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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Incorporated (QCOM) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Valueman who wrote (30129)	5/16/1999 11:28:00 AM
From: CDMQ	Respond to of 152472

David Blaine Staff Writer May 16, 1999 was among the 700 laid off from Qualcomm in February. He has since found a new job at CommQuest in Encinitas. chokes back tears. Blaine had a rocky tenure at the Q, but getting laid off was worse than any bad day he had while on the job. He was hired in 1996 to help improve software development for the company' s Globalstar satellite phone business, but he soon ran afoul of engineers who often resented being told that there were better ways to manage projects. Blaine, 47, was a process man who spent 19 years at a small defense firm, which had learned that good software development is a delicate act of balancing schedules, quality, scope and cost. At Qualcomm, he says, "I was told point-blank that we didn' t have to worry about cost." If there was no accountability for cost, who needed someone giving pointers on process improvement? Blaine was uncomfortable with Qualcomm' s dizzying pace of hiring and a corporate culture dominated by cocky, self-starting engineers, and he initially had trouble fitting in. His first review was dismal, but later evaluations improved. He tended to bounce between the Globalstar project and the company' s infrastructure team as sort of a roving internal consultant. When the company restructured and divided along handsets, infrastructure and other individual business units, he found himself "stuck in Globalstar." By January of this year, under mounting pressure to improve shareholder value and rumors that layoffs were in the works, Blaine says his boss started uttering dark hints. "Oh man, I' m updating my resume. Are you?" he' d ask Blaine. The company was painting a picture of doom and gloom. It even removed complimentary sodas from meeting rooms to show it was trimming costs. About three weeks before the layoffs in February, the company asked Blaine to brief another engineer on how to measure reliability for software tests. There was some urgency to the request, Blaine recalls. "But I had been hammering on that for two years!" he says. In hindsight it was clear the company was draining Blaine' s brain. Yet he says, "I was blinded by hope that I wouldn' t get laid off." Blaine lasted almost the whole day, Tuesday, Feb. 2. It appeared he would be spared, but at 2:15 p.m. he saw his line supervisor entering the building. The super rarely came to the building unless he had to attend a meeting. His arrival was not a good sign. Later, a supervisor watched as a shaken Blaine packed up his personal effects. "All the sudden I felt like I was a criminal," he says. "A pariah." The crushing blow, though, was attending one of the initial outplacement counseling seminars at National University. Blaine says the elevator was rickety, the halls reeked of stale smoke, the carpeting was mottled with cigarette burns, the chairs were broken, and there was no chalk for the black boards. "Man," he thought. "Am I ever gone from Qualcomm." Blaine has since found work as a software process improvement consultant at CommQuest in Encinitas. Even that comfort is broken, however, with the thought that he sold all his Qualcomm stock in February -- just weeks before the stock price hit historic highs. "Maybe my ego told me the company wouldn' t do well without me," he says. Copyright 1999 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.