What’s In My Bag: Chris Gammell
We’re kicking off this week with a series of posts from our authors about what we carry around with us as engineers. We’re sure you’ll find lots of similarities and would love feedback on what you see and possibly even what you think we’re missing! I’ll start us off: Bag: Most of my work is done on a laptop these days. Therefore, I’m often found toting my entire laptop setup around with me. I wouldn’t think otherwise these days, but I know many EEs who prefer desktops because of the assumed high power processing (think MATLAB). Plus doing schematic entry and board layout often requires multiple screens. Still, I favor portability and being able to work from anywhere over a slightly faster load time of a web page or a calculation. Computer: This is a pretty standard issue Lenovo notebook from my workplace. Sure, it’s boring from the outside. But…
How the “Freshman 15” is like the “Office 25”
We’ve all heard of the “Freshman 15” which refers to the average 15 pounds a college freshman puts on when away from home for the first time. Finally on your own and free to eat unlimited quantities whatever you want, possibly on a college “unlimited” meal plan. There’s also a lot of change happening at this time in life with a new home, no more high school and new people. All of this stress can trigger overeating. The Freshman 15 is similar to the “Office 25”, which is a term that I just made up, but refers to an average 25 pounds that an office worker will put on in a sedentary job. Sedentary, like engineering. There is no typical engineering job; some are in factories, some are on assembly lines, some have excessive travel and some are in front of a computer. But as a generalization, I think it…
The Next Big Thing – A New Product Snapshot
Most companies, large and small, recognize that they need to constantly develop new products or revisions to existing products to stay ahead of the herd. Ideas for new products come from multiple departments: Sales, Engineering, Marketing and occasionally the people who manufacture the product might speak up too. Sales and Engineering generally butt heads during new product development, especially in the concept phase. Sales goes and talks to customers and brings back highly optimist views of what will sell. This might be based on a compilation of many customers, or it might be based on one customer, or it might be based on something that someone dreams up and thinks it is a good idea. Because it’s Sales, this department always has a say and will get their New Product Idea heard. It is Engineering’s job to tell Sales how long it will take and how much it will cost to…
Weekend Journal — Countryside Edition
My wife grew up on a farm in Northwest Ohio. In fact, that’s where I am right now, writing this post. It’s a serene place. No sounds of the highway, lots of room for my dogs to run around, lots of fields and woods to explore and a laid back lifestyle. Though I grew up in the suburbs and I still enjoy the city (had a great time in SF a few weekends ago), I always enjoy my time in the country. It’s a relaxing experience and I recommend it to everyone. It got me wondering though. Is it possible to live in the remote areas of the US though and be a successful engineer? My wife has always enjoyed the country and stated her preference to move back a more “spread out” part of the US at some point. I’ve been thinking about it too, since I asked about moving anywhere for…
Which Stereotype Are You?
Yesterday on Twitter, Chris Gammell, Carmen Parisi, and I got into a conversation about how we solve engineering problems. Chris said: Do what the rest of us do….keep adding caps and resistors until it works… And my response was: I need to simulate everything first before I start changing anything. To which Chris responded that we were both stereotypes of the academic and industrial engineers. Of course, I can’t disagree because those stereotypes are somewhat borne out by observation. I’ve seen engineers of both types, and the worst are the extremes: the thinker or the tinkerer. You have the engineers that run in and start changing things, not really thinking about what they’re doing, and then find out that what they did was rather ineffective. Then there’s the ones who sit there and never commit to anything until it’s time to finish things up because of decision paralysis. Most of…
WTF #14: Thinking Ahead
One of the odd things I’ve come across walking the sidewalks of Shanghai are these peculiar ribbed designs on virtually every sidewalk I’ve come across. Here are a few examples courtesy of yours truly: These are sidewalks for the blind. Ribbed designs indicate a straight path while round bumps indicate a turn or intersection. It’s quite the sight as they’re not only put down outdoors, but also inside subway stations as well leading all the way to the subway doors. Shanghai is a fairly new city. It’s an odd statement seeing how Shanghai used to a stronghold of foreign presence after the Opium Wars in the 19th century. Still, much of Shanghai has been torn down and put up anew in the last decade. In trying to turn Shanghai into a modern and model Chinese city, someone (or some government body) had the foresight to think about putting these things…
The Grey Zone
This week, as part of Theme Week, we’re discussing our roles as engineers and how it might change depending on the level/status of the company. Now, I’ve already started by breaking the rules about our little post figure because my ‘company’, SnowU is actually a research university which deals heavily with the research end of the spectrum. However, my area within the spectrum is slightly different because I like to think that my research is right on the border between fundamental research and launching startups, which I’ve dubbed The Grey Zone (and hence the grey arrow). The Grey Zone is that terrible-yet-extraordinarily-wonderful place where you get to work on research topics that feel like they might be commercial products someday. The Grey Zone is fantastic because… It’s an easy sell for under/graduate students because not all of them want to be professors. Some fully recognize that working on a practical…
Weekend Journal — The Doodle and the Truth
Editors note: I (Chris) gave up my usual weekend slot to Seb because he had an intriguing article about a touchy and recurring subject within the field of engineering. This post will discuss working in the defense industry (possibly on deadly weapons), a topic which we know can set off some emotions. We’d love to hear your opinion in the comments section, but we won’t hesitate to squash any hateful or unduly harsh words. Engineer Blogs has maintained civil discourse and we hope to continue doing so. Enjoy Seb’s article! One think leads to another, as they say. This particular though journey started whilst I was drafting my post about the SULSA 3D printed aircraft. The process of writing about the subject gave me pause. I had to stop staring at the keyboard as I did my usual hunt-and-peck routine; I gazed thoughtfully out the window at the forest hills around Heidelberg. A memory…
Doublespeak and Placing Blame
I’ve been on some extensive travel lately and as Chris Gammell related travelling for engineering is no easy task. Making sure you have all your necessary test equipment and access to all the resources you might need involves a lot of planning. But sometimes things just don’t work out in your favor. I’ve talked about testing to failure before. However, plenty of times when you are not anticipating failure it happens anyways: Murphy strikes again. The problem is in dealing with your failure. Very often it’s unclear whether you caused a component to fail or whether you had a bad component to begin with. Miss MSE just talked about how engineers need to be good storytellers. Unfortunately there’s very often no good story to tell. If it was your equipment that caused the failure (but you can’t figure out how) that sort of implies you’re due for future failure. Or…
Is Your Health Insurance Holding You Back?
For most of us working as engineers or other technical jobs in the United States, it is a given that we receive paid-for medical insurance. It is difficult for companies to find technical workers, therefore they usually offer health insurance in some form or another as an incentive. This site gives a breakdown of how much insurance costs state by state: http://www.ahipresearch.org/statedata.html So if you work somewhere that asks you to pay say, 50% of your health insurance, you might be paying $2,500 per year for a single person. That is on par with paying to go out to eat lunch every day (and even then, on the cheap). If you’re a family, things get much more expensive; the costs get closer to $6,500 on average. If you have a single-earner family, it’s unlikely you’re eating lunch out every day. If you are self-insured in NY state (where I’m from), it…