There are lots of situations where I don't worry about it, mostly lower-tech customers where it's an unlikely contingency and I know that my existing methods will work. (TIAs and noise cancellers, for instance.)
A joint-development sort of agreement between a manufacturer and an IP provider such as a university or research outfit will often include royalties, so it's really not that out of the way.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
Perhaps I'm missing the point here, but why not outsource your purchasing and place the audit burden on them and then take your 10% of the charge?
The more the paperwork, the less likely big name will meddle.
You can even setup your own kitting company for the purpose. That way its easier to factor in future savings!
Only rarely have I seen a percentage overhead agreed that would be a disincentive to reduce costs! For every $ you save it costs you 25c! Ouch! But hey!
Where there's a will, there's always a way.
You can just say "NO"!
-- Mike Perkins Video Solutions Ltd www.videosolutions.ltd.uk
The current purpose of UI is to get people back to work in *their* field (otherwise it wouldn't allow people to refuse _any_ work). Having an engineer sweep floors for a day will only lengthen the time it takes him to find an engineering job and give employers a cheap way out. It's called "abuse", which you seem to have no problem with.
You're wrong. We *ARE* paying for UI. We *all* pay for it, every day (both directly and indirectly). Only a lefty believes in a free lunch.
It was put in as an incentive to work until the full retirement age (so reduce the burden on the budget). Up until that age, nothing has changed.
No, they understand exactly what the purpose of UI is. It is *not* welfare (for the recipient or the employer). It's purpose is to get the worker back to work (in his field, if possible). That's why many states didn't buy into the 99 weeks (and more) crap.
Bullshit. They don't pay but a sliver of it (and that is paid by their customer).
Me, too. Hope the discussion remains civilized.
Hey, John, still there?
... ... ...
Oh-oh ..
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Yes, just got home. The meet with the biz types was just lunch, social chatter, no content. That's a good sign. Spent the day talking circuits with a few PhDs (one a co-founder, worth hundreds of megabucks, got a ride in his Tesla) and the project is terrifying. That's a good sign. If they want the hardware badly enough, and it looks real hard, a contract can be worked out somehow.
Pity, I had a bunch of zinger lines ready to throw into the debate, and may never get to use them.
One of the guys presented me with a bottle of Westvleteren 12, arguably the best beer in the world. So even if we get no biz, the trip was worth it.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation
There are lots of cops and fireman around here that make $250K and more. And they will retire after 20 years or so and get the same for the rest of their lives.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation
10%, calculated their way, would be suicide for us.
I recall that in the heyday of Big Iron, IBM manufactured disk drives and mainframes for something like 20% of the sales price. You can't run a technology business and sell stuff for a hair above production cost.
We'll just give them a price, with no provision for auditing or anything like that. Let them try that Open Costing 10% profit nonsense on NI or Agilent and see how it works.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation
I read John's "of course they want to walk away owning all of our IP free and forever" to mean all of John's _existing_ IP.
-- Tim Wescott Wescott Design Services http://www.wescottdesign.com
I'm a consultant, and I rarely have customers who want total ownership of all the IP I generate for them. Usually when I explain that they're getting a bunch of boilerplate that I've written for previous projects for free, and that I have no interest in keeping whatever is unique to them, they agree that yes, if I make some new generic gizmo that'll work for everyone but doesn't directly affect their motors/bit-bashing/ inertial-measuring, etc., then there's no reason I can't use it elsewhere.
But then, as a rule, I don't do "any warm body" sort of consulting.
-- Tim Wescott Wescott Design Services http://www.wescottdesign.com
That sounds encouraging. But sometimes it still dead-ends. The managers and mover and shakers might be all gung-ho but then the agreement has to pass the legal department. "Just a formality", is often said. And then it dead-ends right there. But I hope it doesn't in your case and you get to start this project.
Yellow cap, the Abbey Chief grade? That's their "high voltage" stuff.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
tract, to supply them with some difficult electronics. Of course, they want to walk away owning all of our IP, free and forever. Plus about another 20 insane greedy-lawyer show-stoppers. They essentially want us to sit up and beg for the privilige of being ripped off by Big Name Inc.
subject to audits. We'd be allowed 10% parts overhead, 5% G&A, and a 10% p rofit. We would be expected to continuously work at reducing costs, with al l the savings going to Big Name.
hat?
0 IQ points shy of being able to do the design.Anybody who thinks that IQ test scores have much to do with design ability is similarly dim. Being bright (in the sense that IQ tests measure) does he lp, but it's a small part of the mix.
product cost at design time.
located
make them pay for it. The 10% profit has been a staple of DOD/DOE contract s for 80 years.
mainframes for something like 20% of the sales price. You can't run a tech nology business and sell stuff for a hair above production cost.
It all depends how you calculate your production cost. The usual rule of th umb was that hardware sold at about twice the direct cost of producing it - which gave enough margin to cover the indirect costs and make a profit.
Tom Peters talked about companies that had enough reputation to command a p remium - back then IBM and HP were the classic examples. Apple has done it in recent years. Typically their stuff sold at three times the direct cost of production, and was half again dearer than ostensibly competitive gear f rom regular suppliers.
Selling stuff at "a hair" above production cost is total nonsense. For a st art hardly nobody knows their production costs to "a hair". Seriously high volume producers - like car companies - might come close.
At Cambridge Instruments in the 1980's the video monitor tubes were regular commercial TV tubes, bought out of batches made for regular consumer TV se t manufacturers.
This meant that they were never exactly the same shape from one batch to th e next, and the metal-working group had to slightly redesign the supporting brackets for each new batch. Predicting that kind of cost "to a hair" woul d be a neat trick.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Mostly not true. I've been on several projects where there was a hardcore problem and I thought up this, that and the other idea. Often many of them were shot down in the prior art search because some competitor of theirs had already locked in the IP. It always had major consequences caused by us not being able to take a direct raod to solving a problem.
That's exactly how I handle it. Although I will some day have to take the time and explain the reasons behind this nonrevocable license retainment on my web site because legal folks question it over and over again. OTOH it gave me opportunities to explain engineering to laywers. Some of them found it very interesting and started asking really technical questions. Which is always a good thing, like when one of their kids contemplates not walking in dad's footsteps.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
I wonder if it was from there "free" bottle offer?
Anyway, good luck. Hope it works out well.
Yeah, that's the one. It will take some serious planning for Mo and I to decide where and when to drink it. Maybe Fort Funston, above the beach, at sunset.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation
That's implicit in their contract. All IP of the designed product would belong to them, exclusively, fully-paid-up, forever. They could manufacture it or variants at will.
Our position is that we have all sorts of existing core-technology tricks that we would use in the product, and they can never own it. We might allow them an option to manufacture the gadget, for a license fee per copy. [1]
It will all boil down to: do they need the gadget more than we need the business? And can they get a better deal somewhere else? You know, the market economy thing.
I think these big companies just routinely try to get little companies to sign this nonsense.
[1] They did a quality audit on us and gave us a score of 35 out of 100. Ebgieering got a D+. A****** did a similar audit a couple months before and gave us a 95. Weird.-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation
Yes, by your analysis this conversation is costing everyone in the world because it is distracting both of us from work, play and other things that would make us both more productive. I'm talking about the direct payment which comes from the employer. By your analysis the promotional freebies a company gives out are paid for by all of us too. A silly point of view.
You keep talking about early retirement only. The law has changed. Is that not clear? It used to be that even after full retirement you could not collect full SS if you worked. So people *didn't* work.
You aren't making sense. If a person can work part time in his field (assuming they have a "field") but loses all SS benefits and so doesn't, how does that help anyone? Giving him money to *not* work is the welfare version which is what you seem to have in your area.
-- Rick
Don't you know about the free market? You can BS that the employers pay a "sliver" all you want. I believe I have posted a link about this. You can look it up if you want, I have. The main source of unemployment funds is the employer. When the s**t hit the fan and unemployment became double digit with many people running out of benefits because there were no jobs, the Feds stepped in and ponied up the money to extend benefits. Until then it was mostly employer funds and probably still is.
Yeah, you can argue the silly perspective that we all pay for that in the end, but the same is true of your salary, the company picnic and all sorts of other things. The bottom line is that people don't want to be unemployed and normally employers don't want to lay people off. It happens when companies have to reverse their growth which they *never* set as a goal. Rather than have people wandering the streets selling apples we have decided as a country to try to help people keep their homes and *not* go on welfare by giving them support in looking for a new job. But then I suppose there are always those who would consider that goal to be evil.
Can I ask what you propose? Should we let these people go hungry? Do you have a workable alternative? Soylent green maybe?
-- Rick
When you say "lots of cops and firemen" you mean the 5% at the top? Do you have any facts to back this up? I've never seen a retirement package that paid full wages. Care to modify that statement or substantiate it?
-- Rick
I don't understand completely. "I have no interest in keeping whatever is unique to them" sounds to me like you do give to them the IP you develop for them. Do I misunderstand you?
As to the "generic" gizmo that doesn't affect their work, what does that mean? If it doesn't affect their work, why would they be paying you to create it?
If it can work for everyone, I would definitely require you to *not* provide that unique IP to anyone else who might compete with me. I really don't follow your reasoning.
As to the "free" part, it isn't free. That is part of the pool of experience that a highly paid consultant brings to the table. Otherwise they could and likely would just hire someone to do the work and in theory save money. But a consultant is expected to deliver a result that works better with fewer bugs at a lower total cost. Having this pool of resources is what makes that possible.
-- Rick
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