标签: training

To ensure that I remain current and up-to-date throughout my career as a Chartered Engineer (the UK equivalent of a Professional Engineer), I am required to continue my professional development each year. While the peer review by my professional institution—the Institute of Engineering and Technology (commonly called the IET)—of the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) I undertake is not mandatory, they have recently introduced a new voluntary opt-in system for both members and fellows. It was receiving the email about the introduction of this scheme that got me thinking about how I keep up-to-date. This was particularly timely as I am currently in the process of moving to a new company and position. Changing jobs is always a very exciting time, but—like all job changes – it will require a learning curve as I get to grips with new systems and products. Of course, this gives me new areas upon which to focus my CPD this coming year. It is recommend by the both the IET and the Engineering Council that engineers should undertake 30 hours a year of professional development, and that this should be split between structured (10 hours) and unstructured (20 hours). Over the years, I have kept current like most engineers via the recommended mixture of the aforementioned structured and unstructured training, although—if I am honest—the unstructured training has been easier to do and more fun than structured courses due to project or company constraints. Having said this, these days, there are a large number of resources available on the Internet for engineers. These resources not only allow engineers to keep current in their fields, but they also help with both structured and unstructured CPD, which—in my view—is a great bonus. Perhaps the most recent change is the introduction of massively open online courses. These are resources where universities open up selected courses—or even entire degree courses—for people to follow on the web. These are great resources when it comes to structured training. Consider the following, for example: * MIT OpenCourseWare is an excellent resource that enables you to access MIT lectures across a wide range of subjects. * Coursera lists a number of courses from a range of universities in a variety of different languages. Other great resources are the MOOC List website, which details a large number of open courses. Unstructured training can take the form of a discussion with a colleague or more informal training. Also, there are a number of web resources you can use for unstructured training, such as EE Times , along with vendor journals such as Xilinx Xcell Journal and Internet discussion forums, all of which can offer a great repository of engineering information and techniques. Of course, CPD does not have to be all about undertaking training or taking courses. If you wish to do something slightly different than watch a course, you could research and write a presentation for an engineering conference. Following the IET releasing the new online CPD tool, I will be using this to record my own CPD over the course of the next year, hopefully having used the resources noted above to their maximum benefit. Which brings me to question you... How do you keep current? Are you required to demonstrate CPD and, if not, why not? Adam Taylor is Head of Engineering Systems at E2V  

I recently trained a bunch of engineers from a company in California about firmware issues. What surprised and delighted me is the outfit's policy. All employees, from janitors to executive management, must take at least 25 hours of training per year. On the company's dime. Engineers are encouraged to get 40 hours/year—a full week away from the exigencies of product development—to learn to be more efficient and effective. Of course, this is in California where clever accountants know how to stiff the State for some percentage of those costs. But the company still bears a substantial burden, plus the cost of yanking engineers off of their projects for a week a year. Another company has had me into nine of their sites on three continents in 2012 to train over 300 engineers. They, too, have a policy of company-provided education. But that's hardly the norm. Developers complain that they are not allowed to even glimpse up from the IDE on their monitor. Everyone is under the gun to get the current project done, and everything else be damned! Finish that project, and the next is already late on day 1. Education? Who has the time? So the average engineer learns a bit on the job by making mistakes, picks up some pointers over water-cooler discussions, but any sort of disciplined learning takes place on his or her own time. Most of us love what we do and are eager to learn. But life gets in the way. Leave the office, late, and the kids need attention, the bills have to be paid, and the lawn mowed. Maybe there's a little quality time for the spouse. It's hard to find a chance to curl up with a technical tome. The field is changing at breakneck speed. Seemingly overnight ARM Cortex parts have proliferated to the point where dozens of vendors supply hundreds of variants. Wireless is everywhere; multi-core rears its angry head even though we really don't know how to deal with symmetric multi-processing. Android appeared just a few years ago and is now everywhere. Consumers suddenly want their gadgets to run from a coin cell for decades; at small geometries something like half the energy is wasted due to tunnelling. Have you had a chance to brush up on your quantum mechanics lately? Back in the 1970s, we young engineers were expected to go to conferences and to assail the distributors for training materials (we'd quite literally have them fill our cars with the latest databooks). The conferences were huge—Electro and Wescon would see 30,000, 40,000 attendees. Those all disappeared, victims of the mad death march to get products out the door. One of the few left is the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC), aka "DESIGN West." The show floor is free; a pass that will get you into any of the couple of hundred talks is about $2k. Figure another $3k or so for your (loaded) salary for the week. Get one good idea—one small productivity booster—that ups your effectiveness by just a few per cent and it's a net gain. But engineers tell me the main reason they can't get to the ESC is "not enough time." I'm reminded of the old cartoon of the machine gun salesman trying to peddle his wares to the general fighting a battle with broadaxes and arrows. The latter tells his aide he's too busy to see a salesman. That place in California? Employees stay for 20, 30, 35 years. They invest in their people and avoid the expensive and disruptive turnover that is so common in this business. Does your company support, encourage and even demand education and/or training? If not, why not? Although I'm hugely supportive of any outfit that invests in their people, ultimately the responsibility for our continuing education rests with us. What do you do to keep current and enhance your skills?

Several weeks ago, I spent a day training a bunch of engineers from a company in California about firmware issues. What surprised and delighted me is the outfit's policy. All employees, from janitors to executive management, must take at least 25 hours of training per year. On the company's dime. Engineers are encouraged to get 40 hours/year—a full week away from the exigencies of product development—to learn to be more efficient and effective. Of course, this is in California where clever accountants know how to stiff the State for some percentage of those costs. But the company still bears a substantial burden, plus the cost of yanking engineers off of their projects for a week a year. Another company has had me into nine of their sites on three continents in 2012 to train over 300 engineers. They, too, have a policy of company-provided education. But that's hardly the norm. Developers complain that they are not allowed to even glimpse up from the IDE on their monitor. Everyone is under the gun to get the current project done, and everything else be damned! Finish that project, and the next is already late on day 1. Education? Who has the time? So the average engineer learns a bit on the job by making mistakes, picks up some pointers over water-cooler discussions, but any sort of disciplined learning takes place on his or her own time. Most of us love what we do and are eager to learn. But life gets in the way. Leave the office, late, and the kids need attention, the bills have to be paid, and the lawn mowed. Maybe there's a little quality time for the spouse. It's hard to find a chance to curl up with a technical tome. The field is changing at breakneck speed. Seemingly overnight ARM Cortex parts have proliferated to the point where dozens of vendors supply hundreds of variants. Wireless is everywhere; multi-core rears its angry head even though we really don't know how to deal with symmetric multi-processing. Android appeared just a few years ago and is now everywhere. Consumers suddenly want their gadgets to run from a coin cell for decades; at small geometries something like half the energy is wasted due to tunnelling. Have you had a chance to brush up on your quantum mechanics lately? Back in the 1970s, we young engineers were expected to go to conferences and to assail the distributors for training materials (we'd quite literally have them fill our cars with the latest databooks). The conferences were huge—Electro and Wescon would see 30,000, 40,000 attendees. Those all disappeared, victims of the mad death march to get products out the door. One of the few left is the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC), aka "DESIGN West." The show floor is free; a pass that will get you into any of the couple of hundred talks is about $2k. Figure another $3k or so for your (loaded) salary for the week. Get one good idea—one small productivity booster—that ups your effectiveness by just a few per cent and it's a net gain. But engineers tell me the main reason they can't get to the ESC is "not enough time." I'm reminded of the old cartoon of the machine gun salesman trying to peddle his wares to the general fighting a battle with broadaxes and arrows. The latter tells his aide he's too busy to see a salesman. That place in California? Employees stay for 20, 30, 35 years. They invest in their people and avoid the expensive and disruptive turnover that is so common in this business. Does your company support, encourage and even demand education and/or training? If not, why not? Although I'm hugely supportive of any outfit that invests in their people, ultimately the responsibility for our continuing education rests with us. What do you do to keep current and enhance your skills?  

给公司同事做的培训——CPLD设计基础。用思维导图列出要点：