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Grandpa story time! My first job was at Imagination Technologies in 2006, working on the first SGX chips that shipped in the iPhone 3GS and the first iPad. I d
by david-gpu 5y ago
Grandpa story time!
My first job was at Imagination Technologies in 2006, working on the first SGX chips that shipped in the iPhone 3GS and the first iPad. I did not last long.
At that time the folks at Apple would send us mockup UI apps with placeholder textures, just to test the performance on the chip. They told us they were building the next generation of the Apple TV -- only much later we learned we had been working on the first iPad.
Working there was a pretty surreal experience. We were understaffed and underpaid. To a first approximation the teams consisted of a core group of British engineers alongside with a revolving door of young European immigrants like myself.
Every Friday morning we would be offered free doughnuts in the canteen, and since the nicest ones were in short supply, some people would arrive early and wait. The coffee came from a vending machine and was terrible, though.
There were some heroic efforts to ship stuff on time, especially on the hardware side of things. I have mad respect for the people who worked there under those circumstances.
- jacquesm 5y agoIt is always frustrating to see the people that underpin these massive financial successes mistreated like this.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoIt's pretty standard in Europe semi/HW sector as it's no SV, so there's no massive cluster where people can quickly find alternate employment at a competitor across the road if they get mistreated by an employer. In the EU semi space, changing jobs, often means changing country, which implies a lot of friction many people can't or don't want to deal with.
- dboreham 5y agoVending machine coffee was pretty standard back then in UK tech offices.
- astrange 5y agoAmerican ones too - there may have been an espresso bar, but the free option for us was a Starbucks “iCup” machine whose output tasted and smelled nasty. Now that I think about it, maybe we should’ve checked the water supply.
- david-gpu 5y agoThe stuff we had back then was instant coffee from the vending machine, not some fancy Starbucks bourgeois affectation with actual coffe beans. The visitors were offered some plain brewed coffee, but the employees weren't allowed to touch it.
- Simon_Fe 5y agoI've seen nearly 30years of VL/IMG coffee, but post lockdown the kitchen coffee at IMG has come on leaps and bounds: built in grinder and freshly brewed per cup. Has NOT helped my (failed) attempts to wean myself off coffee :-)
- david-gpu 5y agoThat sounds great. I bet things are very different these days.
- Simon_Fe 5y agoWith the hybrid working policy (https://www.imaginationtech.com/careers/hybrid-working/ https://www.imaginationtech.com/careers/hybrid-working/) it is different* - it's typically fairly quiet in the office when I'm in, but it all seems to be working pretty well. *Sorry if that seems a bit like a plug but it was easier than trying to explain it myself :-)
- david-gpu 5y agoTo be fair, the company was hemorrhaging money at the time. The main "office" building, where I worked, was actually a run down warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Compare the following two pictures, from 2009 [1] and from 2017 [2]. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Imagination+Technologies/@51.7074135,-0.4395362,3a,75y,291.35h,83.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJ9yZ1Y08i0yJeGnT0Nyzqg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m14!1m6!3m5!1s0x487641b9b38b9ff3:0x995b248a5de90764!2sImagination+Technologies!8m2!3d51.7081203!4d-0.4404734!3m6!1s0x487641b9b38b9ff3:0x995b248a5de90764!8m2!3d51.7081203!4d-0.4404734!14m1!1BCgIgARICCAI https://www.google.com/maps/place/Imagination+Technologies/@... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Imagination+Technologies/@51.7074025,-0.4395749,3a,75y,299.68h,94.51t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1siY9RPqBis7rT8C8PBZD2vA!2e0!5s20170501T000000!7i13312!8i6656!4m14!1m6!3m5!1s0x487641b9b38b9ff3:0x995b248a5de90764!2sImagination+Technologies!8m2!3d51.7081203!4d-0.4404734!3m6!1s0x487641b9b38b9ff3:0x995b248a5de90764!8m2!3d51.7081203!4d-0.4404734!14m1!1BCgIgARICCAI https://www.google.com/maps/place/Imagination+Technologies/@...
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago>The main "office" building, where I worked, was actually a run down warehouse in the middle of nowhere. That's nothing, I used to work for one of Europe's biggest semi companies and some of our offices were made of shipping containers lol. IIRC even the mighty Intel had to completely overhaul their offices in 200? after some Jay Lenno visit embarrassed them for looking like the '80's. Why is it that SW companies pride themselves with nice offices while semi/HW companies have some run down trailer park offices and see no issue with that?
- david-gpu 5y ago> Why is it that SW companies pride themselves with nice offices while semi/HW companies have some run down trailer park offices and see no issue with that? I haven't noticed that problem in North America: Qualcomm, AMD and NVidia all have nice campuses.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoWell they can afford it.
- nomel 5y ago> that underpin these massive financial successes It very often takes hard, non ideal, working conditions to make financial success. This story is from a period before that success.