But, strong social skills combined with technical ability make for a deadly combination.
He has demonstrated superior contributions to expanding understanding of his field
Ah, so now the masks fall off. You just admitted that all you are after is holding up a facade..... With a bunch of smooth talking paper waivers... Instead of people that now what they are doing , but dont have a blue ribbon...
Whats the name of that company you work for ? Just so i can mark in my little black book under 'do not use. Not to be trusted'
I actually deliver a product.
Please explain how this is a facade.
What I call a facade is
saying, hey, look at all my experience assembling boards,
I'm an EE!
they assemble and test what someone else has engineered.
You have a choice to work with the system or against it.
Some of you have clearly decided to go against it.
There's nothing wrong with that, but it limits your options
more than you'd like to admit.
I actually deliver a product. Please explain how this is a facade. What I call a facade is saying, hey, look at all my experience assembling boards, I'm an EE! Techs are not EEs; they assemble and test what someone else has engineered.
No,my friend,those people are called "Assemblers"!
As I said earlier,outside the rather artificial constraints of a production environment,"Technicians" do a lot more than that,such as commissioning, high level maintenance, testing,troubleshooting & repair of complex Electronic systems.
Have you ever had to find a fault in a TV Studio Video Tape Recorder" or a Vision Mixing Unit,do a path loss determination for an OB link?
Repair a High Power Radio or TV Transmitter,or a Microwave Link?
Do "First-In" maintenance on Diesel Standby Plant?
OtherTechs repair & test Hearing Aids,repair & calibrate Audiometers, or repair University Scientific equipment.
Some indeed,design stuff,others yet, start successful businesses ,like Uncle Vernon!
You have a choice to work with the system or against it. Some of you have clearly decided to go against it. There's nothing wrong with that, but it limits your options (in pay, employment opportunities, and independance) more than you'd like to admit.Ah, so now the masks fall off. You just admitted that all you are after is holding up a facade..... With a bunch of smooth talking paper waivers... Instead of people that now what they are doing , but dont have a blue ribbon...
Whats the name of that company you work for ? Just so i can mark in my little black book under 'do not use. Not to be trusted'
Yes, in my country, techs assemble, test boards, and repair them. Testing and troubleshooting. Nothing more, nothing less. Most techs are given little, if any, independence in the workplace, although I commend those that do.
I think we are getting back to the same place we were earlier. The EE designs a product and the tech worries about assembly, test, troubleshooting, etc.
The EE designs a product and the tech worries about assembly, test, troubleshooting, etc.
Someone who claims to be an EE without holding the degree will never be hired after the potential employer runs a background check. In fact, it is outright misleading.
An EE holds, at minimum, a four year degree.
Design jobs are generally reserved for EEs.
Having worked with numerous clients around the country
I can say that I'm certainly not alone in saying that few companies employ techs in a design role.
I personally would never have a tech design a circuit
nor would most other employers.
I suspect the only reason a tech would be designing products is because of budget concerns,
which to my mind, reaks of mismanagement.
now, after all the heated namecalling a bit of real-life ...
Here is a scenario i have firsthand...
A group of people , let's call them a 'soldering guy' , a highly skilled troubleshooting person , someone who knows how to layout perfect boards (pass emc testing first time right , perfect signal integrity throughout the board. ) and another person who is a 'serious hobbyist' but has no 'official credentials'. So this group of 4 people , each with about 15 years+ of experience, and having cobbled up and delivered numerous perfectly working prototypes, get a new manager.
This manager is fresh out of school with an 8 year degree ( he had a MSEE and a PHD in electronics) ... is going to lead this team. And oh boy, does he take charge...
First meeting we have , with a big customer out of scandinavia , makes mobile phones you know... , anyway. first meeting we have there is a couple of questions on the reference PCB layout and why we place the decoupling capacitors in specific regions. The customer had some concerns since his board real estate is at a premium and wants some advice to see if we can optimize it a bit. In the same meeting are the 2 people that designed the silicon (both of them ALSO holding PHD's but with each about 20 years of hands on design experience under the belt. The Silicon people give us the numbers of total capacitance they need and designed for. The layout person explains his strategy and the people that built and tuned the prototype assembly explain how they tuned the capacitors to get the correct result.
Before any of us can react , mr freshly minted 'manager' blurts out. But ? you have a mulitlayer board . Why don't you just put parts on inner layers . that should solve your area concerns ..
Now you have to image these two big scandinavian blokes with a heavy accent belching out this guttural laugh .... and keep going at it for about a full minute.
There were a couple of other 'accidents' like that in the next few months.
Like the time we were tasked with cost-optimizing a design. there was some glue logic required and mr super-phd came up with a schematic requiring no less than 9 different ic's. Most of them half used... So the 'techies' 'below' went over it and came up with a cleaner solution and some clevernesslike building an Or gate out of a couple of leftover nand gates ( you know , like using a nand to build an inverter and inverting the inputs of another nand that way. you do the boolean math , i have posted this as an example question when i have to interview potential candidates for employment )
Anyway. mr super phd cannot be convinced that this will work. he has to model it in VHDL and run it through the simulator to double check. At which point i formulated a nice banner to put above the door of the lab: 'more TTL, less VHDL'
You know where all these people are today ? they all Quit , work for a different company. That group shut down and mr nitwit .. eh .. manager , now works in his parents restaurant as a server ...
So here is my question : you have a company. Who are you going to hire ? Mr blundering 'phd magna cum laude' that has no clue how a board is made and makes a total jackass of himself in front of the customer , or the person with 15 years expierence , multiple technical patents (we're not talking design patents foolery here... these are things that sit in mass production...) to his name, having given presentations at ISCC , IMEKO , TCEE and other leading international conventions, has been published in multiple leading circulars such as IEEE magazine , elseviers Journal of computer standards and interfaces , and others. But , no officalized ' blue ribbon' ?
Tough decision ?
I know which i want ... a 1 year 'real-life' degree is worth a ten year university degree..
If that country you live in , or company you work for cannot come to the same conclusion ... well ... it's in a very very sad state of affairs... and it deserves to go under... real fast.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. being able to recant the recipy after 8 years of study does not make you a good cook.... and if you make a fool of yourself by letting the milk boil over, burn your fingers on the hot whisk and setting the entire kitchen on fire on your first day , while making excuses like 'boiling milk' is for 'sous-chefs' and putting out fires is for firemen will get you very quickly where you need to be : on your behind , in the gutter while it's pouring rain.
The title 'engineer' should be something that is post-humeously, or post-retirement if you want to avoid only having dead engineers , awarded to people with a proven track record. Not after school. There you should get a nice certificate that you struggled through the paperwork. But then , for each one with 'known' and 'published' stuff there are so many that never get their 5 minutes of fame. Because they prefer to slave away in their little corner in the lab.
stuff to think about ....
it does you no good having a company with 25 phd's dreaming up the most fantasic stuff , but nobody to actually build it because they can't stand the superiority complex...
So , again : do not 'talk down' to the techs. You need them. Treat them with respect and they will respect you, each in his own field , with a lot of overlap. Pull them in on design meetings and listen to what they have to say. They can anticipate problems down the line that you could not even begine to imagine because you never go down that far ... In the end you will have a harmonious working environment that is very productive and delivers first class products.
and, most importantyl , do not seed topics like 'people without 'official credentials' sould not call themselves 'engineers'.
If it walks like a duck , quacks like a duck and looks like a duck , it is , for all intents and purposes a duck ! ( until you can prove otherwise. and no , killing it and throwing it on the barbeque to see if it tastes like duck is NOT an acceptable test ! )
At the end of the day, the only folks without the degree are those that aren't dedicated enough to the field to make it worth their while or simply aren't bright enough.
At the end of the day, the only folks without the degree are those that aren't dedicated enough to the field to make it worth their while or simply aren't bright enough.Really ? So that is your end conclusion ?
Education: There are all sorts of filtering devices to get rid of people who think independently, starting from the kindergarten and going all the way up to the university. People who don't adjust to the structure, who don't accept it and internalize, are likely to be weeded out along the way. If you finally make it to an elite institution, like the Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. (that depends on outside sources of support such as private wealth, big corporations with grants, and the government), you will go through a kind of socialization: They will teach you how to behave like a member of the upper classes, how to think the right thoughts, and so on. But, you will never be taught how to recognize the actual bits of information from a propaganda: "Your base has to belong to them."
Question: How many movie titles are you aware of, that were really meant to sharpen your critical thinking? Almost every movie title available, goes through the same pattern: Introducing the problem and serving the solution -either directly or indirectly: Bed time stories for little children... In the long run, you are actually being conditioned not to be searching for answers, but to wait for them to be served to you. You will need to try really hard to find a title that leaves the spectator or the reader with no answers provided, in order to start them thinking.
The rest of you could learn something from these two.
Seriously, vxp036000 is obviously a giant troll even if that isn't his intent. This thread just needs to end and stop stirring the pot for absolutely zero tangible gain.
put the time and effort into a degree.
You need to step outside your own little experience with this world. The "broken educational system" is indeed broken. Your employer will not given two craps that you personally put in a bunch of effort to get a degree. He expects you to work and be profitable. From this angle, the educational system IS broken from the perspective of most businesses. While you may graduate and be quite useful right off the bat (I understand your POV, I also had a huge amount of practical experience coming out of school), it's certainly not common for this to happen. Universities did deliver graduates with practical skills some time ago, and that has generally ceased to happen. There can be no debate about that.
I am as puzzled as you how this turned into a giant bitchfest between engineers and techs, because that has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of engineering graduates. The skills Dave and others have talked about are absolutely required knowledge of any well rounded engineer. And if you don't believe that to be the case, you are useful only in large companies that can afford to have a lot of niche people. Engineers are WIDELY employed in places where this isn't the case, and even in large companies you can easily find yourself in a situation where you don't have access to those people either easily or quickly. It just pays to know how to do this stuff.
Above all else you must realize that Dave et al aren't saying YOU, vxp036000, are a trash engineer who isn't worth a damn. They're saying the theoretical mean engineering graduate isn't nearly what he (and for sure she as they existed in far smaller numbers) used to be.
The manager you describe is one of the "low-hanging fruit" on the scale of folks with a PhD. And I would like to know specifically what his PhD was in. Someone with a PhD in IC design isn't going to be familiar with PCBs. Same for the PhD in signal processing. At least with my school, no one with a PhD in RF / mixed signal design could even fathom making the bone-headed decisions you described. Why? Because they've design, built, and characterized those same kinds of boards in school (any reputable school, that is). Yes, sometimes people do manage to get through school without learning anything practical circuits, but it is far from the norm. At the end of the day, the only folks without the degree are those that aren't dedicated enough to the field to make it worth their while or simply aren't bright enough. With most employers paying for up through a graduate degree, there is little reason not to get the paper.