"I have to disagree with this statement. I don't want to do verification work because it sucks — you get none of the glory but all of the responsibility," I ranted. "Which is sexier: being the guy who designed Cisco's most successful product or being the guy who helped verify AMD's last processor? Design, always, design.

"Also, the best that you can ever do as a verification guy is to not mess up," I continued. "That's as good as it gets. Believe you me, none of the guys at Intel who let the infamous Pentium bug go by put it down as a bragging point on their resumes. This is why it's so damn hard to recruit verification engineers. The smart engineers know it's a dead end compared with staying in design."

I wasn't alone, either.

"I can't recall a single instance where the verification engineers weren't treated as a necessary evil, at best, by the management of the company requiring verification expertise," wrote David Simmons of Toshiba. "I've seen the same attitude toward test engineers also, right down to seeing them publicly referred to as 'test weenies' by His Exalted Eminence, the design engineer. As long as the Brahmins of design and management continue to treat support engineers like Untouchables, frankly, all the whining about resource shortages is music to my ears."

"It is certainly true that verification is seen by many as a 'second-class' activity, lower in status than architecture or design," agreed Bob Bentley from Intel. "It becomes self-fulfilling. The best people don't want to work in verification, so the only people you can get are the second-best candidates."

And I laughed when I later read in an EE Times story about the economic downturn: " 'Realistically, now we're at a point when huge cuts will include engineers,' said Paul Kostek, past president of IEEE-USA. 'Maybe not design engineers, but probably engineers in manufacturing, test and other support areas.' "

It reminded me of something David Simmons of Toshiba had said in our earlier Guild discussion. "I happened to like test engineering, and that's the main reason I veered away from it."

John Cooley runs the E-mail Synopsys Users Group (ESNUG), is a contract ASIC designer and loves hearing from engineers at jcooley@world.std.com or (508) 429-4357.