Looking for embedded engineers with nontraditional backgrounds

In my previous job, there was an accountant who turned programmer.

*SHE* migrated from accounting after helping out on a short-staffed project. Her code was so well written that my boss decided that she should be in the engineering department instead of accounting.

But her work was with the GUI client and not embedded stuff so it's not what you're asking. But I thought I'd mention it since it's rare enough to find a woman in my department but a certified accountant?!!

She ended up marrying the engineer in the cubicle next to her and got promoted to team/project leader.

Fred Abagnale may be of some assistance here.

Might you have other works in progress that would trivialize the professions of law and medicine?

Good point. People of very diverse backgrounds can learn to write good code. Code, after all, is a language.

Designing circuits, mechanisms and structures is a rather different matter.

I got into electronics by building some of my own electronic intrumentation while I was completing my Ph.D. in physical chemistry.

E-mail me for more detail - my e-mail address is real.

------------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Probably :)

Not the aim at all. One small section of a single chapter talks about nontraditional routes into the field, and I wanted some real-life examples. I'm hardly recommending these as examples to emulate; merely illustrating that the possibility exists (but that it would be highly imprudent to bank on the stars aligning in exactly the right manner, and the traditional route is the easiest).

By the way, one point of order: How is it possible to trivialize the legal profession - or indeed the law - beyond its practice today? Did you ever read "Bleak House"? Do you think anything substantive has changed since Dickens' time?

You shouldn't speculate on the aims of a work without at least reading a contextual fragment of the work.

Here is a redacted quote from the section in question:

---8< begin quote 8

I've noticed that with the two of my children who are fluent in (Mexican) Spanish without ever having had a lesson. They're both also very good at writing software, though the daughter prefers politics ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

And a much more voluminous tome would be filled with stories of people who started in engineering and had to do something else. Feeding dreamers' fantasies is a low way to sell books.

I sent my story to the email address. It bounced on the first try, but apparently got going the second time. Let me know if you don't get it.

Mark Borgerson

Point taken!

This is true because not all (or even most) "engineering jobs" require the training in fundamentals gained only with study, usually formal study. Straightforward designs can be done from datasheets and adapted from prior practice. This can be done by a clever copyist with minimal basic understanding of underlying principles. Such designs are typically tinkered into existance and tested until "good enough". These people work "in engineering", but they are not engineers -- though many of them think they are.

That is exactly right, there is very strong correlation between income bracket and degree of education with very substantial differences in earning power. The corporate world in the US is a sewer infested with unscrupulous crooks and stands as an example of something to be reformed and not a model in the sense of how anyone should configure their personal life.

Maybe not all- but surely 99.99% of them are closed to non-degreed people. It's okay to be non-degreed but you have to have a quantifiable track record of performance that is significantly better than the otherwise equally experienced degreed candidate.

Well- there is one regular nutcase on the NG who epitomizes everything wrong with going about a career without formal education and direction. I won't name names, but he lives in Canada, and from what I can tell has never understood a thing in his entire life, his mind is a morass of bits and pieces of information garnered from low level applications literature which he somehow regurgitates with varying degrees of fidelity whether or not it is applicable.

Who would be idiotic enough to leave a cushy number in the arts to work in a high stress underpaid sector like engineering that is managed by a bunch of know-nothing clowns ( the PHBs ) ? That's what I'd like to know !

Graham

That's interesting. I used to work with a guy who's degree was in classical languages. I guess a language is a language.

--
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!
                                  at              
FISH-NET-FISH-NET-FISH-NET-FISH-NET-FISH!!
                               visi.com

Hi Mark,

I didn't get either copy, so I'm going to email you from my gmail account and see if that fixes the magic.

Whoa, there - I said they had advanced DEGREES, not JOBS in classical languages :) My wife had great difficulty getting a job with an english language major (art history minor)...

Did you check the education of Dilbert's PHB?

--

Tauno Voipio
tauno voipio (at) iki fi

Greek Philosophy ?

Graham

Pls don't remind me ! Aaaarrgghhhh.

Some have some very strange ideas too and look perplexed when challenged about them.

Graham