. Interestingly enough, no journalists showed up to the session. Still, it was a lively discussion, the key point being that bloggers don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk, and therefore bring to the table a deeper understanding and experience with EDA and design than a journalist, even one that was previously a designer.

I also attended Rick Jamison’s session on “Competitors in Cyberspace: Why Be Friends?” which attracted several Cadence folks (Joe Hupcey, Adam Sherer, Bob Dwyer) and some Mentor folks. Although competitors for their respective companies, there was a sense of fraternity and a lot of the discussion concerned what is “fair play” with regards to blog posting and commenting. The consensus was that advocacy was acceptable and even expected from the partisans, as long as it could be backed up by fact and kept within the bounds of decorum (i.e. no personal attacks). EDA corporate bloggers have been very fair in this regards in contrast to some rather vitriolic “discussions” in other industries.

The Atrenta Blogfest sounded very interesting and I was very disappointed that I could not attend because it conflicted with my Conversation Central discussion. Mike Demler has a brief summary on his blog as does Daniel Nenni on his blog.

Late Wednesday, Michael Sanie hosted a DAC Pavillion Panel entitled “Tweet, Blog or News: How Do I Stay Current?” Panelists Ron Wilson (Practical Chip Design in EDN), John Busco (John’s Semi-Blog) and Sean Murphy (his blog) shared insights into the ways they use social media to stay current with events in the industry, avoid information overload, and separate fact from fiction. Ron Wilson commented that social networks are taking the place of the socialization that engineers used to get by attending conferences and the shared experience reading the same traditional media news. John Busco, the recognized first EDA blogger, shared how he keeps his private life and his job at NVidia separate from his blogging life. And Sean Murphy gave perspective on how blogging has grown within EDA and will continue to grow to his projection of 500 EDA bloggers in 2011.

Last, but not least, there was the Twitter Tower, located next to the Synopsys booth. Previous conferences, such as DVCon attempted to use hashtags (#DVCon) to aggregate conference related tweets. The success was limited, attracting perhaps a few dozen tweets at most. This time, Karen Bartleson had a better idea. Appeal to people’s vanity. The Twitter Tower displayed a realtime snapshot of all tweets containing “#46DAC“, the hashtag designated for the 46th DAC. If one stood in front of the tower and tweeted with this hastag, the tweet would show up within seconds on the tower. How cool is that? Sure it was a little gimmicky, but it made everyone who passed by aware of this new standard. As I write this, there have been over 1500 tweets using the #46DAC hashtag.

If you want to read more, Sean Murphy has done the not-so-glamorous but oh-so-valuable legwork of compiling a pretty comprehensive roundup of the DAC coverage by bloggers and traditional press. (Thanks Sean!)

harry the ASIC guy

I’m writing to you today from a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in beautiful Southern California. There’s something about the atmosphere at a coffee shop that helps me get my thoughts together. Maybe it’s the white noise of the cappuccino machines or the conversations or music in the background.

I’m not the only one of course. Daniel Nenni and his two great danes can often be found at the downtown Danville Starbucks. And like the show Cheers, there are regulars at my local coffee shop that I see most days I am here. Sales people and college students come here a lot. And there has been a noticeable increase in another group. People out of work or “in transition”. In fact, as I glance over to the next table, I see a woman working on her resume. No lie.

Despite the uncertainty, I’ve actually benefited from the opportunity to take a one month break between projects, something I never got as a full-time employee. I’ve been able to catch up with old friends and colleagues on the phone, or over coffee, lunch, or some beers. I’ve also been able to start up some new business opportunities that you’ll be hearing more about in the near future. It never hurts to have multiple irons in the fire, especially in today’s economy.

Which brings me to the topic of jobs. I don’t care what any politician or semiconductor analyst or economist says or what the Dow or NASDAQ is at today. The high tech jobs market sucks. When I ask my very experienced friends and colleagues “what’s happening” they tell me they “can’t find no work, can’t find no job, my friend”. (Marvin Gaye fans will get the reference). Here are some examples:

• Al Magnani, a friend in the Bay Area with 23 years experience, educated at MIT, USC, and Carnegie-Mellon, an expert in computer architecture, networking, and graphics processing, who’s led dozens of ASIC design developments, who’s been a Director managing a total team of over 50 people, has gone through almost all of his 229 LinkedIn contacts and has not even been able to get an interview in almost 2 months.
• Jon Atwood, former VP of Sales at Synopsys and a man who has so much EDA experience that he remembers Joe Costello before he played guitar, has been looking for almost 6 months and has started a blog called Job Search 2.0 chronicling his job search adventure. He’s even been on ABC news talking about his employment woes.
• I’ve received emails from several other very experienced designers, both employees and independent consultants, who tell similar stories of months looking for work.
• On a personal level, as I have been looking for that “next project”, I have encountered much of the same, and count myself lucky that I actually have a next project to work on.

Having talked to so many of these people and recruiters, here is how I assess the high-tech job situation today:

• There are a lot more job seekers than jobs out there. OK, that’s obvious. But to give you an idea, of the magnitude, my recruiter friend says she receives hundreds of resumes for every job posted and there are usually many, sometimes dozens of, qualified candidates to choose from.
• Many of the job postings are soft. That is, the employer does not need to hire someone right away but just has the job posted in case the perfect candidate comes along.
• Employers are looking for the perfect candidate to come along. If they have 10 requirements for the position, and you meet 9 of them, you are probably on the B-list. And not only are they looking for the right experience, they want you to have been doing pretty much the same job very recently, not 2 years ago.
• Submitting your resume to a corporate website is a waste of time. Even if you are perfectly qualified, recruiters get too many job postings and your resume may not even get looked at because they run out of time and already have many candidates.
• Experience counts … against you. Many employers are looking for younger people who don’t have high salary expectations and will work long hours and travel. In fact, I spoke to a recruiter that was retained by a recent chip synthesis startup that told me that he was only looking for candidates with <5 years experience to be an AE at that company. They are not the only ones.
• Employers hold all the cards. I heard today about someone who accepted a job at 10% less than she was currently making. Don’t expect to make more or even as much as you made before. Don’t expect stock options or signing bonuses. And don’t expect more than 24 hours to make a decision on an offer because there is someone on-deck.

So, with the news that bad, it would be easy to get discouraged. I have been discouraged, for myself and for my friends. Still, here are a few tips that I think will help:

1. Update your online identity. Every recruiter and hiring manager will do 2 things before they ever pick up the phone and call you. They will Google your name and they will search for you on LinkedIn. Space prohibits me from going into the details of how to do this, but believe me that this is critical. If you want to see an example, you can see my LinkedIn profile.
2. Find someone in the company who can introduce you or your resume to the hiring manager with a recommendation. This has always been the best way to find a job, but today it is the only way. As I said, the odds of you making it through the corporate website and HR are very low. LinkedIn can help tremendously since you can identify easily who you know at a target company and also whether your contacts know somebody there to whom they can introduce you.
3. Let your contact refer you before you submit anything to the corporate website. Even in this economy, many companies still give bonuses to employees who refer candidates. If you let your contact get the referral bonus, he will be more likely to help you find the right people in the company to talk to and even sell you to them.
4. Sign up for job boards. I know that everyone else is using these, but there are still real jobs posted there and you can get an idea which companies are hiring and then use your networking skills to get in the door. Simplyhired and even craigslist are good.
5. Be willing to take a step back to go forward. You will probably need to a take a cut in pay or take on a position with less responsibility or prestige than you currently have. Accept it. I have a friend who refused to look at jobs that paid less than he previously made. He ended up out of work for 6 months and then ended up taking a lower paying job anyway. It’s more important that you get a job you can do well and that the company has a good outlook going forward.
6. Help others find a job. You can file this under good karma, or pay it forward, or just plain being a mentsch. If you come across a position for which someone you know would be a good fit, let them know, help them out. It will make you feel a little better and you’ll have made a loyal friend who may be in a position to help you out one day soon.
7. Get into social networking. I’ll be talking about this more at DAC, but for now, look for opportunities to get on Twitter. Start reading, commenting on, or even writing a blog. Join relevant LinkedIn groups. Join online communities like those at Synopsys, Mentor, and Cadence or independent ones like OVMWorld or Xuropa.
8. Keep up your skills. There are so many free webinars and opportunities to keep up-to-date that you have no excuse. Check out the Mentor Displaced Worker program.
9. Consider doing some free work. I know that does not sound great, but you can possibly learn something new in the process and at least avoid having a gap in your resume (remember how picky employers are).
10. Decide if you are willing to relocate or travel. If you are only looking for positions within your commuting distance then that limits your opportunities.

For those of you who will be attending DAC this coming week, I will be in the Synopsys Conversation Central booth Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at 1:30 hosting a conversation on Using Social Media for Job Seekers and Employers.

Please stop and we can talk over a cup of coffee.

harry the ASIC guy

(WARNING: What you are about to hear is very disturbing. You may want to remove any children, pets, or small farm animals before listening to the audio in this blog post. You’ve been warned.)

Several years ago, I was driving home from a family vacation when I accidentally speed dialed my boss on the cell phone. His voice mail picked up just as I was singing in the car to my daughter. I had no idea what had occurred until a month later at a staff meeting when he got up in from of my team and my colleagues and played this audio track.

Now you know why I am not trying to become the next EDA Idol at this year’s Design Automation Conference!

Fortunately, there is another tongue-in-cheek contest that I am honored to be part of, EDA’s Next Top Blogger.

In case you can’t make DAC this year, I’d like to introduce you to the fellow nominees because they are all great writers and experts in their domains. I encourage you to read these blogs and subscribe to the ones that you find valuable. And look beyond this list because there are many more out there.

Colin Warwick is a Product Marketing Manager at Agilent EEsof EDA group. Colin’s Signal Integrity blog is about signal integrity tips, tricks, and tutorial for multigigabit/s chip-to-chip data links. It includes videos (technical and humorous), tutorial articles, interactive calculators and polls, reviews, and product and event information.

John Busco is a Design Implementation Manager at NVidia. Blogging since 2005, John’s Semi-Blog shares high quality news and opinion about semiconductors and EDA. John is hands-on working in the trenches on the bleeding edge designs, so you can trust what he tells you.

Paul McLellan  has been an executive in EDA and Semiconductors with companies like VLSI Technologies, Compass, Ambit, Cadence,and on and on. His EDA Graffiti blog covers EDA and semiconductor, looking back to some history, analyzing the industry and looking where things are likely to end up. I always walk away from Paul’s blog posts with something to think about.

Daniel Nenni is also an EDA industry veteran with similarly impressive credentials. Although his Silicon Valley Blog is fairly new, Daniel writes like a verteran blogger, sharing his 25+ years of experience in semiconductor design and manufacture in an entertaining manner. He manages to share some of his personal life observations as well.

Karen Bartleson is Director of Community Marketing at Synopsys. Since November 2007, she has presented news, insights, and opinions on the topic of EDA standards in her ever popular The Standards Game blog. Karen is also spearheading Synopsys’ Conversation Central at DAC where you can exchange ideas with many of these same top bloggers (and many more) about how social media is changing the media landscape.

Frank Schirrmeister is Director of Product Marketing and System-Level Solutions at Synopsys. His A View From The Top blog is dedicated to System-Level Design and Embedded Software and deals with the technology and business aspects to get us to ESL and the next abstraction level eventually!

JL Gray is a hands-on verification consultant at Verilab. In his Cool Verification blog, which set the standard for independent blogging in EDA, JL shares this thoughts on hardware verification, the EDA industry, and related topics. JL spearheaded the EDA Blogger Birds-of-a-Feather session at DAC last year and sits on the ever popular Accellera Verification IP Technical Subcommittee.

I have 2 favors to ask. First, please check out some these wonderful bloggers (and some of the others you can find on David Lin’s EDA Blog Roll) who devote their evenings and weekends writing for free (well, about half of us) to bring you valuable information you can’t get anywhere else. Then, show your support by voting for your favorite blog and telling a friend or a co-worker about all this great content out there. Please vote for whoever you want, but remember, if I lose, I might have to sing next year. And you don’t want that!

(Note: The Denali site requires you to enter a Captcha phrase and also your valid email address in order to ensure that people only vote once. The email address WILL NOT be used for any other purpose, so please do not be dissuaded from voting because of this).

harry the ASIC guy

A few weeks ago I was talking with a former colleague about social media (or new media or web 2.0 or social networking or whatever you call it). He is now VP of sales at one of the companies in our industry and is contemplating starting a blog or doing something in social media and he wanted to get my thoughts. Early in the conversation, he asked “do executives really read blogs”?

An interesting question.

About a week ago, Forbes released a study entitled “The Rise of the Digital C-Suite - How Executives Locate and Filter Business Information” for which they surveyed 354 executives at US companies with annual sales > $1B. The results were both surprising and not surprising.

First, what was not surprising. The younger the executive, the more likely he was to use and count on the internet and social media as a resource for business related research. Whereas 56% of executives under 40 say they use Twitter daily or several times a week, only 17% of those over 50 use Twitter at all. The statistics are similarly skewed towards younger executive as regards usage of blogs, RSS feeds, social networks, and so on.

Also not surprising, the more mature social media technologies had the highest adoption rates. Irregardless of age, almost 100% of executives turn to the internet via search engines to do research before enlisting the help of their staff. The top areas of research are competitor analysis, trend analysis (customer, technology, societal, marketing, political), and corporate developments and news about mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures. Meanwhile, 95% found links from websites, blogs, and other online content to be valuable and 82% found guidance from contacts in online communities to be valuable.

So, what was surprising? Among executives under 40, 72% maintain a work related blog, with almost two-thirds updating it at least weekly. Twitter and RSS usage was very similar. Who knew that these busy executives could find time to keep up a blog or to “waste time” on Twitter? This trend will only increase as more of Generation Netscape and Generation Youtube find their way into the executive suite.

With similar goals, UberCEO.com scoured the Internet to determine how many of the Fortune 100 CEOs were using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, or had a blog. In stark contrast to the Forbes study, the results of their research indicated that of the 100 CEOs, only 19 had personal Facebook pages, 2 had Twitter accounts, 13 had LinkedIn accounts, 75 had Wikipedia pages, and none had a blog. What could account for this difference between the two studies?

Some of the difference is due to the demographics of the two studies. Whereas UberCEO considered only Fortune 100 CEOs, Forbes looked at executives of all ranks (only 18% were CEOs) and included much smaller companies with sales > $1B. (In fact, the Fortune 100th company had sales over $20B, 20x the limit for the Forbes survey). There seems to be a greater tendency for lower-level executives and those in smaller companies to use social media. Also, the CEOs in the larger Fortune 100 companies are more likely in that 50+ range which makes them less likely to participate in social media. I also think that the UberCEO survey undercounted since they did not contact anyone directly and missed many who may just listen in on blogs and Twitter and other social media and not yet participate as content producers.

A third more in-depth datapoint was provided by Ron Ploof in his recently released eBook on How Johnson and Johnson (Fortune #47) Does New Media. Despite being in a highly regulated industry where they had every excuse not to risk adopting social media, nonetheless JnJ has been very bold and successful with 2 blogs, a Youtube channel, a Twitter account, and now a Facebook page. Apparently, many of JnJ’s executives have adopted social media.

So, back to my colleague’s original question, “do executives really read blogs,” here’s what I think. Considering that we are in a high-tech industry with technology savvy execs, who tend to be younger than the average, with companies smaller than the typical Fortune 100 … Yes, the executives that you are likely trying to reach probably do read blogs. And maybe even use Twitter (see this list of business leaders and executives on Twitter) and have a Facebook page.

But that’s just me. What do you think? I’d especially be interested to hear from any executives out there as to what tools you use, why you find them useful, and how you use them.

harry the ASIC guy

My morning routine is pretty, well, routine.

Get up.  Wake the kids.

Check email.  Ask the kids to stop jumping on the couch.

Check Twitter. Tell the kids again to stop jumping on the couch.

Check my Google Reader. Glare at the kids with that “I’ve asked you for the last time” look.

You get the idea.

This Wednesday morning, somewhere in between conversations with my kids, walking the dog, and getting ready for work, I came across the following comment on a friend’s blog:

Ron, we are listening.

http://www.mentor.com/blogs

Ron Fuller
Web Manager, Mentor Graphics

For background, Ron Ploof is the guy who got the crazy idea almost 3 years ago that Synopsys should be doing something in this new world called social media. (Actually, I don’t think the term “social media” had even been coined back then). He evangelized this belief to the VP of Marketing at Synopsys and created for himself a job as Synopsys’ “New Media Evangelist” (actual title on his business card). He launched Synopsys’ first foray into social media, including podcasts, videos, and most prominently, blogs.

Synopsys’ success motivated Cadence to follow suit (something confided to me by Cadence’s former community manager). And it seems, according to the comment on Ron’s blog, it also motivated Mentor’s move into social media.

__________

I wanted to find out more about the Mentor blogs and I was able to set up some time to talk over lunch with Sonia Harrison at Mentor (see her sing at the Denali DAC party) . Sonia had helped me set up my previous interview with Paul Hofstadler and had extended me an invitation to attend the Mentor User2User conference (which, unfortunately, I could not attend). As it turns out, Sonia was the absolutely right person to talk to.

Even though I had only now become aware of Mentor blogs, Mentor had evidently coordinated their launch with the launch of their new website several months ago. Sonia was quite humble, but it seems that she was the driving force behind the blogs and Mentor’s presence in other social media like Twitter. She had been watching what was going on for some time, hesitant to jump in without a good plan, and now was the time.

According to Sonia, Mentor’s motivation for doing the blogs was to extend into a new media their “thought leadership” in the industry, to draw customers in to their website, and to exchange information with customers. Interestingly, Mentor did not hire an outside social media consultant or community manager like Cadence had. Rather, the project was homegrown. Sonia recruited various technical experts and others as bloggers. She developed “common sense” social media guidelines to make sure bloggers were informed of and played by social media rules (e.g. no sensitive or proprietary information, be polite, respect copyrights, give attribution).

According to Sonia, “one of the more difficult things was to get people to commit to blogging regularly. Writing takes time, it’s almost a full time job.” Despite this additional work burden, Mentor has no plans to bring in professional journalists as bloggers like Richard Goering at Cadence. And it doesn’t seem they need to. Simon Favre received a blog of the week award from System Level Design a few weeks ago, so they are doing quite well on their own.

Sonia does not have any specific measurable goals (page views, subscribers, etc.), which I think is a mistake, especially when her upper management comes asking for evidence that these efforts are paying off. My friend Ron likes to tell me that social media is the most measurable media ever and it’s a shame not to use the data.

I started playing with the site later in the afternoon and noticed a few things. First, when I added a comment to one of the blogs without registering, it did not show up right away, nor did I get a message that the comment was being moderated. It did show up later in the day, but it would be nice to at least be told that it was “awaiting moderation”. Still better, why moderate or require registration at all? The likelihood of getting inappropriate comments from engineering professionals is very low, and they can always be removed if need be. Moderation of comments will also kill a hot topic in its tracks. I’ve personally had the experience of publishing a new blog post late at night and waking up to several comments, some addressing other comments. Had I moderated the blog, none of those comments would have even showed up until later in the day.

Second, there was no way to enter a URL or blog address when leaving a comment. It is pretty standard practice to have this feature to allow readers to “check out” the person leaving the comment. Hopefully thay can add this.

On the positive side, the most important feature of a blog is the content and the content looks very good, especially the PCB blogs. Also, there is apparently no internal review or censorship of blog posts, so bloggers have the freedom to write whatever they want, within the social media guidelines of course.

 __________

It’s been almost 3 years since Ron made his first pitch to his manager. Who would have thought that the Big 3 and many others would have adopted social media in such a short time. Meanwhile, my kids are still jumping on the couch.

GTG

harry the ASIC guy

It was 1992 and I was supporting the Motorola Iridium project in Chandler, AZ. There was a project lead named Steve who I was tasked to work with. My job was to get certain elements of our DesignWare library working properly to support his ASIC design team.

Steve was a bit of a control freak. Whenever there were technical decisions to be made, Steve wanted to be the one making the decisions. And once he made his decision, there was no changing it. You see, Steve had a big ego and did not like to be wrong, much less wrong in front of his team.

Unfortunately, his decisions were not always the correct decisions and I had no problem telling him that. You see, I had a big ego too.

As you can imagine, Steve and I did not get along very well.

Fortunately, I had a boss who had dealt with Steve before and who gave me some advice that I carry to this day. He suggested that I bring the relevant facts to Steve and present them in such a way that the decision was obvious. Then, I needed to say these words, “I’m not sure what is the best choice. What do you think?”

As hard as it was for me to relinquish control of these decisions, it turned out to be the right way to handle Steve. Instead of feeling like he was put on the spot to win a debate with the local AE, he felt like a respected authority figure. With this pressure removed, Steve usually ended up making the right decision (i.e. the one I would have recommended).

Steve was happier. I was happier. And we got a lot more productive work done as a result!

__________

The soft skills that I describe in the story above do not come naturally to most engineers. A matter of fact, I’ve often heard it said “he’s a great engineer, but I’d never take him to a client”. So I was very interested when I came across a press release describing how Mentor Graphics and RTM Consulting collaborated to develop a soft skills training class for Mentor consultants. I sent an email to Paul Hofstadler, VP of Consulting at Mentor, requesting to talk to him about the class, and he graciously accepted.

According to Paul, Mentor’s Services are typically focused on deploying to their clients new working processes around the EDA tools that Mentor sells. That is, they are teaching their clients to fish, rather than selling them fish. As you can imagine, it requires a great deal of influence and political savvy to effectively implement these types of changes in a client’s organization. Unfortunately, these skills don’t necessarily come naturally for most engineers. Indeed, when Mentor went back and examined the projects that had challenges, they discovered that the core issues were not technical, but rather involved corporate politics and communication issues.

Paul decided that he needed to increase the soft skills of his consultants in order to be more effective on projects and to recognize opportunities for more business in a tough economy. “More than half the work in consulting is finding and growing people”.  Rather than building a training program internally, or piecing one together from existing off-the-shelf classes, Paul engaged with RTM Consulting to develop a customized class to meet Mentor’s specific needs. “We didn’t want to pull our best consultants off of time critical customer projects to develop the class. They are the ones guiding our customers through complex projects. In addition, we wanted the outside point of view that RTM brought to the situation.”

Most of the course material came from RTM Consulting . The specific case studies and industry specific material came from Mentor. Paul had senior consultants help with the development of the material, especially the case studies which were based on real experiences. The result is a 3 day course that is very hands-on. There is standard lecture time and also several 5-6 person role play case studies. “The collaboration with Mentor Graphics was key to honing in on customization of the training to give the them the best chance at gaining the right skills necessary, and providing a solid return on their educational investment”, according to Randy Mysliviec, CEO of RTM Consulting.

Paul Hofstadler particularly praised the case studies. “The case studies were the most interesting part of the course. I never knew what was going to come out of them. Each group solved the case studies slightly differently using the skills taught in the class.” Even so, Paul resisted the urge to let the consultants bring real customer situations into the class for fear that the entire class would end up working on one real customer case. Instead, Mentor asked consultants to present real case studies after the class, several weeks later, and present them to the internal team. This served as a reinforcement of the material and helped to put the course material into practice.

A 3-day training course for the entire consulting team seems like a big investment. “Ironically, the cost of soft skills training can often be offset by just a single large project overrun or a collection of overruns”, according to Randy Mysliviec. Fortunately, the timing of the class coincided with an end of year lull in delivery, so Mentor was able to implement the training class with minimal customer project impact as well.

Since the training was administered just a few months ago, it is difficult to definitively measure the value. However, there is strong anecdotal evidence that it is working. One senior consultant, who was very skeptical at the beginning, used the techniques in the class to turn around a difficult customer (similar to my story at the beginning of this post). Paul has indicated that “consulting orders this quarter are a lot better than last quarter” and he attributes that in part to the training, particularly the parts that help consultants recognize potential follow-on opportunities for more business.

“In this economy, it is more important than ever to understand the customer’s needs, communicate effectively, and deliver excellent solutions on every engagement” said Paul in summary. “It is clear to me that our projects are running more smoothly after the training. As a bonus, our repeat customer order rate is up indicating that we are continuing to deliver high value to our customers despite the ‘interesting’ times in which we find ourselves.”

Due to the success of the training, Mentor is looking at extending the training to other parts of the consulting organization and to other organizations in Mentor. In the meantime, RTM Consulting is offering the course for other customers, minus the Mentor specific material, of course. “The soft skills needs at Mentor are certainly not unique in the professional and consulting services world”, says’ Randy Mysliviec. “Most technology and pure services companies do a good job of teaching their teams about products, services, and technologies they need to know to effectively serve clients. What is most often missed are the soft skills necessary for consultants to effectively interact with their clients.”

Thanks to folks like RTM Consulting, these soft skill aren’t hard to learn after all.

harry the ASIC guy

There is a consultant working with one of my clients with whom I’ve developed a good working relationship. Today he came by and asked me if I knew of someone to help on another project with a different client. The area of expertise, board design, was not one that I had a lot of contacts. So I decided to Twitter the opportunity:

13:20pm harrytheASICguy: Friend has short term need to design a board for cons elec startup in SoCal. Contact me if you r interested. Please retweet.

The post got retweeted 3 times (to my knowledge). At 7:55pm I got a reference to a board designer and hooked him up with my consultant buddy.

The request came from (1) the customer to (2) my buddy to (3) me to (4) another guy who recommended (5) the board designer. I don’t know the guy or if he’ll get the job or work out, but the speed with which a qualified candidate was identified was remarkable. Just slightly more than 4 1/2 hours. Of course, it would have been a lot less if I had more board design followers on Twitter, and that is the point.

Twitter, for all of its annoyances (and there are many), provides the fastest way to communicate to a large audience today. For identifying possible candidates to fill job opportunities, permanent or temporary, Twitter seems ideally suited.

So, if you are one of the unlucky ones to be looking for another job or another client, you need to get on Twitter. Here are 20 Tips to Twitter Job Search Success. Good luck.

harry the ASIC guy

Last Saturday night, an unattractive, overweight, 47-year old spinster from Scotland appeared on the UK television show Britain’s Got Talent. If you have not seen it, here is the video.

Susan Boyle has become an overnight sensation, this video becoming the most popular on YouTube this week and this month, with over 11 Million views as I write this. What made this remarkable was not the quality of the singing, which was excellent, but probably no better than many top performers on this and other similar shows like American Idol. What made it remarkable was the level of performance as compared to the expectations that EVEYBODY had before she sang. We were set up … by her appearance and by her age and by past auditions by no-name wannabees who delivered horrid performances in order to be ridiculed by the judges. We knew what was going to happen before it happened … and we were dead wrong.

As I thought more about this, I noticed the parallels between Miss Boyle and many displaced engineers affected by the continuing economic woes. Many of you, like me and Miss Boyle, are in your forties. You may be a little overweight and the hair that you still have is turning gray. And you find yourself having to audition for a job amid snickers from the interviewers who don’t expect very much. In fact, I find myself in a similar circumstance, the contract with my current client coming to a close, and me starting to beat the bushes for the next project to work on.

So I am going to take away from Miss Boyle 3 points of inspiration that will hopefully help me and maybe help you too:

1 - Be out there

Even though she has amazing talent, Susan Boyle had every reason to think that she could not compete with the younger and prettier contestants. And even if she did go out there, she risked being ridiculed in front of a national audience. After all, this is a society that judges appearance over substance in so many ways. What was the point?  Instead, she decided that she owed it to herself and her mother (now deceased) to give it a go.

You may think that your age is a liability, especially compared to younger engineers, armed with up-to-date education, who work for less and put in crazy hours. And you may be right. So you have to make a decision. You can feel sorry for yourself and convince yourself that nobody wants you. Or you can give it a go like Miss Boyle and at least you have a chance.

2 - Be Yourself

It’s truly amazing what professional makeup artists and clothing consultants can do to improve your appearance. Miss Boyle could have hired someone like that to make her appear younger, slimmer, and more attractive. But she didn’t. In fact, it looked like she dragged an old dress out of her closet to wear to the show. That probably did not help her, but she would have been much more the fool had she come out with tons of makeup and jewelry in tight fitting Spandex pants. I may be naive, but I believe that people inherently value honesty and authenticity … two of Miss Boyle’s most attractive qualities.

Now, I’m not saying you should dress sloppily when you go to an interview. But you should not go out of your way to make yourself appear, physically or otherwise, like someone you are not. Everybody get’s older, so you have nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, you can use your “experience” as an advantage in most situations. At least your future employer will walk away with the peace of mind that there are no surprises and that he knows what he gets with you.

3 - Be Prepared

Susan Boyle could have been on the show and been herself, but if she sang poorly she would have been ridiculed like so many other contestants. In the end, she had to be better than mediocre, to have real talent to impress the judges. She not only had talent, but she chose a song to sing that highlighted her strengths.

If you follow the 2 recommendations above, at least you’ll get yourself in front of people and they’ll know you are authentic. That should get you close to a level playing field. To get the job, you need to have skills. If you are lacking in the skills you need, you may need to acquire new skills to impress the judges. As I have mentioned several times before, Mentor Graphics’ Displaced Worker Program provides free access to training for displaced engineers and can be a great resource. (Hopefully Synopsys and Cadence will do the same). If you can, take advantage of this and so many of the other free resources available today. There are blogs, Webinars, forums, and social networks that can help you get the skills you desire.

Once you have the skills, make sure you highlight those skills and strengths. Just as Susan Boyle no doubt chose a song that emphasized her singing strengths and de-emphasized her weaknesses (I’m sure she has some), make sure you can speak during an interview to those parts of your experience and expertise that are your strengths. Be prepared for any and all questions.

__________

In summary, I don’t expect that finding a new job/project at this time will be easy for you or for me. But at least we can be out there, be ourselves, and be prepared like Susan Boyle.

Good luck!!!

harry the ASIC guy

I’m still up at the Design Verification Conference (DVCon) and have not had a chance to summarize last evening’s Software-As-A-Service and Cloud Computing EDA Roundtable. I will do that over the weekend and have a complete rundown next week, including slides.

In the meantime, I wanted to pass on some information that was announced a week or so ago and which I became aware of just this week. Mentor Graphics has initiated a Displaced Worker Program to provide free training to customers who have lost thier jobs in the last 6 months. Back last Decemeber I had issued a challenge to the EDA vendors to do just this. I don’t know if this challenge had any affect; hopefully they did this because they thought it was the right thing to do.

So far Mentor is the only company that has done this, to my knowledge. I’ve personally had discussions with one other of the “Big 3″, so hopefully they will follow suit. Maybe Mentor’s offer will help prompt them.

What do you think? Should they do this?

harry the ASIC guy