3 ms·

Yeah same, I’m an EE camping out in software because of the pay. It’s also just easier work. I would much rather be intellectually challenged coding firmware or

Yeah same, I’m an EE camping out in software because of the pay. It’s also just easier work. I would much rather be intellectually challenged coding firmware or embedded work. I didn’t go to school to build web widgets. It’s just EE pays so badly you can’t make the bills. I was getting offered numbers that wouldn’t have afforded my own studio apartment to rent. For EE work. It’s insulting.

riskable 4y ago
...which is ridiculous because of what it takes to become an EE VS what it takes to become a "web developer". Basically anyone who can handle basic logic can be a web developer if they just put in a bit of effort. Degree or not! To become an EE you need a 4-year degree and a whole heck of a lot of knowledge about things that are a real pain in the ass for laypeople like calculating inductance, capacitance, and impedance (<shudder>). You don't need much knowledge to make a circuit board, no. But when your boss wants to add a USB 3.0 hub to your product it suddenly becomes a, "wow, we really need an EE" job (because the spec has so many requirements and you're not going to get your product certified unless you can demonstrate that you followed it).
- robomartin 4y ago
  > You don't need much knowledge to make a circuit board Not quite. For most modern high speed designs PCB's are very far from being simple. Signal and power integrity are critical. It doesn't help that these can be "voodoo" fields where, a bit like RF, years of experience as well as the theoretical foundation are really important. That said, I think I know where you are coming from. A ton of low-performance embedded designs these days can be done by people with very little EE education. Anyone can learn anything online. There are plenty of resources. This is a good thing, of course.
  - riskable 4y ago
    As someone who's not an EE (with no degree in anything at all) and has made many circuit boards... No, they're not that complicated. Not really. I've even designed an analog hall effect keyboard PCB with integrated IR sensor, dual power regulators (to handle 95 ultra bright RGB LEDs), invented-by-me analog hall effect rotary encoders (incremental and absolute), and more. It wasn't rocket science.
    - robomartin 4y ago
      > I've even designed an analog hall effect keyboard PCB with integrated IR sensor, dual power regulators (to handle 95 ultra bright RGB LEDs), invented-by-me analog hall effect rotary encoders (incremental and absolute), and more. It wasn't rocket science. Sorry to burst your bubble... Glad you learned enough to do it and had fun with it. Yet, such PCB's are trivial to design. Heck, one could auto-route something like that and get a working board for prototyping. In fact, I have done exactly that many times over the last four decades for keyboard/control-panel boards. And auto-routers suck. The fact that one can actually use one for a PCB is a good indicator of how trivial that design might be. One of the big differences between hobby PCB's and professional EE-driven PCB's is in manufacturing and reliability. It's one thing to make one or a few of something, anything. Quite another to make hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, millions. As an example, I am pretty sure you did not run your design through safety, environmental, vibration, susceptibility and emissions testing. For an example of complex design one can look at such things as almost any dynamic RAM implementation, from SDR to DDRn. Timing, signal integrity and power integrity are a big deal and can make a massive difference in performance and reliability. Another example is just-about any PCB used in automotive designs. They have to survive brutal power, thermal, vibration and RF environments for decades. This is not trivial. Other fields with critical needs are medical, aerospace (which includes civilian flight) and industrial. Consumer electronics is actually quite critical at the limit because you are dealing with very large numbers of units being manufactured. In other words, while a design for something like an industrial CNC machine might only require a few hundred or a few thousands of boards per year, in consumer electronics one can easily be in a situation where we are running 50K to 200K boards per month. Bad designs can literally sink a company. I understand though. From the frame of reference of a hobbyist or enthusiast everything can look simple. That's pretty much because they just don't have enough knowledge or information. This means they only have access to the most superficial of constraints, which makes PCB's seem easy, maybe even trivial. As my wife likes to say: A google search is not a substitute for my medical degree.
      - riskable 4y ago
        > Yet, such PCB's are trivial to design. No, analog keyboard PCBs are not trivial at all. You have to keep a lot of things in mind when routing your analog VS digital tracks. Especially if you've got per-key RGB LEDs right next to your hall effect sensors (can be a lot of noise if you don't do it right). Not only that but you also have to figure out how to get loads of analog sensors into a microcontroller that may only have 4 analog pins (e.g. RP2040). In a way that can be scanned fast enough for 1ms response times (again, without generating a ton of noise). It's not so simple like an electromechanical keyboard PCB which is quite trivial. > For an example of complex design one can look at such things as almost any dynamic RAM implementation, from SDR to DDRn. Timing, signal integrity and power integrity are a big deal and can make a massive difference in performance and reliability. ...except 99% of all PCBs aren't that complicated. You don't need to know the specifics of RF in order to design a board that controls some LEDs.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  > Basically anyone who can handle basic logic can be a web developer if they just put in a bit of effort. Degree or not! A "modern" web dev needs to know a whole bunch of crap nowadays. Not saying it's insanely hard but its not that easy. But sure, getting a job as a junior should be way easier than EE.

riskable 4y ago

...which is ridiculous because of what it takes to become an EE VS what it takes to become a "web developer". Basically anyone who can handle basic logic can be a web developer if they just put in a bit of effort. Degree or not! To become an EE you need a 4-year degree and a whole heck of a lot of knowledge about things that are a real pain in the ass for laypeople like calculating inductance, capacitance, and impedance (<shudder>). You don't need much knowledge to make a circuit board, no. But when your boss wants to add a USB 3.0 hub to your product it suddenly becomes a, "wow, we really need an EE" job (because the spec has so many requirements and you're not going to get your product certified unless you can demonstrate that you followed it).

robomartin 4y ago
> You don't need much knowledge to make a circuit board Not quite. For most modern high speed designs PCB's are very far from being simple. Signal and power integrity are critical. It doesn't help that these can be "voodoo" fields where, a bit like RF, years of experience as well as the theoretical foundation are really important. That said, I think I know where you are coming from. A ton of low-performance embedded designs these days can be done by people with very little EE education. Anyone can learn anything online. There are plenty of resources. This is a good thing, of course.
- riskable 4y ago
  As someone who's not an EE (with no degree in anything at all) and has made many circuit boards... No, they're not that complicated. Not really. I've even designed an analog hall effect keyboard PCB with integrated IR sensor, dual power regulators (to handle 95 ultra bright RGB LEDs), invented-by-me analog hall effect rotary encoders (incremental and absolute), and more. It wasn't rocket science.
  - robomartin 4y ago
    > I've even designed an analog hall effect keyboard PCB with integrated IR sensor, dual power regulators (to handle 95 ultra bright RGB LEDs), invented-by-me analog hall effect rotary encoders (incremental and absolute), and more. It wasn't rocket science. Sorry to burst your bubble... Glad you learned enough to do it and had fun with it. Yet, such PCB's are trivial to design. Heck, one could auto-route something like that and get a working board for prototyping. In fact, I have done exactly that many times over the last four decades for keyboard/control-panel boards. And auto-routers suck. The fact that one can actually use one for a PCB is a good indicator of how trivial that design might be. One of the big differences between hobby PCB's and professional EE-driven PCB's is in manufacturing and reliability. It's one thing to make one or a few of something, anything. Quite another to make hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, millions. As an example, I am pretty sure you did not run your design through safety, environmental, vibration, susceptibility and emissions testing. For an example of complex design one can look at such things as almost any dynamic RAM implementation, from SDR to DDRn. Timing, signal integrity and power integrity are a big deal and can make a massive difference in performance and reliability. Another example is just-about any PCB used in automotive designs. They have to survive brutal power, thermal, vibration and RF environments for decades. This is not trivial. Other fields with critical needs are medical, aerospace (which includes civilian flight) and industrial. Consumer electronics is actually quite critical at the limit because you are dealing with very large numbers of units being manufactured. In other words, while a design for something like an industrial CNC machine might only require a few hundred or a few thousands of boards per year, in consumer electronics one can easily be in a situation where we are running 50K to 200K boards per month. Bad designs can literally sink a company. I understand though. From the frame of reference of a hobbyist or enthusiast everything can look simple. That's pretty much because they just don't have enough knowledge or information. This means they only have access to the most superficial of constraints, which makes PCB's seem easy, maybe even trivial. As my wife likes to say: A google search is not a substitute for my medical degree.
    - riskable 4y ago
      > Yet, such PCB's are trivial to design. No, analog keyboard PCBs are not trivial at all. You have to keep a lot of things in mind when routing your analog VS digital tracks. Especially if you've got per-key RGB LEDs right next to your hall effect sensors (can be a lot of noise if you don't do it right). Not only that but you also have to figure out how to get loads of analog sensors into a microcontroller that may only have 4 analog pins (e.g. RP2040). In a way that can be scanned fast enough for 1ms response times (again, without generating a ton of noise). It's not so simple like an electromechanical keyboard PCB which is quite trivial. > For an example of complex design one can look at such things as almost any dynamic RAM implementation, from SDR to DDRn. Timing, signal integrity and power integrity are a big deal and can make a massive difference in performance and reliability. ...except 99% of all PCBs aren't that complicated. You don't need to know the specifics of RF in order to design a board that controls some LEDs.
weatherlite 4y ago
> Basically anyone who can handle basic logic can be a web developer if they just put in a bit of effort. Degree or not! A "modern" web dev needs to know a whole bunch of crap nowadays. Not saying it's insanely hard but its not that easy. But sure, getting a job as a junior should be way easier than EE.