So, you want to an electrical engineer? (video)

The whole perspective of the video seems very myopic, it's apparently been produced by an electronics nerd without much of a world view. The lady said

*electrical engineer*, and (surprise guys) there's more to the world than silicon chips and trendy gadgets. I know a lot of real electrical engineers that haven't got a clue about ICs and PCBs, but they have good, and ongoing, work designing, building and supporting electrical generation and distribution systems.

Many universities do. They even have quotas. Hell, even airlines "over-book".

Does MIT require that student's live in dorms? I never lived in a dorm but I know they stuck kids everywhere (three to a two person room, in guest rooms, in lounges, wherever there was a few sq. ft.) the first semester and by the second, there was plenty of space for all. I remember the administration telling the parents that the tight quarters "were only temporary".

OTOH, most of the engineering flunkies found other colleges to transfer to before flunking out; business admin was big, as was teaching. Sort of a "student body shift left". Those that stuck it out to the second year mostly flunked out completely (didn't get the message). After the second year it became flunk outs became far less common.

They're not students, they're graduates of American engineering schools.

Sputnik- another fraud upon the American publuck by another Republican admi nistration to turn engineering into a commodity labor pool and justify a ma ssive expansion of a mediocre education system that was completely unwarran ted. All they achieved was a massive amount of waste and a relatively short

-lived prosperity. The US was already decades ahead of the USSR in missile technology thanks to our new resident Nazi scientists.

They're the ones that have no clue as to the ethics of having someone on the internet do their homework. The goal is not to learn, but rather to pass the exams. After they pass and are awarded a certificate or diploma of some sort, they learn on the job.

Duz it matter? It's the number that actually graduate that's important. As long as India and China crank out H1B engineers, the demand for higher paid US engineers will be depressed. Even if 90% of the engineering students drop out before graduating in India, there will be enough to fill US positions.

The US government has been reciting the broken record of "engineer shortage" for many years in order to justify H1B immigration. It's sole purpose is reducing engineering expenses for the congress critters industry clients. Only after the actual engineering jobs were shipped overseas and the economy took a big dive, did congress somewhat decide that H1B wasn't such a great idea.

There seems to be some question as to what constitutes an engineer in India and China. If you accept the revisionist stance of the article, the US is doing just fine.

Also... "Myth Of High Engineering Dropout Rate Refuted By New Study"

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I have seen electrical engineers that cannot use Ohm's law. So bad that they cannot even do cookie cutter type electrical design. And they bloody have a Licence. MDFTNS

?-)

Bloggs, what part of whoosh don't you understand? How could you miss the point so thoroughly?

population

to

50%. The US can just hang it up, their imagined preeminence in engineering is a pipe dream.

I've met them, too. On the other extreme were the types that wanted to use 1% resistors for audio amps, in the '70s.

I'm using .1% resistors (soon to be .05% arrays) in an audio amp. ;-) Oh, and there are dozens of 1% resistors in there (mostly in the power supplies).

Were you doing that 40 yars ago, when 10% was the norm, and 20% were still in use?

The norm is not 5% for high volume production (1% elsewhere). These resistors are still 1/20th of the norm. ;-)

IOW, you are using COTS parts.

I watched the entire video. Interesting, entertaining, but only marginally relevant. The part where Adam Savage mentioned that he didn't ask for help and thought he knew everything was the only really good lesson to be learned. I suspect all of us have gone through that exercise, where we thought we knew everything and were too proud (or arrogant) to ask for help. My first real design job went like that with an added bonus. Management was split between supporting my project and killing it. Of course, nobody bothered to mention this to me. I couldn't understand why support varied from extremely helpful to obstruction. My guess(tm), it took me about 2-3 years before I was producing more for the company than it was costing them. That luxury no longer exists today, where companies expect instant productivity and are unwilling to pay for a learning curve.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

That reminds me of a bad 'Final Test' tech who used to brag that he worked almost three years in a TV shop, before he was able to repair a TV set without help. He wouldn't have lasted a week at any repair facility I've ever worked at, and a day at others.

Been there. We would buy 5% and 2% resistors, not because the design tolerances required it, but because the 10% and 20% resistors were so awful. What the suppliers would do was bin sort the resistors coming out of the factory by tolerance. The best were 2%. 5% were about the same, except that they were the ones that failed a temperature drift test. 10% and 20% did not follow a bell curve of values. There was a giant hole in the resistor values in the middle, where the 2% and 5% parts had been removed. In effect, they were the rejects. Also, the delivered parts were not randomly distributed between -10% to -5% and

+5% to +10%. One shipment would be all low value parts, while the next would be all high value parts. Rather than fight this battle, it was decided to pay the premium and just get the 5% and 2% parts.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

We got purchasing to stop buying any 5% SMD resistors, and replaced them with 1% at Microdyne, last millenium. I couldn't convince some of the old farts that any 1% value in the middle of the 5% arc was a suitable replacement. Just like the Scinetific Atlanta telemetry gear we built & serviced. They used the lowest grade of opamps. I couldn't do anything about new production, but the repairs left with a lot higher grade after I convinced an old Navy 'electron pusher' that he wouldn't have to work so hard with the better OpAmps. :)

Aren't you glad that 50% tolerance resistors went out of production pripr to W.W.II? OTOH, I still have a few NOS 50% in stock, for the know it alls. They think that three bands mean 20%, and never notice the marked values aren';t right for 20% parts. ;-)

2% and 5% resistors reduced the design challenges. However, the challenges were replaced by purchasing buying +80% -20% electroltyics and tinkering with the ceramic cap temperature coefficients in order to save a few pennies. After a few major screwups, they settled on buying the 2nd cheapest +50% -10% tolerance electrolytics. I forgot what happened to the ceramics.

One of the low points in my career was having the chief engineer point out some of the useless parts sitting in inventory, and demanding that I design them into something. Like an idiot, I followed his advice. As soon as we ran out of the useless parts, it was discovered that they were so bad, that they couldn't be reordered and that proper parts wouldn't work. Oops.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

You forgot to have him sign off on that order? We had a 'consultant' work on a VME based Telemetry receiver design. He had free access to the stockroom, and picked several hundred obsolete parts that were bought EOL to support existing customers. It took him almost a year to design it, and one of our staff four months to redo everything. That was the last consultant they hired, other than the one who redecorated the lunch room.

On a sunny day (Thu, 10 Jan 2013 12:14:36 -0800) it happened Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

My second job, TV studio, started with a payed 6 month in the school banks learning about TV technology and the equipment used (you had to sign a contract you would stay after that training). We started with 6 engineers, IIRC 2 dropped out after a few month (bought themselves out). The old crew, the best of them, from the lab, were our teachers, one for every subject. Years later I was in front of the classes for the next guys myself. I think that is the way it should be, but no longer is that way I think. And mind you, we had an exam and tests too.. Then you were assigned to a department, I got the film studio... Keep it running! Next thing I knew I was designing an audio distribution amplifier.. Later, I was put in the control room (live stress job 32 phone lines all ringing), and VTR (video tape recording (the most difficult part..) ). Nice job, dream job for some. In my case there were 32 applicants... I got it because I had already build my own camera... and knew what TV was. Most electrical engineers had not the slightest clue. Thing with working in a TV studio is that if you make one mistake,

1 minute black gets a whole lot of attention.... Being late does not work out very well either... And an hour studio time with maybe many artists costs a LOT of money, so if you cannot get that camera running, or anything that is needed, you are in deep trouble. You really got to know the stuff.. We also had nice training courses from the manufactures of equipment. I remember one 3 weeks in Germany from Ampex that had 15 kg of books, I remember that because of the weight at the airport...