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The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

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346 points BirAdam | 9 comments | 05 Apr 24 16:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.645s | source | bottom
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davepeck ◴[05 Apr 24 17:15 UTC] No.39944831[source]▶
I was there near the end. First, as a summer intern in 1998, and then in 1999 as a full time engineer on what is now Google's Mountain View campus. SGI had always been a dream company for me. I'd first learned about them in high school; now, right out of college, I'd somehow managed to land a dream job.

SGI's hardware was cutting-edge and exotic. IRIX was killer (sorry Solaris). Cray was a subdivision. My coworkers used emacs, too. They put an O2 on my desk!

The dream didn't last long. Major layoffs hit just a few months after I started full time. I wrote about the experience here: https://davepeck.org/2009/02/11/the-luckiest-bad-luck/

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1. dxbydt ◴[05 Apr 24 19:57 UTC] No.39946489[source]▶
> SGI had always been a dream company

It was a dream company for pretty much every siggraph person at that time. I was in grad school, eagerly awaiting a very popular 3-semester course in computer graphics. It had been devised and taught by a young promising professor who had published some pioneering siggraph papers. I signed up for the course. On the first day of class, the head of the department walked in and said the professor had been recruited by his dream company SGI for an ungodly sum of money to work on some Jewish director’s movie about a dinosaur themepark. I thought ok, whatever, someone else will teach the course. The bastards scrapped the entire 3 series computer graphics module because there wasn’t anyone else who could teach that. So we had to pick from one of the usual dumb options - databases, OS, Networks, Compilers. Since then I’ve always held a grudge against sgi.

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2. brcmthrowaway ◴[05 Apr 24 20:33 UTC] No.39946878[source]▶
Jewish director? Hrmph
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3. Y_Y ◴[05 Apr 24 21:02 UTC] No.39947171[source]▶
Spielberg had a bar mitzvah, what more do you want?
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4. ◴[06 Apr 24 00:45 UTC] No.39948986{3}[source]▶
5. IntelMiner ◴[06 Apr 24 02:15 UTC] No.39949456[source]▶
"Jewish director" is an...interesting description
6. krapp ◴[06 Apr 24 02:30 UTC] No.39949509[source]▶
> to work on some Jewish director’s movie about a dinosaur themepark

I assume you mean Steven Spielberg and one of the Jurassic Park films?

If so, why can't you just say so? Why are you referring to Steven Spielberg, one of the most famous directors of all time, as "some Jewish director?" Do you think people won't recognize the name? I promise people know who Steven Spielberg is.

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7. Kamq ◴[06 Apr 24 03:50 UTC] No.39949782[source]▶
> If so, why can't you just say so?

Based on the comment, it sounds like that's the way the head of the department phrased it.

Presumably the department head didn't know the title as it hadn't been released yet.

8. theonething ◴[06 Apr 24 07:40 UTC] No.39950727[source]▶
I think the GP was telling their story in the context of that time. It's a technique to help the reader more fully understand the context. I'm almost sure there is a term for this literary technique.
9. krylon ◴[06 Apr 24 12:11 UTC] No.39951915{3}[source]▶
I don't anyone is disputing that, but why did the department head see a need to point that out?