Joe,
>Care to mention who's "gotten fat?"<
well, the fact I have the "privilege" to work in Germany
gives me an ample choice of those; just think of Daimler Benz before the merger with Chrysler, or just compare
Siemens performance with General Electric for all these years. Getting fat in my parlance is e.g. never sticking out your
neck and always nod to the "Gewerkshaften BS". Or getting the top jobs by virtue of obscure means that are difficult to
explain either in technology or business.
Interesting that Germany got woven into the "what companies have gotten fat" question. Thanks for your response. Of course, the selection of Dresden, Germany for AMD's big new state of the art fab has been kicked around here, with the discussion being around the question of what comes first: German folks' vacations, or the job over there. I was thinking last night about another aspect of Dresden, which is located in the former East Germany. When I've been over there (West Germany) on business, the West German guys had a lot of fun with East German technology. For example, several times on the Autobahn, they'd point to a really strange looking car in the slow lane, saying, 'look at that East German car, it can't get over 60 km' (~40 mph), ha ha ha ha ha. They said these cars had 2 cylinders! Of course, if you wandered over into either of the two "fast lanes" unless you were going at least 120 mph or so, the Mercedes, BMW's, Audi's etc. would be on you like white on rice, high beams flashing. Point is, I think it goes without saying that West Germany had the overwhelming high tech lead over East Germany.
May be a bit of a stretch, but I just wonder whether the infrastructure is there, or not, in the old East Germany to support a state of the art semi fab. This includes, of course, skilled, experienced workers, from operators to engineers and management. Is there a supply there? I know that companies like Intel have successfully brought up fabs in countries all over the world. So, maybe this is over-active imagining or FUD. Maybe not.
Tony |
