Need Expert in Power Electronics for Brief, Part-Time Consulting Assignment

[Julien Zhu]

Hi!

I have recently joined the sci.electronics.design newsgroup. I'm
impressed at the high level of discussion in the group!

I work with Nitron Advisors, a consulting firm which provides industry
experts with the opportunity to participate in paid consulting
assignments. Below is a summary of what we are looking for and how we
work. There is no risk and no cost to you to participate.

Need Expert in Power Electronics for Brief, Part-Time Consulting
Assignment

We are looking for an expert in power electronics design for a short
term consulting project.

As background, we are a specialty consulting firm, and an
institutional investor client of ours is analyzing the power
electronics business. They are looking for an experienced engineer or
academic who is extremely familiar with the alternatives in power
electronics design. Specifically, the candidate should be responsible
for designing products that use technology from such firms as
Power-One, Artesyn Technologies, and Vicor Corporation. Ideally, the
candidate works for a major computer/electronics firm such as Cisco,
Lucent, Nortel, Sony, Apple, etc.

Our client is interested in knowing:
Technology questions: What are you using in your current products?
What's on the drawing board? What new technologies do you see? What
are the advantages and disadvantages of different providers?
Business questions: What is the decision making process and sales
cycle like? What is the typical process for evaluating providers?

Are you interested in working on this brief, part-time consulting
engagement? You can handle this entirely by telephone, before or after
office hours. We pay by the hour for your time. Alternatively, we
would be grateful if you could forward this to any of your colleagues
who might be interested.

Your Qualifications: At least seven years experience in engineering
and product design. Individual should have a "big picture"
perspective on different providers. Insight into both business and
technology issues would be helpful.

If you would like to apply for this role, please visit
http://www.circleofexperts.net/apply.php?industry_id=11&id=&fn=&ln=&r
and apply to be a member of the Nitron Advisors Circle of Experts. If
you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Julien Zhu
_____________________________________________________________
Nitron Advisors Circle of Experts ( www.CircleOfExperts.net )
Providing institutional investors with access to frontline industry
experts
E-Mail: JZhu@nitronadvisors.com
415 Madison Ave., 20th Floor
New York, NY USA 10017-7939
Office: (212) 838-1245

 

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

Specifically, the candidate should be responsible
for designing products that use technology from such firms as
Power-One, Artesyn Technologies, and Vicor Corporation.

What's soo "Power Electronics Expert" about slapping a ready-made power
brick into a product? (And you forgot RIFA too ;-)

Ideally, the
candidate works for a major computer/electronics firm such as Cisco,
Lucent, Nortel, Sony, Apple, etc.

Ahhhh - Marketing ... Of Course. So Sad.

_____________________________________________________________
Nitron Advisors Circle of Experts ( www.CircleOfExperts.net )
Providing institutional investors with access to frontline industry
experts

Those investors should really care more about what the stock does than about
what goes into the products - that, at least - has worked exceedingly well
for me over the years!

 

[Tim Wescott]

What's soo "Power Electronics Expert" about slapping a ready-made power
brick into a product? (And you forgot RIFA too ;-)




Ahhhh - Marketing ... Of Course. So Sad.




Those investors should really care more about what the stock does than about
what goes into the products - that, at least - has worked exceedingly well
for me over the years!

Perhaps they're investors that want to be able to _predict_ which
companies do well?

After all Enron was doing _really_ well before we found out what
Skilling was up to and there are any number of ways to cook the books to
make yourself look better than you are. In fact, it is perfectly legal
to slash your engineering staff, this will show as a 2-3 year dramatic
increase in profitability before your earnings go over a cliff.

 

[Le Chaud Lapin]

Ahhhh - Marketing ... Of Course. So Sad.

What's even sadder is that, in between the "client" and the
"consultant" is someone whose salary is probably close to around
$200K/year, excluding bonuses. No offense meant to you Julien, but
middlemen typically do not contribute anything more than overhead.

Having worked as a consultant many times, I know that recruiters come
in all forms, and integrity is often lacking. "Rampant" is hardly the
word to describe the greed and undercutting that goes on.

What would you do if a chicken coop offered you $30,000US to find a
chicken that has been wandering around looking for a chicken coop for
the past 5 weeks? That's essentially what recruiting is. If you go
to any professional recruiting site, there will be claims of "We're
not like the other guys. We are not middle men. We actually
understand your needs, and evaluate our consultants to find the best
match." Yeah, like I evaluate my foot every morning to the best sock
to go with. No wonder the lawns in at their offices are always so
plush and green.

One day in France (day before 9/11), I saw an Addeco office, and
decided to go in to compare the French version with the American
version to see how well the homogeneity had been maintained between
international offices. Surprisingly, in spite of the more
convservative nature of the French, one of the recruiters was just as
hawkish, but with an accent. It was quite amusing.

We engineers should be ashamed of ourselves. Most of us take some
ridicule in our youth from less-inspired individuals for having
excessive cranial capacity, then study hard to get good grades, then
work harder to get good test scores, to go to best schools, learn
things that will actually empower us to change the world, for better
or worse, usually better, only to become participants in an
institutionalized form of prostitution, where the pimps are those same
individuals from our youth, and we are the prostitutes. Why?

Recruiters are not the only ones guilty of this. Our industry is
littered with middle-level managers who never should have been allowed
to come near a whiteboard. Everyone reading this knows what I am
talking about. That guy or gal that is two levels above you in the
hierarchy, is clearing at least $50,000 over you, but would not know a
MOSEFT from a Bubba FET, but because s/he has become a master of the
game, a Jedi Weasel Knight if you will, and is large and in charge
cranking out huge turds.

If we were as assertive about our inherent worth as we are about where
the 2*Pi should go in fourier transforms, a lot of the sillyness we
see today would not exist. If we asserted our will and vision of
virtue upon others as they do us, messes like the war in Iraq would be
far less common. And we *DO* have the power to do that. After all, we
are the ones who make space craft and atomic weapons. Not they.

I have every intention of doing something about this, whatever I can,
before I leave this planet.

Knowledge is power. Wield it as such, and kick some ass. Please.

-Chaud Lapin-

"All professions are conspiracies against the laity" - George Bernard
Shaw

 

[Tim Wescott]

What's even sadder is that, in between the "client" and the
"consultant" is someone whose salary is probably close to around
$200K/year, excluding bonuses. No offense meant to you Julien, but
middlemen typically do not contribute anything more than overhead.

I love any sentence that starts with "No offense meant, but". No
offense meant, but it's Alternate English for "Stand by for major slam".

Having worked as a consultant many times, I know that recruiters come
in all forms, and integrity is often lacking. "Rampant" is hardly the
word to describe the greed and undercutting that goes on.

But then, if they continue to make all that money then they must be
providing some perceived value, and if being a "good" recruiter made
significantly more then there'd be fewer "bad" ones. I know some "good"
recruiters -- listen to what you say when you're looking for someone,
only find the folks that you want instead of just giving you 100
resume's that pass the keyword test, etc. -- they never make more money,
they're just admired more by all involved.

What would you do if a chicken coop offered you $30,000US to find a
chicken that has been wandering around looking for a chicken coop for
the past 5 weeks?

If the coop and the chicken really hadn't been able to find each other,
I'd match them up and take the money -- wouldn't you? And knowing both
the chicken and the coop is the contribution of the middleman.

That's essentially what recruiting is. If you go
to any professional recruiting site, there will be claims of "We're
not like the other guys. We are not middle men. We actually
understand your needs, and evaluate our consultants to find the best
match." Yeah, like I evaluate my foot every morning to the best sock
to go with. No wonder the lawns in at their offices are always so
plush and green.

One day in France (day before 9/11), I saw an Addeco office, and
decided to go in to compare the French version with the American
version to see how well the homogeneity had been maintained between
international offices. Surprisingly, in spite of the more
convservative nature of the French, one of the recruiters was just as
hawkish, but with an accent. It was quite amusing.

. It's like city people and country people. I've only been to
Holland, Germany and Croatia (back when it was part of Yugoslavia). At
least in those three places I felt more at home with the country folk
than I did with city people here.

We engineers should be ashamed of ourselves. Most of us take some
ridicule in our youth from less-inspired individuals for having
excessive cranial capacity, then study hard to get good grades, then
work harder to get good test scores, to go to best schools, learn
things that will actually empower us to change the world, for better
or worse, usually better, only to become participants in an
institutionalized form of prostitution, where the pimps are those same
individuals from our youth, and we are the prostitutes. Why?

Probably because they have the same number of neurons as we do, only
their neurons are dedicated to interpersonal skills instead of person to
device skills. That's why they're better than we are at picking up
dates in bars.

Recruiters are not the only ones guilty of this. Our industry is
littered with middle-level managers who never should have been allowed
to come near a whiteboard. Everyone reading this knows what I am
talking about. That guy or gal that is two levels above you in the
hierarchy, is clearing at least $50,000 over you, but would not know a
MOSEFT from a Bubba FET, but because s/he has become a master of the
game, a Jedi Weasel Knight if you will, and is large and in charge
cranking out huge turds.

See the answer above. It's a rare individual who can manage well _and_
has good technical skills. You can find them easily by looking at the
corporate officers of _really_ good, new high-tech companies.

If we were as assertive about our inherent worth as we are about where
the 2*Pi should go in fourier transforms, a lot of the sillyness we
see today would not exist. If we asserted our will and vision of
virtue upon others as they do us, messes like the war in Iraq would be
far less common. And we *DO* have the power to do that. After all, we
are the ones who make space craft and atomic weapons. Not they.

Hear hear! If _all_ the moderates in the civilized world would get off
their butts and sound off we'd be in a better position. Unfortunately
there's something about being an extremist (in any direction) that gives
people the energy to go out there and really foul things up.

I have every intention of doing something about this, whatever I can,
before I leave this planet.

Good for you. Are you acting on that? I'm with you in my small way.
Remember that you do (or should) make more money than the average schmo,
and in the US at least a $1000 check to a congressman's campaign fund is
perfectly legal and does get you some attention. And if you don't make
any money you can send your daily email.

 

[Le Chaud Lapin]

Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

Hear hear! If _all_ the moderates in the civilized world would get off
their butts and sound off we'd be in a better position. Unfortunately
there's something about being an extremist (in any direction) that gives
people the energy to go out there and really foul things up.

We need a new political party. Objectivist? The Rationalist?
Certain if the Radicals were tolerated in UK, we can tolerate a
Rationalist party.

Good for you. Are you acting on that? I'm with you in my small way.
Remember that you do (or should) make more money than the average schmo,
and in the US at least a $1000 check to a congressman's campaign fund is
perfectly legal and does get you some attention. And if you don't make
any money you can send your daily email.

The granularity afforded by our political structure does not allow my
views to be effected efficaciously. Like many rational people
(extreme?), my views typically fall in the tails of the Gaussian.
Voting is good for many, but for me, the risk of significant effort
with subsequent inconsequence is too great. We only get about 50 real
years here to do anything. Half that could easily be spent yapping at
the wind. If you look at the pattern of great man who have an opinion
of man, they all start out the same. As children, they are brutally
rational and objective - the person who put the clothes pin on the
cat's tail should go to his room, not all of us, no matter whose child
he is. But we start to get older, and gradually, we begin to
compromise our principles, one by one, until what is good and what is
not becomes unclear, a foggy fickley mist in the void, moving in the
direction of the first strong gust of wind that does not blow us over.
Later, we realized that someowhere along the way we got pimped, and
spend perhaps the last 20 years trying to revert to our lost innocence
and sense of true purpose (witness recent remarks made by Bill Cosby).

After several decades of trodding this dirty ball, I realized
something important. Democracy is not all it's cracked up to be.

Being democratic does not necessarily mean being right, in the
virtuous sense. Democracy is an expression of the average will of the
people, and if the average will of the people is that witches should
be burned; n*ggers should be hanged; Japanese should be quarantined;
Communists should be villified; taxes should be raised on the small
percentage of people who made enormous sacrifice so that their
offspring could have better; entire countries in Africa should be left
to poverty, starvation, conflict, disease and death; and towel-heads
should be eradicated without mercy, then that is what shall be. The
average person knows not the true meaning of empathy. His nature is
closer to animal than most of us are willing to admit. Democracy? It
was the fetish of few enlightened men who generously bestowed upon us
their vision of virtue, which coincidentally is a very effective tool
for maintaining social stability. The rest of us just came along for
the ride, as is customary.

I plan to take a more direct approach. Rather than vote and hope, I
will assert my will with (legal) force, like a hammer, so everyone
knows what time it is.

-Chaud Lapin-

 

[Winfield Hill]

Le Chaud Lapin wrote...

I plan to take a more direct approach. Rather than vote and
hope, I will assert my will with (legal) force, like a hammer,
so everyone knows what time it is.

Most of us already know what time it is. :>)

Ahem... Are you saying, Le Chaud, that you will follow the
time-honored American tradition of filing a lawsuit?

Thanks,
- Win

(email: use hill_at_rowland-dot-org for now)

 

[Le Chaud Lapin]

Le Chaud Lapin wrote...

Most of us already know what time it is. :>)

Ahem... Are you saying, Le Chaud, that you will follow the
time-honored American tradition of filing a lawsuit?

Ha! I wish I could file lawsuit.

"Case X92.99329 State of Texas Le Chaud Lapin vs. Presidency of George
W. Bush. Mr Lapin Claims that he suffered ridicule and lost
irrecoverable assests while betting that at least one weapon of mass
destruction would be found in Iraq. Mr Lapin seeks compensatory
damages of $7.00US and punitive damages of$5.6US billion."

I think there will be more success in appealing to the sensibility of
youth, and growing a new popular following from there.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

 

[Jim Thompson]

Ha! I wish I could file lawsuit.

"Case X92.99329 State of Texas Le Chaud Lapin vs. Presidency of George
W. Bush. Mr Lapin Claims that he suffered ridicule and lost
irrecoverable assests while betting that at least one weapon of mass
destruction would be found in Iraq. Mr Lapin seeks compensatory
damages of $7.00US and punitive damages of$5.6US billion."

I think there will be more success in appealing to the sensibility of
youth, and growing a new popular following from there.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

You could join with Michael Moore, and, since you are in Texas,
conspire with the jerk Democrat Congresswoman who asked the UN to
supervise our elections ;-)


...Jim Thompson

 

[Fred Bloggs]

Knowledge is power. Wield it as such, and kick some ass. Please.

-Chaud Lapin-

Forget it- engineers are a commodity and that results from the fact that
the government makes it that way- shoving more boondoggle bucks into
every excuse of a university with their greedy self-aggrandizing - far
in excess of *ANY* outright welfare handout to the needy. Historically
engineers do not do well in positions of leadership- the real world
requires more fluidity and generalistic thinking than the typical
engineering mind could hope to possess- see the USSR for an example.

 

[Fred Bloggs]

You could join with Michael Moore, and, since you are in Texas,
conspire with the jerk Democrat Congresswoman who asked the UN to
supervise our elections ;-)

....unbelievable..

 

[John Fields]

I plan to take a more direct approach. Rather than vote and hope, I
will assert my will with (legal) force, like a hammer, so everyone
knows what time it is.

 

[John Fields]

Ha! I wish I could file lawsuit.

"Case X92.99329 State of Texas Le Chaud Lapin vs. Presidency of George
W. Bush. Mr Lapin Claims that he suffered ridicule and lost
irrecoverable assests while betting that at least one weapon of mass
destruction would be found in Iraq. Mr Lapin seeks compensatory
damages of $7.00US and punitive damages of$5.6US billion."

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

On 3 Jul 2004 14:54:33 -0700, the renowned

Ha! I wish I could file lawsuit.

"Case X92.99329 State of Texas Le Chaud Lapin vs. Presidency of George
W. Bush. Mr Lapin Claims that he suffered ridicule and lost
irrecoverable assests while betting that at least one weapon of mass
destruction would be found in Iraq. Mr Lapin seeks compensatory
damages of $7.00US and punitive damages of$5.6US billion."

I think there will be more success in appealing to the sensibility of
youth, and growing a new popular following from there.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

http://southernfood.about.com/library/rec03/bl30317q.htm


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[Le Chaud Lapin]

On 3 Jul 2004 14:54:33 -0700, the renowned


http://southernfood.about.com/library/rec03/bl30317q.htm


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

YOU'RE CRAZY! I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING!!!!! THAT CRACKED ME UP!

Maybe it's that I have had a couple of Hurricances from the 4th July
Partying, but that is just too funny.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

 

[Le Chaud Lapin]

Mr. Rogers is dead, so why not go buy yourself a sweater and a pair of
sneakers and go for it?

Not a bad idea, but I would replace the Land of Make Believe with the
Land of Stark Reality.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

 

[Joel Kolstad]

Historically
engineers do not do well in positions of leadership- the real world
requires more fluidity and generalistic thinking than the typical
engineering mind could hope to possess- see the USSR for an example.

So the fact that the societs emphasized quantity over quality over safety
(i.e., look at the number of soviet submariners who died during the cold war
due to technically inferior reactor designs, piss-poor quality control
during construction, etc.) ... do you view this as an argument for or
against your statement?