What are the minimal electronics skills and knowledge required to be of any use to an electronics company, even a mom and pop company?

What skills and knowledge can a hobbyist work on to get to that minimal level?

I realize electronics is a vast field of different types of devices, but what skills and knowldedge would apply generally to most fields?

I'm talking about actual electronics not arduino or rasberry pie which are really programming rather than electronics.

Thanks
RW

 

What skills and knowledge can a hobbyist work on to get to that minimal level?

It depends on what the job requires. Digital, analog, manufacturing (PCBs, mechanical assemblies, etc).

If I were a mom and pop company, I'd only hire people with proven experience and education to back them up because it's a lot easier to hire than to fire.

I'm talking about actual electronics not arduino or rasberry pie which are really programming rather than electronics.

These days, you have to have skills in hardware and software. Programming used to be required for EE's. I'd be surprised if that wasn't still the case. I had little formal programming education, but I spent most of my career doing software development.

 

Can’t imagine what a Mom and Pop electronics firm would be.

 

Can’t imagine what a Mom and Pop electronics firm would be.

I once applied for a job at one as an assembler. It was surface mount which are too hard (microscopic) to assemble, so I didn't get the job.
The husband and wife company with about 5 employees manufactured precision servos. the husband was the electronics wiz.
The wife was the adminstrator, bookkeeper, HR, payroll etc. I also went to an interview once at a small shop where there were
two owner operators with one or two employees. I don't remember what they made as it was quite some time ago.
I was applyng there at an intern level to be trained by them.
So that is what I mean by Mom & Pop.

 

It depends on what the job requires. Digital, analog, manufacturing (PCBs, mechanical assemblies, etc).

If I were a mom and pop company, I'd only hire people with proven experience and education to back them up because it's a lot easier to hire than to fire.
These days, you have to have skills in hardware and software. Programming used to be required for EE's. I'd be surprised if that wasn't still the case. I had little formal programming education, but I spent most of my career doing software development.

What programming languages does one need to know related to you saying "These days you have to have skills in software?"
Would you have to have that sofware knowledge coming through the door, if you already know some hardware knowledge,
and can learn the software after you are in, while you work at that job?

Thanks

 

What programming languages does one need to know

It would depend on the job. Knowing how to program is more important than the languages you know. I learned BASIC and FORTRAN in high school in the 1970's. I learned another dozen languages on-the-job. One week (40 hours about half lecture and half lab) training courses were all I needed to get most of the language concepts. Using the languages reinforced what I learned.

It takes years to become proficient in any language. But, being able to actually solve problems is more important than knowing a language.

Would you have to have that sofware knowledge coming through the door, if you already know some hardware knowledge,
and can learn the software after you are in, while you work at that job?

It depends on the job. My first job after getting my associates degree in electronics was testing refrigerator sized computers based on TTL. I quickly learned the assembly language for that computer so I could write programs to supplement the test programs that we were using. The project I worked on requiring 8080 assembly programming while I was getting my ASEET was helpful.

 

It would depend on the job. Knowing how to program is more important than the languages you know. I learned BASIC and FORTRAN in high school in the 1970's. I learned another dozen languages on-the-job. One week (40 hours about half lecture and half lab) training courses were all I needed to get most of the language concepts. Using the languages reinforced what I learned.

It takes years to become proficient in any language. But, being able to actually solve problems is more important than knowing a language.
It depends on the job. My first job after getting my associates degree in electronics was testing refrigerator sized computers based on TTL. I quickly learned the assembly language for that computer so I could write programs to supplement the test programs that we were using. The project I worked on requiring 8080 assembly programming while I was getting my ASEET was helpful.

What are the current modern languages being used now that are required in electronics?

Thanks

 

What are the current modern languages being used now that are required in electronics?

I don't know. Likely C++ and some scripting language like Python. I've never taken the time to learn either, but I can hack on programs in either language. I was going to learn Python, but found it really wasn't worth the bother.

 

It might be easier to get a job at a larger firm as opposed to a "Mom & Pop" operation where they would likely expect you to be competent in more areas to do many different tasks, as compared to a large company.

 

I don't know. Likely C++ and some scripting language like Python. I've never taken the time to learn either, but I can hack on programs in either language. I was going to learn Python, but found it really wasn't worth the bother.

Thanks, I'll check those out.

Anyway I was more interested in the actual minimal electronics skills and knowledge a person would need.

I guess the job description would be technician, as EE would certainly be beyond any entry level position
unless there would be some other type of job? Assembler I know about.

 

I guess the job description would be technician, as EE would certainly be beyond any entry level position
unless there would be some other type of job?

"Technician" jobs can cover a wide range of activities.

My first job was testing those refrigerator sized computers. I had as ASEET. I used little of the AC/DC theory I learned for the logic boards in the computer (around a dozen 12"x16" boards, some of which took half a dozen E-sized schematics).

However, I did use some when I worked on the power supply stations where I excelled due to my solid basics. There was a woman working on the line who got some "digital only" degree and was helpless at the power supply stations. She and some other techs started passing power supplies that didn't pass all of the tests written by the engineers. They claimed to our supervisor that nothing passed all of the tests. We each had a numbered stamp that we put on all of the things we tested. I had them get one from the tested units with my stamp. It passed every one of the tests.

After a year in that job, I transferred to the corporate R&D lab. There I used a lot of what I learned and was able to try my hand at design. Even though I didn't have a "background" in software, I was able to program HPIB-based equipment to simulate parts of an optical pulse generator we were designing. We were developing the laser diodes, fiberoptic cables, and LCD in our lab. While I was waiting for parts of the system to be manufactured, I used a programmable calculator and various HPIB equipment to simulate parts that weren't yet ready. As subassemblies became available, I replaced the test equipment with the actual assemblies. That was in interesting project. We designed it for our division in Germany.

 

"Technician" jobs can cover a wide range of activities.

My first job was testing those refrigerator sized computers. I had as ASEET. I used little of the AC/DC theory I learned for the logic boards in the computer (around a dozen 12"x16" boards, some of which took half a dozen E-sized schematics).

However, I did use some when I worked on the power supply stations where I excelled due to my solid basics. There was a woman working on the line who got some "digital only" degree and was helpless at the power supply stations. She and some other techs started passing power supplies that didn't pass all of the tests written by the engineers. They claimed to our supervisor that nothing passed all of the tests. We each had a numbered stamp that we put on all of the things we tested. I had them get one from the tested units with my stamp. It passed every one of the tests.

After a year in that job, I transferred to the corporate R&D lab. There I used a lot of what I learned and was able to try my hand at design. Even though I didn't have a "background" in software, I was able to program HPIB-based equipment to simulate parts of an optical pulse generator we were designing. We were developing the laser diodes, fiberoptic cables, and LCD in our lab. While I was waiting for parts of the system to be manufactured, I used a programmable calculator and various HPIB equipment to simulate parts that weren't yet ready. As subassemblies became available, I replaced the test equipment with the actual assemblies. That was in interesting project. We designed it for our division in Germany.

You said you "excelled due to my solid basics".

What would "solid basics" consist of?

Other than EE and technician, what other kind of electronics jobs would there be?

Thanks

 

What would "solid basics" consist of?

For starters: DC theory, AC theory, semiconductor/device theory, digital, troubleshooting/analytical skills, math, physics, fabrication.

 

Can’t imagine what a Mom and Pop electronics firm would be.

I can. I worked for one. When I started there I was one of six technical employees. The bookkeeper was the president's wife. Up until shortly before I started working there, the company was run from a couple of rooms in the president's house. Yet even by the time I started the company had just finished doing an IC design for Texas Instruments that TI has been working on for a couple years and been unable to get to work, but our design was so successful on first silicon that they used the test chip directly in a commercial product. We did a lot of lunatic-fringe designs for a number of big players that normally did their own IC designed but couldn't do these inhouse because they were simply not compatible with their mindset or workflow -- we also got a lot of customers that had been told by the larger design houses that what they were doing couldn't be done and we had an extremely high first-silicon success rate at then doing them. To be sure, while we were extremely successful competing with them in that niche, there's no way we would have ever dreamed of trying to compete with them in their area of expertise because they would have annihilated us.

Until I got there, the bosses wife did all of the soldering of the test boards even though she had zero electronics background. She did an okay job -- not stellar, but good enough to get by. So, to answer the strict question posed by the TS, you don't have to have hardly any electronics skills or knowledge to be of use to an electronics company. But just being "of use" is an extremely low bar.

Most people would probably be surprised to discover how many small electronics companies are out there and many of them are, to one degree or another, essentially family businesses. It's the nature of how many of them get started and manage to keep their costs manageable for a long time.

For a large portion of the time I worked there, we had one or two students working for us doing a host of relatively low-skill stuff, yet stuff that provided them with valuable experience. We had them assisting in the lab or helping out with design verifications. Back then, it was a LOT of manual work to wade through the error files and ferret out the issues, so I showed them a handful of detective strategies that I had developed and then turned them loose. They were often able to quickly identify enough low-hanging fruit that I and the other engineers could then efficiently track down the rest.

 

Thanks, I'll check those out.

Anyway I was more interested in the actual minimal electronics skills and knowledge a person would need.

I guess the job description would be technician, as EE would certainly be beyond any entry level position
unless there would be some other type of job? Assembler I know about.

There's always 'tech' jobs for those that can slip on acid gloves and handle dangerous chemicals if they are drug free and can pass DHS security in the chip industry. but for minimal electronics skills and knowledge, not so many.

 

It might be easier to get a job at a larger firm as opposed to a "Mom & Pop" operation where they would likely expect you to be competent in more areas to do many different tasks, as compared to a large company.

Hard to say. Small companies often have a hard time hiring top graduates because those kids had offers from the big companies months before graduation, whereas small companies are often simply not in a position to extend an offer until they are pretty desperate to get someone that can start the week after next. So what they often look for is not someone that can walk in the door with a huge skillset, but someone that has strong fundamentals and the right mindset. It's surprisingly easy to get a feel for whether someone has those fundamentals and the engineering-problem-solver mindset by asking them to work a couple of oddball problems that are just minor twists to Electronics I problems. The number of applicants (including some with high GPAs from schools with really good reputations) that just want to blindly throw memorized equations at the problem was pretty eye-opening. It was actually quite rare that an applicant even noticed that the circuit they were given wasn't a cookie-cutter circuit from a textbook.

 

For starters: DC theory, AC theory, semiconductor/device theory, digital, troubleshooting/analytical skills, math, physics, fabrication.

Not much hope for a hobbyist then it seems. I took DC, some AC, semicondcutors and tubes (it was several decades ago),
Boolean algebra and some digital and one basic microprocessor class I never finished; (It was the 8080 or something like that).
Once class was assembly of a power supply. do I remember all the theory I was taught? No. that's why I have been breadboarding
now trying to put it all together. Maybe a lost cause.

 

Sounds like you are about my age or even a bit older. Unfortunately, companies (pretty much of any size) that are going to hire someone with minimal skills are probably looking at doing so as an investment in what you can learn and eventually become to them. That means that they are looking for someone pretty new and fresh that just currently lacks the experience -- and hence is going to be paid accordingly. They aren't looking for someone our age, who will (rightly or wrongly) be viewed as someone that is unlikely to grow beyond what they bring to the table to begin with.

My guess is that, if you do find someone willing to hire you, it will be a small house that is looking for someone to do what is the equivalent of electronics manual labor for very low pay. The good news is that those kinds of employers are usually more more willing to let you grow into whatever level of work you are capable of even if they didn't expect it to happen.

 

Sounds like you are about my age or even a bit older. Unfortunately, companies (pretty much of any size) that are going to hire someone with minimal skills are probably looking at doing so as an investment in what you can learn and eventually become to them. That means that they are looking for someone pretty new and fresh that just currently lacks the experience -- and hence is going to be paid accordingly. They aren't looking for someone our age, who will (rightly or wrongly) be viewed as someone that is unlikely to grow beyond what they bring to the table to begin with.

My guess is that, if you do find someone willing to hire you, it will be a small house that is looking for someone to do what is the equivalent of electronics manual labor for very low pay. The good news is that those kinds of employers are usually more more willing to let you grow into whatever level of work you are capable of even if they didn't expect it to happen.

Age discrimination. I get it but I see what you are saying.

I wonder at what threshold of skill, say with older guitar amplifiers, old stereos etc.,
(discreet through hole components, even tubes) that a person can declare and feel
that they are ready to do the real world work? I'm talking about based on deliberate
learning and hobbying style skill improvement. It's not like I'm starting from zero.
On the other hand, considering the advances in modern electronics technology and
new graduates with AS degrees, maybe I'm beating a dead horse. I do enjoy the
concept of electronics, but maybe I'll be better off just being a hobbyist.

Thanks

 

You should first study about electronics in which you are good and keep practicing with the help of Youtube or Different Websites on Internet.