To: Ramsey Su who wrote (30036 ) 5/16/1999 11:21:00 AM From: CDMQ Respond to of 152472
Staff Writer May 16, 1999 Desikan revered Irwin Jacobs, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-authored "Digital Communications," the seminal technical textbook on the subject. Although never a student of the man who would later co-found Qualcomm, Desikan nonetheless considered Jacobs a mentor. Desikan struggled, however, with the book' s section on spread spectrum technology -- the foundation of code division multiple access, or CDMA -- and switched disciplines from digital communications to focus on telephone communications. How ironic, then, that after being laid off from two of three previous jobs this decade, Desikan in 1993 landed a position at Qualcomm -- where he had two weeks to learn CDMA. Desikan became so proficient that he emerged as the company' s designated hitter on CDMA, and he became a worldwide evangelist for the technology. He would leave his wife and two children at their home in Poway for weeks at a time. "My family accepted the fact I had to travel," he says, his Indian accent elegantly trilling the "R" consonant. Desikan, along with former Qualcomm executive Allen Salmasi, who left to head the ill-fated NextWave Telecom, facilitated the first CDMA technology transfer to South Korea, which remains the largest CDMA market outside the United States. Unfortunately, his tireless crusading throughout Asia, Central Europe and parts of Africa was for Qualcomm' s ill-fated infrastructure division. He was in Egypt in January when friends at fortress Qualcomm passed on rumors via e-mail that layoffs were brewing. Desikan, 50, was unfazed. "I took the position that today I have a job to do and will do it," he says. "I felt being a long-time employee, Qualcomm would retain me." He returned to San Diego on Jan. 31. Two days later, he was seated in a conference room with his boss and a human resources representative, who delivered grim news. "I could see in their faces that they were uncomfortable," Desikan says. At a restaurant recently, Desikan was impeccably dressed in dark blue suit, red tie and board-stiff white shirt -- the same type of attire he wore while at Qualcomm. He has been out of work since February, but habits die hard: "There was an unwritten code in the business department -- you always dressed properly." His wife, who joined Qualcomm in 1996, is with the division that makes the computer brain chips for mobile phones. The division is one of the company' s top performers, so she' s secure for the moment. A generous severance package and the fact that his wife retained her job cushioned Desikan' s fall. "I look at this as an opportunity for me," he says. "I know CDMA. Now I can go on to learning something different." Copyright 1999 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.