I never thought much about whether MBAs and bankers and money managers enjoy their lives. Sounds like a lot of them don't.
The plumbers and electricians and engineers that I meet seem to be pretty happy.
Maybe working with physical stuff is satisfying. Some people (like my wife, a speech therapist) really enjoy working with people.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
I enjoyed programming, which is virtual physical stuff. Maybe it's the underlying logic that satisfies. Like solving puzzles, but with a product that is useful. People, on the other hand...
Mike.
As much as I like electronics, I find more satisfaction in remodeling. Not too shabby at it either, in fact it is really cool when I do something nobo dy else wanted to, or could do.
Thing about electronics is I've been at it for over forty years. I guess it 's old. Just fixing something, ho hum. Now something that is a challenge, t hat's where it's at.
Now I am trying to get more into designing and as such I have some things t o learn. In the past things were very simple but now I am getting into a bi t more complex stuff - analog stuff. What I'm hearing from customers is tha t "Nobody does this except...". One guy "Yeah, they'll do it as long as it' s easy". That was one I had to retrofit audio output ICs because the origin als were NLA. Thing also had about five problems total.
Harder is better ?
Maybe I'm weird, or picky or just plain old insane. People make spaghetti s auce in two hours, I take five. Same with chicken paprikash. Done the old w ay with very slight modifications. The old way. Up until late last year I n ever had a food processor, a mandoline, meat thermometer and a decent meat slicer. Some of these are things I might only use once a month, but I gotem .
Job satisfaction is harder to get than money I think. Think of a cook at a steak house. I like mine black and blue, seared but still cold in the middl e. It takes an extremely hot fire to do it and some skill. When they get it right I say "I want to see the cook !". They might think I want to complai n but then he gets to the table and I throw him a fiver. It isn't much but I am already paying maybe $75 for the works including a few overpriced beer s. Don't eat in PA if you like beer. Got some grub there and had three beer s, they were seven bucks apiece ! I can get a case of beer for that much.
But what goes through that cook's head when he takes that fiver ? Well one time I fed a paprikash aficionado mine and he said it was the best he ever had. This guy had spent up to maybe $100 at restaurants to try their kash. He had money what the f*ck. He went to those thousand dollar a plate dinne rs for politicians. Makes for good connections. (with my crowd those come i n handy)
One thing in electronics that was satisfying, restoring an old Tektronix 56
1A. It had been in a fire and a flood and the filament winding was arcing i nternally so it blew the front end out of one of the channels and even made it to the trigger and channel switching. Ugh. You would think. But when I got to calibrating it and it turned out to be as accurate as my 422 (which is a VERY accurate scope, and stable) I was on top of the world. Well not q uite. Sex is better.Working on cars, when I beat Vettes IN A LUXURY CAR that was pretty cool. ( not the 454s though) Figuring out a sheared Woodruff key in a crankshaft th
obody else could figure it out. Nobody. (actually caused when he had had th e timing belt changed and someone lost the key and used an SAE one instead of a metric, that little bit of lash was enough to make it shear)
Figuring shit like that out is like a conquest to me. That Woodruff key, I made almost nothing on it, I was just helping out a friend.
Money may be a way to keep score but has nothing to do with being happy in one's work. For example, what you make, maybe $80K ? Alright, if I said I w ould double that for you to go and shovel dog shit, what would you rather d o ?
Monday and Tuesday I filled the lab with smoke. An old module had a bad Tantalum cap, and it caused a power decoupling inductor to really smoke. Then Tuesday, a power switch on something that had been acting a little flaky blew up. Sometimes you had to wiggle the switch a bit to get it to turn on, I'd been ignoring it for a while. That day, I turned it on, and there was a huge POP and it blew a 1 mm hole in the side of the switch, as well as popping all the fuses. I had the right switch handy, so just replaced it and all is OK.
Hopefully, that's all the smoke for THIS week.
Jon
Wood is very satisfying stuff too.
People keep inventing new parts. And obsoleting parts!
I think that not many kids are learning to do analog design any more. They all type.
Sometimes really hard is fun, and it keeps the competition away.
Anything that takes more than 20 minutes, I buy cooked.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Some call it magic smoke, but I don't see anything magic about it. It's not much fun either.
--
Thanks,
- Win
"We do it not because it is easy, but because it is hard"...
(And it bankrupts the competition!)
Mike.
Nothing some quality time with a 28 y/o redhead in spiked boots, carrying a leather flog and a bad attitude can't fix (a recreational activity that I hear second-hand is often popular with bankers and hedge fund managers)
The beatings will continue, until morale improves
as a contract hardware designer you sometimes get solicited for work by "interesting people" but I pass on jobs where the widget is probably classified as a medical device in many jurisdictions, above my pay grade
John Larkin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
I think that pocket billiards is one of the finest sports going. I am the spin doctor!
Mike Coon wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.plus.net:
I always thought it was because I was, in fact, moving electrons around in very specific ways, so I considered it quite physical, especially if I could optimize a program to perform a task faster and using less resources and providing a more robust, synergistic output product.
Interesting that you equate your job to your life. You talk about enjoying your life and then only talk about working. Some people work as a means of making money and find their true pleasure in life elsewhere.
The fact that someone doesn't see their work as their hobby doesn't mean they don't enjoy their lives. A non-hobby job doesn't have to be a drudge or unpleasant.
Rick C.
That's not that alien of a concept, and by no means new. Think even of name s, Carpenter, Miller, Smith etc. Were they pulled out of a hat ? Of course I know that is only a small fraction of the names out there but there may b e some foreign words (names) that weren't translated when immigrants came h ere, just spelled differently.
Around me, if we meet new people and hang around a bit it eventually gets t o "So, what is your gig ?". That's the kind of people I REALLY hang with. A nd since we know what each other does if I need cement done I just ask. The y got broken electronics they ask me.
As a result of this, all of our money is worth more. We get things cheaper, or as a favor, shit like that. Get a call, "Hey yeah how are you and all t his, then how about a box change at 157 ?". (we name houses now, we don't s ay his, theirs, whatever) I look at it and say OK, few hundred for me and b uy what I say. Quite a nice installation and I got a picture if you like. W e had the ultimate wrench but he died. By wreck I mean he could not trouble shoot a car, but he was great at other things. Front ends and even working on the engine n shit, but just give him the part and he will put it in. And he never claimed to know how to diagnose. He wasn't stupid, just didn't ge t that ECM shit. That was my job. In fact he was making a grand a week out of his garage until his olady fell out of love. He didn't have an ad in the paper.
When at least what you do comes up in conversation, that leaves way for a d amnear underground economy. I'd say I've saved about a half million bucks. And so have they. They guy who smokes a big cigar and drives a Cadillac car gets no cut from this. And we can actually trust each other.
It is not just the money. I go put up some cabinets and woodwork in someone 's house, the fact that it is good is just as good as the money.
OH HO !
Do you equate business with money ?
Charities, donations, no interest loans, gifts, buy a broad a car, any of t hat.
And business and commerce are not exact synonyms.
Yeah actually I think my next step will be a small brick and mortar and I k now how to get it cheap if I play my cards right. I'll really be part of th e community then. Been there done that, just a little higher class this tim e and not by much. Let me be known.
"Larkin" means something like forester, estate agent, groundskeeper.
Right.
We evolved as hunter-gatherers, not even farmers. Our ancestors had no electricity, no roads, no books, no police, no laws, no houses, no money, no supermarkets, no dentists, no jobs, and no 401K. The unemployment rate was 100%.
Now, unless we are born into wealth or welfare, we are defined by jobs and measured in money. I think we're better off.
You can do serious electronic design as a hobby, but most people do it as jobs for pay. Have someone else provide equipment and customers and coffee+donuts.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
There's really no sense of satisfaction in chasing numbers, so I'd concur here. We didn't evolve to chase numbers.
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There are a lot of retired guys who putz around the house and play with their money as a hobby/occupation/obcession. That's chasing numbers.
Electronics is quantitative, involves numbers and abstract numbers, but in the end we build stuff that does stuff.
Some people, amazingly enough, enjoy being accountants. I know one lady who gets excited by, and loves doing, trial balances.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
A pal of mine not too far from here who has a PhD in electronics would agree with you there. His doctor advised him to take up a physical hobby when he got hospitalized through overwork and stress designing electronics for an over-demanding employer. So for him, it's been literally a life saver. And he genuinely enjoys it, too. Makes amazing fruit bowls from various exotic woods!
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Thank you for that valuable insight. ;-)
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Er, yes. That's what I was referring to.
Yes, but the fund managers, bank presidents and ledger-keepers never produce *anything* of any true value to mankind. They are but brokers; skimmers; intermediaries, spongers and leaches.
I totally get that. Different strokes for different folks 'n' sheet. I enjoy running SPICE simulations among other things, but when they (eventually) work I seldom actually build them from real-world components. Try explaining *that* to outsiders!
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