State of electronics down here?

[GK]

Almost exactly 14 years ago to the day, disenchanted with my place of employment, I formally informed management that I wasn't to return in the new year. This was only weeks after acquiring a mortgage and I hadn't yet even started looking for employment elsewhere. Prior to that I had completed a 4 year apprenticeship in the technical laboratories (physics and chemistry research) of a university. We designed and maintained custom laboratory equipment.

The TAFE and diploma-qualified staff performing these engineering tasks were ostensibly called "Technical Officers". Back in the day it was a unique opportunity to earn your "trade" in such an environment. I worked on everything from fusion experiments, lasers, spectroscopy to hydrographical equipment. Suffice to say I could throw my 2002 job in and not worry about walking straight into another. Back then "Technical Officers" with an engineering background and experience were far less plentiful than those with simply maintenance or electronics service industry experience. With my skill set, and, I dunno, lets say umm, "institutional pedigree", I knew that I was pretty much guaranteed any non-degreed technical officer role that I applied for, and sure enough I had secured my new job, to begin in the new year, before the year was out. (again in a scientific/engineering environment). Not long after starting I teased out of my colleagues the fact that, against the other applicants, there really wasn't any serious competition - as was the case with my 2002 employment. I don't particularly give a fig if that sounds arrogant as that was the reality at the time.

But times have changed. I've been looking for alternative employment for a while now and really, there is farking nothing out there. The scientific institutions that used to employ Technical Officers in an engineering capacity have for the most part wholly evaporated. I can't remember the last time I have seen a job advert posted in the paper by the CSIRO. No one seems to know what a "Technical officer" is anymore, let alone advertise for the services of one. Universities have for the most part discarded the once plentiful internal technical services that were once the backbone of development for their research facilities. The university I did my 4 year stint in had a policy of not keeping apprentices once their time was up, but after I left they did not employ another, due to the culture of "change" and funding cuts. The apprentice scheme had ran, AFAIK, pretty much from the universities inception. When I started there we had plentiful technical staff, but before the end I saw half of the staff and knowledge base move on or retire with no replacement.

Somewhat tangentially related, in 1993 when I was a year 11 student I did one week of work experience in the service department of Radio Rentals on Main North Road (metro Adelaide), which at the time employed several dozen service personnel and was billed (truthfully or not) as the largest service department in the southern hemisphere. By mere coincidence one of my current colleges is a 20+ year veteran of that place and he can't inform me of any prior workmate now known to be thriving in some alternative electronics-related occupation. The RR service department still exists, but only, I am informed, with a "technical" staff of 3 or 4 and they mostly do stuff like downloading new firmware into smart TV's and occasionally swapping out dud hard drives from program recorders. 

Prior to my apprenticeship I worked as an assembler for a year and a bit of radio frequency broadcast equipment and got to know a few broadcast technicians. I recall at the time considering that carer path before landing the scientific/engineering orientated role. We as a society are still broadcasting crap 24/7/365 but who even knows what a Broadcast Technician is nowadays? Where have they all gone?

The only currently reliable trainer of Electronic Technicians in my state of SA is the armed forces (predominantly army and navy) - so you can do your mandatory six years there and you will exit with a trade qualification useful for wiping your rear end. Civilian roles for the traditional Technical Officer or electronics technician are virtually non-existent. Even degree-qualified electronic engineering jobs few and far between. In the rare instance that something is advertised, with a 90% probability, it is some very highly specialized role and typically on short-term contract. For example a defense contractor has a six month project and requires the services of an FPGA/ASIC designer with no less than 4 years of immediately prior industry experience. Good luck to the typical jock fresh out of uni with his/her EE degree.

So just what do diploma-qualified and industry/institution experienced electronic technical officers and technicians do for a living these days? There sure as hell aren't any serious long-term prospects here in South Australia anymore as far as I can see. I am occasionally asked for mentoring advice in getting started in a career in electronics by means of attaining some relevant tertiary qualification. In all sincerity I can only advise to either consider the degree path with potential relocation or forget about electronics altogether. The habitat of Technicians and Technical Officers doesn't exist by a long shot as it did only ten years ago.

[GK]

Oh yeah, an other thing. There used to be an Australian institution specifically for electronics technicians, which you were permitted to join if you were trade qualified. Electronic Australia magazine back in my high school days used to publish servicing advice provided by them (known/established faults for popular brands of consumer electronic products ((mostly TV's)) and the relevant fixes). Anyone remember them? Their acronym as best as I can remember it was something like TEITA or TIETA. I presume that they have gone the way of service and repair industry or do they still exist in some capacity?
 

[rstofer]

Side issue:  I certainly look forward to seeing your updated site when you post details about your GK-1 project.  At the moment, I have a rather simplistic analog computer

http://www.analogmuseum.org/english/homebrew/vogel/

With just 2 integrators, it can still solve interesting equations of motion as well as coupled DEs like the Predator-Prey problem.  I used it the other day to generate sin(x), cos(x) in an attempt to tie electronics, analog computing, oscilloscope use (and the Analog Discovery) to my grandson's Pre-Calculus course as well as a brief discussion we had on the derivative and integral of the two functions.  A perfect fit!

I need an upgraded model before he gets to the Differential Equations course (January 2018?).  Or I can just use Matlab with Simulink but it just isn't the same as real hardware...

[GK]

Being in the States you might be able to track down a used Comdyna GP-6:

http://www.comdyna.com/

Dunno how often they pop up on ebay, or how current/relevant that homepage is, which claims that the GP-10 is still being produced - though probably would be beyond a typical hobbyist budget I would imagine.   

[DTJ]

Oh yeah, an other thing. There used to be an Australian institution specifically for electronics technicians, which you were permitted to join if you were trade qualified. Electronic Australia magazine back in my high school days used to publish servicing advice provided by them (known/established faults for popular brands of consumer electronic products ((mostly TV's)) and the relevant fixes). Anyone remember them? Their acronym as best as I can remember it was something like TEITA or TIETA. I presume that they have gone the way of service and repair industry or do they still exist in some capacity?
 

I remember them. It was TETIA.    "The Electronic Technician's Institute of Australia (TETIA)."

From http://www.lyanenterprises.com/news.htm
"2010
Unfortunately we have seen the dissolution of both the Television Electronics Services Association (TESA) & The Electronic Technician's Institute of Australia (TETIA).
TETIA, founded in 1956, provided professional technical support for electronics technicians and engineers in each State. TESA N.S.W. (the last remaining branch) which was formed in 1962, and supports electronics businesses involved in repair, rentals, sales or the supply of electronic parts, has decided to cease operating at the end of 2009
While both organisations have ceased, we abide by the principals held by them & will continue to do so."



There's not much about them on the web that I can find. Maybe this organisation has replaced TETIA to some degree:
http://www.ceta.org.au/index.html

[vk6zgo]

Oh yeah, an other thing. There used to be an Australian institution specifically for electronics technicians, which you were permitted to join if you were trade qualified. Electronic Australia magazine back in my high school days used to publish servicing advice provided by them (known/established faults for popular brands of consumer electronic products ((mostly TV's)) and the relevant fixes). Anyone remember them? Their acronym as best as I can remember it was something like TEITA or TIETA. I presume that they have gone the way of service and repair industry or do they still exist in some capacity?
 

Yeah,that was TETIA. (The Electronic Technician's Institute of Australia).
I remember my first brush with semiconductors---TETIA ran a course at the WIA meeting rooms using  Philips material.
You didn't have to be a member of either organisation to attend.
That said,TETIA  had application forms & so on.

When you started your apprenticeship,the "change process" was already well on its way:-

Telecom Aust started handing out Redundancies to TOs & Techs  in 1987/88.
It was a clever move--the redundancies came out of your Super.
They worked out how much the fund would be worth in a set number of years & offered that.
The Super fund still had all the investments,so it was a calculated guess that they would be worth more than the payouts.

Those who missed out were overloaded with work,so many ,like me,just pulled the plug--big saving!

I went to TVW7,staying there till 1999,got a small redundancy payout.

Jobs were already thin on the ground,& it was quite a while till I got a job at Australian Hearing fixing Hearing Aids,various Hearing test equipment.

Another jobless gap,then I joined Skilled Engineering.
They had no category of Electronics Tech,so I went on the books as an Instrument Technician.
Through Skilled,I landed a position at the University of WA fixing Electronic equipment in the Chemistry Dept.

They hadn't had a permanent Tech for a couple of years,so the workshop was full of  faulty stuff.
Stayed there for a while---they were going to return to having a permanent Tech,but the suits squashed that!

No job for a while,then Skilled found me a gig reprogramming dishwashers---around a thousand of the sods!

Another gap,then a spot at a mob that built vehicle simulators---rotten job,they really just wanted assemblers.

After that a gap,then a job (not through Skilled) with the Radiowave Therapy Clinic,looking after their transmitters & ancillary equipment.
There were two of us to start with,then just me for a long time.
The Chinese Transmitters we bought were faulty from new,& needed a lot of fixing & tuning.
Sliding chip capacitors across a PCB whilst watching the swept responses of RF Amps was something I thought I'd left behind 25 years before!

I told the Boss I wanted to retire,& we advertised.

We got dozens of applications from young blokes who had BEs,& better from China & locally,but they universally had no knowledge of RF,or any "hands on" experience.

We left it for a while,then tried again--this time we found a bloke who  could do the job!

[DTJ]

Hey vk6zgo, I sent you a PM.

[StillTrying]

It's exactly the same up here.

[rstofer]

Being in the States you might be able to track down a used Comdyna GP-6:

http://www.comdyna.com/

Dunno how often they pop up on ebay, or how current/relevant that homepage is, which claims that the GP-10 is still being produced - though probably would be beyond a typical hobbyist budget I would imagine.

I have seen the Comdyna GP-6 on eBay several times and for long periods of time.  They go for around $1000.  The thing is, I have delusions that I want on the order of a dozen amplifiers.  Whether the amplifier is an integrator, summer or inverter is to be determined by patching.  Then I want to think about using a uC to control the timing and initialization.  And on and on...

One of these days...

[Someone]

Universities have for the most part discarded the once plentiful internal technical services that were once the backbone of development for their research facilities.

Commercialisation has pushed a focus on expenditure and trying to manage research like a business, its been rough. Technical jobs of all types in universities are being pushed onto much lower paid graduate (even undergraduate) students with the view it will improve their learning by having them learn to do all the jobs, specialist lab technicians who did analyses or operated instruments are being pushed out along with the technical trades to support them and untrained staff are expected to replace many of those functions on a revolving door basis. We see these forums getting a steady stream of researchers trying to get the job done with free crowd sourcing:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/please-help-i-need-a-good-data-logging-dmm!-1-5kv-range!/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/nanoammeter-circuit/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/fast-switch-with-picosecond-falltime/
Its particularly funny when they already have a budget for achieving world class performance, which won't even cover the parts required.

The promises were that instrumentation would be maintained on service contracts and renewed frequently, and specialist tasks would be contracted out so the universities wouldn't need to maintain technical trades on staff. You might be lucky making contacts and trying to setup as a consulting business but once they see commercial quotes for the work they used to get for "free" I'm not sure how many will proceed. Some people dropped in the downsizing found jobs with the distributors/manufacturers of the instruments as field techs but thats not comparable to the lifestyle or satisfaction of a broader role on site.

What all the bean counters missed in their "business cases" was the time lost waiting for external entities to repair equipment, unless you maintain a large volume of redundancy in the instruments then failures cause lost time. If a team of a dozen or more people are held up while waiting for a repair the losses add up quickly, and the pressure to meet deadlines for funding and prestige are ever growing. I've sat around at jobs for weeks at a time getting paid to entertain myself and then made the position pay by dealing with failures quickly and providing technical advice, its a win for everyone and if you can get enough research & development work to fill up the schedule then the business case was strong. But with the lack of serviceable parts or documentation on modern instruments this sort of role is going to die out, sad but true.

[Someone]

I was going to send you some helpful pointers and suggestions but you've blocked PMs, so much for extending a helping hand....

[GK]

Ahh, TETIA; I didn't get the acronym right so google didn't get me any hits. A bunch of not very young looking diehards there in CETA. Wagner Electronic Services (WES) must have downsized a huge amount in the past fifteen years.

Late last year Telstra were advertising for trainee communication technicians. Their techs nowadays are trained entirely in house - no tertiary institutions involved. Their job advert mentioned the secondary schooling prerequisites but made absolutely no mention of any potential desirability of electrical/electronic trade qualification and experience - which is my guess would actually count against an applicant. As far as I went along with the on-line application process (just out of curiosity) I got the impression that they want blank canvases to mould into brand-loyal minions of minimal value to any other potential future employer/competitor. So these days the school leavers with SACE under their belt can start their "technical" career at Telstra and not even get any kind of formal tertiary training or qualification out of it.

[GK]

Universities have for the most part discarded the once plentiful internal technical services that were once the backbone of development for their research facilities.

Commercialisation has pushed a focus on expenditure and trying to manage research like a business, its been rough. Technical jobs of all types in universities are being pushed onto much lower paid graduate (even undergraduate) students with the view it will improve their learning by having them learn to do all the jobs, specialist lab technicians who did analyses or operated instruments are being pushed out along with the technical trades to support them and untrained staff are expected to replace many of those functions on a revolving door basis. We see these forums getting a steady stream of researchers trying to get the job done with free crowd sourcing:

Probably a bit out of the capabilities of the average student interested in atomic physics to construct their own fusion reactor along with all the custom support and ancillary equipment though. That was probably the most historically ambitions project completed in-house by the workshops I eventually wound up working in. By the time I started that experiment was still run, but only by an emeritus professor who would rock up a few days a week. The whole shebang (like half a floor of equipment) was sold off to the university of Houston in IIRC the year 2000. I was involved in getting it up to scratch operationally for demonstration to the purchasing professor. We pulled down a buggered driver stage for one of the 450kW RF generators and after I screwed it back together the grateful prof from Texas invited me over for the re-commissioning, though my supervisor put the kibosh on that, declaring that too much of a responsibility for an apprentice.
This was Flinders Uni. In addition to the electronics workshops (which became workshop during my term with a merger really intended as the initiation of downsizing) they had a huge mechanical workshop which could machine/fabricate just about anything. Mills, lathes, sheet metal machinery, a whole metal plating and anodizing section, welding booths, paint booths, blah, blah, blah. I don't know for sure what the current state of operation is, but none of the staff which I knew to be left are currently listed on Flinders on-line staff directory. It is my guess that it would be mostly defunct now.

 

[GK]

I was going to send you some helpful pointers and suggestions but you've blocked PMs, so much for extending a helping hand....

OK, I'll enable PMs.

[vk6zgo]

Ahh, TETIA; I didn't get the acronym right so google didn't get me any hits. A bunch of not very young looking diehards there in CETA. Wagner Electronic Services (WES) must have downsized a huge amount in the past fifteen years.

Late last year Telstra were advertising for trainee communication technicians. Their techs nowadays are trained entirely in house - no tertiary institutions involved. Their job advert mentioned the secondary schooling prerequisites but made absolutely no mention of any potential desirability of electrical/electronic trade qualification and experience - which is my guess would actually count against an applicant. As far as I went along with the on-line application process (just out of curiosity) I got the impression that they want blank canvases to mould into brand-loyal minions of minimal value to any other potential future employer/competitor. So these days the school leavers with SACE under their belt can start their "technical" career at Telstra and not even get any kind of formal tertiary training or qualification out of it.

They aren't a Tech's bootlace! 

More like half-baked  "Lineys".

Interestingly,back in the day,PMG/Telecom Aust  did all their Tech training "in -house" but their Training schools were the equal of any  Tech College in the country,---better than some!!
And,of course,they got a solid Theoretical grounding.

Only after the TO structure came in,did they start to outsource the  Diploma courses to TAFE.

DCA were the same,& OTC.
Those organisations supplied a lot of Techs to the rest of the Electronics Industry.

"Technical Education" nowadays is basically providing "core skills" on a "monkey see.monkey do" basis.

[GK]

There always was to some degree a lack of formalism in what constitutes the required skill set and qualification of a technician. For my term at the Uni I was officially listed on the books as a "Radio Trades Apprentice" - an antiquated title dating back to the medieval days when working in electronics meant working in radio. On the resultant parchment I'm an accredited/certified "Engineering Tradesperson (Electrical/Electronic)".




 

[VK3DRB]

There are a lot fewer electronics jobs around now than in the early 90's. Part of this is the government outsourcing work overseas thanks to our federal politicians and their overpaid advisers. They do not care if jobs go offshore.  There are no votes in it for our lawyer-bred politicians. The government outsources programming work to India. Unless it affects their own pockets or property portfolios, the politicians are simply not interested.

Secondly, electronics is too cheap. I would like to see heavy import duties on consumer electronics. A 48 inch TV costs $400. If it breaks it is thrown out. If that TV attracted a huge import duty that made it cost $2,000, then the TV would be worthy of fixing if it broke, provoking rekindling of the manufacturing and repair industries. I think the last TV manufacturer in this country was in Sydney (National Panansonic) in the early 1980's. Plus the taxes can be used to repay some of the government's mounting debt.

I had no idea TETIA was disbanded.

[GK]

A 48 inch TV costs $400. If it breaks it is thrown out. If that TV attracted a huge import duty that made it cost $2,000....t

Not sure that is the answer. All that kind of protectionism seems to have leaded to is a monopolized/corrupt local industry producing sub-standard product. It's sad to see the auto manufacturing industry closing up down here, but I am glad that we're not all driving around in Trabants either. Protectionism and tariffs won't return us to the good old "baby boomer" days which were a technologically and culturally vastly different era. And the good old days weren't all that golden either. Recall when a typical member of the proletariat could blow three or four months equivalent wages on notoriously-dodgy, locally-produced Philips or AWA TV, but once out of its short warranty could no longer afford to keep it serviced?
     
These days people throw away their faulty consumer goods not necessarily because they aren't economically repairable (which they quite often still are), but because it's widely considered not trendy or the mark of a lower culture to hang onto stuff that is no longer current or "in vogue". You know, your neighbors might think less of you if your TV is more than 10 years old and your comparably vapid mates might prefer to watch the footy at someone else's place.

When I bought my place in 2002 there were several secondhand furniture warehouses within a 20 minute drive. They've since all close shop. Why would anyone want to furnish a new place with sturdy secondhand, but slightly imperfect furniture that was originally built to last when you can get new shiny but disposable crap from IKEA that's, like, brand new and totally modern. The IKEA catalogues that appear annually in my letterbox go straight into the recycling bin and I wouldn't go there in a fit (not even for their horse-meat meatballs), just out of principle. F$#k IKEA, I say.

[VK3DRB]

A 48 inch TV costs $400. If it breaks it is thrown out. If that TV attracted a huge import duty that made it cost $2,000....t

     
...You know, your neighbors might think less of you if your TV is more than 10 years old and your comparably vapid mates might prefer to watch the footy at someone else's place.

My TV is more than 10 years old. I don't give a rats arse what anyone thinks of me or my old TV. My neighbours are decent and we get on well. People from the shallow culture of saving face and judging people by what stuff they have are not welcome here, so I don't have any problems.

[rstofer]

A 48 inch TV costs $400. If it breaks it is thrown out. If that TV attracted a huge import duty that made it cost $2,000....t

     
These days people throw away their faulty consumer goods not necessarily because they aren't economically repairable (which they quite often still are)///

Given modern technology inside TVs and SMD packaging, where do you find someone qualified to repair such a thing?  If you did find someone, how much would it cost?  Anybody qualified to work on modern electronics will probably not be working in the service industry.  And if they do, I couldn't afford them...

It was easy when TVs had vacuum tubes, the most likely failure point, and easy-to-diagnose components.  I could actually buy the schematics for just about every make and model of just about anything and the schematics had waveforms and voltages.  That doesn't happen today!  So, you have this product with a 256 pin BGA packaged FPGA.  How are you going to troubleshoot it when you can even get to the traces on a 6 layer PCB?

Import tariffs aren't the answer because for every tariff imposed by one country, there are retaliatory tariffs imposed by other countries.  In the US, or maybe just in California, we pay a disposal fee at the time of sale.  In theory, this should cover the cost of recycling/disposal although I confess to never looking into it.  I just see the fee on my register receipts.

[GK]

I can immediately think of three places in metro Adelaide that service TVs. The service industry isn't extinct, it's just a shadow of its former self. There is currently an ad for a local experienced TV serviceman on seek.com. I can imagine that there may be plenty of common faults that render a modern TV inoperable that can be easily repaired without having to reflow a BGA - psu faults, physically damaged I/O port arrays that can be repaired in minutes with a daughter board swap, etc. A typical TV purchase might be north of $1k. A few hours labour won't cost more than a replacement.

[VK3DRB]

A 48 inch TV costs $400. If it breaks it is thrown out. If that TV attracted a huge import duty that made it cost $2,000....t

     
These days people throw away their faulty consumer goods not necessarily because they aren't economically repairable (which they quite often still are)///

Given modern technology inside TVs and SMD packaging, where do you find someone qualified to repair such a thing?  If you did find someone, how much would it cost?  Anybody qualified to work on modern electronics will probably not be working in the service industry.  And if they do, I couldn't afford them...

It was easy when TVs had vacuum tubes, the most likely failure point, and easy-to-diagnose components.  I could actually buy the schematics for just about every make and model of just about anything and the schematics had waveforms and voltages.  That doesn't happen today!  So, you have this product with a 256 pin BGA packaged FPGA.  How are you going to troubleshoot it when you can even get to the traces on a 6 layer PCB?

Basic SMD repair equipment is not too expensive, but it does take a steady hand and a lot of patience. But you cannot repair everything unfortunately. BGA is more difficult of course as you say. Sometimes replacing a chip requires subsequent firmware programming, and you need technical information that is never released by a manufacturer. Years ago, there were some fabulous circuit diagrams around. These days, you are lucky to get a block diagram. Even Tandy used to supply a circuit diagram with everything, even their $5 AM radios.

The average consumer does not care about technical support. Most of them don't even know what a schematic diagram is. Therein lies the problem. No demand. But I suspect if a car manufacturer made a car designed to be serviced by a DIY home handyman rather than a specialised mechanic, it would be a winner. The car would have:

Open source support.
A dashboard where every module can be removed with a screwdriver in minutes.
Schematic diagrams to all circuits. PCB's laid out to facilitate repair if necessary.
Firmware source code fully downloadable and programmable via a serial port (bootloaders on the micros), with debug features.
An engine bay where you could get to everything with great ease.
No features like heated seats.
Parts as generic as possible and off-the-shelf at reasonable prices.
No special tools required.
Low price, but well built.

It would sell like hotcakes to down-to-earth DIY people. We used to have cars where to did not need to be a rocket scientist to fix. 1970's Holden, Falcons, and Valiants are good examples.

[rob.manderson]

We used to have cars where to did not need to be a rocket scientist to fix. 1970's Holden, Falcons, and Valiants are good examples.

Remember the good old days when, if you dropped a spanner at the top of the engine compartment, you had a better than 50% chance of it hitting the ground?