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Let me tell you a story: Tektronix lifted the Portland Oregon region right up. Was called silicon forest. At that time, Tek was funding startups its employee

Let me tell you a story: Tektronix lifted the Portland Oregon region right up. Was called silicon forest. At that time, Tek was funding startups its employees thought up after working for Tek, getting great education provided directly by the company as well as through college partnerships. Tek also literally trained a workforce here by educating any of its employees and by doing programs with suppliers to do the same. I am a product of that time. A drive through this region in the 80's and early 90's was awesome! Shops of all kinds, Tek itself had COMTEK which could make damn near anything, and opportunities abounded! Howard Vollem died and the MBA took over. COMTEK was torn down, work was sent overseas, education stopped, startup funding stopped, and soon a drive through this region looked very different: hair nails and laundry. While large scale manufacturing has grown, the rest has suffered huge! Our military can't find the capacity it needs! And they, along with aerospace, are the best customers there are, with auto in some parts too. The rest has been gutted. That is what we need to fix. It matters. If companies won't do what Tek did, and that is invest in the region and it's people, and they won't because getting max dollars at any cost matters more than sustainable business does, then we must have robust small to mid sized manufacturing. Where else will our future skilled labor come from? And I left for higher end professional work and software. I can make anything I can draw, it was damn good at it too. Saw way too many places close and there's no way I can raise a family on that and I quit ... tons of us did. The skills I have are rare and in high demand. Young people today can't get them like I did, and that adds right the hell up. You think your arguments make sense. And you are not wrong. They do, but that is not the problem. The problem is for your argument to make sense, a ton of people and manufacturing potential is lost and nobody seems to recognize the massive opportunity costs in all that. And frankly if large companies aren't going to do it and get a return on that investment, then our government damn well should. We do really put our national security at risk doing otherwise.

mlyle 2y ago
> Our military can't find the capacity it needs! This has a lot more to do with the stance of the past 30 years to manufacture defense materiel at relatively constant, small rates. There was no capital investment, because why pay to have a huge line that isn't being used. We spent our military dollars on wonder-weapons that would probably win a direct war quickly, but that we can't give to allies in a proxy conflict. Going so far was a strategic mistake. > And they, along with aerospace, are the best customers there are, Military are terrible customers, especially if you're a subcomponent manufacturer. Gravy might pour, it might not; it's very unpredictable. You spend a lot of effort and business just evaporates. > Howard Vollem died and the MBA took over. On the flip-side, can you imagine being the high-cost Tek of old in today's test equipment marketplace? Tek already struggles to compete against cheaper, adequate solutions. So much of that market has commoditized out. > nobody seems to recognize the massive opportunity costs in all that. Actually, that's exactly what I'm talking about, in both directions. Having a ton of manufacturing means we would have opportunity costs in the other direction. We've traded the manufacturing we had 50 years ago for other things. It's not possible to specialize in "everything."
- sounds 2y ago
  > There was no capital investment, because why pay to have a huge line that isn't being used. I'd like to suggest that what Tek did worked back then, and the same insightful leadership wouldn't simply copy the solutions from 20 years ago. Thus the problem is "there was no capital investment, because there was no visionary leadership," and the problem is also that the short-sighted leadership simply saw "a huge line that isn't being used," instead of a workforce ready to take your company into the next century. > Military are terrible customers ... You spend a lot of effort and business just evaporates. This only applies to companies that lack vision, that seem to only be able to keep stamping out the same widget as 20 years ago. > Tek already struggles to compete against cheaper, adequate solutions. Seems like a lack of leadership, instead of an existential proof that Tek can't compete. > We've traded the manufacturing we had 50 years ago for other things. It's not possible to specialize in "everything." This actually sounds like the kind of visionary leadership that Tek or the larger Portland metro needs. If I sound combative, please only read this in a curious voice. What kind of visionary leadership could rise from the ashes of the Silicon Forest?
  - mlyle 2y ago
    > > There was no capital investment, because why pay to have a huge line that isn't being used. I was specifically talking about war materiel. The US is not doing great at making things like low-tech artillery shells, because we've not had a large line running for them for quite some time. In retrospect, it would have been better to have a bigger stockpile and to be paying for more line capacity. Things are steadily ramping, but it's taken a good year and a half to get to the quantities we now want. > > Military are terrible customers ... You spend a lot of effort and business just evaporates. > This only applies to companies that lack vision, that seem to only be able to keep stamping out the same widget as 20 years ago. Nah, vision or not: political winds change and projects get killed. Being involved in an early program is exceptionally high risk: you need to start ramping to do the whole thing and you may get a good return on capital or a pittance. > Seems like a lack of leadership, instead of an existential proof that Tek can't compete. The overwhelming majority of the test equipment marketplace has commoditized out. This is a problem if you're still mostly a test equipment vendor. It would be even worse if Tek had higher costs. > This actually sounds like the kind of visionary leadership that Tek or the larger Portland metro needs. In those sentences, I'm not talking about Tek: I'm saying the United States has, as elementary economics predicted, specialized in areas where it has a comparative advantage over other countries. It is not possible to have a comparative advantage in "everything."
mike50 2y ago
And suddenly it wasn't 1960 and the PCBs were in mass production. Suddenly it was 1990 and only the true high end low volume (space and mil) paid for their own custom silicon and fabs. Finally it was the year 2010 and the front end of a scope was a mass produced part for pennies with an fpga and the scope was a hobbyist and auto mechanics tool.
- ddingus 2y ago
  Sure the scope did change, and Tek made those moves as they should have. There was a great argument for trading some capability to continue to build new products on now current processes, with the same rapid feedback loop in place. That should have happened rather than the very aggressive tear down and brain drain we actually saw. The key point being ongoing and regular investment in the company and people would have yielded more and better products that would compete just fine, not just be the cheapest. That organization would be smaller, but still potent and a lot more nimble, able to continue supporting technical engineering across many fields. And as I have mentioned up thread, couple that with returns from smart spin-off investments and an ongoing innovation culture rather than just a cost cutting one and we would have seen more than we did. I would also argue the big push to apply software was sexy, and took the air right out of hardware efforts. Lack of investment there was not about the lack of returns, and it still is not about that. They are just a different kind and over a longer time. Ignoring those has bled the region of a lot of capability. It is much harder to make things and here we are trying to understand how the next generation makes it on hair, laundry and food. Making things is important. And it is not the cheapest way of course. Having a large percentage of people unable to build lives is and will continue to be very expensive. Crime, need for government services and more abound. Early on, the promise of new tech and automation was a reduced need to work as much and or at the least maintaining respectable standards of living. Put simply, it was supposed to cost less to live and for the most part these things did not happen. Something needs to.

mlyle 2y ago

> Our military can't find the capacity it needs! This has a lot more to do with the stance of the past 30 years to manufacture defense materiel at relatively constant, small rates. There was no capital investment, because why pay to have a huge line that isn't being used. We spent our military dollars on wonder-weapons that would probably win a direct war quickly, but that we can't give to allies in a proxy conflict. Going so far was a strategic mistake. > And they, along with aerospace, are the best customers there are, Military are terrible customers, especially if you're a subcomponent manufacturer. Gravy might pour, it might not; it's very unpredictable. You spend a lot of effort and business just evaporates. > Howard Vollem died and the MBA took over. On the flip-side, can you imagine being the high-cost Tek of old in today's test equipment marketplace? Tek already struggles to compete against cheaper, adequate solutions. So much of that market has commoditized out. > nobody seems to recognize the massive opportunity costs in all that. Actually, that's exactly what I'm talking about, in both directions. Having a ton of manufacturing means we would have opportunity costs in the other direction. We've traded the manufacturing we had 50 years ago for other things. It's not possible to specialize in "everything."

sounds 2y ago
> There was no capital investment, because why pay to have a huge line that isn't being used. I'd like to suggest that what Tek did worked back then, and the same insightful leadership wouldn't simply copy the solutions from 20 years ago. Thus the problem is "there was no capital investment, because there was no visionary leadership," and the problem is also that the short-sighted leadership simply saw "a huge line that isn't being used," instead of a workforce ready to take your company into the next century. > Military are terrible customers ... You spend a lot of effort and business just evaporates. This only applies to companies that lack vision, that seem to only be able to keep stamping out the same widget as 20 years ago. > Tek already struggles to compete against cheaper, adequate solutions. Seems like a lack of leadership, instead of an existential proof that Tek can't compete. > We've traded the manufacturing we had 50 years ago for other things. It's not possible to specialize in "everything." This actually sounds like the kind of visionary leadership that Tek or the larger Portland metro needs. If I sound combative, please only read this in a curious voice. What kind of visionary leadership could rise from the ashes of the Silicon Forest?
- mlyle 2y ago
  > > There was no capital investment, because why pay to have a huge line that isn't being used. I was specifically talking about war materiel. The US is not doing great at making things like low-tech artillery shells, because we've not had a large line running for them for quite some time. In retrospect, it would have been better to have a bigger stockpile and to be paying for more line capacity. Things are steadily ramping, but it's taken a good year and a half to get to the quantities we now want. > > Military are terrible customers ... You spend a lot of effort and business just evaporates. > This only applies to companies that lack vision, that seem to only be able to keep stamping out the same widget as 20 years ago. Nah, vision or not: political winds change and projects get killed. Being involved in an early program is exceptionally high risk: you need to start ramping to do the whole thing and you may get a good return on capital or a pittance. > Seems like a lack of leadership, instead of an existential proof that Tek can't compete. The overwhelming majority of the test equipment marketplace has commoditized out. This is a problem if you're still mostly a test equipment vendor. It would be even worse if Tek had higher costs. > This actually sounds like the kind of visionary leadership that Tek or the larger Portland metro needs. In those sentences, I'm not talking about Tek: I'm saying the United States has, as elementary economics predicted, specialized in areas where it has a comparative advantage over other countries. It is not possible to have a comparative advantage in "everything."

mike50 2y ago

And suddenly it wasn't 1960 and the PCBs were in mass production. Suddenly it was 1990 and only the true high end low volume (space and mil) paid for their own custom silicon and fabs. Finally it was the year 2010 and the front end of a scope was a mass produced part for pennies with an fpga and the scope was a hobbyist and auto mechanics tool.

ddingus 2y ago
Sure the scope did change, and Tek made those moves as they should have. There was a great argument for trading some capability to continue to build new products on now current processes, with the same rapid feedback loop in place. That should have happened rather than the very aggressive tear down and brain drain we actually saw. The key point being ongoing and regular investment in the company and people would have yielded more and better products that would compete just fine, not just be the cheapest. That organization would be smaller, but still potent and a lot more nimble, able to continue supporting technical engineering across many fields. And as I have mentioned up thread, couple that with returns from smart spin-off investments and an ongoing innovation culture rather than just a cost cutting one and we would have seen more than we did. I would also argue the big push to apply software was sexy, and took the air right out of hardware efforts. Lack of investment there was not about the lack of returns, and it still is not about that. They are just a different kind and over a longer time. Ignoring those has bled the region of a lot of capability. It is much harder to make things and here we are trying to understand how the next generation makes it on hair, laundry and food. Making things is important. And it is not the cheapest way of course. Having a large percentage of people unable to build lives is and will continue to be very expensive. Crime, need for government services and more abound. Early on, the promise of new tech and automation was a reduced need to work as much and or at the least maintaining respectable standards of living. Put simply, it was supposed to cost less to live and for the most part these things did not happen. Something needs to.