I am currently in the process of looking for an internship position that will potentially start in May and end on Sept the following yr (16 months, but can be 12 months or 8 months). Now I am not asking you guys to do anything at all really. I am living in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada area and would like to stay there since I don't think I could stomach the costs of relocating temporarily (that is if I manage to secure a position, also its not fun living off Kraft Dinner either!).
I am currently assembling a list of companies that I will "cold call" or e-mail to inquire about what opportunities they have.
I am simply asking you if you work with a company that does embedded design (or some other technical stuff) work in Toronto or know of a company in Toronto that does this kind of work and would let me know?
Yes that is important information. I apologize for not including it.
I am currently in my 3rd year of Electrical Engineering undergrad at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The internship (if acquired) is slated to start right after this academic year. This effectively delays my graduation by 1 yr, but I think that is a really small price to pay for the experience.
Here is a rudimentary list of my skills, a more thorough one will be submitted w/ my resume:
I ported my Z80 emulator to this app some time ago. My M68000 emulator is working and is tested to be quite accurate, but the author no longer maintains it or updates it so I decided against porting it (even though I can still get into the CVS).
Programmable Logic: Xilinx Spartan3 series FPGA w/ Xilinx ISE WebPack
I designed a simple VGA frambuffer 320x240x2-bit and a simplistic
16-bit CPU in VHDL.
Electronics: Basic analog electronics (FET's, OpAmps, BJT's, etc.) Here all I did was some school projects. Simple stuff: VCO's, FET amps, etc.
Operating Systems: Linux, MS-DOS, Windows (effective w/ all). Been doing installs on all OS's for quite some time now. Used MS-DOS while I was growing up (had it first running on a 16Mhz 386SX).
Most the stuff I have learned was from buying products containing the previously mentioned items and playing around with them and their associated tools and reading my dads old college books (he studied electronics engineering technology at NAIT. They did extensive course work in digital electronics).
I really do not have any related engineering experience. I did work for GO Transit this past summer, a major transportation company here in Ontario, as general help. I was called on one day to look over some computer scans of microfilm schematics of the trains (and electrical systems) to make sure they were up to par.
I would like to shadow some teams in the engineering sector to get a feel of what you guys do in the industry. I would like to see how you guys solve problems, tackle issues or shortcomings you come up in development and the like. I'd also like to learn from the people working in this industry in general since they have a wealth of knowledge and experience. Sometthing I think can be invaluable to me in my career.
They have some listings at my school, but they are not exactly what I am interested in. Thanks for listening to my story!
Any companys you know of in Toronto? I know Altera has some offices here. Might try and get a hold of them later on.
I am surprised to see Ryerson classified as a university. In my student days it was a first class technical school, but definitely not a university. No deprecation intended, my student days preceded transistors.
... snip impressive list of student achievements ...
I would definitely recommend the year out - the difference between graduates that had industrial experience and those who don't is huge and employers really take notice of that.
I would look at Dy4 Systems who I think are now part of a different group (simple google to find I'm sure) who I believe are based around Toronto or maybe somewhere else but Canada is a pretty small place ;-) They are into single board computers for aerospace and make some interesting things and work with some good technology on interesting projects. Your skills would fit pretty well into their picture but I have no idea about whether they do internships.
Absolutely! We need grads that have practical skills. I have seen many (far too many) who can't even solder. It's pathetic these days.
Just a suggestion: Post again under the subject "Looking for internship near Toronto". And also post in sci.electronics.design. There are a few Canadians who know the industry up there. Monster might be another avenue (though I don't know if that one is free).
Relocation: I wouldn't exclude other places. All my vacation jobs during my university time were actually in other countries. Sometimes I pooled my available rent money with a few others and then we found we were able to rent a nice big house. Almost cost me less than my apartment near the university. And you don't have to live off cans and ramen noodles. It is amazing what you can cook out of fresh ingredients, from scratch, if you have critical mass (enough cash contributing eaters). We took turns shopping and usually cooked together. Pizzas, casseroles and what not, all from scratch and for little money. Yep, we made our own dough. I never ate any fast food from the first day at the university until they handed me my masters. Still don't :-)
Yes they have switched 20 - 30 yrs ago. I have been worried about whether its reputation would affect my chances at some companies. It doesn't seem to be as well known as some of the other established Canadian schools (U of Toronto, U of Waterloo, Queens, etc.).
Yes, haha, I definitely need some pointers on that. Well I guess I can blame it on the fact that I am using my dads umm less that spectacular iron.
I will do that. I am a bit of a newbie to USENET so I am not too familiar with the various groups that have technical natured discussions.
Well relocation is definitely not out of the cards if some assistance can be offered. Or camping in with others haha. I also can cook for myself too. As a kid my parents were both working quite late at night so I had to do it or else I would go hungry ;). Though I have never made a casserole! I have made some pizza but that was with the assistance of my older sister.
As an aside note, there is an offer for a position with Redline Communications
formatting link
I think I could be a fit with them. I will forward a resume to them.
I am also hearing of RIM making postings later on. Though those will likely be game/app programming. That I think will be worth taking a look at. Thanks for reading this, anyone else have something to offer?
I did that when I was young. Real adventure, certainly not for the faint of heart. You have to be confident that you can stomach rough helicopter rides and living way out at sea. You might not want to apply if you have a tendency to get sea sick. Also requires a very thorough medical (they reimbursed me for all that). Candidates usually have to be in really good shape. The doc couldn't make my heart rate go up and asked me to step on it a bit on that exercise bike. Then its break belt began to smoke...
I signed up on the UK Monster which is free but it does take a long time to get all your details into it. However, of all the agencies I gave my details to Monster generated by far the most calls. Admittedly many of them were completely unsuitable but agents tend to cast their nets wide when trying to fill a position. I'm happy with my current job but I still get calls despite taking my details down from Monster now - I guess some agents don't keep very up-to-date records but it shows that they are keeping people on their files.
Joerg is totally right on this - the more of you there are the cheaper everything gets. However, you do need to get on well with your commune because everyone has to eat the same thing, use the same shampoo, share the same phone etc if it is going to work. You can make a big vat of spaghetti bolognese for well under $10 that will feed 4 people for days. Splash out on fresh basil though (or grow your own) because it makes all the difference.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.