radically, down to a small percentage of the original group size, and some down-
sized their entire UE departments (Sanders, 2004; personal communications).
A few vendor companies were able to keep their groups, and fewer still actually
grew their UE departments over the past few years, but these companies were in
the minority (for example, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and World Savings Bank were all
able to grow their UE departments while many other companies laid off UE
professionals).
These cyclical economic upturns and downturns have demonstrated that
although vendor companies recognized the importance of UE professionals
more than in previous years, understanding ...