Rush to Bust
by Paul McGoldrick
Everybody is finally admitting that the bad times are over, this time around, and the budgets are being increased, the job requisitions are being posted, advertising money is being freed up and the holiday season looks like a happy one for our industry.
The jobs that are being offered now are different, as we expected, with employers looking for wider job skills than before; but we are back to the situation where travel expenses are being met for job interviews, where analog engineers are being told that there must be a job for them in the company even if the one they applied for isn't quite right.
But I'm rather scared.
I think the brakes have been released too much, too quickly. Everyone is infighting for the warm bodies they want to hire and everybody is predicting double digit growth rates for 2004 but are not looking beyond that year. Think about it: We are entering a year of presidential elections, which are going to be contentious. We have no clear vision of where we are going to be in terms of two overseas battlefields; we can only guess what diversions may come from terror activity at the summer Olympics in Athens -- which has already been an arena for its own homegrown terror for many years.
There is little that semiconductor vendors can, or would, do to stem the rate at which OEMs want to build and sell: They just have to keep supplying the orders that come to them and hope that the industry as a whole does not overbuild to the point where a collapse is inevitable at the beginning of 2005. It is certainly one of the reasons why things fell apart early in 2001 because of a 2000 growth which was unsustainable.
So, if you are in a position to control the rise in your people and equipment,
examine the scenarios for your company if there was a major turndown shortly
after the presidential inauguration in January 2005. Please, take it seriously,
for all our sakes. Let's not get too euphoric about the good times until
we get through the roadblocks at the end of 2004.