Comment Happens in hardware, too (Score 1) 226
In a past life, I worked for a company that developed control hardware. I loved designing hardware and software, and I could focus on it. When the time came to build prototypes and manage BOMs and shop vendors for parts and all the niggly crap that surrounds actually building something, there were people who did that.
One day, all of those people were laid off, and we engineers had to start doing all of that work ourselves. Suddenly I was spending 20% of my time doing my job, and 80% on my time doing the jobs of all of the support people who got canned.
I didn't stay too long after that, and neither did any other engineer who was good enough to get a job during a recession.