Advice to BSEE juniors and seniors...

Funny the things you remember... 55 years ago, when I complained of not enough allowance, my father (*) said, "Something keeping you from pumping gas?"

That's sort of become my mantra.

(*) Making, in 1955, the annual equivalent of $132,000 today. ...Jim Thompson

regular

for

Not always the case, though. I lost a couple of really good techs because they couldn't get promoted. A couple transferred to a programming group and got promoted on transfer.

Would you be an employee of HP or the job shop? If the latter, they were being overly careful about the rules (10/12 months employment isn't necessary).

I got half way through but the program (Syracuse) was a joke and I got bored.

It happened but it was exceedingly rare. There was an "equivalency board" that had a real hard-on for techs. One outstanding kid that I trained transferred to the research division (Yorktown Labs) and was promoted right up the ladder. He'd never have gone anywhere if he hadn't transferred.

I suspect the same.

You think the experience of running businesses into the ground teaches them something other than how to run a business into the ground? Practice makes perfect. BTW, the owner of the company where I work is a business school grad. ;-)

ome

be

parts

ome

=A0MAC

into

of

du....

to

hey

ave

ng

kid

The only problem with ARRL text is they are not all that disciplined. AM sort of equals double sideband in their book. Little stuff like that annoys me.

Ok, they may not always be academically correct. However, I learned a heck of a lot more about real RF design out of that $6 book than at the university. The occasional imprecision does not annoy me. They always had ways to explain stuff in half a sentence and you'd immediately get it. Like the clear button: "This is the I didn't mean to press that button button".

Still have it.

I think the job shop, although I don't really know.

I was just a handful of credits + a thesis away from finishing when my employer went belly-up, so I stuck around for a year as a "research assistant" (joke #1) to finish the coursework and then spent, um, three years (having left and found a real job again) finishing my "thesis" (joke #2).

In retrospect I should have found a different professor (rather than going with the first one I asked who I knew would agree to sponsor me) -- mine was a perfectly decent and intelligent guy (and a very good teacher), but I was never particularly interested in his specific areas of research. Oh well...

I did enjoy the coursework, though -- with very few exceptions, the time I put into those was more than worth it.

Oddly, even while demonstrating my lack of being a very good student -- at least insofar as study areas he was interested in went -- over those three years, my professor was always "encourgaing" me to get a PhD. No way was I going to sign up for that!

---Joel

Yep!

The owner here dropped out of college*. :-) This is actually the second company I've worked for where that was the case!

---Joel

• This was back in the '70s where you could still get a job at places like HP with no college degree (e.g., Steve Wozniak, who was working for HP before quitting to commit to Apple full-time, at which point he dropped out of college as well); I think it's rather harder today to become successful if one chooses this route.

This guy even dropped out of school, yet succeeded:

You certainly have a point there (and I agree with and like Phil's quote), but to an extent as technology progresses everyone is going to have more just "handed" to them. Didn't your bicycle come from your parents rather than your having to walk everywhere? Didn't you have more time to experiment with electronics because you weren't chopping wood for a fireplaces for an hour every night after school? Didn't you have electric lights rather than candles? Hence, while I wouldn't go around just buying a kid today a fancy ham radio or a car, I think you're doing a kid more harm than good if you don't at least hand them an old computer to play with (and I mean one running Windows, not a Commodore 64! :-) -- Although that'd be cool to hand them that too: "See what you could do in 64K? Today 'Hello world!' takes over a megabyte!")

Heck, I doubt Jim Thompson would be any better of a designer today if his dad

My first big purchase like that was a Taiwanese 35MHz oscilloscope, $500 from JDR Microdevices... earned working at McDonalds for $3.35/hour.

---Joel

P.S. -- There's some well-heeled amateur radio club where, when a kid passes his novice license exam, they'll buy him or her whichever handheld radio they'd like. Whaddaya think -- too much reward for the amount of effort required? Or no?

Good example.

While these days most everyone is largely expected to go to college, I keep thinking about what John Larkin has mentioned regarding how many little widgets that could be created by a one-man shop would have a decent market and what you've said about how this is kinda the "golden age" of design in that so much software is now freely available and so much hardware is stocked up in Thief River Falls and only a few days away via (realtively) inexpensive mail order.

Maybe making it as a sole propreitor these days is easier than ever before? ...it's just that wanting to work for a place like Tek, HP, Analog Devices, Linear Tech, etc. now seems like far less of an option if you don't follow the traditional college route.

---Joel

That's true, and we all would not be here if we had to chop wood all day long or work on the farm. I always took school for granted, not thinking about the kids 200 years before me where child labor was the standard and often only rich kids could go to school at all.

Yes, my first real bicycle was a Christmas present from my parents. However, that was then also my mode of transportation to school which was about five miles away in the next town. Later I wanted a 10-speed and that I had to earn.

It's not that I detest hand-me-downs to kids, on the contrary. But what I see today is that kids get just about everything, they essentially have to earn nothing, it's all given to them on a silver platter. Worst case on the parent's credit cards.

There I made more, about $4-5 in the 70's. But it was back-breaking work at a meat factory. Heaving Italian style salami into smoker room carts, strings of three and then 10-12 of those strings on a wooden bar. Well over 50lbs total and you had to push that up above shoulder height and then into notches on the cart, while letting of some Sumo wrestler scream. All day long. Back in those days I could have knocked a school bully straight out of his boots with one hit :-)

To be honest, I don't think that's a good thing. If a kid comes from a very poor household it's ok to discreetly and quietly (meaning anonymously) lend a financial hand, but not a blanket entitlement.

Hey, "free" exercise too! -- These days the parents might drive the kid to school and then pay for a gym club membership! ;-)

I remember being ready, able, and willing to work well before the age of 14 when I could finally get a summer job detasseling corn, and I was really happy to get that McDonalds job at 16 since it was year-round employment (and hence income). Any time I wanted to use my stepfather's credit card I had to already have the money around and ask him in advance.

Wow -- sounds like you definitely earned your money!

Other than the occasional scrubbing of floors or whatever, McDonalds was certainly not at all laborious and was really pretty fun at times. A *couple* times per day you might have had to go and get another huge cube-o-lard from the basement; those were 50lbs. (Whereas the boxes of meat were only something like 35lbs.)

---Joel

No. That is because the business climate in most areas is decidedly hostile towards small biz. 50 years ago you just hung out a shingle and you were in business. Nowadays they'll send the goons out and sock it to you. Seriously, this happened to people I've met. Nonsensical laws about zoning, licenses, ADA stuff, minimum tax, a bazillion laws that hit the millisecond you hire someone (so I simply do not hire anyone ...).

Ideas? Yeah, tons of them. But I don't want to stand in the crossfire of bureaucrats so it's often best to just let those ideas go by. If you are a big company, different thing. There you have negotiating power and the local authorities kowtow to you because hundreds of jobs are on the line.

...it's just that wanting to work for a place like Tek, HP,

I did follow the traditional ivy league route but right around finishing my masters degree realized that big corporation work is not my turf. I just cannot stand bureaucratic hurdles and would have busted them left and right. In fact I had a written job offer from a fine company and turned it down. Started at a small US company instead, and people told me I'd be out of my mind for making those decisions. Well, I wasn't :-)

I would venture to say knowing the difference between a board layout and how to lay out a board would be important.

The point being, technical knowledge is a good thing. Coupling technical competence with an ability to communicate that knowledge with grammar and style is a combination that is rare and valuable.

Jim

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

Wow, that's some dreaming!

I knew a guy who'd been in the navy back in the '70s and, as part of an exit survey, was asked what it would take to get him to stick around for another two years. His response of, "promotion to fleet admiral!" wasn't viewed as funny. :-)

I actually had an uncle...

20 years in the Army, retired

Then became Sheriff of Killeen, TX.

Look him up, named Darl Godwin... my mother's brother.

I used to kid him that I'd drive thru Killeen at 100MPH, in my 280ZX, to test his deputies. His response, "Don't do that, they'll shoot you!" ...Jim Thompson

Well, why do you think the first four letter of the name of that town are K-I-L-L ? :-)

Fort Hood ?? ...Jim Thompson