The announcement last week that Sony will slash up to 900 jobs at its New Stanton TV plant wasn't unexpected by workers there, given the company's reaction to market forces in recent years. But that prescience did little to eliminate the sting of losing one's livelihood.

"It's not like what happened at Rolling Rock," said Steve Schaefer, 43, of Greensburg, one of the first employees hired by Sony in 1992, and who lost his job in June. "Everyone saw the writing on the wall in the last two to three years."

Sony last June shut down its glass-production plant at the complex in East Huntingdon, slashing 350 jobs, including Mr. Schaefer's position as a production manager. Sony's decision to stop making traditional cathode-ray picture tubes and the 34-inch and 36-inch televisions that use them was spurred by technological advances that decimated the market for sets with cathode-ray tubes.

Workers saw the cuts in June as a prelude to Sony's decision to shift production of rear-projection sets to a lower-cost facility in Mexico, ending large-scale employment at the facility that the Japanese electronics giant opened in an abandoned Volkswagen plant in 1992.

"We knew it was coming but didn't know when," said Beecher Dale, 38, of Greensburg, who, like Mr. Schaefer, was hired in 1992 and lost his job as a production technician in June. "When I left last year, we all knew they would make it for one more season, but didn't know what was going to happen after that, and that's exactly what happened."

Still, he said, everyone employed there continued to hope for the best, even as they feared the worst.

"Everybody has hope until you hear those words that you're no longer going to be employed. Everybody thinks, 'They'll cut it down but maybe I'll still have a shift,' and then you don't and you're sick, you're physically sick. It's like a death.

"We made that company. We put up every wall, we put in every piece of equipment. There's a lot of blood, sweat and tears in there and it's going to be real hard."

The 300 Sony workers who will be unemployed in the next 30 days, followed by another 500 to 600 over the coming year, will have to deal not only with the loss of a good paycheck but the loss of a good employer, Mr. Dale said.

"Life was great there," Mr. Dale said. "I have to say they treated us really well. I wish in the end they had been more forthcoming with information, but that just may be how business is done."

Mr. Schaefer agreed that Sony "tap-danced around the issues" a bit too much, but concurred that Sony's New Stanton plant "was a good place to work. There was a lot of room for growth there."

What made working for Sony so special, they said, was an environment that presented opportunities and challenges while focusing on quality.

Mr. Schaefer rose from a production technician to a supervisor and finally to a manager -- experience that he said serves him well at Mosebach Manufacturing Co. in Bridgeville, where he's worked since August.

Mr. Dale likewise rose to a level of responsibility in his years at Sony and now is a train conductor for CSX Corp.

He's making more money than he did at Sony, but he nonetheless misses his old job.

"I was one of the senior people. I had a lot of responsibility. I enjoyed being the go-to person. I was saving the day every single day and so was everyone else," Mr. Dale said.

"Sony was a really unique deal. We're not finding the same environment, the same quality elsewhere. We're disappointed other companies don't participate in that. They could be so much more efficient.

"We want more responsibility, more challenges that some jobs don't offer."

Mr. Schaefer said those who have gone on to other companies see "how much we learned at Sony. It would behoove companies, particularly start-up companies, to use the talent pool from there.

"This is a good opportunity to tap into that talent pool," said Mr. Schaefer, who joined Sony as his first job after serving 10 years in the Navy.

Mr. Dale agreed that companies needing workers would do themselves a favor by hiring former Sony employees.