Richard Goering, 1952-2023

I have some sad news to report. Richard Goering passed away last month at the age of 71. For many years, during the heyday of EE Times, Richard was the chief journalist covering EDA.

As a marketing guy in EDA at various times, I interacted with Richard whenever we had a new product announcement. We would always hope to get on the front page, although Richard always insisted that he had nothing to do with the decision as to whether what he wrote appeared on the front page or not. You rarely got to meet Richard face to face since he lived in Felton, on the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and only occasionally came to Silicon Valley. He did "work from home" decades before we all learned to work from home during Covid. But this was before Skype and Zoom, so the modus operandi was you would email him the Powerpoint, and then get on the phone and go over it without any direct visuals.

One time he did come to the valley, one of the rare times he came down from the mountain. He and I were on a panel together, and I happened to sit next to him at the dinner before. I asked him if he was an engineer who got into writing (I suppose like I have), but he said that he actually went to journalism school and had no technical background whatsoever. That makes it all the more amazing that he produced articles on EDA to such a high standard.

I forget exactly when, but EE Times decided to cut EDA coverage since EDA had pretty much stopped running big ads as it had in the past. No money in, no coverage out. Richard (and Mike Santarini) were laid off. After a period of trying to make an online EDA newsletter work, Richard joined Cadence. He was my predecessor, and when he retired, Cadence recruited me to write the Breakfast Bytes blog.

Craig Cochran was VP Corporate Marketing when I rejoined Cadence. He hired me after an interview in a coffee shop in San Francisco about halfway between where we both lived at the time (I live in San Jose these days). I asked him about Richard:

Richard was the legendary EDA editor that most of us marketing people had to cut our teeth on when learning to brief the press. He was unafraid to ask the difficult questions, but he was always fair and wrote balanced articles, seeking to show multiple sides to every story. We marketing managers definitely had to be well-prepared for his briefings. Later, when I joined Cadence, Richard was in my team, where he retained his editorial independence and balanced approach while also helping to tell our story. He was very pleasant to work with, and extremely knowledgeable, and I was honored to be able to work with him up until he retired.

When I rejoined Cadence in 2015, my cube was next to Christine Young (another journalism school graduate) who had worked alongside Richard before his retirement. I talked to her to see what working with Richard was like:

Working with Richard was an honor, and reading his words a privilege. On a team with big, bold thinkers who didn’t hesitate to share their creative ideas—and good, cathartic laughs along the way—Richard balanced things out with his reserved demeanor. He also stood out for his engaging storytelling. He made dense, sometimes dry topics interesting and easy to understand, and his integrity in the way he told his stories shined brightly. He was an excellent model for someone new to blogging about the world of electronic design. R.I.P., Richard.

I didn't know Richard well, but Brian Fuller did, at both EE Times and Cadence. Brian has written Remembering Richard Goering, which has a lot more detail. Who knew that, at one point, Richard lived in Haight-Ashbury and made furniture for a living? Here's the final paragraph from that piece:

After EE Times Richard went out on his own for a while, still covering EDA, before he wound up at Cadence, writing those beautifully detailed, insightful articles, this time around Cadence technology and some industry issues. He retired eight years ago to his organic farm in Aromas [near Monterey] with his wife, Cindy, and spent his time there and pursuing one of his great passions: Hiking.

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