Transistors

Martin

Do you have the movie "Idiocracy" in your collection, Jim? ;-)

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

On a sunny day (Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:04:14 -0500) it happened Spehro Pefhany wrote in :

Talking of movies... I sometimes record movies from satellite directly to DVD, without authoring or editing or anything, just the raw stream, that gives me exactly 4700000000 bytes, and no filesystem overhead, and no time wasted. But.. that can go wrong now the German stations are transmitting really high quality widescreen.... -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4756000000 2007-11-14 21:03 cliff_richard_finders_keepers_german.ts

So my test to myself was: How do you get this on ONE DVD, and still be able to play it back? The answer: You zip it! gzip -c cliff_richard_finders_keepers_german.ts >

cliff_richard_finders_keepers_german.ts.gz

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4535186578 2007-11-14 21:46 cliff_richard_finders_keepers_german.ts.gz

Then burn the zipped file as ISO image. But how to play? cat /dev/dvd | gunzip -c | mplayer -ao oss:/dev/dsp1 -

Actually the German voice over is extremely good, the songs are still original.

Also nice is that even digital transport stream can be further compressed.

As to the original example, perhaps electronics is only for those who have it as hobby too, in my view.

It is unfair. Your question is very tough, because it requires a common sense.

My standard question is about the ADC:

Consider a 10bit ADC referenced to +5V. There is 10k/15k resistor divider at the input of the ADC. The ADC reads the value of 0x123. What is the voltage at the input of the divider?

This basic question is sufficient to sort out 90% of applicants.

I am wondering what happens to those "engineers" that can't answer the questions like that. Perhaps, they are getting employed by the big companies and enjoy their life.

Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

Nope. Never heard of that one until you just mentioned it.

...Jim Thompson

Joe average wakes up in the future to find himself the Einstein of a world of TV-watching helpless weenies.

Low-brow, but funny. You'll roll at the political spoofing.

Cheers, James Arthur

"Roil", possibly. ;-)

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

John Larkin a écrit :

Then when you've selected the good ones (do you need really plural there today) you can push your test further and totally confuse them with an even harder quizz:

Then ask the very same questions.

You have no business springing that test on new applicants without warning to allow sufficient preparation. It also may be racially and/or gender biased... standby, you will be hearing from my lawyer....

My response would be :" You gotta be some kind of simple-assed moron to even ask dumb-assed trivial crap like that, this must be summmm kinda work environment for the mentally impaired. Forget I even applied here..."

Maybe you could use the extra time to figure the value of parasitics from the frequency of some presumed oscillation. Then they'd mark it wrong and you'd be out of the running.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Yep, Fred. I always suspected you of being niggardly ;-)

...Jim Thompson

That would be a transparent bluff. You would walk out by mutual agreement.

John

Preparation? To answer a bog-basic circuit question like this? I couldn't hire a design engineer who wouldn't be able to tell me all the approximate voltages and currents casually.

How about a voltage divider? Is that unfair to "spring" as well?

A resistor charging a cap is another good resume-deflator.

Last guy I interviewed, we spent a couple of hours at a whiteboard, doing the first steps of an actual VME module design. After I hired him, he finished it.

John

On a sunny day (Thu, 15 Nov 2007 07:35:12 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

John, you are right to ask simple questions like that. I did the same to some applicants in the past, my favourite was: Here I have 12V DC, and a 12V relays, and I need to drive this with a uc output 0-5V, can you draw a circuit? If they forgot the diode, then forget it. But those guys mostly got it right. But it is not always so straight-forward. Once the guy I selected (actually the best of them), was not liked by the Big Boss, and once an other chief tried to bribe me to recommend an other guy, who came via an agency where his wife worked, likely he or she got some provision. I did hear huge fights on the telephone about a black technician too, 'as blacks would be lazy'. Now and that in a country that has no discrimination.

But if somebody asked me to design something in an interview, and it was hours of work, I would ask for money up front :-)

Yup, no point starting on hard ones.

Interesting, but I've never met a female circuit designer, or a black one. Have known some techs of both sorts.

I did fly him and his gf halfway across the USA, to spend a week in San Francisco to see if they'd like it, all expenses paid. That's not unreasonable for a couple hours of work.

They liked it.

John

Vladimir Vassilevsky antispam snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com posted to sci.electronics.design:

They need to put more questions like that in the mandatory portion of the electrical PE exams.

Right, suu...uuuure it is, troll.

Isn't that just an RTL download these days?