Engineers can't solder.

[GK]

So the other day I had to babysit a final year engineering student for a few hours - can't solder.

It's not the lack at that stage of that skill alone that is a bit  per se, but everything that necessarily follows.

Another one a while back needed me to explain how to wire a switch to assert an I/O pin on one of those Ardeweeno things, or whatever they're called.

What would have Bob Pease or Jim Williams been without a soldering iron?

[bd139]

Sounds about right.

Then again there's a curse there because as a foolish EE grad who could solder, the first thing I ended up doing was getting chucked on production for "lifecycle experience".

[SiliconWizard]

But they can make an LED blink on some Arduino board in like 2 minutes. Things change.
Who needs a soldering iron when you can just stack up boards like a Lego game?

[taydin]

Many engineering students seem to have the attitude that "soldering is for technicians, I'm an ENGINEER, I don't have to know soldering, I'll just let the techs do it"

Loser attitude I think.

[bd139]

Many engineering students seem to have the attitude that "soldering is for technicians, I'm an ENGINEER, I don't have to know soldering, I'll just let the techs do it"

Loser attitude I think.

Totally agree.

[Zbig]

Can't solder it might very well be, let's just hope they don't draw conclusions based of the samples of two

[free_electron]

But they can make an LED blink on some Arduino board in like 2 minutes. Things change.
Who needs a soldering iron when you can just stack up boards like a Lego game?

using a 1 gigabyte development system, 20k of runtime libraries.

[SiliconWizard]

Many engineering students seem to have the attitude that "soldering is for technicians, I'm an ENGINEER, I don't have to know soldering, I'll just let the techs do it"

This attitude is nothing new amongst engineering students in general, but I think the EEs used to be the least affected by this attitude...

[MagicSmoker]

How in the world do these "engineers" prototype their own designs?


<that's a rhetorical question - they don't>

[Buriedcode]

That is shocking, but remember, it only takes what, maybe a couple of hours practice to learn how to solder? 

Did you show him/her how to solder properly?  It's all well and good scoffing at a student because they can't do something, but what did you do to change that?

[GregDunn]

Many engineering students seem to have the attitude that "soldering is for technicians, I'm an ENGINEER, I don't have to know soldering, I'll just let the techs do it"

Loser attitude I think.

It's no worse than the attitude some techs have that "I don't need to know theory, I have practical experience."  Huh.  I wonder why this circuit doesn't work, it's assembled perfectly. 

Both kinds of extremism are very undesirable in electronics.

[001]

I understend You
Check another tread https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/digital-generation-like-new-medieval-era/

[Gyro]

... But sadly that's not a new problem, a lot of new graduates have lacked basic soldering skills for years. It's not a new 'Medieval' problem.

[Warhawk]

So the other day I had to babysit a final year engineering student for a few hours - can't solder.

It's not the lack at that stage of that skill alone that is a bit  per se, but everything that necessarily follows.

Another one a while back needed me to explain how to wire a switch to assert an I/O pin on one of those Ardeweeno things, or whatever they're called.

What would have Bob Pease or Jim Williams been without a soldering iron?

I started my professional career about ten years ago. Only engineers, I have witnessed soldering properly, were hobbyists or lab managers. I worked at Siemens R&D and now I am with TI in Germany. I had to buy even my own soldering tips, tweezers, wire cutters and fluxes because the Germans simply don't solder below 450°C (true for TI, true for Siemens) and tweezers look like tiger tanks in Soviet Russia in 1945. I've been to dozen labs all around the world and it was always the same story. Recently, a PhD colleague has asked me "hey, what is flux for?".

But hey, why to use a pre-heat station or change the tip for bigger, when you can kick the tiny 0.4mm weller tip to 450°C  and fuck it up in an hour including the PCB?

9/10 EEs I've met had no idea about soldering, how it works, what flux does and why they should care. But I don't wonder anymore. My manager told me once "I did not hire you for soldering". I guess he hired me for powerpoints.

Bop Pease, Bob Widlar (my child heroes) would be just average engineers in today's corporations. HR would not tolerate Widlar's special personality and the communications department would not tolerate Pease's messy desk. There's no place for individualism today. Political correctness is more important. Just check Infineon's or Siemens's Linekdin profiles.

</rant> ; but feel better now 

[SiliconWizard]

HR would not tolerate Widlar's special personality and the communications department would not tolerate Peases's messy desk. There's no place for individualism today. Political correctness is more important. Just check Infineon's or Siemens's Linekdin profiles.

That's for sure. We prefer employees that are easily replaceable these days, that's why average, but well formatted engineers are preferred. Makes organizations more "flexible" and easier to manage.
That's also very reassuring for top managers, because this way they have a well established process on how to hire and manage people. When your company is made of "special" personalities and particularly gifted people, that can add tremendous value, but most companies usually don't have a damn clue how this all happened, so they don't know how to reproduce it.

Conversely, hiring people that all have the same profile and have them do the exact same things all the time is very simple, and completely reproducible.

[taydin]

That is shocking, but remember, it only takes what, maybe a couple of hours practice to learn how to solder? 

Did you show him/her how to solder properly?  It's all well and good scoffing at a student because they can't do something, but what did you do to change that?

The EE student should have done whatever's necessary to learn soldering. Heck, even the minimal amount of passion towards your future profession should have had you building/experimenting with circuits, and wanting to learn soldering. Just waiting all those years for a teacher to come along and teach you soldering isn't the way to go.

[bd139]

Edit: I removed this post as I was dissatisfied with my rant. I will think some more and try again 

[ebastler]

How in the world do these "engineers" prototype their own designs?

SPICE. 

[rstofer]

Bop Pease, Bob Widlar (my child heroes) would be just average engineers in today's corporations. HR would not tolerate Widlar's special personality and the communications department would not tolerate Pease's messy desk. There's no place for individualism today. Political correctness is more important. Just check Infineon's or Siemens's Linekdin profiles.

I think highly productive employees can still be a bit off the rails.  What?  An employer is going to let a Bob Widlar type employee go to their competitors?  Nonsense!  They will build a special work area/lab and shove pizza under the door.  There are too few geniuses and far too many employers.  I wouldn't be surprised if they just rented a separate 'Special Projects' building.  No snowflakes allowed!

Remember, in Silicon Valley you change jobs by driving in the wrong driveway in the morning.

Soldering would be a 'soft skill'.  It won't be taught in college and is probably just expected by employers.  But it won't be a deal breaker one way or the other.  Employers are paying engineers for hard science and math.  They can find hundreds of people to do the grunt work.

I don't expect my Structural Engineers to know how to weld.  I pay them to size the beams, not glue them together.

[rstofer]

How in the world do these "engineers" prototype their own designs?


<that's a rhetorical question - they don't>

The company teams up a $15/hr technician with a $50/hr engineer to handle the grunt work.  They can buy 3 techs for the cost of an engineer.  Do you really think the economics favor an engineer doing his own prototyping?  I would be surprised if a company would even allow such a thing.

[SiliconWizard]

How in the world do these "engineers" prototype their own designs?

SPICE. 

You wish... not even. I've met very few young EEs that even knew how to properly use Spice-based simulators. Or cared.

[Rerouter]

It takes about 2 and a half days of training hours on average spread over a few weeks to get someone to a level where they can solder smd 0805 components to a decent standard. If you try and rush it in one big hit then they forget most of it.

Technician here. And have trained a lot of apprentices on how to solder. There used to be a part of my trade course called equiptment diagnosis and repair. Where they would essentially grab some of the equiptment the first years blew up. And for a day run through finding the fault and repairing it. (Most if it was fuses) but they dropped that part about 6 years ago.

[james_s]

It's not so much that I'd expect an engineer to do a lot of soldering on the job, but I'd definitely have less respect for one that didn't even know how. I'd be very hesitant to hire an engineer that doesn't do engineering related things as a hobby. It would tell me that they're only in it for the paycheck and not really passionate about it.

My dad is a ME and spent most of his career designing boilers and related equipment for paper mills and power plants. He didn't spend his weekend building boilers at home but he does know how to weld, machine metal, carpentry, plumbing, etc and I'm the same way. Most of my interests revolve around engineering and I'm always baffled when I encounter an engineer who isn't like that. Even if one doesn't regularly need to get their hands dirty, I expect them to know how.

[taydin]

The company teams up a $15/hr technician with a $50/hr engineer to handle the grunt work.  They can buy 3 techs for the cost of an engineer.  Do you really think the economics favor an engineer doing his own prototyping?  I would be surprised if a company would even allow such a thing.

When working on a prototype, you might need to make many changes in a short period of time. Also, you might be still working after hours to finish something. Relying on a tech for each change, or for him to stick around after hours would be horribly inefficient. It's much better to just do it yourself.

[taydin]

And yes, a mechanical engineer isn't expected to do any welds, and especially not ones that are critical, but just going by theory won't make you a good ME. You need to be able to look at a weld and know if it was done well or not, and you need some hands on experience in order to catch a weldor bullshitting you about what can be done and what cannot be done