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Is there a divide between board level electronics engineering and ASIC design?
TheUnnamedNewbie:
I have a mostly academic and high R&D background in the ASIC/millimeter wave world. I've noticed a few times that there seems to be a huge divide between people who do board level design (which most people seem to think of when they hear "electrical engineering") and ASIC/chip design. It almost feels like two entirely different sectors.
Is this just me living in my R&D bubble, or do people closer to products also notice this? Any opinions/ideas?
tszaboo:
Yes there is. I generally don't accept job applications for the available PCB design jobs from people who only have experience with ASIC or what they call microelectronics. If they want to make a shift in their career, they should include a cover letter explaining.
Otherwise the experience is not applicable, just like building bridges wouldn't be. In fact it makes the applicant less desirable, because if they are a senior engineer with a decade of experience, they will probably ask for salary that's in line with that, without the experience.
coppercone2:
sounds like you can get a leg up if you buy a parameter tester and learn the die probing techniques. I think there are tons of asterisks you need to deal with too related to various process deficiencies, I think depending on how they make the chip dictates a whole world of crazy DRC you need to obey that do not make sense. Like regional customs.
tooki:
--- Quote from: karpouzi9 on April 09, 2023, 04:53:21 pm ---This thread seems to have sunk beneath the tide. Any new ideas for increasing overlap?
Or is it better for the populations of [board-level] and [asic-level] EEs to stay separated so as to reduce their perceived interchangeability and increase wages within each group? :-//
--- End quote ---
Why would you want to increase overlap? Specialization is unavoidable given the sheer complexity of the things we do. It’s impossible for an individual to be an expert in everything. I’d rather leave chip design to chip experts and board-level engineering to board-level experts, rather than having everyone do both of them poorly.
My professional background (that I have pivoted away from, just finishing my electronics technician training this semester) comes from the IT world, specifically usability/UX. And in UX, there’s the constant demand from employers for what we call “UX unicorns”, i.e. someone who not only does usability research and user interface design, but also art design and graphics production, and both front-end and back-end coding. And while I won’t say that such people never exist, ones that are actually good at all of those things are as rare as hen’s teeth. Consequently, businesses that aren’t big enough to need a team of people to do those things are better advised to hire an agency for their projects. Similarly, I don’t think anny electrical engineers are going to be able to be experts at all aspects of electronics engineering, from system level all the way down to silicon design. Both in UX and EE, you want everyone to know enough about the entire field to be able to communicate competently with experts in the other subdisciplines, but only be an expert in one or two themselves. I mean, when I was in UX, I found it very useful to have a solid understanding of graphic design, typography, and programming so that I could talk to graphic designers and programmers competently, but I wouldn’t want to do their jobs. Similarly, I don’t think most board-level EEs want to deal with silicon design. And probably vice versa!
redkitedesign:
I've been involved in both. Originally PCB designer, evolved into some small ( <200 hrs) firmware/VHDL designs, and then my employer wanted me to do ASIC verifications.
Well, that was a completely different job. And while I apparently did a good enough job (my boss wanted me to do more ASIC work, and less PCB work) I hated it.
So yeah, there is a divide, as there should be as it are two completely different fields of play. It really is carpentry versus bricklaying. And while there are plenty of tradesmen who can do a decent job in both, they are really different!
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