标签: job

I graduated college in 1979 (yeah, I know.... makes me about 35, right?). Back then our college Comp Sci department had less processing power than a modern toaster. There was talk, probably apocryphal, of a PDP-11 somewhere in the building, but we in the Physics department cut our teeth on a PDP-8, which had less processing power than a modern slice of toast. Nonetheless, we made do, learning machine code, assembly language and FORTRAN, booting up the machine with a strip of paper tape and entering our programs via punched cards.   My first job post-college was working on flight simulator control loading systems at Link-Miles in Lancing on the south coast of England, for the princely sum of 4000 pounds a year. Plus shift differential, of course, flight simulation being a 24/7 kind of business.   Flight simulators were all unique, depending on the particular avionics fit of the aircraft we were simulating. The control loading was overwhelmingly analog. At age 35, my memory isn't what it was, but essentially a load cell, located at the base of the control yoke, translated pilot inputs into a force, which was then integrated twice (using opamps and capacitors, of course) to produce both velocity and position terms. These then drove a hydraulic servoactuator which moved the yoke to provide feedback modeled on real aircraft behavior. Along the way, inputs were added into the equation representing flight surface loading, cable stretch, stiction, and so on. All in all, a classic old-school control loop.   Old School board layout (Image source: Wikipedia )   The whole control loop was implemented on wire-wrap boards. If you needed to add another term to an equation, you would manually wire in a new socket or two, add a couple of op amps and a few passive components, then test it out. If it worked, you'd mark up the schematic, turn it into the drafting department and you were done. Quality control? Functional safety? Hahahahahaha.   Need some logic functions? Crack open the Texas Instruments orange 7400 book. One of these days I'll find a use for some of those bit-slice parts. Analog? I always started with the Burr-Brown data book, because it contained almost magical functional blocks like analog dividers and log amps that went down to DC. Never found a use for those either, sadly.   To quote Ellen DeGeneres - my point...and I do have one, is this: back then, working as a professional EE was like being a home hobbyist on steroids. Much of what we did, at least on the hardware side, wasn't too far removed from what you might do tinkering at home in your garage.   And just like at home, we felt an almost parental involvement in the final product - perhaps because we designed, built, tested and approved our own (admittedly minor) piece of it, with no committees, peer review boards, or any of that nonsense those indispensable components.   Contrast that to the current situation. The increasing complexity of current engineering applications has led to each project being shared among dozens, if not hundreds, of people distributed worldwide.   And I think we've lost something along the way in terms of job satisfaction. I'm sorry, but being a small cog in the vast machine that's the 21st-century cross-functional team, doesn't give me quite the same, well, buzz.   What say you?

There are instances where networking can hurt you if you strive to "lose friends and alienate people." That may be an excellent movie title but not words to live by. In this blog, I focus on the good, and how you can use networking to advance your career. My full-time job: Obtained and advanced by networking Generally, the more appropriate way to leave a job is to be extremely nice to everyone and keep in touch after you leave. You never know when that will help you, especially if you stay in the same general geographical region. This has worked out well for me in several instances. In my current job, I had worked with one of the engineers at another company. I got along with him very well at the first company, and he helped me get the job at the second. Not only that, during negotiation it was extremely helpful to have him there to provide some guidance. Some companies just won't negotiate on certain things (like holiday time), but others will. Having a "man on the inside" is excellent to find out more information. Besides the process of actually getting the job, it was great to have someone I knew in the new job to introduce me to my new coworkers. It takes a while to get used to new faces, so this helps smooth your transition out. Additionally, having someone who you can trust that's been with a company for several years is a great resource for other more ambiguous questions. What's tolerated for company Internet use, who should you be nice to, or even whether or not you can take a snack break in the morning are good questions for a former/current colleague. My gig at EE Times: Another product of networking You might have inferred from this column that writing for EE Times isn't my full-time job. Interestingly, my part-time writing "career" started on Hackaday.com under the editorship of EE Times' own Caleb Kraft. After a year and a half of that gig, Caleb told me that he would have to let me go. With a gig like that you never know when things are going to change, and the site was going through a major transition. I wasn't too upset, and said something like "nice working with you." It wasn't personal, or even a reflection on my performance, but even if that had been the reason, there's no reason to leave on a bad (or possibly worse) note. Fast forward a few months later, and after keeping in touch (and on good terms) with Caleb, he offered me a gig writing for EETimes.com. It's been a fun assignment, and in addition I've been able to do several speciality articles for Hackaday. Whether you're a freelancer, business owner, or traditional employee, networking is an excellent way to get noticed and advance your career. It's been said that "It's not what you know, it's who you know." This may be true, but just as knowledge can be increased through study, schooling, or experimentation, "who you know" can be increased as well. If you both know the right people, and know what you're doing, you certainly have a recipe for success. Jeremy Cook is a manufacturing engineer with 10 years' experience and has a BSME from Clemson University.

In my previous blog , I discussed how networking can hurt you if you strive to "lose friends and alienate people." That may be an excellent movie title but not words to live by. In this part I focus on the good, and how you can use networking to advance your career. My full-time job: Obtained and advanced by networking Generally, the more appropriate way to leave a job is to be extremely nice to everyone and keep in touch after you leave. You never know when that will help you, especially if you stay in the same general geographical location. This has worked out well for me in several instances. In my current job, I had worked with one of the engineers at another company. I got along with him very well at the first company, and he helped me get the job at the second. Not only that, during negotiation it was extremely helpful to have him there to provide some guidance. Some companies just won't negotiate on certain things (like holiday time), but others will. Having a "man on the inside" is excellent to find out more information. Besides the process of actually getting the job, it was great to have someone I knew in the new job to introduce me to my new coworkers. It takes a while to get used to new faces, so this helps smooth your transition out. Additionally, having someone who you can trust that's been with a company for several years is a great resource for other more ambiguous questions. What's tolerated for company Internet use, who should you be nice to, or even whether or not you can take a snack break in the morning are good questions for a former/current colleague. My gig at EE Times: Another product of networking You might have inferred from this column that writing for EE Times isn't my full-time job. Interestingly, my part-time writing "career" started on Hackaday.com under the editorship of EE Times' own Caleb Kraft. After a year and a half of that gig, Caleb told me that he would have to let me go. With a gig like that you never know when things are going to change, and the site was going through a major transition. I wasn't too upset, and said something like "nice working with you." It wasn't personal, or even a reflection on my performance, but even if that had been the reason, there's no reason to leave on a bad (or possibly worse) note. Fast forward a few months later, and after keeping in touch (and on good terms) with Caleb, he offered me a gig writing for EETimes.com. It's been a fun assignment, and in addition I've been able to do several speciality articles for Hackaday. Whether you're a freelancer, business owner, or traditional employee, networking is an excellent way to get noticed and advance your career. It's been said that "It's not what you know, it's who you know." This may be true, but just as knowledge can be increased through study, schooling, or experimentation, "who you know" can be increased as well. If you both know the right people, and know what you're doing, you certainly have a recipe for success. Jeremy Cook is a manufacturing engineer with 10 years' experience and has a BSME from Clemson University.