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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lynn who wrote (89446)	2/1/2001 7:37:50 PM
From: hlpinout	Respond to of 97611

Hiya Lynn, Done. My postal carrier has been duly notified by this concerned customer. -- For Engineering Jobs, Follow The Handhelds (02/01/01, 4:59 p.m. ET) EE Times The news in January from computer makers was far from reassuring: The major box makers were predicting slumping demand, citing an overall slowing in spending for information technology. So what does that mean for the job prospects of engineers in the field? William Aspray, executive director of the Washington, D.C., Computing Research Association, said he's watching the job situation closely. "It's hard to tell yet," he said. "Certainly we've seen some layoffs, and we're going to continue to see layoffs. But how extensive they are isn't clear yet." Aspray, whose group represents academies and industrial research labs, said the fallout from January's bad news in the computer sector might not be so harmful for engineers after all. "It's a concern; there's no question about that," Aspray said. "The places where we are going to see the most serious assault on research and development are in the traditional, larger companies." So look for work-force reductions there. On the other hand, smaller companies and startups that don't have stock prices to get battered might be in somewhat less trouble. And academic and government engineering programs may also fare well in any shakeout. "Academics say they can't keep their graduate students in school; there's too much pull from industry," thanks to the magnets of stock options and high salaries that the New Economy promised, Aspray continued. Yet as those lures weaken, Aspray said he "wouldn't be surprised" if more engineering students opted to stay in school. Not only would that help keep departments running, it would also help replenish the pool of potential faculty recruits, which is shallower than ever. "Undergraduate enrollments have skyrocketed in the last five years, so there's much more demand for faculty members," Aspray said. However, too much weakness would obviously be a bad thing, Aspray adds, since engineering departments are particularly reliant on a strong industry for support. But while the desire to buy new PCs may be flagging, the popularity of handheld computers appears to be rising. NPD Intelect Market Tracking said that while desktop PC sales fell by nearly 18 percent in 2000, sales of palm-sized computers rose by 161 percent, from about $430 million in 1999 to more than $1 billion last year. So it might make sense to follow the money and look for work at the companies that are producing personal digital assistants (PDAs). Like Handspring Inc. (stock: HAND), for instance. The Mountain View, Calif., company has a few openings for engineers, including one in quality and reliability. Applicants should have a BSEE or an equivalent degree and at least a year of direct experience in printed-circuit board assembly, plastics manufacturing, or computer products development. Handspring is also looking for a communications/applications technician engineer with a BSEE or BSCS and five years of hardware and software design experience. Palm Inc. (stock: PALM), which owns about three-quarters of the PDA market, has dozens of engineering positions to fill. The company needs a senior systems engineer in Santa Clara, Calif., to work on its Palm.Net mobile Internet application service. In Texas, Palm is looking for a senior tools engineer to work on debugging and compiler integration. Also in Texas, Houston's Compaq Computer Corp. (stock: CPQ) continues to have hundreds of openings for hardware and software engineers. It needs a design engineer with a BSEE and at least four years of experience in PC architecture on both the hardware and software side. Compaq is also looking for hardware design engineers with BSEEs (or the equivalent) and "strong circuit design skills and the ability to debug complex problems to root cause."