[sdiy] Who Needs a Degree?

[karl dalen]

Splendid! Exactly my words if i had written it and thats also the 
very reason i'm trying to get my sorry arse out of the EE business.
It's simply not worth it anymore. As far as i'm concerned EE are
kind of dead end when management constantly compares everything
with China.

The life of contract engineer are indeed different.
I'm also pretty crap at EE to! :)

Reg
KD

>>Tom Farrand <mbedtom at gmail.com>:

> Does having a degree make that much
> difference?  I don't know because
> I cannot experience the path not taken.  I do know
> that as a contract
> engineer, one is only as good as the last project you
> worked on.  I've
> done a few projects that scared the hell out of me due to
> cost
> considerations.  Is my $10,000 first article going to
> work or did I
> design a brick?  How many hours will I spend on the
> phone with a UL
> engineer discussing the various contradictions in
> 60601-1?  Will the
> FDA accept my FMEA submittal?  You must be a seasoned
> designer,
> wordsmith, diplomat, customer service representative,
> mind-reader,
> salesman, draftsman, materials engineer, buyer, technical
> writer,
> packaging engineer, PCB layout expert, and
> bookkeeper.  Oh, and you
> must be self-directed, self-reliant, frugal, and know what
> is and is
> not important to the customer ... who speaks little
> English.  We buy
> custom prototype parts from China ... how's your Mandarin?
> 
> The debug phase of a project is very exciting.  In not
> more than 3
> hours after pulling the prototype PCB from the antistatic
> bag, the
> boss wants to know how it is going.  In a recent
> response I proudly
> held up the prototype and showed him the charred crater
> where an
> inductor used to live.  Donning a big smile I added
> that the inductor
> glowed like the sun for a few seconds until the substrate
> caught fire.
>  Thankfully he got the hint and left me alone to fix the
> problems,
> lick my wounds and pop the stack on my ego.  Contract
> engineering is a
> whole other world.  And I just love staring into a
> microscope to swap
> out fifteen 0201 resistors for a different value ... on
> fifteen
> fucking prototypes!.  Re-seat that 360 ball-BGA
> part?  Sure, no
> problem.  I live for shit like that.
> 
> I miss the "good old days" where a project would go from
> inception to
> Production in 10-18 months.  Some dweeb from marketing
> would call a
> meeting and gesture what he wanted and then my group would
> make it
> happen.  (Marketing does not believe in writing things
> down.  That is
> a secretary's job.  If it's "technical" the engineer
> will sub for the
> secretary.)  Things were always busy but the buyers
> would handle
> getting us the samples we needed.  Receiving and
> Shipping would handle
> getting stuff in and out.  Drafting would take yellow
> pad sketches and
> turn them into works of art.  Technical writers would
> get my
> requirements document and begin to write user manuals, and
> so on.
> Engineers were allowed to focus on the job of engineering.
> 
> 
> My point is, what demands are placed on a person, often
> determines how
> others will assess their performance.  When there are
> many people to
> support the engineering function it is much easier to be
> Superman.
> When you are pretty much the the only dog pulling the sled,
> the trip
> is a bitch and you don't look very good when it's
> over.  Your reward
> is taking shit for not billing out more than 80 hours to
> projects in
> the last two weeks.  What was that 5.5 hours of time
> on "Office"?
> 
> Degree or no degree?  The answer is irrelevant. 
> What you do with what
> you've learned is what matters.  How it got there ...
> who cares?
> 
> Peace.
> Tom Farrand