Transferred to Cray
Oct. 1st, 2001 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pphaneufThat day, I started as a Cray employee, although I was sitting at the same desk, and not much really changed (they did lay off the receptionist).
How did that came to be? Well, NEC, my employer, was under the effect of an anti-dumping suit in the US, where they had some ridiculous import tax on their computers (something like 150%!!!), put on them after Cray filed a complaint. See, Cray, they were on the way down, and when NEC came out with CMOS-based air-cooled vector supercomputers which were much cheaper than Cray's water-cooled systems (all that plumbing is expensive and makes maintenance more complicated). During that time, Cray had been reduced to taking back decommissioned Alpha-based T3E chassis back from customers, retrofitting them with newer processors and reselling them, because they didn't have the money to finance R&D on new supercomputer technologies or manufacturing brand-new systems. Rather pathetic.
They were in such trouble at that time that they struck a deal with NEC where they would drop the anti-dumping suit, in exchange for becoming the exclusive re-distributor of NEC supercomputers in North America, as well as getting money. NEC went for it, because they basically couldn't sell in the US at that time, but it made my directly employer, the subsidiary responsible for North America, obsolete. They basically transferred most of the employees to Cray and it was business as usual.
This change in employer was pretty weird for me, because a long time ago, I established a personal goal where I wanted to be in a job where what I did was off-beat and experimental. I had stated this something like "someday, I'll have Cray business cards of my own" (hey, I was young and silly!). So when I had a box of those delivered to my desk, I sort of wondered what I should be doing now.
I didn't have to wonder for long.
How did that came to be? Well, NEC, my employer, was under the effect of an anti-dumping suit in the US, where they had some ridiculous import tax on their computers (something like 150%!!!), put on them after Cray filed a complaint. See, Cray, they were on the way down, and when NEC came out with CMOS-based air-cooled vector supercomputers which were much cheaper than Cray's water-cooled systems (all that plumbing is expensive and makes maintenance more complicated). During that time, Cray had been reduced to taking back decommissioned Alpha-based T3E chassis back from customers, retrofitting them with newer processors and reselling them, because they didn't have the money to finance R&D on new supercomputer technologies or manufacturing brand-new systems. Rather pathetic.
They were in such trouble at that time that they struck a deal with NEC where they would drop the anti-dumping suit, in exchange for becoming the exclusive re-distributor of NEC supercomputers in North America, as well as getting money. NEC went for it, because they basically couldn't sell in the US at that time, but it made my directly employer, the subsidiary responsible for North America, obsolete. They basically transferred most of the employees to Cray and it was business as usual.
This change in employer was pretty weird for me, because a long time ago, I established a personal goal where I wanted to be in a job where what I did was off-beat and experimental. I had stated this something like "someday, I'll have Cray business cards of my own" (hey, I was young and silly!). So when I had a box of those delivered to my desk, I sort of wondered what I should be doing now.
I didn't have to wonder for long.
