Starting A Technology Manufacturing Company — Now and Then
I’ve been reading more about entrepreneurship and starting businesses lately. Mostly in auxiliary reading about personal finance, but also in my reading about technology companies. One of my favorite sites, Get Rich Slowly, has lately been talking about a book called “The Millionaire Next Door”. In fact, just today, Robert Brokamp of the Motley Fool interviewed one of the co-authors, Thomas Stanley. In the book, they highlight a large percentage of millionaires are business owners. I’m not using this as a basis for the idea of starting a company (many many companies fail)…I’m just saying that it’s added motivation to take that leap. So why not start up a technology manufacturing business? Why not go out on my own and make something? Well, I’d still like to someday. In fact, I already have an incorporated business in the state of Ohio, Analog Life, LLC. However, this is more small time consulting…
Remedial Tinkering Class
A friend and I were discussing engineering education yesterday. The state of the education system, the constant lamenting of fewer engineers coming out of the US and our own experiences. Of course there are a ton of problems right now. And yes, there are also a lot of potential solutions in place. But out of this discussion came an irrefutible argument and idea: (Most) engineering students need a remedial tinkering class “Hunh? A what? I’ve never heard of that,” you say. Well, it’s because it doesn’t exist. But it exists for a lot of other subjects. If you weren’t all that great at math in high school, you can usually find a remedial math class to brush up on your algebra. If you’re from out of the country and english is a second language, there are often resources to help bring you up to a level where you’ll have a…
Physics Caused The Sparks
Unlike the hobbyists I interact with all the time on The Amp Hour (or our recent guest blogger Paul Clarke), I didn’t start working on electronics at a young age. Nope, my story is much closer to that of Fluxor’s; my story began in high school. In fact, it makes me wonder if there is a separate class of engineers that didn’t consider the profession until entering college. I’d also wonder how they might differ from the hobbyist type, but that seems to be a discussion for another time and post. So how’d I decide which career path to try? Physics! I loved physics. I still love physics. I love simple models for really complex things. I love having well defined problems (though those rarely occur these days) and later exploring more intricate details as necessary. And most of all, I loved that feeling of “getting it”. It’s like a drug and…
Winter Thought Exercise
All across the midwest this evening, they’ve been calling the most recent stormfront the Blizzard of 2011. Whether or not it will develop into a truly nasty storm remains to be seen. But it did get me thinking (and yes, a little bit scared): If you had to generate all you own power starting tomorrow, do you think you could do it? Posing this question to a few co-workers and myself gave me pause. I understand the scope and magnitude of power generation. It’s no small feat! Aside from the fact that we just expect power to be there these days, we don’t usually have a real feel for how much total power we use and how hard it is it actually generate that power. But we’re all engineers around here, right? (or at least masochists who enjoy reading about engineering) So let’s figure out what it would take and…
Expectations And Starting Electrical Engineer Salaries
It’s been a few weeks now, but I was advising a few younger friends about starting salaries and thought it’d be interesting to write about. They are entering the work force for the first time. And while there are often career services available at a lot of schools, they often don’t provide the perspectives that other engineers might be able to offer. So yeah…I guess that other perspective is…me! At least one of the many perspectives you can get. You can ask just about anyone. So what do I have to say about it? Only what I know so far. First, you might be surprised at what you’re making when coming out of school. Unless you have a badass co-op or internship while you are in school, you’ll be earning a lot more money than you’d be used to. But here’s the part you might not realize: Your salary might…
Social Media and the Engineer
I’m loathe to talk about this in general, but I feel it needs to be said. Social media can work for engineers. It can work really well. The reason I try not to talk about it is because I’m getting better at it and I don’t want vendors to know. I don’t want them to know because even when you know what you’re doing it can eat all of your time and I have better things to do. Just in the past few days, Jeri Ellsworth and myself have launched a campaign and website using crowd sourcing and social media that would make most vendors’ eyes pop. We went from mentioning and idea about a 555 design contest to a functional website in less than 48 hours (granted yes, we’re still working out details, but some of those details…involve vendors!). I’m sure that some day, some huge company is going to…
Do You Prefer To Work On Projects On Your Own?
I don’t! I know I’m not the most stereotypical engineer out there. I’m social (somewhat). I’m talkative (on my radio show at least). I don’t wear a pocket protector (sometimes). I haven’t whispered sweet nothings to my calculator (lately). But this whole idea of working on your own? Without being able to bounce ideas off of friends and c0-workers? Holy hell! That’s a nightmare! I recently started consulting for electronics work. It’s always outside the scope of my day-job (and sanctioned by my company) but still involves being an analog electrical engineer. The people/companies that need work done though often need one engineer, not an entire department! So the struggle I face, and one that many before me have likely also faced, is that of solitude! “But Chris! I thought engineers loved solitude!” Well, a lot of us do. I mean, I do too. But not when going over a…