On Home Projects as a Reentry into the Job Market

Tim Wescott · 2010-08-24T16:53:07+00:00

I do not -- thank God -- have to reenter the job market. But I've seen a lot of posts recently that start something like: "I haven't worked in engineering since 20xx, and I'm (starting)/ (looking for) a job. To make my (job search)/(first week) more successful I'm thinking of doing a project to put on my resume and get the juices flowing."Does this seem to actually help? Is anyone here in a position to hire, and if you saw a resume (or interviewed a person) who had done some hobby/home project just to get back into the swing of things, would you give that much weight? Would you give it _more_ weight than, say, going back to school and taking a class or two, or teaching math to villagers in Africa for six months*, or doing something that was obviously meant to keep your hands busy and make ends meet, like sweeping up at MacDonalds or being an engineering manager?I'm not dissing the notion in any way -- in fact, I have several back-burner projects here that I pull out whenever work gets slow. I'm just wondering if, when looked at with a cold and cynical eye, the time and money spent does a reasonable amount of good.* A distant friend / good acquaintance of mine is doing this, more for himself than for the job prospects.-- Tim WescottWescott Design ServicesDo you need to implement control loops in software?"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.See details at

Aug 24, 2010 68 Replies

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Joel Koltner 16 years ago

I guess it's more or less expected with open-source hardware designs. Why bother going to open-source hardware the application you meant for it requires the purchase of a commercial OS? -- You might as well buy closed-sourced hardware at that point, as there are plenty of perfectly good single-board computers that run Windows or QNX or other commercial OSes.

Actually I think that the majority of GPS navigation systems (the aftermarket ones for cars) run Linux -- they just license the maps directly from TeleAtlas or NavTech, and have the volume/money to make it viable.

---Joel

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krw 16 years ago

I didn't, but the courses (and connected labs) were available. They only did some pretty simple stuff when I was there, though. They were given a complete set of tools for ICs a couple of years after I graduated.

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Spehro Pefhany 16 years ago

Same here- they had a small fab on campus (maybe 3" wafers) for researchers and grad students. This was before MOSIS.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

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miso 16 years ago

nd in

nly did

complete

"The Journey is the reward"

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eff.com

HP was doing fabrication for students prior to Mosis. If it is not clear here, the mosis projects were multichip. That is, multiple designs on the same tooling. Very inefficient, but done in companies that have the R&D budget.

I'm trying to recall the computer CAD tools back then. Kick (sp) or Magic (sp too!). I don't know of any universities with a Calma back then. That would have been GDS 1 on Tek storage tubes. If you ever used one, it was buggy wip technology. The GDS 1 was designed for digitizers, not on screen layout. It had a DRC, though not very good.

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miso 16 years ago

hire,

you

going

ers

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has free topo maps. These can be loaded on garmin gear.

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krw 16 years ago

complete

The students did the work at UIUC. That was part of the deal.

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JosephKK 16 years ago

Well i'll be swaged, it is still around. Cool.

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rickman 16 years ago

Why

uires

rket

Atlas

We are not on the same page here. I'm not talking about a PC. I'm talking about a GPS device... a handheld GPS device. It won't be running Windows or Linux. Trying to power a device running Linux is a loosing battle. How long does an Android cell phone actually run on a charge. I don't mean sleep, I mean run! My GPS receivers run for 12 hours and they are 10 year old technology! A modern GPS receiver needs to run for 20 hours or more to be competitive. Any OS that requires so much memory that it needs an MMU is not an option in a truly hand held device.

Rick

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