TEN TEC is a small company. They also do not pay very well, partly because of their location. Some of the engineers that left were both RF engineers as well as software engineers doing embedded programming in addition to DSP programming. Because of the small size of TEN TEC as well as the market they serve, they will have a hard time finding anyone that call fill all those shoes. Do you really think they are going to hire four engineers for the price of one? Yes, they may be able to slug along producing the stuff that is already on the market, but expect no firmware updates and no new products. That combination spells doom...
p.s. Just because you occupy and a few engineers occupy an insignificant position within your company does not mean that the loss of key people at Ten Tec is insignificant.
Hot shot RF engineers right out of college can get $120k-250k a year with the top RF design companies like RF Harris, Rockwell/Collins, Thales, RaCal, etc, etc.
Engineers that can write software code as well, are highly paid.
Ten-Tec can't hope to attract that type of talent, it's just not in their budget.
So, you typically have older engineers who may already be retired, going to work for them as more of a "for the love of ham radio" reasoning for working there.
However, these guys may not be fully up to date on cutting edge RF technology, and they may be abit too conservative on ideas for new radio designs.
Sorry if this statement ruffles a few feathers. Its not personal, it's just the truth. And sometimes people need to hear it, and think about it.