EEVblab #2 - Are Electronics Hobbyists Useless?

[EEVblog]

Some people have said Dave is asking too much for a hobbyist/student employee to have basic design, layout, construction, debugging, and firmware skills.
Naturally Dave thinks that's bullshit, and that is in fact the *definition* of a good hobbyist.
Job description: http://www.eevblog.com/files/EEVblogJobDescription.pdf
(Since modified to highlight I'm not after professional level skills, if that wasn't already obvious)

[tautech]

Yep. they're out there Dave, come across the them from time to time, hope you can find one and hang on to them.
But will they want "worked for Dave" on their CV?   

[ncoonrod14]

Certainly that's not too much to ask. On the other hand though, I have many friends who are 4th year EE students who I wouldn't trust with the probes of a multimeter if you told them where to put 'em. I also know many people with the skills you mentioned and would love such an opportunity whether it payed or not.

[TeslaPunk]

I would not have qualified in my youth as my boards were wirewrapped. I spent many nights experimenting trying to figure out how manufacturers got those solder traces to stick to a PCB. It never occurred to me that underneath there was copper was clad to the board and etched away. With the wealth of info available to kids these days, thanks to people like Dave, there really is no excuse for not having said skills except they are not "serious" hobbyists.

[AG6QR]

I think you're being reasonable.  I am a professional software guy, but dabble in electronics hardware strictly as a hobby, with no intention of making money at it ever.  I would meet your qualifications, except that I haven't made a PCB yet.  All my projects have been one-off prototypes strictly for myself.  I've built them using a variety of techniques, including at least one of virtually every kind of prototyping board, plus manhattan style and ugly construction.

But you're right, PCB fabrication prices are getting cheaper.  I should have a board made sometime soon.

I'm not applying, because I'm on the wrong continent and I'm already employed.

I guess if you don't get anyone who fully meets your requirements, you may have to relax things a bit, but I wouldn't go relaxing the requirements just yet...

[Gibleh]

I signed up to the EEVBlog forums to write this reply. I have been watching the blog videos for about 18 months now and really enjoy them but never felt the need to post in the forums.

With "hobbyists" being useless, its not limited to hobbyists. I hold a cert. 3 in telecommunication electronics and I don't have have the skills you are asking for. I will admit that my current employment does NOT use any of the skills that I learnt as part of the cert 3. I am willing to admit that I would be more useless at these skill than some, if not most, hobbyists that watch your Vblog.

But in having said that, I do design and make "BASIC" circuits at home in my spare time. Mostly things that I require or find interesting. I have never designed a PCB but rather just use protoboards.
I would class myself as a hobbyist but i feel somewhat deflated after this video. I realize that this was not your intention (I hope)...

Just my 2c worth
Regards,
Gibleh

[amc184]

The description looks reasonable to me.  My only concern would be for a student trying to fit these hours in with full time study.  Might be better for someone studying part time.

[nixfu]

In my own case.  I was an EE student but switched to CompSci my SENIOR year.   It was the mid 80's and I simply decided that I liked all the new exciting computer stuff more.  I don't regret that decision, the 80s, 90s, and first decade of the 2000's were exciting times in IT and provided a very interesting career.

So, while I am not an EE, I ended up an IT professional for the last 20 years, but it was my original interest, and it and ham radio have made it my hobby.  I don't remember everything from school, and lots of it is not all that up to day anyway probably, but it certainly provided a very good 'base' for my hobby electronics experimentation.  In my hobby level electronics I am pretty sure I would fit your skills myself and I have never worked a single day as an EE or with electronics professionally, its all been an IT career for me.

For many people computer stuff is a hobby, for me at the skill level I have now, its almost too easy to do nearly anything IT related and it has become just a "job" that I don't want to do at home as well as work.  So ham radio and electronics provide that same mental stimulation and challenge that computers used to provide me when I was young.

I do believe your best bet to find someone that would fit WOULD be either a hobbyist or maybe a retired EE who used to be technical but at some point got into mgmt, sales, consulting etc, but still has a love of electronics and would enjoy doing it again.

Frankly, I think you should have "Advanced Amateur Radio License" as a job requirement.

If you want a group of non-EE professionals who have serious electronics skills, hang around ham radio people. 

[djcrunkmix]

Dave, you're not asking too much. It is just that you're competing for a person who can be better paid and wouldn't want to work as a lab assistant. These skillsets are there, but you will need to compensate them accordingly. It is not a question about your requirements can be considered a basic skillset - it is the pressure of the market that will determine whether you will find someone or not.

Hell, the reality is that (atleast in the US colleges) majority engineers who graduate with a Bachelors in EE do not have the "basic" skillset you have listed. This has been my experience in a IV league college in America. Not kidding.

I truly hope you find someone who is passionate and willing to work for a lower wage and in a fun environment.

Cheers and my two cents. I apologize if it was harsh.

[miguelvp]

Dave, you're not asking too much. It is just that you're competing for a person who can be better paid and wouldn't want to work as a lab assistant. These skillsets are there, but you will need to compensate them accordingly. It is not a question about your requirements can be considered a basic skillset - it is the pressure of the market that will determine whether you will find someone or not.

Hell, the reality is that (atleast in the US colleges) majority engineers who graduate with a Bachelors in EE do not have the "basic" skillset you have listed. This has been my experience in a IV league college in America. Not kidding.

I truly hope you find someone who is passionate and willing to work for a lower wage and in a fun environment.

Cheers and my two cents. I apologize if it was harsh.

How much did the on Campus Student Lab Assistants get paid? I doubt it was more than minimum wage, at least that's what it was in my times. And since you have to help students you better have the skill sets that he mentions, otherwise you'll be a pretty bad Lab Assistant.

[pickle9000]

I think all a person needs is a hunger for electronics. Dave listed a few things but a hobbyist can also work work a drill and make a case, label it and so on. 40 years ago it was a big deal to have a VOM, fixit shops repairing TV's and such where common place you cold call them hobbyists.

Today there is so much more available, microcontrollers, parts that you can actually buy, datasheets to download. Instructions on how to program. Everything is there.

If you hear of a new (neat) chip, board whatever, do you buy it and play with it? If the answer is yes you are a hobbyist in my book you are doing it for the sheer enjoyment.

Dave is by definition looking for a person that enjoys electronics.   

[IanB]

This has been my experience in a IV league college in America.

Are the IV league colleges on life support? 

[rs20]

I haven't watched the video yet, but all I can say is this: the passionate hobbyist types at my university were better at greenfield design and prototyping before they started undergraduate than the there-for-the-money types at the end of undergraduate. All you learn at university is how to sit exams, and theoretical concepts that the bad students can't connect to FR-4 (and time management, and ethics, actually useful things to be fair, but the ability to prepare a prototype? bahahaha). If I was in Dave's position, I would want the former, and that's exactly what he's going for, so 

[miguelvp]

About Stutent Position Job pay at say MIT:

http://www.eecs.mit.edu/resources/student-hourly-employment

Code: [Select]

HOURLY RATES Freshman/Sophomore Junior/Senior Graduate
Course/Lab Assistant $15.00 $15.00 $15.00
Tutoring Program $11.00 $12.00 $13.00
Problem Grader $10.00 $11.00 $12.00
General Helper $9.75 $9.75 $9.75

I bet TAs are not that far away from this pay rates as well.

Edit: as for Internships MIT requires a one time charge of $30 per position offered. They sure are greedy

[SeanB]

I started off destroying stuff, and eventually got some to work again after I had it apart. Now I fix stuff. Yes the current stuff is amazing, and so much easier than before, but it is regarded as basic. There is little training and most are not interested, but those who are have a wealth of good education available for essentially the time that they devote to it.

[george graves]

I don't think anyone said that some "hobbyists" don't have the skills you listed.  You missed the point.

As a side note, I don't think you're going to find that skill set in a student.  I can't speak for Universities in Australia, but in the States, it's common for a EE grad to have very little hands on experience.  I see a whole lot of student's senior projects made with stuff cobbled together from Sparkfun - all hooked up with jumper wires.

And if you do find a student, then perhaps they could do a summer internship, but a full course load and working up to 30 hours a week?  That's slim pickings.  But....Maybe if they are required to an internship as part of their studies, then that would work.  But that's going to be even harder to find.  Why don't you go to someone of the local universities and ask? Surely they would need to 'vet you before they can sign off on you being part of their education.  They may even underwrite the whole thing.  (Also, they usually have job boards you can post on)  - that would be where I would start.

Anyways, there some helpful suggestions for you.

So that leaves you with an advanced "hobbyist".  If you can find someone with the skill set you listed, doesn't need money, then more power to you I guess.  (ya cheap bastard!)

Maybe the job title should be "Wanted:  Nerd that lives with his parents, doesn't smell too much, won't take up my time, and willing to work for peanuts." 

[han]

Is it possible to hire undergraduate student there? and not full time 30 Hour a week.
I have plenty of side job when i'm in college (at that time experience is more important then money).

[Psi]

I think the term hobbyist is a bit generic. It refers to anyone who has a hobby and doesn't make assumptions about it being a passing interest or a full on obsession.

A "electronics hobbyist" is anyone who plays around with electronics in their spare time.

What Dave wants is an Elite Hacker Hobbyist

A 360deg view of a persons electronics lab/hobby area is the quickest way to classify a hobbyist. 

[Dr. Frank]

Dave,

you have clearly defined the requirements, so it's absolutely not the question, whether these are correct, or not.
These are simply your necessities for that person.

I understand which skills you have in mind, because I started the same way, being a teen..

At the age of maybe 12 I started soldering simple electronics, (after playing around with KOSMOS Radioman for years already), always had these yellow / brown fingers from etching with Fe3Cl, layouts at first directly rubbed on PCB, later on transparent foil and transferred to UV photo resist mask.. and learning each and every aspect of analogue and digital electronics on my own later on.
This evolutionary learning was very common at that time, i.e. 40 years ago, but that faded away later, and maybe now is popular again, as can be observed here in this forum.

Therefore I hope, that you will find such a (younger) person, who would also have to have a charitable attitude.

Because if someone already has all these skills, nowadays the people also know, what it's worth.. and you did not even specify the hourly wage, you old CHEAPSKATE!   

Frank

[GEuser]

LOL good one dave , one has a valid point .

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hobby

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hobbyist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby

And my invention > "A Hobby is what one does when there is nothing better to do"

The other day I noticed a mention of a "Advanced Hobbyist" in the forums , I wonder if one gets that label from the weetbix packets and also if they are free .

It is automatically assumed (by some or most) that a hobbyist is either a basic person with basic intelligence or basic? skills and one needs a accreditation to surpass those hobbyist types , I could list here just how many in the past can be categorised as hobbyists that became world? renowned so called experts in their fields and shed light on many and many unknown things , then became famous and only then became accredited with a label of some sort by the elite dumb bastards ,

but I'm not going to list them as its all only a hobby for me so I do not have too , nor do I care too nor could I be bothered too either .

A hobbyist is just a Hobby no more no less imo of course ...

ps> this post could be much longer yet again who gives a .

[s_lannan]

I knew more about "electronics" before I enrolled in Uni...
Now I know a lot about control theory and math...

[SL4P]

I reckon some of the blame goes to use of tech language* and jargon.
Dave's struggling at the best of times, but it's so easy to toss in phrases like PCB design, SMPS repair, and other 'umbrella' phrases - if you are so familiar with the repercussions and drill-dowen to the necessities of each.

Specific skills may exist, but need to be tuned to a specific project requirements as the newbie learns you and where you've been.

I admit the laundry list was pretty complete, but expecting a young/cheap person with all those skills reedy to go - able to apply them at a semi-pro level is a big ask.

The advent of Chinese consumer electronics and the ever-diminishing school science streams have also shrunk the pool of techno-literate (or inclined) teens over the last ten years.

I suspect Dave may need two 'less skilled' bods at 0.5T to reach all the corners.  Or a late twenties full-time paid colleague to achieve all the ticks.

I agree with everything Dave mentions in the video, but he's reflecting on ten years ago... imagine thews of us looking back 30-40 years!!!

*Microsoft are particularly prolific at redefining tech terms into muddy ambiguous, vague references to their original meaning.

[AndyC_772]

I'd be interested to know what the typical profile of a young electronics enthusiast actually is. I suspect it's changed out of all recognition since I was in that category myself.

Wind the clock back to the late '80s, I was a geek, or nerd, before the world had really worked out what those categories were. I was at school, 8-bit computers were the rule, and a few 16 or 32 bit machines were around (if you could afford them, which I couldn't).

By current standards, those machines were incredibly accessible when it came to programming them. They'd boot up straight into a BASIC interpreter; giving them commands to execute didn't require another computer and a debug cable, you'd just start typing. Some had assemblers built in as well, and I remember proudly stating on my university application that I was fluent in both 6502 and ARM code.

Peer around at the back and there was inevitably some kind of expansion interface, with chip selects, address and data buses there for the attachment of whatever you could come up with - provided you could get hold of a schematic or data book, of course. Very few of my peers actually chose to build hardware (it cost precious pocket money, after all), but we all became reasonably accomplished programmers. The ability to bypass the OS and poke hardware registers directly was both a necessary skill and a badge of honour.

The same age group now has smart phones and tablets, which are about as far removed from a Spectrum or BBC Micro as it's possible to get in terms of how the user interacts with it, and how accessible the underlying hardware is. For this, I really feel sorry for them.

Some other skills - PCB layout, for example - are ones which I'd never have come across before I graduated and went into industry. Routing boards was one of my first jobs, but I had to be taught how to do it by a senior engineer.

Thinking of the skills I had back then, and how I gained them, I can't help but feel today's EE students are at a tremendous disadvantage. They can't be upgrading their phones with custom hardware, nor even learning much by cracking them open and looking inside.

How do they learn?

[pickle9000]

They start learning like most young people do ripping stuff apart to see how it works. Then repairs (cleaning contacts on the tv remote), and so on. 5 seconds on google and your good.

http://www.letsmakerobots.com/

[iampoor]

I don't think anyone said that some "hobbyists" don't have the skills you listed.  You missed the point.

As a side note, I don't think you're going to find that skill set in a student.  I can't speak for Universities in Australia, but in the States, it's common for a EE grad to have very little hands on experience.  I see a whole lot of student's senior projects made with stuff cobbled together from Sparkfun - all hooked up with jumper wires.

And if you do find a student, then perhaps they could do a summer internship, but a full course load and working up to 30 hours a week?  That's slim pickings.  But....Maybe if they are required to an internship as part of their studies, then that would work.  But that's going to be even harder to find.  Why don't you go to someone of the local universities and ask? Surely they would need to 'vet you before they can sign off on you being part of their education.  They may even underwrite the whole thing.  (Also, they usually have job boards you can post on)  - that would be where I would start.

Anyways, there some helpful suggestions for you.

So that leaves you with an advanced "hobbyist".  If you can find someone with the skill set you listed, doesn't need money, then more power to you I guess.  (ya cheap bastard!)

Maybe the job title should be "Wanted:  Nerd that lives with his parents, doesn't smell too much, won't take up my time, and willing to work for peanuts." 

Doesnt this encompass the large majority of people who get degrees regardless of the field? Might also explain why many people have degrees in fields that they "cant find a job in". Usually because they are not qualified!

PS: Im saying this as a 21 year old who acquired most of the skills listed in Daves posting in 6 months without formal education. How? Persistence, Dedication, and the ability to admit when I was wrong...

Its not rocket science. You (Students) either catch up with the world, or you should just start working at McyD's!