General > General Technical Chat
Electronics companies should stop killing themselves
fourfathom:
--- Quote from: floobydust on July 08, 2023, 02:46:58 am ---Look at Elon Musk- he sacks all those Twitter employess, they go over the Facebook and work on Threads.
Now he's all whaaaaa “willful” misappropriation of trade secrets, they stole IP! But you fired them dumbass. You don't own people, slave driver.
These guys don't realize that what's in an engineer's head walks out the door and they can't own the guy's brain. Even a big NDA can't take away your right to prosper I've found.
--- End quote ---
You sound like someone to whom I would never show a new product under nondisclosure.
I know nothing about the Twitter IP thing, but FWIW I do believe in the concept of IP. If you sign a (legal) contract then you are bound by the terms of that contract. IP does not include concepts and principals that are common knowledge in the field, but if you are working on or developing something that is proprietary and unique then your employer has every right to prevent you from taking that with you when you quit or are fired. You take your employers money, you should abide by the terms of your contract.
And yes, I have quit a few jobs where I was bound by nondisclosure or non-compete terms in my contract. It didn't mean I couldn't "prosper" as an engineer, I just couldn't use certain methods that had been developed by me or others at the previous company, or work for a direct competitor (for some specified duration.) And I knew this would be the case when I signed up.
I have also seen how IP agreements can be used unethically. I've been deposed in a couple of IP/noncompete cases, and it's not pretty and sometimes unfair (claiming common knowledge as IP, where a non-technical jury only knows what the lawyers and judge tells them.) Perhaps the Twitter case is one of those?
tggzzz:
--- Quote from: coppice on July 08, 2023, 12:01:48 am ---
--- Quote from: tggzzz on June 27, 2023, 10:27:36 pm ---Treez/ocset/faringdon appears to be an excellent exemplar of something described by Isaac Asimov in 1957. His novella "Profession" is still worth speedreading.
https://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html
The points in that resonated with me when I was a schoolkid, and significantly and positively benefited my career and outlook on life.
--- End quote ---
Are you sure you read that story? You seem to keep referencing it in contexts where it doesn't fit. The whole point of that story is the vast majority of people are incapable of doing anything really interesting, and the small number of truly creative are hard to recognise. There is nothing the vast majority of people can do about their lot in life. Only the small number of truly creative people can do anything about their lot in life, and really need to, as they can so easily be screwed by the clueless.
--- End quote ---
Incorrect.
For a start, the protagonists did recognise the truly creative George - because they were specifically looking for that. George didn't recognise it in himself, but that is a completely different issue.
More importantly, the "whole point", ahem, is that there is a difference between those whose
* aspirations/abilities are limited to working on specific examples of existing equipment,
* aspirations/abilities transcend that to being able to apply general principles to new conditionsIn other words, the difference between production/military training and engineering.
The key section is about 70% of the way through
--- Quote ---... said Trevelyan. “... They've been saying for weeks that the Beeman machine would be used. All the wise money was on Beeman machines. The damned Education tapes they ran through me were for Henslers and who uses Henslers?
...
“Don’t be a fool. They’ll tell me my brain was built for Henslers. Go argue. Everything went wrong. I was the only one who had to send out for a piece of equipment. Notice that?”
...
If it had been a Hensler, I would have known I was right. How could I match up then? The top winner was a San Franciscan. So were three of the next four. And the fifth guy was from Los Angeles. They get big-city Educational tapes. The best available. Beeman spectrographs and all. How do I compete with them? I came all the way out here just to get a chance at a Novian-sponsored Olympics in my classification and I might just as well have stayed home. I knew it, I tell you, and that settles it. Novia isn’t the only chunk of rock in space. Of all the damned –”
...
George said, “If you knew in advance that the Beemans were going to be used, couldn’t you have studied up on them?”
“They weren’t in my tapes, I tell you.”
“You could have read – books.”
...
--- End quote ---
Faringdon resembles Trevelyan, and seems to be incapable of thinking of being a George.
tggzzz:
--- Quote from: coppice on July 08, 2023, 12:04:53 am ---When sifting through piles of CVs it amazes me how many people are deeply impressed by CVs showing a long string of jobs. When you point out this means the candidate offers poor stability they have to agree, but with great reluctance.
--- End quote ---
Do people really think that? Twits.
When I started it was a common belief that you could reasonably leave a job within 1 month or after 2 years. In between was an orange flag worth investigating.
Nowadays we have the wretched "gig economy" and "hire-and-fire".
It is reasonable for consultants to have had 40 clients, but not employees to have had 40 employers.
tggzzz:
--- Quote from: fourfathom on July 08, 2023, 01:01:31 am ---Since the statute of limitations has expired (this was around 2001) I am posting it here.
--- End quote ---
I didn't realise there is a statute of limitations on libel. The UK has appallingly liberal libel laws, sometimes leading to iniquitous SLAPPs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation
Otherwise I suspect you are correct.
hans:
--- Quote from: Faringdon on June 27, 2023, 09:38:52 pm ---Hi Guys,
Please could we have an exerpt on “general analog hardware electronics and SMPS” companies stopping damaging themselves?
The owners of such companies are always reluctant to employ new engineers, lest those engineers then run off after seeing the company’s schems and then use them at other companies or competitors….of course, this is total utter nonsense.
This , as you know, is absolute nonsense, having people see the schems , then leave, and work at a competitor, matters not one jot……pretty much all general analog/SMPS companies use the same circuit theory, and any engineer who can understand the schems in one company, could understand them in all others….so its pointless to worry about engineers joining and then leaving.
I have worked at over 40 different electronics co’s, but that doesn’t mean I could compete with any of them on the basis of copying their schems….for one thing….I WOULD DEFFO NOT COPY THEIR SCHEMS……..i would always take a customer spec on face value and design fresh for it, using the widely known analog theories that are spewed all over the internet anyways. As you know, If you copy a schem, then that schem may not have been optimised for its purpose, etc etc.
And why does anyone need to copy a schem anyway?…….it would be like nicking your companies screw drivers so you could use them at a competitor company……why bother?…just use the screw drivers at the next company….they are the same.
--- End quote ---
2 points:
- The big players surely copy each other schematics. It's sometimes easier to reverse engineer a competitor product than it is to design and validate your own. And what is even "optimized"? A PSU can be tuned for various parameters, such as noise, pulse response, accuracy, etc. You can bet that if youi copy the PSU design of a LED bulb from your competitor, that they will have exactly the same stake as you have. It's need to be reliable, stable, and cheap. That last part, BOM cost, is more dependant on your own logistics than it is on any technical reason. So perhaps that is where some of the work goes into. Doesn't sound terribly exciting from a designers point of view though.
- PSUs are a commodity. You don't need to hire someone from UK , EU, or US to find someone that can do it. There are many people now in (still-) low-wage countries that are graduating BSc/MSc in EE and can do a similarily fine job. We mandate CE et al. for PSUs to go into products. Ignore the crap you can order via the side channels directly on Aliexpress. Honestly, if something becomes such a big commodity, then that job in the overly expensive west is becoming more difficult to maintain. It needs to add value somewhere.
Now don't get me wrong. Talking in a native language to your customer can be that "added value". There is a huge industry for Wordpress website companies that will put together a website for your local hairdresser that also wants to sell hair products via an e-commerce portal. They will go to a local company that speaks their local language, understands the local payment and shipping procedures, and if necessary the hairdresser can call a local number during local business hours to file a support ticket.
But purely for design, we must embrace the fact that engineering is competing on an international market. Point of sale isn't.
--- Quote ---So please, can we have a representation, to the industrial bodies, that general electronics companies stop damaging themselves by not cycling enough engineers through their company? And stop fretting over engineers coming in, and then leaving. It does zero damage, and because each engineer brings and drops off his/her own spectrum of knowledge, it is actually more beneficial....... The more the number of electronics engineers who have been cycled through any company, the greater the benefit to that company...the worst electronics companies that you go to, are always those that have only ever employed 1 or 2 electronics engineers....almost inevitably their schems are filled with mistakes, and their failure_return bins are full to overflowing. Thier production failure bins are brimming full.
--- End quote ---
No way. Businesses need freedom to operate.
In addition, what's bad with engineers going and leaving? It's probably more to do with their individual career paths. Jumping ships is a classic to negiotate a better salary or secondary conditions. Then there may be no way up in a small business. People may get bored with designing PSUs for a dozen years. They may want to get into more managerial jobs, and if those seats are taken, they will also leave.
Now that shouldn't take away any credit we should give to design guru's that are a literal library of knowledge and can make a difference in a design or validation process. If those gurus start leaving, then it signals a bigger issue at that workplace.
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