Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Anonymous says Marvell has bought DS2

An anonymous coward has posted a comment on HAN Fan today claiming Marvel has bought DS2.

From the post:
Well well The nightmare is over, Marvell have finally reach the end of negotiation with DS2, They have made 40 employees redundant. It was a very curios selection of redundant list.
All the Manage and their friends and family stay on, They have dissolved the Workers comite, and they have lay out members of the comite that belong to Union.
I don't see the company doing well if the top are not remove...
Remember that DS2 have not come out with a new product since the change of R+D Coordinators (Gigle Boys) over 5 years now... 
HAN Fan thinks this is likely to be true, but there is no official press release so far.

Update 29 July 2010: According to new comments, it seems that "Marvell has not bought DS2. They have bought the IP and contracted 2/3 of the staff rather than buying the company".
So, don't wait-up all night for a press release from DS2 that says: "Assets stripped, debt still due, but we are still in business". HAN Fan is pleased that most of the staff has jobs.

14 comments:

  1. Basically, I left DS2 some time ago, so for me, all things happening to DS2 are from a nostalgic point of view.
    All the information I had, it is that Marvel acquired DS2. It is a very good thing for the people that will continue in the new company. Good for them and their families. Sincerely, I believe DS2 could survive as DS2 if some years ago the management team fired out about 40% of the DS2 staff. Sometimes, you need to do these things to reborn or to survive. They didn't took any good decision, and here is the final result: DS2 dies.
    I'm curious if the management team will continue working for Marvel. If they continue it will be the first error of Marvel. From my business point of view, the management team must be people that are able to innovate, to communicate, to convince and they must work very actively for the company. And I remember only few people like that. There is a extended mistrust among the engineering team in those guys.
    In the other hand, I believe DS2 had a very good set of engineers to create very nice products (and marketable products, it is important to sell enough to get revenue).
    I know that some workers (perhaps now ex-workers) of DS2 will believe that the death of DS2 has been caused by Gigle (remember that they come from DS2). and IMHO, it is a stupid idea: while DS2 was 5 years thinking in new standards, HomePlug got the main percentage of the market.
    DS2 died because DS2 never sold enough chipset to maintain its company structure.
    A good lesson to learn. And a thumb rule: "las gallinas que entran por las que salen" (a spanish joke).
    Perhaps some people at the management staff of DS2 must think on this things: you must design and produce products, and you must get enough sells to maintain your work and the company you are working in.

    I believe also that for Marvel has been a good sale. They has now some of the nice engineers (not all, I must to say) of DS2.
    I hope a good future for them.
    Good luck!

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  2. I do confirm the news. Today, two thirds of the employees of DS2 have received a contract of Marvell. The other third of the employees that won’t continue with Marvell haven’t received any reason why their managers decided not to contract them. This makes one think that the lists of contracted and fired employees have been made taking into account only favoritisms, creep people and things like that. Those managers have done a big mistake... time to time...

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  3. Marvell has not bought DS2. They have bought the IP and contracted 2/3 of the staff rather than buying the company.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well you anonymous (sure you are one of the creeping manager) that said that Marvell has not bought ds2, Ok let put it this way, Marvell have ended the ageing of the contract of the employees and the Trustee have to use the 25M euros paid by Marvell to pay out the layout employees. In this way it will be easy for Marvell to do further cleaning without paying further compensation corresponded to each employee contract for the years they have been working for ds2.

    What really surprised me in this company (DS2), was the structure and the artificial growth of some of the managers in the past 8 months. You know when a company loses his visions, what the tops normally do is to look for somebody that they can really have trust, to take over some strategy position. For Example, The director of R+D was a manager of customer support, he received a promotion to become a Firmware manager, within 4 months he received another promotion R+D Director... This is a Joke for a proper company... Hope Marvell will be aware of this soon...

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  5. For me the great surprise has been the salary list published, around the 30% of the engineers above 70K EUR...

    R&D Director around 80K...

    and the rest around 50K...

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  6. The real cancer of this company was its own CEO. Now with the CEO out, the consequences of its bad work remain. Keeping the salaries, in one year they will have the same problems. The average salary in Spain for similar engineers is around 40K. After the cleaning, the average salary should be around 65K (EUR).

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  7. No comments.

    http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Marvell_Semiconductor,_Inc./Salary

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  8. Yeah, now I know that my salary in Marvell is 1/2 of the mean salary... grrrr!!!

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  9. For Anonymous "No comments"

    Salaries here are in USD. Salaries in ex-DS2 (now Marvell) are in EUR.

    USA and Spain are not exactly the same; inside Spain, Valencia is not Madrid or Barcelona.

    May be the 70% of the new Marvell employees will be very happy if their salaries grow up to these quantities.

    The salaries in ex-DS2 were excellent for the JBC friends, but not for the real excellent workers.

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  10. As said on before comments, salaries of the 80% engineers who make the "real work" (like developing Firmware, or Digital/Analog Hardware), are BELOW 30K €/year

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  11. I think some of the managers who realy have expirience in the firmware and are not doing anything and are earning around about 70 to 80k should work.
    and those managers JBC have used as a shadow should be reconsider... if you are reading this blog you know yourself

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  12. :-)

    http://www.sys-con.com/node/1504712

    :-)

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  13. Marvell Acquires DS2 Technology

    http://www.marvell.com/company/news/press_detail.html?releaseID=1428

    ReplyDelete
  14. For Example, The director of R+D was a manager of customer support, he received a promotion to become a Firmware manager, within 4 months he received another promotion R+D Director... This is a Joke for a proper company... Hope Marvell will be aware of this soon.my blog usagamezone.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete