Laid-off engineer is an entrepreneur and a plaintiff

He left a good job at Texas Instruments for another at Seagate Technology in Bloomington. Less than a year later, he was laid off -- just as the global economy went into the tank.

The solution? Engineer Chandramouli Vaidyanathan became an entrepreneur ... and a plaintiff. He started his own business and also sued Seagate. Today both strategies have paid off.

Vaidyanathan, who goes by Mouli, established Mouli Engineering of Eagan after he failed to get any takers on dozens of job applications around the country amid the 2008-09 recession. His old job at Texas Instruments in Texas had been filled.

"I looked at my options in January 2009 and, seeing that everybody was dumping jobs, I felt my best option at age 47 was to become an entrepreneur," Vaidyanathan said last week. "I knew a lot about semiconductors from my work at Texas Instruments, and I knew a lot about metals from the University of Wisconsin," where he received a doctorate in metallurgy.

Mouli Engineering has gotten traction with services that range from design and parts procurement for the wind and solar industries to working on battery electronics for medical device firms and as an expert witness in litigation involving semiconductor and metallurgical failures.

Last month Vaidyanathan was awarded $1.9 million by a federal jury in St. Paul that concluded that California-based Seagate duped him and violated Minnesota law when it hired him for a job in late 2007 that never existed.

"It was tough and stressful and, at first, I regretted my move," said Vaidyanathan, who uprooted his family to move to Minnesota from Texas.

Holly Robbins, an attorney for Seagate, said the company had no comment, pending entry of judgment in the case by U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank, who is expected to do so when he makes a ruling on a second count in the case brought by Vaidyanathan.

Snyder said the same Minnesota law was applied earlier this year when a jury awarded $1.2 million to prospective Gophers assistant basketball coach Jimmy Williams after he quit another job to take one offered by University of Minnesota basketball coach Tubby Smith. The coach's hiring decision later was overruled by U Athletic Director Joel Maturi.

Vaidyanathan, a Texas Instruments semiconductor yield engineer for 10 years, was head of that company's yield engineering department when he resigned to join Seagate, which makes computer disk drives and data-storage equipment. The job was filled after he left. A yield engineer ensures that the product meets or exceeds manufacturer's specifications.

According to Frank's summation of the case, toward the end of 2006, Seagate created the Alternative Technologies Group to support a new semiconductor drive venture.

Vaidyanathan was told by Seagate that it was close to being able to manufacture a finished product. He accepted the $126,000-a-year Seagate job and started working in February 2008. Only then did he realize that the Seagate project was nowhere near ready for production.

Vaidyanathan testified during the six-day trial that the new product wasn't developed and there was no need for yield engineering after he arrived because there was no product to test for reliability. Vaidyanathan said he unsuccessfully applied for jobs and that not working as a yield engineer for more than two years took him out of the fast-paced field.

The Indian immigrant still always remembers the day in 1995 he was sworn in as a U.S. citizen by a federal judge in Wisconsin.

"I'm a lucky guy with a wife who supported me," he said, "and I'm lucky that I can continue to be a productive citizen of Minnesota. Today, things look rosy."