I was offered a chance to live and work in Pittsburgh back in 2001 where I would be working for a company that made flat panel displays. I would be making $96,000 per year but if I ever wanted to come back to the Toronto area, the housing price rise would lock me out of coming back unless I wanted to settle for a town house. Also, I would be working for two people who owned the company and had a combined age of 160 years. There were some people I know that took the offer but I saw them back in Toronto a few years later, so the company must have never gotten off the ground.
The head guy pissed me off no end by downplaying may ability as a successful proposal writer and engineer, so I decided to stay where I was. But if you are a fan of engineering breakthroughs, I saw a flat panel television made with an electroluminescent flat panel display and it was the first of its kind. There were a number of lineouts but it was still functioning. This guy was Peter Brody, the man who coined the phrase "active matrix". He had a reputation in the industry of being "difficult" and as the director I was working for at the time said he was proof that working with cadmium selenide on a continuous basis turned you into a complete asshole.
