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TBH, I'd really like to work for the FCC doing this stuff. I know it's grunt work, but it would be such a great end-of-career job to scrutinize hardware to the

TBH, I'd really like to work for the FCC doing this stuff. I know it's grunt work, but it would be such a great end-of-career job to scrutinize hardware to the nth degree, and just have to worry about doing a precise job, not a fast one.

walrus01 6y ago
It's a third party commercial test lab that does this stuff, the FCC just receives the filings. There's a high degree of trust put on the test lab to meet certain engineering standards.
- mindfulhack 6y ago
  Not sure if that's a good thing. I know that structure exists all over the world though, in countless regulation contexts. So in practice, maybe it's OK.
  - schwartzworld 6y ago
    how else could you do it? you expect bureaucrats to inspect the hardware themselves?
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
Maybe look into a job at NIST? It's not exactly the work you describe, but I've been blown away by some of their stuff.
- TooKool4This 6y ago
  Definitely! I had an opportunity to visit their physical measurement labs and get a tour of their facilities as part of my job and the amount of detail poured into every single aspect of the measurement system for primary standards was amazing. Seeing the kibble balance that is now the primary standard for mass measurement was particularly great! And the work going into putting primary standards into the hands of thousands of people through the Nist-On-A-Chip project is absolutely amazing. https://www.nist.gov/pml/productsservices/nist-chip-portal https://www.nist.gov/pml/productsservices/nist-chip-portal
InitialLastName 6y ago
I know some of the folks who do the ligthweight version of that (FCC EMI compliance testing, among other things), and it really does seem like an amazing gig: - They tell the most amazing stories of things they've seen come through the lab - Their "projects" are basically maintaining and honing their (astonishing) test systems and building out their test capabilities - Clients (we, at least) pay them by the day and often do a lot of the setup (for debug sessions, at least), leaving them to just facilitate - They get to enjoy someone else's tension and release when a pesky prototype just barely passes a scan (with no stakes to them)

walrus01 6y ago

It's a third party commercial test lab that does this stuff, the FCC just receives the filings. There's a high degree of trust put on the test lab to meet certain engineering standards.

mindfulhack 6y ago
Not sure if that's a good thing. I know that structure exists all over the world though, in countless regulation contexts. So in practice, maybe it's OK.
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  how else could you do it? you expect bureaucrats to inspect the hardware themselves?

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago

Maybe look into a job at NIST? It's not exactly the work you describe, but I've been blown away by some of their stuff.

TooKool4This 6y ago
Definitely! I had an opportunity to visit their physical measurement labs and get a tour of their facilities as part of my job and the amount of detail poured into every single aspect of the measurement system for primary standards was amazing. Seeing the kibble balance that is now the primary standard for mass measurement was particularly great! And the work going into putting primary standards into the hands of thousands of people through the Nist-On-A-Chip project is absolutely amazing. https://www.nist.gov/pml/productsservices/nist-chip-portal https://www.nist.gov/pml/productsservices/nist-chip-portal

InitialLastName 6y ago

I know some of the folks who do the ligthweight version of that (FCC EMI compliance testing, among other things), and it really does seem like an amazing gig: - They tell the most amazing stories of things they've seen come through the lab - Their "projects" are basically maintaining and honing their (astonishing) test systems and building out their test capabilities - Clients (we, at least) pay them by the day and often do a lot of the setup (for debug sessions, at least), leaving them to just facilitate - They get to enjoy someone else's tension and release when a pesky prototype just barely passes a scan (with no stakes to them)