ESS Technology Reviews

Pros

start up mentality, can-do altitude, wide responsibility from front-end to back-end.

Cons

weak methodology resulting in buggy product; poor management culture.

Advice to Senior Management

move faster by promoting better methodology.

Pros

Some cutting edge consumer electronics

Cons

Very poor documentation
No communications between managers and staff.
No coherent direction
No recognition

Advice to Senior Management

Need more structure

Pros

Nice city, some, nice people at work, not much security, time is flexible, and after tape-out people can take 1-2 weeks off (not considered as vacation time)

Cons

Tools and equipments are big issue there; most of their tools are outdated. There is no software support (even for windows, and linux), you are almost on your own using the tools, and battling bugs. Management is poor, mostly people sneak away, management does not have a clue how much people really working, you are used to show something, but nobody wants to know the issues, and how can they help. Projects are not well-defined, and specifications are changing by hour. Sometimes you work on something for two month, and they remove that block completely from system, and you are just wondering what am I doing?
Documentation does not exist there, they ask you to test and debug of a block somebody else who left, and when you ask, where I could find the design, testbench, simulation file, nobody knows; good luck on the file server. There is no standard in file naming, so you are lost for a week, until you find something useful. It happens that the system configuration completely changes and nobody tells you, in weekly meeting you fell confused; it happens a lot! Personal encouragement does not exist, if you show some interests to do something, writing paper, or presenting something to the group, nobody encourage, they may say we don't have money.

Advice to Senior Management

1. Get better tools and equipment, you save money at the end, by using your staff time better.
2. Keeping track of people time, I know people that they take off one week every month, and seems nobody cares, if that person works part time, or has problem, you better let know punctual people that, because others feel nobody notices, and appreciate their punctuality, and presence.
3. Good system design and architecture design and block specification well before tape-out save lots of time during tape-out, changing a circuit a day before tape-out should be a BIG NO_NO.
This gives people time to plan ahead finish it, and verify it well before tape-out, but since blocks are changing all the time without any constraint people feel confused and stressed, OH the load of my circuit changed by the order of magnitude, how can I redesign it in a week?????
4. Good filing system, (with standard for naming), and documentation save lots of time during testing and debugging. I have not seen using previous design in ESS. Usually everything is redesigned from scratch, that's why always our tape-out time pushes by 4 month.
5. Use people's ambition to improve your staff knowledge. Try it, it pays at the end, they say a company's most valuable asset are their employees.