Getting a Job Requires Good Intercourse
Back when Engineer Blogs was still just a young and innocent babe, waiting for loving hands to write upon its empty pages of life that still lay before it, I put down a few words regarding Transistor Interview Questions. A gracious reader named Phil was kind enough to pen his thoughts in the comment section, even going so far, and humbled am I that he did, to ask for advice not only regarding interviewing tips, but also, I presume, an open-ended general appeal of counsel for, as he describes himself, “an aspiring analog designer”. I promised Phil that I shall in a future time write another post responding to his entreaties; that time has come. Let me tackle the first of the two inquiries — interviewing tips — not because it is easy, but because it is hard, thus necessarily bounding the size of this post with my limited wisdom.…
It’s a Digital World…
…or is it? Back when I was in university, when I was naive and skinny, when fresh hopes and dreams still sprouted from my fountain of cluelessness, when nubile bodies walked the same halls, I was unfortunate enough to have signed on to electrical engineering where the ratio of nubile bodies to geeky guys was 0.017 (not a made up number). It was also a time when the high tech industry was riding a humongous crest upwards. The first web browser was just released. Everyone was talking about media convergence and the new brave digital world. Upon graduation, my classmates went left and right into digital design. For me, I enrolled in a masters program researching … analog design. My sanity was questioned by family. My friends wondered if I will be one of those taxi-driving master degree engineers not unlike the fate of so many new immigrants. Many moons…
Salary Case Study
This week’s theme at Engineer Blogs is all about salaries. Chris gave us some excellent big picture view for those starting out in engineering; FrauTech provided insight to the current conditions and future outlook for engineers in the United States; while for Cherish, the temporary-engineer and cash-poor grad student, she isn’t in it for the money. Bless Cherish for still being able to hold on to her ideals. Still, if you’re in engineering for the money, you’re in the wrong industry. But that doesn’t mean that as a practising engineer, one shouldn’t try to milk as much out of your employer as possible. At the very least, one should be able to get paid more than an academic. Given the big picture has already been covered, I will focus my attention on a specific case study and what lessons we can draw from this case. Let me start by saying…
S Stands for Smith
For many electrical engineers, the complex s-plane, where upon the plotting of Laplace transforms take place, is something very familiar. Often, it’s used to plot the poles and zeros of a transfer function, be it open or closed loop. For a feedback amplifier circuit to be stable, for example, the open loop poles must be located on the left half of the s-plane. The s-plane can be used to plot the root locus of a transfer function, something that is useful in analyzing a loop’s stability. It’s also good for plotting impedances of circuit structures or components. For example, passive devices lives entirely on the right side of the s-plane since real-life passive devices can only have positive real impedances. This last point is important and I’ll return to it later in the post. What’s less familiar to most electrical engineers is the Smith chart. In fact, some EEs I’ve…
Virtual Meetings, Virtual Results
It’s been two years since I first posted this on my own blog. Things haven’t changed a bit since. Netmeeting, LiveMeeting, WebEx, and a host of other online meeting tools are great. They allow people separated across vast geographic distances to collaborate and share information. Sitting at one’s desk staring at poorly prepared presentations with too much information while the presenter reads it verbatim off the slides may seem torturous boredom more fitting for breaking down interrogation suspects, but this style of virtual meetings present an opportunity that simply cannot be matched by the good old gather-in-a-big-room face-to-face meeting. First, there’s the mute button. Sing, curse, snore. No one will be of the wiser. (Make sure the mute button works.) Second, the PC that’s streaming all those wonderful slides over the ‘net also allows you to surf-while-you-meet. Check stock prices, read my blog, download MP3s. (Make sure to lay off…
Transistor Interview Questions
Last week, I wrote about an interview with a disappointing candidate that was applying for a analog IC design position with FluxCorp. Although he wasn’t able to answer many questions regarding his own past designs (or alleged designs), I still thought it necessary to give him a chance by moving to more basic questions, like the transistor. In my opinion, these questions are not difficult. If one bothers to prepare for an interview like this by flipping through some old text books, these questions should be a breeze. Unfortunately, the candidate (let’s call him Mr. Flop) in question failed horribly, which illustrates a few things. First, he doesn’t know how to prepare for an interview. Second, he has not internalized undergrad material in his brain so that he can claim to be qualified to be an analog IC designer. Third, he grossly overstated his abilities on his resume. And I’m…
IC Designer’s Guide to IEEE Conferences
Just before Christmas last year, I asked the powers that be whether I can attend the 2011 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). The last and only time I’ve attended ISSCC was back in 2007 when I went with a colleague. For those that have followed my own personal blog, you’ll know him as the Psycho Colleague. For those that haven’t, let’s just say the metaphor fits him well. This past week, I was told that my request to attend ISSCC has been denied. No money in Q1; but it’s not all bad news. I’ve been approved to attend a conference of my choice in Q2, Q3, or Q4. This decision gave me pause — any conference in Q2-Q4? This got the hamsters running and kicked off a process of conference ranking in my head. I started to think about some of the more memorable papers that I’ve read. I tried…