Ed the Serial CEO has run into a spot of bother. After Ed sacked the CTO, the analogue IC design team resigned in protest, and Ed has to replace them, or see the company's new product programme compromised twelve months before the company's expected IPO.
'Everyone in the company blames me for sacking the CTO and the subsequent resignation of the analogue design team', writes Ed in his diary, 'so there's no one here prepared to be helpful. My initial thought is to go the universities and hire some graduates, but a friend of mine tells me that won't work.'
The diary continues: 'My friend, an old hand in the analogue game, told me: "It takes a long time for a newly graduated analogue design engineer to become productive. It takes five to six years for them to be able to do a design on their own."
'Shit', continues the diary entry, 'so I asked my friend: "How about poaching some design engineers off another analogue company?"
"It takes a number of things to attract good analogue designers and retain them: a good corporate environment; exciting projects; compensation," replies my friend, "everyone in the industry knows what's happened with your CTO and your design team, and no one will be inclined to join what they see as an unhappy ship. So it all comes down to projects and compensation."
'Shit and double shit', runs Ed's diary entry, 'I can't increase salaries. The whole point of the row with the CTO was about cutting the R&D budget. And I'm told we had already sidelined the sexy projects pre-IPO to focus on bread-and-butter stuff."
'What the f*** can I do?'
'Still, it's only 333 days to the IPO and then I'm free of all this and loaded.
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