Technician, Engineer, Fabrication Assembler etc. and whatever...

 

1. Biggest cash- project manager, cons are too many eng applies for this position. Not much study needed, I would say just communication skills to talk to higher boss are necessary.

2. Good cash- Embedded programmer, few people applies so you will get job immediately. But it will ruin yourself very soon. Medium offers available.

3. Good cash if you are very good - HW engineer. You must go very deeply inside like antenna design, chip design, etc…Too much study. Not much offers.

4. Medium cash - PCB designer. Not much study. Too much offers.

 

1. Biggest cash- project manager, cons are too many eng applies for this position. Not much study needed.

2. Good cash- Embedded programmer, few people applies so you will get job immediately. But it will ruin yourself very soon. Medium offers available.

3. Good cash if you are very good - HW engineer. You must go very deeply inside like antenna design, chip design, etc…Too much study. Not much offers.

4. Medium cash - PCB designer. Not much study. Too much offers.

1. Biggest cash- project manager, cons are too many eng applies for this position. Not much study needed.

No Manager jobs. Too much B.S. and H.R. emphasis & "Hire-fire", company politics---forget it.

2. Embedded programmer,

No Programmer jobs. Programmers are not doing electronics. If I wanted that I'd become an IT expert or software engineer.

That's why I said, "hardware only"

 

Of the PCB designers I have worked with, one knew electronics very well, at some engineering level. The other PCB designer knew almost as much electronics as my good friend's CAT knows. But knew the software very well and could follow all the design rules.
The fun engineering position was supporting a research scientist in creating a fundamentally new scheme for sensing to trigger air bags firing.
The best for doing serious engineering was designing controls and sensors for industrial production machinery. Every project was a new challenge, and the motivation was never to compromise quality to reduce the price.
Reliability and accuracy have a moral backup, while reducing quality to boost profits does not have any moral justification.

 

Of the PCB designers I have worked with, one knew electronics very well, at some engineering level. The other PCB designer knew almost as much electronics as my good friend's CAT knows. But knew the software very well and could follow all the design rules.
The fun engineering position was supporting a research scientist in creating a fundamentally new scheme for sensing to trigger air bags firing.
The best for doing serious engineering was designing controls and sensors for industrial production machinery. Every project was a new challenge, and the motivation was never to compromise quality to reduce the price.
Reliability and accuracy have a moral backup, while reducing quality to boost profits does not have any moral justification.

Where did this come from?

I didn't start this Thread to discuss the "Morality" of business or cutting corners in Quality Control and no where in my first post does it mention anything close to that. Maybe you are confused about which thread you are in.

 

Where did this come from?

I didn't start this Thread to discuss the "Morality" of business or cutting corners in Quality Control and no where in my first post does it mention anything close to that. Maybe you are confused about which thread you are in.

I added that last comment because it is a personal opinion of mine. NO!, certainly you did not mention nor ask. It is unfortunate that any reference to right and wrong offends some folks. THAT was certainly not my intention in this case. I will avoid doing it again in your threads.

 

I added that last comment because it is a personal opinion of mine. NO!, certainly you did not mention nor ask. It is unfortunate that any reference to right and wrong offends some folks. THAT was certainly not my intention in this case. I will avoid doing it again in your threads.

It is unfortunate that any reference to right and wrong offends some folks

"Right and Wrong" doesn't offend me.

The thread is about hardware jobs in electronics.

 

It is unfortunate that any reference to right and wrong offends some folks

"Right and Wrong" doesn't offend me.

The thread is about hardware jobs in electronics.

Go where you heart leads in jobs, not your wallet if want money and joy in what you do.

 

I've been doing H/W design for over 30 years. Started as a tech, then EE.
It's fun, creative, demands a lot of intelligence, massive scope of knowledge- electronics, PCB layout, components, fab, regulatory approvals etc. - that is undervalued and not appreciated.

You will always be the bottleneck to corporate profit, so understand the constant beatings and demoralizing "when will that be done!?", "why is that taking so long?" etc. treatment that makes it no fun actually. I am passionate and love electronics as a hobby but working for the man, doing it is just gross.
Executives get the high pay and bonus perks- but engineers do not.

What I would advise, if you're going to do it - the more expensive the products, the industry - go after where the money is, so you don't have a stressful life where you "followed your heart" as I did and the stress of being impoverished yet having the time of your life doing design. It's a myth nowadays to shoot for that. Joy does not pay the mortgage.

It depends on if you are willing to move/relocate as some provinces/states have a good electronics industry, others are a wasteland.
The corporate trend nowadays is to not build anything, "just buy it!" out of a catalogue, outsource it etc.

 

I've been doing H/W design for over 30 years. Started as a tech, then EE.
It's fun, creative, demands a lot of intelligence, massive scope of knowledge- electronics, PCB layout, components, fab, regulatory approvals etc. - that is undervalued and not appreciated.

You will always be the bottleneck to corporate profit, so understand the constant beatings and demoralizing "when will that be done!?", "why is that taking so long?" etc. treatment that makes it no fun actually. I am passionate and love electronics as a hobby but working for the man, doing it is just gross.
Executives get the high pay and bonus perks- but engineers do not.

What I would advise, if you're going to do it - the more expensive the products, the industry - go after where the money is, so you don't have a stressful life where you "followed your heart" as I did and the stress of being impoverished yet having the time of your life doing design. It's a myth nowadays to shoot for that. Joy does not pay the mortgage.

It depends on if you are willing to move/relocate as some provinces/states have a good electronics industry, others are a wasteland.
The corporate trend nowadays is to not build anything, "just buy it!" out of a catalogue, outsource it etc.

Thanks.....Very specific to the subject at hand, and a great post. It's also a sad post that reveals the "$$$ profits are most important" aspect of it all. I realize that this is the way of the current world. and not just in electronics.

"Executives get the high pay and bonus perks- but engineers do not." Ain't that the sad truth...and in all industries the executives make the big $$$
But regarding electronics hardware specifically maybe working in R&D would be better than production? Also how about working with primarily hardware outside of the corporate money machine? But like you said, "Joy does not pay the mortgage" for the "Money Machine" world, an amazing, genius, complex electronics device is just as important as a hamburger.
To that world, (and those profit executive types) they will take the hamburger over the device if it makes more profit, but I guess they fill a need.

Probably "Nikolous Tesla" was the best example of that, as being a true scientific and hardware genius he died almost penniless due to the profit tyrants. How do you separate the profit machine from the hardware scientific fun? I don't know myself, maybe it is to keep electronics as a private scientific hobby and make money (for the mortgage) some other way like selling Real Estate or Investing and gambling...Who Knows?

 

For your research, do it backwards - look for H/W design jobs out there right now. Pay attention to years of experience wanted.

If you have many years of experience say Sr. Engineer, you are considered expensive so they sack you and prefer to hire freshers with a little experience. Immigrant engineers are also much lower cost but they stretch their resume a l o t, terrible. The fact that the product will take (too) long to develop while they learn the Art, and it fails regulatory approvals because they have no experience or wisdom with that... is the norm nowadays. Basically a clown car.

What I've found is Asia greatly values and respects engineers. Not so in North America where they are treated pretty much as a pack horse or dog.
Consulting to Asia is easy in that they give you all you need to be successful, instead of the usual Wall Street Song where you can't get that new scope or take a course or a PCB run done because quarterly targets were not met etc. meanwhile you are literally one guy doing all the work on an entire product. They squeeze so tight that failure is guaranteed. Google, Facebook, Microsoft - all of them massively bungled hardware development. You can't manage H/W like it's S/W. Huge mistake, another problem in the industry.

Don't listen to me 100% I'm sure someone has a better story. I found after working for over a dozen companies as an engineer doing H/W design that I was wrong about "doing what you love" equating to fun and joy. Because the corporate treadmill kills all of that off for profit.

I won't tell you a fairy tale approach. Try not to make a golden carrot and dangle it in front of you, a fantasy job/career path that is not realistic.

 

I've been doing H/W design for over 30 years. Started as a tech, then EE.
It's fun, creative, demands a lot of intelligence, massive scope of knowledge- electronics, PCB layout, components, fab, regulatory approvals etc. - that is undervalued and not appreciated.

You will always be the bottleneck to corporate profit, so understand the constant beatings and demoralizing "when will that be done!?", "why is that taking so long?" etc. treatment that makes it no fun actually. I am passionate and love electronics as a hobby but working for the man, doing it is just gross.
Executives get the high pay and bonus perks- but engineers do not.

What I would advise, if you're going to do it - the more expensive the products, the industry - go after where the money is, so you don't have a stressful life where you "followed your heart" as I did and the stress of being impoverished yet having the time of your life doing design. It's a myth nowadays to shoot for that. Joy does not pay the mortgage.

It depends on if you are willing to move/relocate as some provinces/states have a good electronics industry, others are a wasteland.
The corporate trend nowadays is to not build anything, "just buy it!" out of a catalogue, outsource it etc.

Being impoverished is a personal responsibility if you're that good. Sounds more like excuses for failure, or maybe, some people are just unlucky at life.

A fantasy job/career path, that is not realistic but IMO is not realistic to think you are owed anything from the suits but the paycheck, you agreed to.

 

Impoverished - as in the happy artist, musician, poet - doing what they love. They are masters at their craft. Yet struggling to pay the rent. This is not happiness for the people I know like this. You are saying it's personal failure or bad luck?
Maybe more like a see-saw where overall happiness is not great because you are doing what you love, yet not loving the financial stress. So the average is low happiness.

Hardware designers make a lot of money for their employers who pound out the design like cookies.
I also know other EE's that have designs out in the 100K pcs zone. And guess what? They get paid the same as the guy whose design is out there 1K pcs. Another way engineers get exploited.

 

Now I am going to violate my own thread rule of keeping it on topic of "hardware electronics"

"prairiemystic"
Another way engineers get exploited.
That is true in many other types of business besides electronics.
A Multi-Million dollar businessman I know explained it this way when we talked:
"You make me a Million $$$ and I pay you $100,000"

Some companies treat their employees better however.
It depends on what kind of people run the company and what their personal philosophy is about life and people.
Some start out being nice to their employees but then get sued several times and then they harden their hearts.
That happened to Walmart. Also, I know of a small to medium size business (50-100 employees) who did pride themselves
of treating their employees like gold. But after some of those same employees sued them for "Government Regualtion"
issues, the owners retreated to treating their employees like numbers and strangers.

On the other hand, I worked at a small company of about 25 employees and when the owner made a huge windfall with his
product, he shared the profits with his loyal long time employees handing out checks for $5000 and even $50,000 to his janitor
who had been with him from the beginning.
Also, I worked for a company (175 employees) that had a "Profit Sharing" plan. Some who worked there had several Million
dollars in their Profit Sharing account. The catch was that you had to be a perfect employee..No "being Late too many times, or
taking too many days off, or violating any rules that would accumulate and you would get fired losing all your shared profits.

That being said I have other income and could survive with less $$$ off a hardware electronics job.
Personally I don't need to make my entire living holding down a nameless cogwheel corporate job,
but I have "been there and done that" in other industries so I know what it's like. Add to it the hours
spent in rush hour traffic jams, and you have very little free time left to do what you want.

 

Impoverished - as in the happy artist, musician, poet - doing what they love. They are masters at their craft. Yet struggling to pay the rent. This is not happiness for the people I know like this. You are saying it's personal failure or bad luck?
Maybe more like a see-saw where overall happiness is not great because you are doing what you love, yet not loving the financial stress. So the average is low happiness.

Hardware designers make a lot of money for their employers who pound out the design like cookies.
I also know other EE's that have designs out in the 100K pcs zone. And guess what? They get paid the same as the guy whose design is out there 1K pcs. Another way engineers get exploited.

Easy solution, own your business and then pay them the same as the suits.

Stop trolling nonsense.

 

I'm not trolling nonsense, but let's be real about where the electronics profession is, for someone looking at it as a career. I share my opinions based on my experience.
Would love to hear yours instead of the usual nonsense "go where you heart leads in jobs". That was preached back in high school lol. I see it's a myth for myself and everyone I know who went down that road.
I guess it worked for you? Tell us about it- the traps, the wins.

One EE I know doing his heart's desire and really passionate about it, working 28 years for one company. He's an expert in the field, embedded hardware and firmware design. The company's failing due to bad management, stock tanking for years despite decent tech. Last week it's desperate axe swinging and break up the company sell the pieces, oh and and here's the exit door. The guy is stunned his sweat and toil for 28 years means nothing, company made millions $ off him. Your heart and a corporation have nothing in common.

Another profession with similar problems is nursing. People are passionate and have their heart in it, caring for people. But the environment is about cost cutting, skeleton staff, long shifts, restricted health dollars and it just burns them out. Then there are cries whaaa "we can't find skilled people" because it's a meat grinder and the profession is being avoided now. The exec's make wages 10x that of the nurse for sitting at a desk scheming how to cut costs.
I've experienced similar in EE and bring it forward here.

Yes, working for one's self is the answer. TS should really learn business at the same time as electronics.

 

Yes, working for one's self is the answer. TS should really learn business at the same time as electronics.

I already stated my POV and observations. No doubt people do get screwed working for other people a lot of the time.
The bigger the company, the more you are a nameless cog and are expendable.

Also you have to follow the Golden Rule.

"Those Who Have the Gold Make the Rules"

 

My advice is to first know (early) what you are good at, and what you are not good at.
Passion aside, many inventors and genius were failures in some aspects of their life, while being masters in other areas.
You might like mountain climbing but keep falling off Everest. At some point it's good to know you are not a great mountain climber and it's not improving lol. Something else should be pursued instead of repeatedly doing what you aren't great at.

This is all relevant with business where you need a group of skills. Such as tech skills but also social skills to schmooze and do marketing of your work, as well as accounting, web page design etc. Missing any one piece makes it not work well and a smart person will just delegate to someone good at it. Instead of trying to be the one man band or constantly failing or getting hung up when doing work you dislike.

 

My advice is to first know (early) what you are good at, and what you are not good at.
Passion aside, many inventors and genius were failures in some aspects of their life, while being masters in other areas.
You might like mountain climbing but keep falling off Everest. At some point it's good to know you are not a great mountain climber and it's not improving lol. Something else should be pursued instead of repeatedly doing what you aren't great at.

This is all relevant with business where you need a group of skills. Such as tech skills but also social skills to schmooze and do marketing of your work, as well as accounting, web page design etc. Missing any one piece makes it not work well and a smart person will just delegate to someone good at it. Instead of trying to be the one man band or constantly failing or getting hung up when doing work you dislike.

Do you actually read my posts or are you just talking at me?

 

I've been doing H/W design for over 30 years. Started as a tech, then EE.
It's fun, creative, demands a lot of intelligence, massive scope of knowledge- electronics, PCB layout, components, fab, regulatory approvals etc. - that is undervalued and not appreciated.

You will always be the bottleneck to corporate profit, so understand the constant beatings and demoralizing "when will that be done!?", "why is that taking so long?" etc. treatment that makes it no fun actually. I am passionate and love electronics as a hobby but working for the man, doing it is just gross.
Executives get the high pay and bonus perks- but engineers do not.

What I would advise, if you're going to do it - the more expensive the products, the industry - go after where the money is, so you don't have a stressful life where you "followed your heart" as I did and the stress of being impoverished yet having the time of your life doing design. It's a myth nowadays to shoot for that. Joy does not pay the mortgage.

It depends on if you are willing to move/relocate as some provinces/states have a good electronics industry, others are a wasteland.
The corporate trend nowadays is to not build anything, "just buy it!" out of a catalogue, outsource it etc.

"P.M." certainly got it right!! When I was at METHODE we got a new manager and he called an "all attend" meeting to announce a major shakeup that included staff reductions. His statement about releasing engineers, added, "If we need more, then we can always just hire more" verified his belief that all engineers are the same! THAT only applies to Bean Counters!!
The very most satisfying and interesting jobs were always at companies that designed and built industrial equipment, rather than consumer products. Each project was a new challenge, not the grind of trying to design five cents out of a production line product that cost less than a dollar to produce. The TECH CREW BUILDING THE MACHINES also seldom had the same jobs every day. So the technical side of the business never got boring.
THOSE were always the good jobs. Not always the highest pay, but there is a big benefit to a job that always allows creativity.