One of the ESNUG readers forwarded me a link today from SOCcentral.com with
the republished May 9th press release titled "Sierra Design Automation Starts
India Operations".  This is funny because 14 months ago, one of the minor
controversies on the DVcon'05 Bigwigs Panel was the perception that Sierra
was only hiring Indians.

          "Does Sierra only make EDA tools for Indian engineers?"

       "When is Sierra going to hire its first non-Indian employee?"

were from the questions for Pravin Madhani, CEO of Sierra, in ESNUG 439 #3.

From what I remember, Pravin handled these Indians-only questions quite well
on the panel.  Instead of bullshiting around with the usual politically
correct answer of "we-hire-the-best-regardless-of-who-they-are", he put up a
single slide detailing the exact percentages of the national origins of his
employees.  In a single stroke, that one slide showing hard data immediately
shut up all the naysayers.  I thought that was well done.

And hence my snicker at the recent news that 14 months later, Sierra has just
now finally created an India division.  Considering that all of the major and
many of the minor EDA vendors have some sort of presence in India these days,
I don't think Pravin is going to catch any hell for this move now!  :)