4 ms·

For some reason I still cannot fathom, the 50-cent saving is a point of great pride to electrical engineers. They repeat some phrases about million-unit manufac

by hoseja 4y ago

For some reason I still cannot fathom, the 50-cent saving is a point of great pride to electrical engineers. They repeat some phrases about million-unit manufacturing runs and I just seethe with anger that we can't have nice things.

walterbell 4y ago
Good case study for Harvard Business School. When a design engineer wants to cut a feature to save a few pennies, they are teamed with a marketing pair-analyst to assess the TAM and margins, considered holistically with other feature subsets.
xani_ 4y ago
It's not EEs, it's beancounters, EE's are just paid to please them. Just like developers really
kube-system 4y ago
You can have nicer things, you just have to pay for it. But because of economies of scale, you don’t just pay the difference in BOM cost, you pay that difference plus the difference in fixed costs divided by a much smaller unit run. USB UPSes exist, and they’re really not that niche. Amazon has one for $50. That’s mass-market pricing as far as electronics are concerned.
- m463 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, there are a few no-name DC-only ups systems, but it would be really nice to have a USB-only DC-only ups that did things like USB-C with PD.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    APC has a DC UPS but iirc it's 12V only. Mainly intended for routers etc.
goodpoint 4y ago
No, they are required to do that by management.
llampx 4y ago
Its more the operations/supply chain/bean counting department. It goes like "They'll never know the difference!" and pretty soon you've gone from a premier brand to a cheapo outsourced-to-China generic product.
spookthesunset 4y ago
> 50-cent saving is a point of great pride to electrical engineers As an engineer you are given a power budget, a thermal budget, a size budget, a weight budget and a monetary budget, among many other constraints. This means, like any engineering endeavor, there are tradeoffs to make. That 50-cents you saved on some power controller might be "spent" somewhere else that has a higher impact on the product. There is a near infinite set of things you can do to make the product better somehow. Unfortunately you don't get to do them all. Many of the things conflict with eachother--more battery life might mean more weight and size that you have to "steal" from some other aspect of the product to balance out. Faster, better charging might cost 50-cents but that might mean in order to stay on budget you'd have to use a lower quality plastic shell that is more prone to damage. That faster, better charging might also eat into your thermal budget, meaning you'll need to spend more on cooling, weight and size. It's all tradeoffs. There is no free lunch.
babypuncher 4y ago
I imagine it's a similar feeling of pride felt by the engineers who design outdoors equipment that only fits in the provided container when folded precisely how it was at the factory with no margin for error.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  An Engineer's favorite thing to do seems to be replacing something easy that just works with something that requires special training. Usually it's to make things simpler... but occasionally they will add complexity as long as it makes stuff harder... Their second favorite is complaining when people make things easier.

by hoseja 4y ago

walterbell 4y ago

Good case study for Harvard Business School. When a design engineer wants to cut a feature to save a few pennies, they are teamed with a marketing pair-analyst to assess the TAM and margins, considered holistically with other feature subsets.

xani_ 4y ago

It's not EEs, it's beancounters, EE's are just paid to please them. Just like developers really

kube-system 4y ago

You can have nicer things, you just have to pay for it. But because of economies of scale, you don’t just pay the difference in BOM cost, you pay that difference plus the difference in fixed costs divided by a much smaller unit run. USB UPSes exist, and they’re really not that niche. Amazon has one for $50. That’s mass-market pricing as far as electronics are concerned.

m463 4y ago
As far as I can tell, there are a few no-name DC-only ups systems, but it would be really nice to have a USB-only DC-only ups that did things like USB-C with PD.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  APC has a DC UPS but iirc it's 12V only. Mainly intended for routers etc.

goodpoint 4y ago

No, they are required to do that by management.

llampx 4y ago

Its more the operations/supply chain/bean counting department. It goes like "They'll never know the difference!" and pretty soon you've gone from a premier brand to a cheapo outsourced-to-China generic product.

spookthesunset 4y ago

> 50-cent saving is a point of great pride to electrical engineers As an engineer you are given a power budget, a thermal budget, a size budget, a weight budget and a monetary budget, among many other constraints. This means, like any engineering endeavor, there are tradeoffs to make. That 50-cents you saved on some power controller might be "spent" somewhere else that has a higher impact on the product. There is a near infinite set of things you can do to make the product better somehow. Unfortunately you don't get to do them all. Many of the things conflict with eachother--more battery life might mean more weight and size that you have to "steal" from some other aspect of the product to balance out. Faster, better charging might cost 50-cents but that might mean in order to stay on budget you'd have to use a lower quality plastic shell that is more prone to damage. That faster, better charging might also eat into your thermal budget, meaning you'll need to spend more on cooling, weight and size. It's all tradeoffs. There is no free lunch.

babypuncher 4y ago

I imagine it's a similar feeling of pride felt by the engineers who design outdoors equipment that only fits in the provided container when folded precisely how it was at the factory with no margin for error.

eternityforest 4y ago
An Engineer's favorite thing to do seems to be replacing something easy that just works with something that requires special training. Usually it's to make things simpler... but occasionally they will add complexity as long as it makes stuff harder... Their second favorite is complaining when people make things easier.