[sdiy] Can your *really* teach "Engineering"?

[Paul Schreiber]

> Check out the letter from the former student.  How true.
> Now, if they had classes that taught how to do whatever the guy did when 
> he
> decided to totally switch careers and get where he is now I would take
> them...  How come they don't seem to teach that?
>
>  http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~mleach
>

a) if you are referring to "how to be a stock broker" that is pure luck. I 
know several right now, and as an engineer I make more than they do :)

b) this is a GREAT, very-well written letter about 'real world' EE stuff. 
And it sounds like this person was a very GOOD engineer: he thinks like one. 
And this is the main thing you learn how to do taking EE classes (and 
thermo, and statics & dynamics, and physics) is to not learn EE stuff, but 
to learn how to think for yourself, and to step back and analyze. Every 
instance but one (and that took *insight* first, the lack of a front-end 
filter on the RF receivers) had nothing to do with learning EE stuff. 
Rather, it was careful analysis, observation ('Hey, lot's of RF sloshing 
around this place!') that was the solution.

c) if you think that management (and *ESPECIALLY* marketing people, who are 
frat boys that never grew up) gives a rat's ass about EEs, guess again. To 
them, they are selling "stuff". They don't *know* what it is, and they 
really don't *care*. They are in it for the money and it's sort of a pinball 
game (from the best book on being an EE, "The Soul of a New Machine", every 
EE/DIYer needs to read this book) meaning if you do a good job, you get to 
do it again). At Tandy, we had Radio Shack people tell us that a computer 
was "no big deal, like our batteries are" and they demanded the same gross 
margin (~profit percentage) for a $6000 computer system as a $3.99 blank 
cassette tape. I vividly recall the "Compaq is not a threat" speech the day 
after Compaq placed a full-page ad in Wall Street Journal for the DeskPro 
486 (the cost of the ad was $11million). Their reason: Radio Shack hired 
Dataquest and Dataquest concluded Compaq's gross margin was 38% and "that 
cannot sustain their business and debt load for more than 14 months." We has 
63 points of gross margin (as a comparison, the average of all Fortune 500 
companies is probably 4%, Intel is like 17% and Micro$oft 22%).

So, they patted all the EE on our heads, gave us a coffee mug (leftovers 
from CES show) and said not to worry. "We have more stores than 7-11 or 
McDonalds!" they crowed.

Genius.

Paul S.