rant: Sears Sucks

Big FPGAs cost big bucks.

I haven't used Xilinx software in eight years. It was OK then but you aren't the only one who's bitched about it since. We didn't use a million chips a week, probably more like a few dozen (at $3800 each) for the life of the program but we got support, after a fashion. We didn't require much, though.

OTOH, I had much better response from Altera, even though we only used a thousand, or so, CPLDs. Lattice has been super, though they are looking to sell millions. ;-)

It only works with their hardware, if that's what you mean. So what? The source is easily transportable (if you don't use vendor specific hardware features). Test benches are transportable, too and often they use ModelSim, anyway.

The job of Sears is to rebrand other products and throw a scam on top. They get sued so much that I don't see how they're still allowed to operate.

- The Sears Card exists only to generate revenue from broad spectrum of late fee fraud.

- They violate all major credit card terms by billing for products before they are available to ship. (A policy that helps with the Sears Card fraud.)

- They've been caught selling foreign tool replicas as "Made in USA."

- They send fake technicians to your home to declare that your appliance warranty has been voided.

No, they will have you committed no matter what.

Not sure what you intend by that term. If you mean can you use your design on other vendor's chips, then yes, they can't restrict your design. They can restrict the use of the bitstream their tools produce however. I know Altera won't let you use the bitstream to directly produce an ASIC. You have to use *your* sources.

While Sears has, at least at one time, made more money from its financial business than it has from retail, "late fee fraud" is certainly not their reason for existence. That's just absurd.

Citation needed.

Citation needed.

I have no love for Sears anymore and rarely walk in their stores but the above is libelous drivel.

Time for one last rant before EoV (end of vacation)...

I don't know. I've never had a public sector job and have no idea what it might be like. That won't stop me from speculating.

One problem is that different people have different ideas of what constitutes on the job fun. In my case, fun is simply the lack of boredom. I tend to get bored very easily. My solution is to have a large number of projects going simultaneously. Starting projects is infinitely more fun than finishing them. That is not normally considered a good idea for meeting deadlines, so I usually negotiate a compromise. Working for myself, there's nobody to negotiate with, so the cancerous growth of unfinished projects continues. However, I am having fun.

For government servants, I would guess(tm) that the job would be rather monotonous and boring. While I can't work in that manner, there are those that can. While I look for new and unknown areas to explore, there are those that function best in the safety of the well practiced and well known, which implies endless repetition.

According to Outliers: it takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. At 8 hrs/day and 200 working days per year, that's about 6 years which is somewhat more than the 4.4 year average job tenure. That might also explain why nobody seems to know what they're doing. They haven't put in the 10,000 hrs needed to become proficient. I suspect that public sector jobs last somewhat longer than 6 years, which suggests that once they become proficient, boredom sets in. So, they change jobs, starting the learning curve over from scratch. However, if they're stuck in their present position, the boredom can become endemic, which means they're permanently not having any fun.

The obvious solution to the public sector boredom problem doesn't work. You can't force an automatic job rotation every 6 years because everyone would then be constantly climbing the learning curve. At least with bored greater than 10,000 hrs public sector employees, they know how to do their job. The only challenge is getting them sufficiently inspired to actually do their job (without falling asleep).

The problem is a little different in different size companies and organizations. With a small company, everyone knows what everyone else is doing. People tend to have multiple positions and functions, which is great for providing the entertainment value needed to prevent boredom. Things are not the same at larger companies, where an employee is often compartmentalized into a single job function. Without the ability to easily get involved in diversionary projects, the large company employee reaches the point of boredom much sooner than the small company employee. That's because the small company diversions detract from the 10,000 hrs needed before the onset of proficiency and boredom. Much of the fun that you're currently enjoying in a small company might not be possible in a large company.

Let's see if the numbers are close. If someone works for about 45 years, and it takes 6 years to become bored, then the average tenure per job should be about: 45 / 6 = 7.5 years/job Well, it's a bit higher than the alleged 4.4 year average, but it's in the ball park. Assuming the average is correct, the average worker is bored: 7.5 - 4.4 = 3.1 years of their life. Sounds about right.

A more fundamental issue is the expectations you have *from* your "job". Many people will gladly trade "fun/enjoyment/challenge/etc." for *security* -- they want to know they have $X coming in the door every week. They'll put up with a fair amount of cruft in order to get -- and maintain -- that "security".

Other people want to avoid "responsibility". Happy to fill a role that someone *else* has deemed necessary -- without concern for the truth of that ("if Bob thinks we need someone -- me -- to fold napkins all day long, who am *I* to say otherwise?!")

Still others want to "have fun" -- which can be defined in many different ways. E.g., test driving vehicles could be considered "fun" by some. Even if the results of their acts are imprecisely defined ("This car was a 3 out of 10" -- what the hell does that mean?)

Some might consider it "fun" to be a tour guide -- getting enjoyment out of sharing their knowledge of a subject/site with others; watching them develop an appreciation for something *you* value.

I'm not sure I'd fall into the same camp. To me, "fun" is learning something new -- a *fresh* challenge. Ideally, one that builds on past learning in an evolutionary way.

E.g., refurbishing computers quickly reaches a plateau in terms of "learning" -- after about the 4th or 5th unit! :> OTOH, coming up with ways to more efficiently get the job done can be very challenging -- esp when you are forced to adopt constraints over which you have no control (e.g., can't BUY spare parts).

You can "indulge" these sorts of preferences if you don't have other pressures (e.g., lots of hungry mouths) coercing you to address *other* needs, aren't driven by a need for "security", fear of a new "unknown", etc.

It is *security*! Just don't get caught screwing a goat, etc. I think the same is true of military careers -- if you can put up with someone telling you what to do (even if they are "wrong"), then you're guaranteed an income/position!

At smaller companies (IME) there is also more innovation and willingness to try new/different approaches to problems. Things that large companies (and their inherent politics) tend to effectively discourage (stockholders, little empires/fiefdoms, etc.)

I've often seen a sort of "hunger" in "old-timers" who opted for "security" in their job positions when they see others engaged in "interesting", new products; products in which they no longer have the appropriate skillsets to participate.

You make a tradeoff at one point in your career -- and then tend to get stuck with it throughout (how many folks take a deliberate pause and reassess where they are headed?)

Of course there is a continuum in the above. We all lie (and want to) somewhere on these axis.

Sure. "Fun", like "happiness" is largely what you make it, though. You are really in charge of that for yourself.

Ditto.

Goat screwers are now a protected class. It's not a firable offense, rather a requirement for promotion.

I haven't found that at all. I've only worked for one small company (and three large ones) but, other than the government contract (could only stand it for a year), I found that the large employers have far more money to spend trying new ideas and weren't too worried about failure. The small company was almost too scared to move.

I haven't seen that at all. Rather the opposite. The older folks have the experience to know how to do new things. Perhaps those that don't, fell out (into management? ;-) along the way.

Many, once their children are on their own and they're more or less financially set, take up second careers or start a business.

But if you're reasonably good at it, electronics design is fun and pays fairly well to very well.

The fun part depends on a great many factors.

It depends on how varied the opportunities that are presented to you and of which you avail yourself -- as well as the framework you have to work within. E.g., how often can you explore a solution AT YOUR LEISURE? Look at perhaps five or six (largely) *completed* implementations before deciding which to actually pursue?

Employers, clients, customers tend to put financial and time pressures on most development efforts that stiffle just how flexible you can be. It's no fun trying to rush to meet a deadline -- wondering what corners you've cut and haven't yet realized, etc.

I know folks who have done (essentially) the same thing for their entire career (often very $ucce$$fully!). Few of them would characterize their jobs as "fun"; many would say "nonchallenging", trivial, disappointing, PROFITABLE, etc. -- looking for satisfaction in *other* endeavors ("hobbies").

E.g., I know a guy that JUST designs power supplies. He's very good at it and can squeeze whichever end of the balloon you tell him needs to be optimized. But, it's just "work" to him; nothing particularly challenging (even if you constrain cost, volume, reliability, etc. -- "Ho, hum... ")

Another guy JUST designs data acquisition systems. How fast, how precise, etc. Just different parameters on (essentially) the same problem that he's been solving over and over again. A new set of components/technologies available, this year... but, they'll just be applied in more or less the same way as last year's!

Lots of software folks quickly fall into pigeon holes -- writing code for the same sorts of applications (or devices) over and over again. Usually not given much freedom to experiment with different user interface styles, coding practices, implementation frameworks, etc. ("This worked for the last project; why do anything differently?")

I can knock out a new/novel hardware design in a few months -- and spend a few *years* writing code for it. Very little challenge in that (challenge == fun in my lexicon).

Rather, I get much more enjoyment and satisfaction in exploring other application domains. Different *types* of problems to which my past experiences can, perhaps, be directly applied -- or, can inspire novel/untried approaches that, at the very least, shed new insights on the application and/or the technology that I've tried to apply: "Hmmm.... having tried *that*, I now know where my assumptions were inappropriate -- and how I can better achieve the results I originally sought! But, on a *different* project!"

The *last* thing I want to get stuck doing is repeating a past project ("We don't have time to do it right -- but, we'll have time to do it OVER!") I find that the equivalent of "digging ditches" for a living (mindless).

"OK, guys, we're ready to start developing Product2016, now..."

If an electronic design is "pure electronics", electrical input and electrical output, like designing variants of a power supply (and pushing them through CE test labs!) it could get boring. What's interesting is to do the things that George H and I do, which is to apply electronics to various physical processes. One has to learn new physics (and new buzzwords), push the limits of instrumentation, and maybe amaze a few scientists now and then. You can be a scientific dilettante, without the hassle of going to grad school and being a postdoc and stuff. Play around lasers and jet engines and microscopes for a while and move on.

But there isn't much leisure to try things five or six times. Things have to work, preferably first try. That part can be exciting, too, promising to do something difficult and then seeing if it will work.

It is amazing how ubiquitous electronics has become. There is practically no science that doesn't involve electronics. Plenty of opportunities.

The same can be said of many applications. I have a friend who has been designing video games -- and now slot machines -- for close to 40 years. Hard to see the "challenge" in that -- even if you concoct all sorts of variations on the themes!

I think you'd be surprised at how much variation there is in the software world; talk about "ubiquity"! E.g., software

And, there are many things that can be done in software that are completely impractical in hardware.

E.g., pharmaceuticals (tablets) are produced on high volume, rotary tablet presses: In essence, these are *many* "single station" presses that are operated in a common mechanical framework: So, a "75 station" press is actually 75 single station presses on a common turret -- each station moving around the turret experiencing various parts of the tablet formation cycle (fill, precompression, compression, ejection) endlessly.

As each station has its own mechanical characteristics (dimensions of upper and lower punches, shapes of punch faces, dimensions of associated die), a tablet made on station #M may be physically different than an "identical" tablet made on station #N -- assuming everything else is held constant (e.g., the granulation/powder that makes up the tablet varies over time).

Yet, you have to ensure certain physical characteristics of ALL of those tablets are within some set of manufacturing limits (tablet weight, hardness, cosmetic issues, etc.).

Implement a traditional control loop and what ends up happening is observations from station M are applied to station N; station N's observations applied to station O; etc. So, your "control" may, in fact, make the "process" *worse* than it would have been without the control present!

Imagine observations of M suggest the tablet made there is "too soft" -- because the punches were a few thousandths too

So, the "random" arrangement of punches and dies in the machine leads to unnecessary variations/oscillations *caused* by your control loop.

Complicate this with the fact that *two* stations are producing tablets at opposite sides of the machine at any given time (examine original picture closely: notice two hoppers on top and two ejection chutes on each side?). Now you've got 150 single stroke machines in the same "box", sharing certain portions of the mechanism(s) (e.g., compression rollers, fill/ejection cams, etc.)

In software, you can treat each of these as separate control systems and seek to optimize the overall process -- instead of making a naive short-term control decision that *will* deleteriously impact neighboring stations.

Imagine designing a piece of hardware to implement such an inter-combined set of control loops. And, imagine being able to set performance criteria for it!

There isn't in *many* (most) development environments. OTOH, there

Just because opportunities *exist* ("in theory") doesn't mean folks can avail themselves of them! If your employer builds radios and you want to build microwave ovens, you have to pick a different employer! (and hope he is interested in your talents!) If, after having your fill of microwave ovens you want to work on guidance systems for ballistic missiles...

:>

Yep, as long as you can find customers with deep enough pockets to fund the development of products that aren't cookie cutter in nature. And... as long as you don't try to use technology you aren't very good at using.

Search for "Sears Card fraud." There's a very sophisticated scheme behind it that has generated many state lawsuits against Sears for fraud.

Just ask Sears. They billed me for a clothes washer and drier as soon as I placed the order, even though it was not yet available to ship. Sears customer service claimed that it was their procedure. This violates the terms of all major credit cards, including the one used.

Me. I had a self-install RO filter that would not turn off. I followed diagnostics in the manual and found a defective diaphragm. I boxed it up for return to the store. Two Sears stores refused to honor their warranty in-store and said a tech must inspect it as a house call. I set the box on a table. The "tech" arrived hours late, saw that it was boxed up, and phoned in that I had voided the warranty by uninstalling it. While standing right in front of me and the box, he said that he inspected the product and it was completely destroyed.

I recorded it with a laptop but can't find it at the moment.

As somebody said, 'the best projects are the ones where you get a knot in your stomach as soon as the contract gets signed.'

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

One difficult question that we've probably all been asked:

"Do you think this dress makes me look fat?" ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Nah, that's the key. You become a wizard by getting chucked in the deep end N times in a row. If you only do what you're good at at the moment, you'll get obsolete.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs