Feb 2, 2023

Chip designing at Parthus Parthus Technologies floated on the Nasdaq in the early 2000s. I was 22, not a millionaire but thinking about my Ferrari. I wanted to work in the US, I had never visited, and transferred to the San Jose office where my salary tripled. There was a group of Irish expats. We would all drive into work – no liftsharing – in our Mustang convertibles. It was a crazy time, a lifestyle which I later questioned. But then we got to witness the other side when the dotcom boom started to implode. Half of us were laid off. I had a life in the US, and wanted to stay, but ultimately could not get a job. ​ More Punto than Mustang I ended up in Portugal for nine months as my parents had bought a place there. I had never taken a gap year. This was my time to be a beach bum and I was burnt out. In Parthus I was designing silicon chips, not something I planned. But once you get skilled up in a certain area, it is hard to get off that track. But the world is your oyster as there are a lot of highly paid jobs. In 2004 along with many others who had gotten laid off, I got a job in the south of France with Texas Instruments helping make mobile phones for Nokia and Ericsson. It was not quite the Mustang lifestyle in Nice, more Fiat Punto, but the Irish community was just as fun there. The same ilk as in San Francisco, lots of partying and skiing. And this is where I met my future French wife, Jen, who was teaching French to foreign students. ​ Stockholm We wanted to travel so through contacts I got a job in Ericsson in 2007 in Stockholm and Jen could teach here. I was still chip designing and working in big teams – a microchip is essentially billions of switches. It’s a really complex process. The job I was doing was very specialised – manipulating at an atomic level the transistors to make sure they work at the processor speed. We liked Stockholm, but in 2011 we wanted to settle down in Ireland and so I got a job with Intel, where five years later I found myself moving to a startup within the company. ​ Taking the automotive route ​I’m a car person and wanted to work in automotive and there was a team in Intel supporting Jaguar Land Rover – which is where I got off the chip-designing path. I wanted to be close to the customer and became an applications engineer. I moved teams in 2016 and I was supporting autonomous driving. When there was a reorganisation in 2017, our team of 12 approached Land Rover to set up a unit, thinking if we could keep jobs for 20 people it would be worthwhile – they ended up making a commitment for 360. ​ The straight and narrow I’m up at 7am. Jen keeps us on a healthy regime – porridge and water for breakfast. Tea but not coffee. I bring in my lunch, it’s a time-saving thing. Our home in Ennis is 15 minutes’ drive from work. Jen brings the girls to school but one day a week I do it. She does part-time volunteer work and I’m at the office all day, so she does everything with the kids but on weekends I taxi Zoe, who is nine, and Milly, aged six, to swimming and gymnastics. If I get some me time I play the drums badly, so I’ll slip into the garage to take out my frustration on them. My chat-up line with Jen was maybe she could teach me French, but I still don’t speak it well. Jen’s parents live in Nice so we tend to go for a month and I will work some of this. I like running at lunchtime. I can’t commit to a gym or team sports, but my Apple watch forces me to do more exercise. I like whiskey, I’m in the Ennis Whiskey Club – we meet every two months to have dinner, try some whiskeys and discuss them. ​