Get a job, any engineering job. That get's your foot in the door. Monitor the internal job openings relgiously. Put in for any/every job of interest, especially (in your case) FPGA design. Take a pay cut if necessary. Get on the right train. -----Original Message----- From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of gsletch Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 9:37 AM To: si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [SI-LIST] Career Advice for a junior EE I have a question, not technical per se, but more career advice related. I am an unemployed EE(US Citizen) with about 3 years experience in the hard hit telecom/computer server industry. My first job out of school was mainly doing high speed digital PCB layout. On occasion, I did some simple schematic capture and I was trained in Cadence's signal integrity tools, but never got into it like I was promised...industry started to tank, environment changed, etc. Long story...anyway. Now to my question, how do engineers/managers view a "newbie" whose previous job was as a PCB Designer, but wants to get into more board level circuit design with less physical design other than supervising layout designers or doing some myself when needed? I feel that the PCB layout exp. was helpful, but not challenging enough; hence, the lateral career move. Am I looked down upon because I was a PCB Designer? Will there ever be an opportunity as a Hardware Engineer? The job market doesn't seem to want to open up for the junior level people...it is closing in on 2 years out of work for me.... I have a BSEE with Graduate level courses in FPGA/ASIC design and (soon to be) board design. Do I have a chance or am I wasting my time? Opinions are welcomed.... ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List FAQ wiki page is located at: http://si-list.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Si-List_FAQ List technical documents are available at: http://www.si-list.org List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu ______________________________________________________________________ All email being sent to or from SRC Computers, Inc. will be scanned by a third party scanning service. ______________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List FAQ wiki page is located at: http://si-list.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Si-List_FAQ List technical documents are available at: http://www.si-list.org List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu