tonto, curious what you think about this.
Engineers' eBay auction yields encouraging response
By Matt Marshall
Mercury News
The San Francisco engineers who auctioned themselves on eBay after their jobs were offshored seem to have scored big.
The engineers listed themselves on eBay on March 25 as a dream team because their jobs at a high-profile division of Autodesk were offshored to Canada. Gus Grubba, the leader of the team, said they were overwhelmed by the interest they received.
When the Mercury News wrote about his team's efforts, he said, he received inquiries from places such as the Netherlands, France, Germany and China from people who had read the translated article. Their listing, under the title of ``e-Dream Team,'' received almost 29,000 hits and got more than 20 bids.
Grubba said he had more than 450 e-mail inquiries and even a résumé request from eBay's own technical recruiter.
The minimum bid was set for $250, and the deadline was April 2. The final bid topped $900, which the team is donating to the George Lucas Educational Foundation.
The winning bidder is from Hollywood, but Grubba would not reveal anything more, saying the negotiations are still under way.
``We're in the process of negotiating what the job is,'' Grubba said. The winning bidder received the right to negotiate exclusively with the team.
Among the failed bids were one from South Korea and another from India, Grubba said.
It's also not clear whether the self-named ``e-Dream Team,'' also known as ``Teamoffshored'' on eBay, will get the assurance they'll be able to stay together, Grubba said.
The team of about a dozen 3-D animation and graphics specialists began looking for work after they were laid off. In their eBay listing, they said their work has touched the ``lives of every person who has ever enjoyed a movie, played a computer game or watched television.'' They worked on the films ``The Matrix,'' ``The Last Samurai'' and ``Mission Impossible,'' to name a few.
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