“I wouldn’t suggest engineering as a career path for my child.”

So you’re an engineer. Maybe you have been for a long time and you have put up with a lot of grief. But still…Would you really tell your kid not to go into engineering?? Apparently 1 out of every 3 electrical/electronic engineering parents or so are. And while these numbers are better than the ridiculous ones I had first thought they were (more like 2 out of 3), they are better than the numbers coming from non-engineering parents (only 20% encourage their children to go into engineering, though it is likely ignorance). I can’t stand it. Why? Because it’s followed by stories about the US not having enough engineering talent. Then that story is followed by a story about H1B visas. Then THAT story is followed by a commentary about someone lamenting the situation with international workers. But it’s worst when I see it on message boards and comment sections and on blogs (see all the comments on the survey page and just about any other article on EDN or EETimes these days). Then I realize it’s not a statistic. It’s actually people telling their kids why they shouldn’t go into engineering.

So, let’s be scientific about it (engineerentific?) and look at both sides. Obviously, I’m biased about why parents shouldn’t be doing this sort of thing. But I think there are some significant implications if engineers aren’t cultivated from a young age by those who know the profession best.

First, let’s look at your arguments against your child going into engineering:

1. “Business is all about finance and marketing these days!”
   • Oh yeah, it’s true. Marketing is everywhere and it’s important. I take personal interest in it and bug my friends about personal branding all the time and why I think it’s important and all that stuff. But without a product, there isn’t anything to sell. Nada. Without a product to sell, the bean counters and the brokers on wall street no longer have a job. Without them, everyone loses confidence in the company (for some reason) and everyone is laid off and jobs are shipped overseas or everyone shuts down. End of story. A sub-argument here would be that we need people to package and brand products that are made overseas and that the marketers can continue to do that. Well, that’s true…but eventually the overseas producers are going to figure out that they can come up with and market the products too. Then it won’t just be engineers asking,”Where’d all the jobs go?”
2. “Engineers aren’t paid well enough!”
   • I can only imagine this would be a complaint among engineers that move up in the workplace and see other educated people continue to move up in salary for non-engineering positions. Sure, if you look at the top of the management field and the top of the engineering field, there are differences at the top. But fewer professions provide the pay that engineering offers directly out of school (with only a 4 year degree). After that, yes, you have to work harder to get to the top of the pay-scale. If  it worries you that much, go get an MBA and try out middle management.
3. “There’s too much global competition!”
   • I hear that Chinese parents were going to tell their children this, but decided against it when they heard all of the American parents were telling their kids that. And now just about every person of power in China is an engineer, helping to encourage policy and investment that will encourage even MORE engineers. Sound scary and daunting? Sure it is. But that’s why they call it competition. Eventually the Chinese parents (there are a lot of them!) might encourage their children to become marketers and managers. Then EVERYONE in the US is out of a job. Think about it and tell your kids to study hard and learn their math and sciences. Even if you don’t keep going with engineering, it could contribute to your child’s career as a CEO.
4. “They will never be in charge!”
   • I would guess disgruntled engineering parents use this reasoning because of timing (an engineer who is 50 might have a child entering college, but if they are still an engineer they may not be “in charge”) and because engineers get frustrated being told what to do; it’s a conflict of roles when a person gets to define how a system is built but not how much money they can spend on a widget going into the machine. However, in order to maintain a technical career sometimes you have to let others do some of the managerial tasks; it’s a sacrifice that is at least in some ways necessary if you want to maintain control over technical aspects of a project. To the ones who fall under this category and wish to do it all, I would encourage you to start your own company; then encourage your children to do the same. One profession that will always have job openings is entrepreneur-ing and there are no greater sources of jobs than small businesses.
5. “I’d rather my child be a _________.”
   • I know I’m kind of shouting into the void here, but do you hear yourself? No? OK, close your eyes and imagine YOUR parents telling you this. How do you feel? If there is anything an engineering parent should do, it is warning a child against potential pitfalls in an engineering education and career (“Those double integrals can be real stinkers!”), not steering them off on an alternate course. Tell them the truth about engineering, the ups and the downs. And if there are a lot of downs, maybe take a step back and consider why you are still in engineering.
6. “My son isn’t interested in science!”
   • Well what about your daughter? Besides the fact that there is education assistance for women in engineering and support throughout the educational process, research has shown that more and more women are following in their father’s footsteps (we’re assuming here that the father is the one talking about their son’s disinterest). My friend Elaine can go toe to toe with any other engineer out there and I can personally attest to the fact that she helped me get through college. Women do great things in engineering and cutting off your daughter from that greatness could rob her and the rest of the population of her future potential.

OK, I’ve changed your mind, right? You decided you want to encourage a young potential engineer. What do you say? What are some reasons you should be encouraging your child to follow in your footsteps?

1. “You get to make stuff!”
   • You aren’t just pushing buttons. You aren’t pushing paper. You aren’t yelling at people (well, maybe). You aren’t sitting around doing nothing. And most importantly, you aren’t just trading companies  and pretending that you’re creating value when in fact you’re bringing down western civilization by creating horribly complicated investment vehicles just to make a buck and trying to cover your tracks so regulators won’t catch you (whew!). No, instead you are going out and making something useful. It’s how economies are built. NOTE: If you are making some copy-cat MP3 player with nothing to add other than bottom of the barrel cost, you might fall into the “not-so-useful” category too, so maybe try to steer clear of that. It’s true, not all engineering jobs (such as reverse engineering and the fake components that can result from it) are for the greater good.
2. “You get to make stuff!”
   • How fun is that? You get to design stuff that will be used by other people! You get to make something that could last longer than you will on the planet! (hopefully as a useful product, not in a landfill). You get to wake up everyday and say “I can do anything. I can make anything. If I can imagine it (and the cost is feasible), I can build it.” Hey, if you aren’t excited about the prospects of working on new products, it’s cool…we can always ship your job somewhere where they’re excited to do that kind of work (and do it at a discount). But if the prospect of making a product excites you (it should, or else you might be reading the wrong blog…), then you should pitch this idea to children who could end up as similarly excited engineers.
3. “Don’t worry, you can be happy without money.”
   • Wha? Money doesn’t make people happy? Well, no, it doesn’t, and there are lots of studies to prove it. Sure, it makes things a little easier than NOT having money, but beyond meeting your basic needs, more money does not equate to more happiness. You don’t have to belabor this point, because it won’t sink in with kids. Instead, emphasize things that do matter: helping people, living simply, taking joy in your work, trying to change the world, connecting with friends, etc. All these are valuable life lessons and things that will help them in life and in their career (it won’t hurt them to develop those engineering soft skills either!). They will hopefully figure out the money thing later on when they are enjoying the finer aspects of life.
4. “You won’t be doing the same thing every day!”
   • This is what sold me on engineering. When I was sitting around in high school, trying to plan out a future and really not having any clue what I was doing, I decided I didn’t like being bored. So that was criteria number one. I wanted something where I could do a lot of different things and not sit behind a desk without any hands-on activities. Some job or calling where I would have to keep learning and keep figuring stuff out every day. I know there are a lot of jobs that really do fall under this category, but I obviously didn’t realize it at the time. What I’m trying to say here is that you are more likely to be expected to be an expert on lots of areas as an engineer (technology, science, business, etc) and that will keep you on your toes. And I like that.
5. “My child, look at the big picture.”
   • If you can go to work every day and feel that you are accomplishing something that is good for you and your community (local or global), then that should be what you encourage your children to do. As an engineer, I would hope that you feel engineering provides the greatest chance to feel satisfied with how you are contributing and that it makes it worth putting up with all the things people complain about in engineering. Engineering can lead to great technical careers, great management careers or careers having nothing to do with engineering. The skills learned are invaluable in myriad professions, so there’s no downside to getting an engineering degree (OK, maybe cost).

OK, so there it is. Two sides of the argument, all presented to you with the skills I learned in engineering school: unarguable logic (10(b) + 10(b) = 100(b)), beautiful prose (technical writing was taught but haikus were my forte) and massaging of data (the hyper link is the new pie-chart). See? TONS of useful skills!

Ah, and now for a bit of perspective. I have been an engineer for 5 years now (counting co-ops). That’s not much, it’s true. However, I am a continual optimist and I believe that I will continue to enjoy being an engineer (hell, I write about it in my spare time). I also believe that engineering will continue to offer the best option for graduates in terms of career fulfillment, compensation, job opportunity (regardless of off-shoring) and options outside of the field of engineering. Everything else I feel about this topic you can deduce from the points above, doubly so for the points dripping with sarcasm.  It should also be noted that I don’t dislike other professions (nor management, which I could very well end up in some day), it’s just that when I compare it to engineering I feel I made the right decision for myself at this time. So there that is. I am young and have not experienced all of the ups and downs of engineering that a veteran might encounter, but I am strongly against discouraging kids from it.

Here’s what I do know. Tell your kids to make up their own minds. Point them in the right direction and let them make mistakes; don’t try to protect them from a potentially great career based upon current (linear) data. I was very lucky in this regard, I have wonderful parents who were very supportive of my choices (although neither was an engineer). As mentioned above, if you are an engineer, point out the good and the bad. Steer them away from the pitfalls in both education and the working world and help to make them a better engineer. Volunteer at schools to let children other than your own know the benefits of engineering and explain to people what you do in a positive light so others know that they can positively affect the world through work in engineering.

If you have any thoughts on engineering or encouraging children in engineering, please contact me or leave them in the comments below!

A background

Switching regulator, buck converter, boost converter, SEPIC, flyback, push-pull, buck-boost… do you know what the heck these things are??? Because I sure didn’t when I was getting back into analog electronics. Now thanks to new interest in power efficient electronics, they are starting to come front and center on the electronics stage. Hopefully this article will give you a better understanding of what they are, what they do, where to use them and issues with noise.

OK, so before we get to the real topic of this post, what do switching regulators do?

Switching  regulators allow you to translate one voltage into another. They allow you to take a higher voltage and translate it to a lower voltage or a lower voltage and go to a higher voltage.

“Eureka!” you cry, “Chris has found the solution to all of our energy needs! We just hook a bunch of these switching doo-dads up and we’ll have unlimited power!”

But no, it’s not that easy. Switching regulators go off the fact that you can take a voltage and translate it to a different voltage, however, the power stays the same (in an ideal case). Meaning if you have 5V coming into a circuit and you have a portion of that circuit that needs to operate off of a 15V supply, you can use a boost converter or something similar and crank up the voltage. Say you have 150 mA (at 5V) coming in, when you convert it up to 15 V, you’ll have 50 mA available to whatever needs the 15V power. Notice in this (ideal) case, the power stays the same (750 mW).

It is a similar story when going down  in voltage. However, there are many more options when moving down in voltage: switching regulator, linear regulator or even a passive element (like a resistor or a diode). You use a switching regulator because they regulate the output voltage (unlike the voltage drop across a resistor or a diode) and they don’t waste power like a linear regulator. If you want to go from a 20 V input down to a 5V output, a linear regulator would just “burn” up that 15V in the middle. With a switching regulator, most of the power is conserved (assuming you are running in the optimized voltage ranges…and there are a ton of different models to choose from so you can find the right range).

Finally, real quick, where are these used? Well, the hot new talk of the town has been renewable energy. “I can get 95% efficiency?” you ask, “Why wouldn’t I pay $4 per chip to do that?”. And really, the power efficiency isn’t just the garbage everyone seems to be spewing these days about saving energy for savings sake…it actually can help you make a better product. If you are in a heat sensitive situation, you don’t want to use a linear regulator to get your required voltage. In the above example if you are going from 100 mA at 20V and the output of the linear regulator is 100mA at 5V…that means you are burning 1.5W just regulating your voltages. With a switching regulator you can save a good percentage of that (for battery or “green” devices) and you can reduce the heat in a sensitive application. Plus, if you’re trying to go from a lower voltage to a higher voltage, you’re out of luck with linear regulators.

Switching Noise

Nothing in life is perfect. Switching regulators aren’t 100% efficient, there are limits to how much you can convert voltages (1000v down to 10V usually isn’t possible…or smart) and even in the best cases a switching regulator will introduce noise into a circuit. For the ways I have mostly used switching regulators (supplies for digital circuits), switching noise isn’t that big of a deal. If you are supplying 5V to a piece of flash memory, the part will probably not care if there is 100 mV of noise “on top” of the 5V signal (meaning the actual power supplied would bounce between 4.9V and 5.1V). Same for supplying power to LEDs or other non-analog situations. However, if there are any measurement components in your design or any even slightly sensitive analog portions, you should consider how the switching noise will affect your output.

So why does switching noise occur? To answer that we really need to look at a switching regulator to understand what is inside of it. To illustrate, I will be using my version of LTSpice, which is free (awesome!). Also to note, there are lots of great programs out there to help you design this stuff (Webench, for example). Just don’t want to leave any of the vendors out, especially when they give out sampled parts. For this example, we’ll look at the LT3755, which EDN (and me by extension) showcased in an article about creating simple LED lighting for your home.  The application here would be to boost an input of 10V to an output of 40V to light an array of up to 14 1A LEDs.

Notice the LEDs (D2 in the diagram) are where the final current and voltage is being delivered. The waveform for the inputs and outputs is below:

In this graph we see the voltage at the point above R4 (the sense resistor), which is close to what is being delivered to the LEDs. Notice that the voltage starts at roughly 15V and then shoots up to around 40V; the “on” state when the LEDs would be lit settles around 38V. When the red PWM waveform turns off, the voltage bounces up to the exact voltage (40V) the LT3755 is supposed to be outputting because the LEDs are not draining on the output of the circuit. When the PWM goes back on (to 5V), there is noticeable noise on the output voltage. So why is there noise?

If you look at the circuit diagram above, the second most critical component after the regulator itself is the inductor (L1), just to the upper right of the LT3755. Switchers take advantage of the fact that the voltage across an inductor is equal to the instantaneous current through an inductor times a constant (known as inductance). Pulsing current through the inductor introduces the voltages necessary to step the output voltage up to the desired level. Using negative feedback, the controlling chips can output pulses at varying speeds and shapes to correct for any errors on the output of the circuit (see the image above to see the current going through the inductor in light blue). However, as stated before, nothing is perfect. The bandwidth of the chip (the op-amps and other controlling elements within the chip) are finite, so there cannot be perfect control. This introduces noise on the output of the circuit at the same frequency as the switcher (and some harmonics of that frequency).  In the LT3755, the switching frequency can be anywhere from 100 kHz to 1 MHz.

If you are using this switcher for LEDs in a car…no big deal. And really, with high power applications such as lighting, the noise isn’t much of an issue. However, as switching regulators find their way into more and more products, the noise issue becomes more prevalent, especially smaller products. The trade-off comes in when you start looking at the inductor required for the switching regulator. Some can get quite large and unwieldy, especially for handheld products (see below for an unwieldy example).

So instead of using a large value (and size and price) inductor, the switching frequency needs to increase. As explained before, voltage is created across an inductor by forcing pulses of current through the inductor. The higher frequency means that there are smaller current pulses, but there are more of them. This allows for smaller and smaller inductors in designs (some are starting to be pulled into the chip packaging!) but brings with it the noise, now at a higher frequency.  If you have a 5V power supply line with 100 mV of noise of top of it (with the noise at around 100 kHz), then it might not be a problem on your circuit board. But when your boss tells you to start using smaller parts so you can fit the design in a handheld form factor and the switching frequency goes up to 1 and 2 MHz, you will start having problems. That innocent 100 mV from before now might couple into other board traces and introduce noise into the rest of your design. If you have any analog signals that are critical to your design, 100 mV of noise can wreak havoc on the output.

Less noise, more answers

Switching noise is something that will be apparent in any design involving a switching regulator. Knowing your system constraints will allow you to best decide which option is best for your specific needs. If you are crunched for space, you will need to be able to handle high frequency switching noise. If you are sensitive to noise, you better buck up for some big, expensive inductors and carefully route your board (in fact, if you’re that sensitive, maybe reconsider switching regulators entirely). If you have access to the resource, the best people to ask are the vendors selling the parts; they know the funny behavior of a part and which “flavor” of regulator to use to best suit your needs. And in the meantime you can play around with the tools they make available online and in software.

Please leave any questions or comments you might have and good luck with your new designs!

Last month, I had a not-so-nice commenter remark that my last post on blogging keeping me going through a recession was a waste of time. He or she went on to remark that they didn’t have a job and they were obviously looking for some help. While I can’t say I condone their harsh tone and unnecessary crudeness (I know, I know, it’s the internet), I do empathize with their jobless situation.

So today’s post is going to be on some ways (and notably some non-traditional ways) to go about getting a job and hopefully getting through this recession. Here is the big disclaimer though: I don’t know how many of these techniques work. I am basing them on my own ideas and experience and some are just brainstorms. Let’s start from the top with the most traditional methods of finding a job and work our way down to the silly and intriguing ideas. On with the show…

1. Online job searches/classified ads — 4% success rate, 10% unemployment. Do the math and consider this one to be a non-option.
2. Networking — Ahh man, I know I’m not going to get this point across like I want to, but there are so many ways this is important. I actually had a digital designer I worked with a few years back sit me down and explain the importance of networking, and I STILL didn’t get it. In fact, for a long time, I was infuriated by the idea that just who you know might get you a job, as opposed to what you know. But here’s what it comes down to: there are a ton of people who can do your job. In fact, there are a lot of people out there who can do your job better and possibly cheaper than you (think China). However, you are the person who was in the right place at the right time, with the right skills, the right charisma and the right contacts. Everything else you start learning the day you start your new position. Networking takes time, though, and you need to start it before you lose or leave a job. It means that you are friendly with the people you work with and you’re actively keeping in touch with people you used to work with.  If you haven’t been doing that, call up a former co-worker and see what they’re working on; you might find something interesting and you get to maintain a relationship easily.
3. Vendors — Yes, this still falls under the category of networking, but in a different way. Vendors, for those of you who do not know, are people trying to sell you (an engineer or scientist) stuff. They can be salesmen, application engineers, marketers, you name it. If they’re trying to get you to buy what their company has to offer…they’re vendors. They are also in the unique position of trying to sell stuff to other people in your industry; therefore, they know a lot of people doing a lot of stuff that is similar to your job. If I lost my job tomorrow, my stack of vendor business cards would be the first thing I would reach for. Call up some of them and see what trends they see in the industry. Ask for a place to look for your next gig. If you don’t deal with vendors on a regular basis, try other people you interact with daily who have contact to the outside world (maybe the UPS or FedEX delivery person?).
4. Get something published — You don’t need to publish a paper in IEEE or Nature to get noticed by people. Sure, those first two magazines will get you noticed by a lot of people, but you really only need one. Think smaller. Write a letter to an editor in EETimes or EDN (two of my favorites).  I know whenever I see a letter to the editor, I am usually curious to what kind of expertise that person has and what industry they work in. Make sure when people look you up they know how to find you and that you have some good examples of your work.
5. Blog Comments — The traditional gatekeepers to knowledge have started to transition. Whereas engineers and scientists might have only had a few sources of news in the past, blogs now offer an alternative in myriad forms; be it a day-in-the-life format or an aggregation of smaller news stories that might interest an engineer or scientist, information is available everywhere these days. These outlets also provide new ways to find others interested in the same stuff as you. If you see a comment from someone on a blog that intrigues you, try to strike up a conversation with them or see if that person has their own website (usually a link from their name). Try contacting the writer of the blog and see how receptive they are to talking to their readers (hopefully very). Blogs provide information and a new method of meeting people online. As with many of the other items on this list, try the less traveled places first; don’t try writing to an administrator of slashdot if you are interested in tech stories. Look for some smaller blogs (maybe from people linking their own blogs on slashdot) and try to contact them.
6. LinkedIn — One of the best ideas I have ever heard in a job hunt is “informational interviews” (I first read it in the classic “What Color Is Your Parachute”). Basically, you call up someone and ask them about what they do, their industry, job trends and anything else you think might be relevant to a position.  Sometimes people will pick up on the fact that you’re in the market for a job, but other times they might not and you just have an interesting conversation. The problem I always had though was how to get an interview. The best way would be through those contacts I mention when I talk about networking…but the real problem is when you don’t have any contacts either. Then you are in a bit of a tighter spot and you need to get creative. One technique suggested by a friend that had worked for me to look up people on my LinkedIn network; extra points if they work somewhere I think I would like to work. Then once I know their name I try to figure out what their company email might be (usually they’re standardized at companies) and try to email them to request if you can call them for an informational interview. Sure it’s a little sneaky, but I think it’s OK if you’re genuinely interested and not just trying to use them as a contact. Sometimes you won’t get a response, sometimes you’ll get a confused response, sometimes you get a grouchy person and sometimes you get a person who doesn’t mind taking a few minutes out of their day to talk to an inquisitive person. I’ll let you look up informational interview questions for yourself, but go through the interview, keep it brief and ask if they wouldn’t mind passing you a name of someone else to talk to; if they do, be sure to thank them profusely afterward. If they don’t pass you a name… thank them profusely anyway. If nothing else, you will get a good conversation and some more information about an industry that interests you. Note: I always tried to email people first before an informational interview. You could always try and call someone out of the blue (call a front desk, ask for them) and ask for an informational interview; they usually will be confused by this abrupt request. Refer to this technique (that I learned from some sneaky recruiters) only if you really would like to talk to someone and they are non-responsive to email (remember, there might be a reason).
7. Work For Yourself – My friend Pat recently came up with a great idea while he looks for work. He has been helping me out with my (still) broken Wurlitzer, taking the old schematic and putting it into a modern CAD program. He gets the experience of using common, open-source tools and I get some free labor to help me with my board. He also mentioned learning other software while he is looking for work. I see this sprouting into other opportunities too; if you are working on a new piece of software, you’re likely going to go to discussion boards for help.  You might even get involved in the development of the open-source tools, all of which can provide great experience and great contacts. If nothing else, you can put hobbies on your resume that are relevant to your potential job (the only hobbies that should ever be listed in my opinion). Showing an employer that you are passionate about your chosen field (i.e. willing to go home and do the same stuff you just did for 8-12 hours that day) really can make you stand out in a crowd.
8. Work For Free — Starting to get into ideas that I’m really not sure would work. Offer to work somewhere for free. This could be considered an “internship” or whatever you want to call it. You’d basically be working for two things (besides no money): contacts and experience. The latter might be limited, especially if you are working somewhere with a sensitive security policy. However, if you offer your services for free, you will get to meet people and that could be worth more than anything else. Remember, you want to look in the non-standard places for work, so don’t waste your time begging for a job at this place. If they don’t want to pay you to start with, they probably won’t want to pay you in the future (at least not in a recession). Instead, talk to everyone you meet and make them want to help you. This idea might be the most difficult of the bunch but if you can pull it off (namely getting the internship to start with), it might have the best chance of success.
9. Guerrilla marketing — Are you particularly good at CAD programs? Have you created a novel circuit that you think might interest an employer? Have you made a website about analog electronics? Use non-standard ways to stand out; however, make sure you do this at non-standard times. Don’t walk up to a recruiter at a job fair and hand him a circuit diagram with your signature on it. Instead, find out who is in charge of the hiring process (non-HR) and send it to them. Better yet, use the idea in number 5 and figure out who that person is and send the circuit diagram as a thank you to each person you talk to along the way. As for the CAD designer, make your business card out of a circuit board or something else novel like that. Passively advertise that you are in the job market. The “Parachute” book mentions putting it on your answering machine that you are currently looking to have your contacts help your searching project. If you have a website or a facebook profile, make sure it is well known (your front page or your default status message)that you are in the market for a job and some of the best characteristics you can offer. Shameless? Nope, just a good way to get your name out there.
10. Walk in a front door — This idea was the inspiration for this post and also the most ludicrous of the bunch. What would happen if you dressed up in your best suit and walked into an office and asked for a meeting with Mr. BigGuyInCharge? Sure, you’d need to figure out that person with some sneaky or not-so-sneaky methods prior to walking in there; but if you did it right, this technique has a small small chance of working. It’s like the in person cold call. Most managers won’t have anything to do with it, but that one time it might work that makes it all worth it. I’d suggest any of the above methods before this one, but since it was the inspriation for this post, I figured I had to include it.

The recurring theme for all of these ideas is stepping outside your comfort zone and to try approaches to non-standard job paths. You don’t have to try the most extreme of these ideas (like walking into an office asking to talk to a manager), but you might have to pick up a phone and call a bunch of people. Or you might need to develop some new skills on your own before applying for a new job. If you keep trying hard and keep trying different things (other than online applications), you’ll eventually find something. If you are lucky enough to be working right now, keep an eye out for friends and colleagues and help them when you can. Good luck to all and leave any other ideas you might have in the comments.

Photo by brettdarnell