[petek]

[Warning: long, rambling answer to a short question]

I had my dream technology job - it was my first "career" job, right out of college. But first, I had to turn down a job offer, from the same company, which everyone though I was crazy to refuse.

That job offered great pay and benefits, "lifelong employment" (this was pre-Reaganomics days) and good work in my field, designing industrial control systems. But it didn't offer a chance to innovate or to do analog electronics (my real interest at the time), so I said "thanks, but no thanks" to the HR rep.

I got lucky - the HR rep asked me what I was looking for, and after I told him, he said he'd get back to me. He did, the next day, and the next thing I knew, I was visiting a rambling research & development lab at Dupont in Wilmington, DE, where, as it turned out, I was to spend the next fifteen years.

This was the place where they turned basic research into functional prototypes and pilot production systems. I got to design circuits for analytical instruments, embedded controls for patient-care devices, machine controls for a world-class robotic assembly line (so-described by an IBM manufacturing automation manager) and laboratory automation systems for environmental analysis and DNA extraction. Even got to turn a huge bridge crane into a radio and microwave linked "robot" for a nuclear waste processing technology demonstration.

It was a great job - learning new things every day and a completely new project challenge every year or so. But, like most good things, it didn't last forever. When globalization and diversification allowed Wall Street to take control from the engineers, more emphasis was placed on profits than growth, new products and technology. When my group went from 140 to 14, I decided it was time to move on. Which I did, to a pharmaceutical start-up, where I still am eleven years later.

I moved away from Wilmington and lost touch with most of my Dupont friends, but, ironically, I ran into some of my former co-workers again when I got involved in FIRST. They make up much of the leadership of MOE (365) and include two regional Woodie Flowers winners. They were great people to work with back then and are still great people to "work" with now. Maybe I should have stuck around...