Re: good post on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is 99% trash, so it's a great way to waste time and not design electronics.

I have used it to find talent, which works fairly well. One cheap ad can spin up hundreds of applicants and the presentation makes them fast to evaluate.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

In sci.electronics.design John Larkin snipped-for-privacy@glen--canyon.com wrote: |--------------------------------------------------------------------| |"LinkedIn is 99% trash, so it's a great way to waste time and not | |design electronics." | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|

David Bishop had recommended me to create a LinkedIn account to try to find a job which actually pays money. This is why I created an account on LinkedIn. Mister Bishop means well, but LinkedIn fails at the only task which I created this account for.

A person who used to contribute more than 700 articles to comp.lang.vhdl who promotes VHDL a lot on LinkedIn likes a recent LinkedIn comment by me that comp.lang.vhdl is for works, but the newest comp.lang.vhdl article by him that I detect is dated 2021.

Alas persons use LinkedIn instead of the USENET. LinkedIn is not good at threads. LinkedIn is not good at archiving reliably.

LinkedIn is not good for detailed discussions.

I do not find it to be a complete waste of time though, as non-engineers who are important to me find it convenient to use.

A purported electronic engineer follows me on LinkedIn since the Year

|---------------------------------------------------------------------| |"I have used it to find talent, which works fairly well. One cheap ad| |can spin up hundreds of applicants and the presentation makes them | |fast to evaluate." | |---------------------------------------------------------------------|

If I would be hiring then I would want to see that a candidate contributes to the USENET. (S.

In sci.electronics.design John Larkin wrote: |-------------------------| |"What do you want to do?"| |-------------------------|

Thanks for asking.

I am a space engineer who wants to read reliability in scientific publications but instead real publications are overrun by lies by subventions fraudsters.

I do want ethical workplaces and employees' welfare to exist.

I want to convince persons that coding should be done in a strongly typed language. (S.

Absolutely!

So you are a coder?

When I program (which I avoid) I do it in PowerBasic. It lets you do most anything.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

In sci.electronics.design John Larkin wrote: |--------------------------------------------------------------------| |">I am a space engineer who wants to read reliability in scientific | |>publications but instead real publications are overrun by lies by | |>subventions fraudsters. | | | |Absolutely!" | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|

Thanks for agreeing!

|--------------------------------------------------------------------| |"So you are a coder?" | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|

Why else would I care so much about comp.lang.vhdl?

|---------------------------------------------------------------------| |"When I program (which I avoid) I do it in PowerBasic. It lets you do| |most anything." | |---------------------------------------------------------------------|

I did not detect a reference to PowerBasic on your website, whereas I did detect references to 3 languages (including VHDL) on your website.

I am reminded about a bizarre job interview which I was once the candidate in. That job advertisement very prominently shows that that job is a C# job, but that company's owner moaned to me during that interview about C#. "A language without pointers is not a language!" said he himself incorrectly.

Actually I detected references to 4 languages on your website if we count English. Cf.

(S.

The only electronics I did as a kid was to build a completely passive crystal set - the only non-linear element was a diode.

I didn't get into electronics until I was a graduate student - and I got into Fortran first. It doesn't seem to have been too late.

That depends on the journal, and the referees they can find to peer-review the papers that get submitted for publication.

My wife edited a couple of psycholinguistic journals for a while, and finding good referees took a lot of work (and she was good at it).

Review Scientific Instruments couldn't find good referees for papers with electronic content for many years, and I've published rude comments about it there from time to time.

That usually means becoming active in a trade union, which employers don't like.

But not elegantly. It's one small step up from assembler, which lets you do absolutely everything.

Basic was Fortran dumbed down for small processors.

At one job the computer manager was terrified of hackers, so I couldn't run any kind of compiled program, and had to do my number crunching in Excel. Our sub-contractor didn't have any trouble translating the procedures into executable code, but it did waste a lot of my time.

I think we may quote that in replies to some of your future posts.

Why not just scrape the site and periodically update that -- instead of trying to encapsulate it in a single document.

None of hose metrics mean anything. It takes me an hour to get to the post office (on foot!).

I can't comment on LinkedIn as no one that I know uses it. My understanding (?) is that it is a networking site -- a way to "get jobs".

Most of my colleagues have more than enough work without any sort of "advertising" or "job mining". Makes you wonder what the folks using it are lacking... (REAL contacts??)

The part that caught my eye was: " The only electronics I did as a kid". Many of us spent our childhood teaching ourselves electronics - so we may remind you of this difference next time you start making disparaging remarks about other engineers' knowledge and abilities.

I built one, too. First thing that worked for me, apart of lamps and batteries.

We had Europawelle Saar on 1422 KHz maybe 10 miles away, pumping

What's your

That was my guide: <

Gerhard

You may be thinking of InDeed.

Networking is just keeping track of co-workers and professional acquaintances - but there's no real controls on spam.

It has groups, similar to Facebook, where an administrator can keep things relatively clean. The longer running of these usually has some commercial incentive for the admin.

Tapping into 20 year old threads (where all the good references and articles were being discussed)in such a group is well-night impossible.

Like Facebook, it is heavily dependent on your machines' RAM and is unfriendly to non-google, non-chrome browsers. This may be why Edge is having issues: it would serve MS right.

RL

Of course it does. As there is a huge advantage to learning chess or math or languages or soccer when you are young. Actually doing stuff involves practical feedbacks and acquired instincts.

University education seldom installs much in the way of instincts either. It's too rigid and formalized, and too late.

A mentor with instincts is great if you are lucky enough to have one.

Obviously too late.

I sometimes read RSI when it's available. The circuits are hilarious.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

I signed up to LinkedIn so I could post a job opening for an intern. He only lasted 6 weeks; then I made him full-time. Another story.

I think that LinkedIn is mostly spammers and unemployed coders and avoid all the connections, although I occasionally swap messages with Mike Engelhardt, which is cool. He has interesting opinions about RF design.

LinkedIn, like most of the internet and phones, is mainly a way to waste time.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

Instincts are what you were born with. What you get from doing stuff is habits.

Learning stuff too early can instill bad habits, and they are hard to unlearn.

Languages aren't learned any faster if you learn them young, and some aspects of language can't be learned at all by very young kids.

Since instincts are what you get with your genome, universities can't install them at all.

Formal instruction at university is formal. It's mostly accompanied by practical classes, which are a lot less rigid.

The complicated stuff that most people learn at university mostly can't be instilled into adolescents - some rare kids can learn it early, but they tend to be exceptionally clever and need exceptional power of concentration. About 30% of the undergraduate intake doesn't ever get any kid of degree, and probably shouldn't have started at all.

Instincts come from the genome. What good mentors have is experience, and some understanding of what that experience has taught them.

Electronics has advanced a lot over the past fifty years, and mentors are correspondingly less useful as teachers.

What's obvious to you is what you want to see. Trump is even more deeply into wishful thinking than you are.

They tend to be functional, rather than elegant, and not always all that up-to-date. I once got very rude about a paper lauding the use of 1Ok ECL which got published after ECLinPs had been around for a few years.

It was a particularly horrible example, quite the worst I've ever seen.

No, LinkedIn. AFAICT, it just lets folks advertise other people that they know/endorse. The practical effect of that is referrals (which is another way of saying "get jobs").

And, you need a third-party "site" to do that? Don't you

If I'm contacted about a potential job, I think about the people that I know who might be appropriate (because anyone that I *refer* for a position is a reflection on me!). Who (if anyone) I contact is based on my knowledge of where their interests lie and what they might be doing, presently.

I know those things because of communications with them

It also lets you share things in the strictest of confidence; things that you (or a business relationship of yours) may not want discussed or disclosed "publicly".

Interacting directly with colleagues doesn't suffer from these sorts of problems. No one is going to "pitch" anything to me or expect me to pitch something to them. Because "contact" is an intrusion (of sorts) and should be worth that "burden".

Another way to waste resources (in this case, your time!).

Similarly, if I am contacted about a particular employer, client or potential employee, I can give a candid appraisal without fear of reprisals or running afoul of legalities.

I had a guy pitching himself as "qualified" that I knew to be a complete idiot. Giving my colleague that assessment (without "couched terms") made it very clear what *I* thought he should do about the guy!

I've similarly had colleagues inquire about past clients, how had they might have been to work with, how promptly they pay invoices, how capable they are of understanding what THEY are asking for, etc.

As most of my colleagues are NOT looking for a teat to suck on for years (i.e., a job that is continually in flux and, thus, never ending), knowing those things ahead of time can avoid uncomfortable (and frustrating) situations down the road. (you can't really ASK the client/employer those things and get a straight answer!)

The GigaComm parts are about the fastest discrete logic around, except for some iffy Russian stuff. All crazy expensive, like hundreds of dollars per gate.

Some parts that are labeled for other uses can do crazy fast logic.

And the logic inside some FPGAs is super fast; an extra input to a LUT-based logic block has zero added delay. Getting into and off the chip is the bottleneck. As internal logic gets faster, i/o seems to be getting worse.

We just cranked up the clock a proto circuit to run a bunch of logic in a T20, including a DDS synthesizer, at 250 MHz. The tools OK'd that, but I'm sure it would run a lot faster in real life.

I volunteered to kluge in a 25 MHz XO, as the PLL input.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

It used to be a discussion of work-related issues and news between people you knew, or were introduced to on-site. Jobs or contracts seldom came up, as I recall. Participants were just too disparate in specialized fields.

There was some potential conflict with confidentiality at times.

Supplying references to articles and publications was the primary benefit, as well as keeping in touch.

Mind you, a considerable number of old connections are more than just retired - living on as 'contacts' from beyond the grave. . . . . LinkIn don't care . . . . . . and just try to close your account . . . .

A great many issues that are in the public domain may be considered as confidential, by employers or clients. It's the sort of thing only a few are willing even to discuss. So: there were obvious restrictions to even opening an account - employability and limitations on likely clients for those who did participate.

This is true of most 'public' participation, in some fields and and some 'private' participation in all of them. Just the way things are.