Stressful, frustrating, not rewarding, that's how I feel at work these days. Apart from the heavy workload that comprises of RTL debugging and timing tuning, I felt like I am working without a clear guidance. The design has grown so complex that reading and understanding it are hard enough, let alone improving it. Unrealistic schedule of bumping up 1GHz to 1.5GHz in 3 months puts unnecessary pressure on us. The reason for all the pressure coming from top management is quite apparent with news saying that RIMM is going to drop our CPU in their future product:( The team morale is pretty bad now.

Did i mention that my manager "looks like" he is going to leave? LinkedIn shows that he is actively looking for opportunity and the fact that he has been skipping regular meeting coincides with our speculation. He is a good manager who always shields us from the pressure coming from top. Should my manager decided to leave, i dread to report to his boss, who is actually quite bossy. That would really suck.

I further ponder if I want to do this (engineering) for life? Back in high school, engineering seems like a cool thing for "smart" people, but after studying + working in this field for almost 9 years, at times I wonder if it's really a smart thing to do for a living. What are the other smarter choices/opportunities out there?

One thing for sure, i grew to love stock market more and more. There's a lot to learn, and I am far from being able to do any comprehensive technical analysis. And for that I think I am more a speculator than an investor. That makes me feel bad, though there's fine difference between a speculator and a gambler. I recently opened a marginal account with zecco. Now that I can "short", does that make me cooler?:)

I have 42K at my disposal:) What's next? Option trading?