Electronics Forum / Electronics / December 2004

"Al Borowski"

**  In your case -   take up garbage collecting.

.............   Phil

Thanks, but I still have a semester(one unit) left. But it help to be
looking early.

You know why uni graduates are taught to wash their hands? It's because they
still don't know not to piss on them.

;<)

Peter

True, I can say from what I've done of my uni course so far, is that very
little design is actually taught. We learn very general skills and basic
concepts, and we are left on our own to hone these skills further. Some
take it as a sign that they don't need to learn any more and in a way
they are right, they have all they need to know to pass the exam, but they
are sorely mistaken that their skill are sufficient to be of any use out
there in the world.

Just a slightly off topic question, I am a prolific tinker of
microcontrollers and fpga/cpld, and have stated so in my resume. I have
designed and built many devices, now does it help if I bring in a
physical example of what I've done to my next interview?

"Mike Harding"   =   grade A pommy bastard

**  While mirror gazing   -  no doubt.

**  Not unreasonable when you realise none of the uni lecturers have any
damn idea themselves.

 (  Those who can do   .........    )

**  The notion the "engineers" must have academic degrees is a relatively
modern one  -  based more on trying to elevate engineering to the same fake
*professional* status level as Law and Medicine than anything real.

But the scam never worked  -  ost engineers are still treated like
expendable employees and paid like bus drivers.

**  Most engineering types are introverts - so they will become
(reluctantly ) team players but not any sort of leaders.

**  Sure  -  so a pompous, control freak arsehole like you can lord it all
over the poor sods.

**  Only as the leader, motivator and with the power to hire and fire.

............    Phil

Ok, I actually agree with some of what you say, but not all. Let me explain.

I was talking about averages, that is the average uni student is smarter
than the average tafe student. I dont think thats anything outlandish, just
a normal fact I think mr and mrs joe public would agree with.

Also I understand what you are saying to some extent about hiring less
knowledgeable people for a better fit. Thats pretty common these days,
especially in australia, the economics are such that it can be disastrous to
get the wrong person, and the typical australian electronics company doesnt
have the money to absorb much of that. In my present role, when I was
appointed one of the selection committee actually said they were appointing
for exactly that reason.

But let me tell you why I wouldn't hire a tafe grad, and why its about
merit. I find these days there are far more uni grads than real jobs around.
Firstly, the clueless ones exist at both tafe and uni. I really dont care if
he's clueless and can solder because the one I'm looking for can anyway. I
always ask what his hobbies at school were, and when he started electronics,
always. Then I never try to pick his brains, I simply ask for him to give me
a short chat about those experiences before he ever went to uni. That chat
has more to do about me summing him up than anything else in an interview.

The very fact that he went to uni instead of tafe is an automatic bonus as
far as I am concerned, as if I have 2 bright young chaps infront of me and
one went to uni and one went to tafe, there is no contest in my eyes.

Now let me tell you something about leading edge. I seriously doubt if you
were ever a leading edge design engineer if you never went to uni. I dont
care who you are or what anyone told you. There is simply not enough leading
edge happening to be able to claim that. A very old teacher when I was at
technical college, before going to uni, told me once, and I have never
forgot it, that when you persue the leading edge, "you become a scientist, a
mathematician and a physicist". And I've never seen anyone from tafe ever do
that.

Lastly let me tell you a story. 3 years ago I was at a uni open day in
brisbane checking out the latest projects at the uni and I met a young chap
there was displaying a voice processor he had made as part of his final year
project. He was a nice fellow, although very quiet. 6 months later I got a
resume from him as he was still looking for a job. In the meantime he had
been working part time in one of his professors labs (maybe paid parttime
but I think he used to live in that lab). I didnt have a fulltime job for
him but I did have a project that needed doing and was able to scrounge the
money to offer him something for 6 months. I needed an instrument to examine
pulses coming out of a piece of equipment we were working on at the time. He
came in, designed a small circuit for a few weeks on a bit of a board. I let
him use whatever micro he wanted. He used a hc11, although we were using
pics at the time. Then he sat down with a maths book for ages, came up with
a closed form solution to an integral transform and coded it onto the board
in C++. Now that kid was smart. No tafe kid on this earth could have done
that.

Much to my dissappointment I was unable to renew his funding and he remained
out of work for a while. I got an email a few months later to say he had
received an offer from a firm in SanDiego. He getting paid now as an
engineer as he deserves and probably will never return.

Likewise I have been lucky enough to have had a couple of PhD's around for
very short periods. Whilst they are not all good, I would never presume to
bag them. I've tried to read some of their published materiel on occassion
and it was beyond me. It seems fashionable in some techy circles to bag
them, but at least where I am I wont tollerate it. I can make judgements
about whether I think their work will earn us any money, but its not my
place to judge them, I've not been in their shoes.

Thats what merit is, reward for hard work. I really feel sorry for grads
these days, when I was in technical college very few of the students were
self funded (most were cadets etc.) these days it appears they have to study
hard, fund themselves and come out into a dead market. And then listen to
people bag them. The only advise I could give many of them is to buy a plane
ticket to get the experience they need.

Nick

You are in denial, see an occupational psychologist right away.

Eg Ask the electrician what the difference between a diff amp and an op amp
is,
mathematically .

You didnt do their job, so dont you criticise. They didnt want to tell you
how useless you are,
so they didnt say much, so you say they are stupid. they could have proved
you to be a ignorant
'throw the components on the board and move them until they work' designer,
but I guess you didnt listen to any comment, so you never found out. you
just believe you are good and they are dumb.

Engineers  look after the mathematics  and general design.

If the parts delivered have some unspecificied behaviour, it may be that you
new about that behaviour, buts what you are there for. If they didnt need a
pleb to repair simple faults like hot spots or discharge from cirucit to
case, and other things that may not be well predicted from a design,  then
they would just have a robot build the circuit straight from design. You
would be redundant.

There's design and then there's engineering designing. You fail to mention
that.
You are the ignorant one , not the graduates.

No it doesnt.

You didnt offer to employ them toget that experience either.
You judge them as useless without giving them the experience they would need
before you could judge them , so shame on you !

And how is ANYONE going to get that if you dont give them a start ?

You have strange idea of what university is.

You may think that, but you dont know the falacy of 'better the devil you
know'.

You just get along with the tafe grads, because they dont challenge you.

The uni grads were doing totally different stuff that is beyond you.
Believe me, its beyond you. No point even starting to explain , given what
you have said so far.

Dont beat the 'graduates have problems' crap constantly. Its no use hiding
it in this 'he's going to cause' something.

Engineers are normally quite able to decide what is in their arena and what
isnt, and if you are talking about stuff that isnt in their job description,
they stay right away from it.

One trouble with the pleb management is that they tend to  constantly  let
fires grow they redirect all staff efforts into fighting that one fire.
because its a rush and its every man on on deck, its an innefficient. people
are running to get supplies instead of waiting for deliveries. they are
asking questions and questions instead of just waiting for a design to be
printed and sets of instructions to be delivered. they are  doing things by
hand because the tool to do it is three days away.

The grad engineer is the PIONEERING engineer.

The TAFE designer, like you, is the 'well this book has a circuit so I am
copying it', the circuit is dated
1965.

well good, you are great at 1965 circuits,
you totally fail to understand university and  university graduates roles.