Re: Arrow Electronics

In article <pan.2007.03.24.20.52.23.781235@xxxxxxxxxxx>, Rich Grise wrote:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 11:55:04 -0700, Richard Henry wrote:
On Mar 24, 8:57 am, David Lesher <wb8...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bru...@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

The distributors.
I have not come across a more useless bunch of wankers in the
distribution business.
Me: Hi, do you have this part xxxx?
Them: Do you have an account?
Me: No, but if you have the part we will open an account to purchase.
Them: You need an account.
Me: I just need to know whether you stock the item.
Them: You need an account.

I used to have to spec parts from "Hamilton Have-Not"....

Salesdroid: "Oh yes, we have 128 of those in stock."
Moi: "Great; I'll be over to pick up 30..."
Salesdroid: "They're not here...they're in Dallas.."
Moi: "No problem; ship 30 here & I'll come pick them up - Tuesday?"
Salesdroid: "Err....."

By the time I left that assignment; even the procurement folks were
using my version of their name...

I remember the good old days (81-3) when distributors really
distibuted things. There was one small disty (Kierrulf, I think) who
shared our parking lot. And they had a will-call window. And we had
an engineering account. Typical response time: get the Chief
Engineer's secretary (the account was in his and her names) to call to
confirm availablilty and place the order, then walk across the parking
lot and pick up the parts.

And on the other side, there was a little beer, pool and burger joint
where I got lunch several times a week for under $5: Little Red
special w/ cheese (1/4 lb burger with fries), plate of nachos and
pitcher of beer (the nachos and beer split with a coworker). We went
there so often that the waitress would just point at us, we would nod,
and the pitcher and nachos would be right up.

Oh, the good ol' days! <Rich wipes away a small tear )-; > I once had
an AMP rep hand me a $250.00 or so crimper, just because he had it.
Another time, I was teching at a place where they were using bleeding-
edge ADCs and DACs, and there was a Burr-Brown rep there, and he handed
me a couple of 12-bit ADCs, at a time when new ones were about $25.

And you could call reps and ask about a part, and they'd say, "Want some
samples?" and they'd show up the next day by priority mail or FedEx.

Sigh.

Oh boy!

Sometime in the early 1990's I got samples of InGaAlP LEDs in red, the
usual reddish shade of "orange LED orange", and amberish yellow from HP, 6
each. They asked me my application - LED bicycle lights.

It should have been obvious that chances were high that no more than one
bicycle was being outfitted with these.

So I mentioned some of these fairly favorably in my website (to this
day), bought 100 of them later on from Newark, and later still when they
were Agilent or Avago parts I bought maybe 60 more from DigiKey.

Nowadays, now that Digikey stocks them, I suspect that for sample
quantities of at least some of these get some from DigiKey.
Back in the early 1990's, purchase of these through distributors often
involved a minimum order of 500 pieces - and I suspect a lead time close
to a week-plus for many of these via backordering unless you pick a
specific part popular enough for a distributor to stock bags of 500 of
them. I was not able to buy 10 back then - for less than 500 all I could
do was get 6 free samples! (It appears to me that 6 is or was a
traditional free sample quantity for electronic components of cost in
production quantitiesin cents rather than dollars.)

I feel that the mid 1980's were the crest of electronic product and
component manufacturing in the USA, and that "fairly good times" in USA
for electronics was from the beginning of "The Golden Age of Radio" (close
to 1920) to whatever was the last year that Intel made most of its
processors in the USA (I think late 1990's).
Even in mid-late 1980's electronic technicians often had to work for
less than twice minimum wage, often less than 1.5 times minimum wage if
there were benefits. (There were some notable exceptions of much better
pay for technicians even then. Even in late 1980's top-5% of tech school
graduates competed for those good jobs!)
Hour count in workweeks for engineers in this area since upticked - I
have heard a few horror stories. Those looking to get into engineering
jobs in this area - please check out risks of not getting time-and-a-half
for working over 40 hours a week, or even being paid a salary by a time
unit of at least a week while there is lack of upper limit of hours per
pay period that you need to work to stay in good standing!

- Don Klipstein (don@xxxxxxxxx)
.

Relevant Pages

  • Looking for hard-to-find Electronic Components
    ... Original Electronics Manufactures, Contract Electronics ... passives, Sell Passives, memory chips, Buy and Sell Memory Chips, ... brokers, distributors, Trading, online trading, inventory online, ... Semiconductors, trade semiconductors, auction ceramic capacitors, ...
    (sci.electronics.components)
  • Re: CoolRunner XPLA3 getting axed?
    ... And what is the art of knowing what stuff you can get when you need it? ... None of the manufacturer main distributors have stock they quote me 12-15 ... Yesterday a catalogue supplier had the 600 parts I need in stock. ... Sadly the Xilinx offering has a pitiful range and no commitment to holding ...
    (comp.arch.fpga)
  • Re: Maxim parts and lead times.
    ... >> Keeping stock was what distributors used to do and was paid for by their ... >> mark up. ... >> stock and have removed most of their reason for existing. ... the disti model was working well. ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: AT91rm9200 Devel. Board (Student Project): Choice of OS??
    ... There are three distributors in Finland: EBV, ... I think you may find stock at the other two. ... You can get even cheaper boards like the www.cogcomp.com CSB337. ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: Microchip withdrawing FAEs from distributers - bad decision???
    ... What the stock price does over the same period is ... remember where) and he was saying that design support was an area they felt ... online store has been cheaper than the distributors I checked. ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)