Advice to BSEE juniors and seniors...

IMHO they don't need to be experts on that. I never do layouts, just like IC designers don't. The main reason is that layouters are less expensive and also they are intimitely familiar with what design rules this or that PCB place can live with, drill sizes, precision, the place's reputation, and so on.

Of course this doesn't mean I can be blissfully unaware of layout in general. When I design switchers I have to sketch the critical stuff so the layouter knows how I want that area done (and why).

And being able to draw a schematic in a way that it looks nice and is easy to read by others. Not in "cram-it-in-there" style.

Well, pretty much all companies that develop software use some form of bug-tracking these days, and Bugzilla is certainly a very popular form based on its feature set and the fact that it's freely available. I don't think anyone cares about the name all that much...

That being said, if you apply at some company making some little digital widget that you can reasonably understand all the piece-parts of (say, an MP3 player or PDA or GPS receiver) and they tell you they've got hundreds or thousands of bugs in their bug-tracking system, I wouldn't recommend accepting the job offer. John Larkin has the right idea here -- even though his products aren't as complex software-wise as an MP3 player, I think his bug-list count seldom exceeds one digit.

---Joel

...unless they're going to work for the Japanese radio manufacturers :-)...

Most of the basics are still the same.

Engineers who know about analog design, programming, digital circuitry (programmabe logic / FPGA perhaps), Linux and networking are very very scarse. Usually an engineer masters a few areas. The biggest challenge is to put a good team together.

Nah, no problem. Companies use programs such as Filezilla, it's normal.

To say it in teen-speak, that's sooo last week. The rage today is "i-something". Got to have it, or you may be considered a geezer.

I never had a problem putting teams together. BUT, the average age of such teams was usually well over 40. Companies that think that everyone over 35 is past prime are going to face one project failure after another.

...and I bet it's been creeping up over time...

The problem might be that guys who go to business school are often no better running a business at 40 than they are at 25. :-)

In the past I've had companies assign a junior engineer to look over my shoulder and "learn" from me.

Utterly clueless, "Why'd ja do dat?", etc... never EVER done any creative thought on their own, no useful math background... :-(

Part of the reason I stopped interviewing high school students for admission to MIT... enthusiastic but clueless... and I knew it. I just couldn't be part of the fiction... enthuse, then decline admission :-( ...Jim Thompson

I agree altough its nice to have some youngsters around. We have some interns working at my employer at the moment. They usually come up with interesting ideas and new methods. One of them brought quite a handy logic analyzer:

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I would think a better approach would be... hand the junior engineer some completed and documented design, have him study it, and then ask him if there's anything he didn't understand?

One of the things that often doesn't make it into documentation but that's quite valuable when it does is some discussion of things that *didn't* work. It's great to say, e.g., "this new super-snoot circuit here has a tempco of

The real problem when one is beginning is that you really don't know what you don't know -- the vast bulk of circuit "design" at school is done using rather ideal parts at room temperature.

Oh yeah, young people have fresh ideas and we also have an obligation to groom the next generation. It makes no sense if we design cool stuff, some day end up in a nursing home and then ... poof ... it's all gone.

What frustrates me at times is how quickly young folks give up when they don't immediately understand a circuit. Once I had an intern sit in on one of my design reviews. From the facial expressions it became clear that the other guys (none of them being from the analog world) understood the stuff but the intern absolutely didn't. So afterwards I offered to explain in detail, and that I wouldn't bill the client for the time that would take. The answer was "no thanks, this stuff is way over my head" :-(

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The optimizer in Excel is quite clever. You can set up the target to be dynamic, i.e. a function of the last optimized solution. I used this once to create an arithmetically symmetric bandpass filter. I would force one half of the bandpass to match the other half, i.e. make the target for one side be the result for the other side. Obviously this was a multi-stage design since a 2nd order bandpass has to be geometrically symmetric.

Note the optimizer isn't part of the standard Excel installation. It is the only thing I miss in open office.

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Now that is sad, but you have to realize they don't teach much analog these days. Even classic control theory is glossed over for digital control. The problem is some systems (amplifiers for instance) need a knowledge of classical control theory.

They didn't pay me to teach, just answer questions as met a two-week deadline :-) ...Jim Thompson

This was a switcher. A bit unorthodox but not complicated, in essence regular PWM stuff.

I know universities are letting people down these days when it comes to analog know-how. However, back when I was a kid at around 15, a TV technician in our ham radio club offered to teach a crash course on how a color TV works. About two dozen signed up, half of them under 20. We sat there with wide open eyes, gobbling up all the info, asking questions, and so on. He was an excellent teacher, I understood the stuff, and from then on felt comfortable repairing color TV sets.

What I find sad is not the lack of knowledge since that can be fixed. What is sad is the lack of interest to invest the effort, in getting to know complicated stuff.

It has another shortcoming and that one is way more serious: No VBA. That means a lot of files from other simply won't work in OpenOffice.

Around 1970, I couldn't find a technician to hire. Offered to teach a course for free at Scottsdale Community College. Declined. Even though I already had my MSEE, I had no teaching certification :-( ...Jim Thompson