Re: EE Professors -- Textbook recommendation needed, please!

Hello Winfield,

True, but if I were a professor that book would be mandatory to have. Especially distance-learners can easily lose track of reality since they don't get involved in labs and stuff like that. So they need to build things with their own hands.

I am less and less enthused about the quality of recent grads. Many of them can't even solder, let alone design anything at transistor level. Some weren't even able to understand my module specs although I am not too bad in writing that kind of prose. It can't be so bad because even mechanical engineers tend to understand it. Then again those are folks in their 40's to 60's.

There is much talk about age discimination and I am sure it happens. But for some reason all the engineers I hired were over 35 and some much above that. Sometimes it's similar with techs. The best guy I ever worked with was around 75. After retiring he went onto his wife's nerves too much and she made him go back to work again.

Regards, Joerg

Joerg, I can relate to the accuracy of your post.

When I worked at Raytheon, whenever a tough software challenge confronted us, our top sofware consultant was a guy approaching 80 years old! He was paid the "big bucks" because he could invariably resolve the problem. That was back around 1980 before the Internet even existed (except for ARPA).

Now I am approaching 70, been retired for almost 10 years and my telephone rings nearly off-the-hook with calls from my previous employers.

Raytheon, in particular, shot themselves in the foot by laying-off off many of their higher paid employees after the age of 50 to save money. What the financial guys in the company overlooked was the fact that most of the employees laid off were the only people qualified by their experience to write technical proposals to the government, in turn costing the firm millions of dollars in lost business. They also lost site of the fact that these guys that were laid off were the only employees with sufficient experience and knowledge to make their systems function properly.

As a consequence of this extremely poor management decision, Raytheon's once robust Equipment Divison no longer exists, and hence they extensively rely on former employees hired as consultants to satisfy their continuing corporate responsibilities to the federal government and defence department.

These reponsibilities include --

The SPS-49 radar system The ROTHR over-the-horizon radar system The Tomahawk missile system The HAWK missile system The Patriot missile system ... and numerous other programs.

Since the newly hired college graduates are clearly no up to the challenge, what in the heck are company's like Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon going to do when old farts like myself die?

I'm no mental giant, but back when I was in college we had a CO-OP program that required us to work in industry for half of the year. When we returned to classes, our experiences in the field were discussed and we were advised of what we had done wrong, plus what we had done correctly. This prepared us for entry into the real world. Unfortunately such college programs are rare today and largely limited to the very top technological oriented institutions.

'Nuff said....

Harry C.

Make as much money as we can until we die ?:-)

I don't think I could really retire, I'd go bonkers with the inactivity.

...Jim Thompson

Hello Harry,

That is exactly one of the points. I got my degree in Europe and CO-OP was and AFAIK still is a mandatory part of the curriculum. You had to complete the first 3 months before mid-term or they would not allow you to sit for any further exams. The other 3 months had to be completed before they'd give you the degree. Very simple, not enough CO-OP time, no degree.

They also would not assist in finding those jobs. We had to do that on our own.

But the real knowledge came as a hobbyist, by building stuff. Lots of stuff. I didn't learn the Smith Chart as a student but by actually needing it. Then there were lots of jobs and this has hit me in my grades. After ten hours of wrestling with some control circuitry I often just couldn't bring myself to study another five hours. Then again, what good does it do to graduate with top grades and not have the foggiest idea of how to make an AGC amp with transistors and for under $1 in parts?

Regards, Joerg

I read in sci.electronics.design that Joerg wrote (in ) about 'EE Professors -- Textbook recommendation needed, please!', on Tue, 27 Sep 2005:

I often wonder. I sorted out the electronics for two fellow-students, one of whom got a First. I built lots of audio stuff and FM receivers. Although it wasn't compulsory, I did 7 weeks in production engineering between first and second years (incidentally saving them $$$ for screened cabins by turning the AM radio alignment stations through 90 degrees to eliminate the fluorescent lamp interference), and then 8 weeks in design engineering between second and third years. When I went back for a full-time job, I knew two of the interview board and I'd worked for both of them.

That's the same thing *your* seniors were saying about you in the 60's and 70's...

Having been in academia at the time (not EE, but a sideways field where I got to teach EE students) I can tell you that the blame can squarely be laid on VLSI technology in the 80's/early 90's. All the young professors being hired at the time did nothing but VLSI, and all the students pretty much wanted to do nothing but VLSI, because that was where the big bucks were and admittedly that was where most of the excitement was.

It's hard to put your "hands on" those microscopic transistors so instead the students learned computer-based layout tools for their last couple years before graduating. Most of the ones I knew poo-pooed their first couple years where they actually had labs where they put parts together and watched traces on scopes - they only wanted to connect the dots on CRT's, to them that was electronics.

Tim.

No, I know two people who worked at Raytheon. Harry was exactly right. Both of these people were hired back by Raytheon as consultants to rescue the programs they were working on but in both cases it was way too late. One project was for the FAA. Makes me really shy about flying any more.

tim