[SI-LIST] Re: commodity

  • From: Scott McMorrow <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Todd Westerhoff <twesterh@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 7 Aug 2015 11:06:48 -0400

Ah, Chris, so mentoring is still imporant, which I think is what you are
driving at. Either direct one-on-one mentoring, or the mentoring one gets
by working with a quality team. Quality people tend to lift the capability
of their peers. And, yes, this can be the luck of the draw.
The other thing that occurs to me is that engineering degrees have changed
in the past 30 years. Many people these days are taking a Computer
Engineering curriculum that is not as rigorous in the basics as Electrical
Engineering is. As a result, tools (software, simulators) are emphasized,
rather than the mathematical, system, and physics basis of what we do in SI
and EM. Single minded reliance on tools can dull the thinking process,
resulting in flawed results and solutions.

I personally look for engineers who have good minds, who can think and
solve problems in both conventional and unconventional ways. In
consulting, we have to jump from problem to problem in multiple disciplines
in a matter of days, or sometimes hours. To do that you have to have a
foundation in electromagnetics, manufacturing, test and measurement, and
then have the mind to be able to translate your knowledge to very specific
(and sometimes weird) problems that are not always easy to understand. I
need minds that can analyze and synthesize, and integrate many disparate
ideas and concepts at once in multiple fields.

Internally, we want to turn our knowledge into a commodity. That is, we
want to become so proficient at specific tasks, that we can define a set
process and repeat it ad infinitum for efficiency. Others outside could do
the same, and so we are all striving for SI as a commodity in our internal
and external communities. At the same time, we need to be able to
understand when conditions warrent a detour from the standard process.
Eventually, through internal software and methods, we can make many things
a "turn of the crank" (a commodity), but we need people who can discern
that what they are currently working on is a special case that needs to be
handled separately.

It is this ability to know when additional steps or warrented, when a
result does not "smell" right, or when a tool is not appropriate for a
specific job that is the differentiator that many here are looking for.

I have a philosophy that all of my engineering consultants must have a
broad knowledge base. They must know each tool that they use intimately,
inducing accuracy, limitations, and warts that need to be worked around.
They must always be ready to defend and stand on their results, (the "I'll
bet my job" test), and they must be able to move to multiple tools and
perform comparisions to verify results and accuracy. Finally, our results
have to be grounded in physical measurements. Otherwise we potentially
will produce electronic hallucinations.

I submit that any person or team of persons performing an SI task that has
not compared their results to measurements, that has not built test boards,
that has not operated or supervised the operation of the equipment, is just
blowing electromagnetic analysis smoke. If they have not benchmarked their
tools against measurements, they truly are operating on faith, designing
with magic software that is as reliable as a magic 8 ball.

Most respectfully

Scott






Scott McMorrow
Consultant - R&D
Teraspeed Consulting - A Division of Samtec
16 Stormy Brook Rd
Falmouth, ME 04105
(401) 284-1827 Business
http://www.teraspeed.com

On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 9:58 AM, Todd Westerhoff <twesterh@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<Humor>

There's an engineer that gets called into the boss' office to be let go.
When he's told of what is happening, he exclaims:

"But I have 10 years' experience! There are guys in our group that have
only
been here 3 or 4 years!"

And the boss says:

"It's true that you have 10 years of experience. Unfortunately, it's only
one year, repeated 10 times."

</Humor>

Todd.

Todd Westerhoff
VP, Semiconductor Relations
Signal Integrity Software Inc. • www.sisoft.com
6 Clock Tower Place • Suite 250 • Maynard, MA 01754
(978) 461-0449 x124 • twesterh@xxxxxxxxxx

“I want to live like that”
-Sidewalk Prophets

-----Original Message-----
From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On
Behalf Of Bill Martin
Sent: Thursday, August 6, 2015 5:52 PM
To: billh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; doug@xxxxxxxxxx; jim.nadolny@xxxxxxxxxx;
buenoshun@xxxxxxxxx; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; 'Grasso, Charles'
<Charles.Grasso@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: commodity

But Bill, you did learn!

:)

-----Original Message-----
From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On
Behalf Of Bill Hargin (Nan Ya, USA)
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2015 4:14 PM
To: doug@xxxxxxxxxx; jim.nadolny@xxxxxxxxxx; buenoshun@xxxxxxxxx;
si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; 'Grasso, Charles'
Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: commodity

Man, the people with 3 years of experience are being awfully quiet!

So far, we have:
- If you're going to choose engineering, you've got to love it because it's
not as financially rewarding as some of the other "smart guy" professions.
- You need to stay nimble, always adding breadth and depth to your skill
set.
- It's "not fair." (Often true, actually.)
- If you're not running the show (and statistically, most people aren't),
your income grows with age and experience, and you become a walking target
for "cost saving" by people that are oftentimes half your intellect.
(We've
all seen this ...)

Age discrimination is illegal, but - when faced with cost-cutting pressure
-
the pointy-haired Dilbert boss looks at a spreadsheet of salaries, and
says,
"why don't I replace this big number with a little one?" And there you go
... 50% as good, but half the cost. And you'll be long gone by the time
they find out - or that there's even the honesty to admit the mistake.

What to do? I think the answer is different for different people, but it
doesn't hurt to become ready to become a consultant at a moment's notice,
or
to use those EE skills to team up to develop your own cool whirligig that
doesn't compete with your day job, and look for some VC money to build a
company around it. Easier said than done, of course ... Or, be willing to
move overseas if that's where your company's going with their hiring.
(Harder with kids/family involved, of course.)

I learned all of the above the hard way! :-)

Bill Hargin
Director of North American Sales and Marketing Nan Ya Copper-Clad Laminates
billh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ▪ 425-301-4425 ▪ Skype: bill.hargin



-----Original Message-----
From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On
Behalf Of Doug Smith
Sent: Thursday, August 6, 2015 1:11 PM
To: jim.nadolny@xxxxxxxxxx; buenoshun@xxxxxxxxx; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;
Grasso, Charles
Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: commodity

Hi Charles and the group,

And maybe slower as well. Not sure about others, but I can diagnose
problems
I have never seen before faster and learn new technical concepts faster at
68 than at any point in my past. I think engineering brains get better with
age, like wine (don't drink it though, just water, coconut water, and
orange
juice mostly).

Doug
http://emcesd.com

On Thu, 6 Aug 2015 19:15:27 +0000, "Grasso, Charles"
<Charles.Grasso@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Folks with 3-5 years' experience are cheap !!


Best Regards
Charles Grasso
Compliance Engineer
Echostar Communications
(w) 303-706-5467
(c) 303-204-2974
(t) 3032042974@xxxxxxxxx
(e) charles.grasso@xxxxxxxxxxxx
(e2) chasgrasso@xxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jim Nadolny
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2015 7:52 AM
To: buenoshun@xxxxxxxxx; si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [SI-LIST] Re: commodity

Hey Istvan - I would not call SI engineering a commodity but I would
say that it is maturing. At one point SI seemed to be the lone analog
engineer in a sea of digital dudes. Stuff would not work due to analog
effects so it was up to the analog guy to sort out transmission line
effects, maybe even model the analog aspects of the digital circuitry.
By default, this analog guy had to be pretty good to investigate,
troubleshoot, measure, model...and eventually they were an expert.

Universities rose to the challenge...a few anyway. The software tools
matured and became much more easy to use. The instrumentation matured.
I could have really used a 4 port VNA with AFR 20 years ago, but none
existed. A few companies have SI training programs and there are very
good consultants that can teach you what you need to know.
So now you have guys with 3-5 years of experience that are very
capable. They might struggle with stuff they have never seen before,
but that is true of anyone. The difference is that the expert might
have 3 ways of solving a problem and know 5 guys that have solved this
exact problem. They know what they don't know and know who and how to
get the problem solved. The guy with 3 years' experience might know of
one way to solve the problem and not realize that he is missing some
major pieces of the puzzle.

I think of it as evolution not commoditization.



-----Original Message-----
From: si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:si-list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Istvan Nagy
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2015 2:26 AM
To: si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [SI-LIST] commodity

Hi,

Did signal integrity engineering become a commodity?
Or is this trend about to slap someone in the face?

I thought it used to be a professor or scientist job for the best and
brightest, but nowadays all companies keep hiring people for their SI
teams in large quantities. Most job postings are like "fresh graduate
with 3yr experience", that's all that's required. The "expert" is not
part of the equation anymore?
Did it become that simple that any fresh graduate can do what 10 years
ago only the smartest people could do?
I got quotes from some service/contractor companies doing SI
simulations for us on their Ansoft tools (for a lot of money), but
"what to simulate" or "how to interpret the results" was either not
covered or was seriously misguided.
The same might have happened to "engineering" some years earlier. Is
it the same, or this time it is different?
Some threads here on si-list in recent years seem (to me) to reflect
that too.

Regards,
Istvan Nagy
(I am not really an SI-engineer, but a HW/product/board designer)


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