Thoughts on Starting a New Career
I recently completed a 16-year stint at an engineering company. I started there fresh out of college in June 1996. This June I just started a new career as an applications engineer in the area of motor drives at Microchip Technology in Chandler, Arizona. The experience I had in switching jobs was a very enlightening one for me, and has given me an opportunity to reflect on my career. I want to share some of that reflection with you.
Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this and other blogs...
Organizational Reliability
I was cleaning out my email inbox at work today and ran across something I had forwarded on to a friend a few years ago, which I thought I would share, for those of you who are working in the engineering world.
Below is a handout I got about 10 years ago from Doug Field, an executive now at Apple. Doug is a superb and inspiring leader, whom I had the opportunity to work with briefly.
The following is a bit of a diversion from the topics I usually post, but is some good food for thought for...
Getting smacked by the long tail of poor design habits
In the 80’s I did a fair amount of consulting and enjoyed it greatly.
I would come in, hear what it was the person hiring me wanted; meet with the people that I needed to work with and proceed to toss together a design, parts list, and program. Sometimes I would work with them to get a board into production. I knew my chips and code and could make all kinds of amazing toys.
One of my biggest repeat customers eventually offered a good salary at the same time that my wife was feeling...
Your Career Archive
Clive Maxfield and Adam Taylor recently published a series of blog posts about how to get and keep an engineering job, discussing preparation in high school through early career stages. I've just started a new job, and wanted to add some information on a particular aspect of changing jobs, the employment background check.
Over the past 10 years, I've changed jobs several times. Three of those jobs, including the most recent two, have required background checks as part of...
What I Learned From Crashing and Burning in Grad School
Have you ever felt so consumed by something that it started to crowd other parts of your life? So obsessed with success in a particular area that you could hardly think about anything else? I found myself in exactly that spot in 2018 when I first started graduate school; I wanted to succeed so badly that I worked myself to the bone and I let even my marriage and my health suffer in service to it. This state of being is, believe it or not, NOT conducive to success, in neither the long-term nor the short-term. But it took two authors and one pivotal book for me to understand that, to see the pit I had dug for myself, and to begin the path back out. In this blog, I want to share with you my journey in the hopes that you can avoid the mistakes I made.
The Backstreet Consultant
In the uncharted land between Arduino-wielding kids and qualified electronics engineers emerged an entirely new market for embedded work. In this article, based on my personal experience and observations, I will attempt to outline this young market, the forces operating within it, and the kinds of people involved.
A short historyUp until fifteen years ago, give or take, embedded design was done exclusively by trained professionals: not just because of the required technical know-how, but also...
