Someone just asked how many of us are engineers or hobbyists and I'm curious too. Let's have a poll

https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/are-most-of-you-electronics-engineers.136351/

Hello.
Just wondering if most of you folks that are able to answer all the electronics questions are EE's or other highly trained electrical gurus?
.

Feel free to respond with specifics

 

@strantor
Maybe another category...I am State Licensed to design heating and air conditioning, unlimited, but that's not the same as P.E. because it's only one field of endeavor. It's a political distinction about licensing. Am I a P.E.? Not in the political sense. Am I a Licensed Engineer? Yes.

Strange results on the poll numbers. Right now you have 10 answers but a (1) vote is showing up as 14.3%. Right now, the poll has 143% out of 100% of the votes.

Yes I know. You didn't cause that. Just pointing to a situation that is difficult to understand.

 

Learnt at home from very young (with the help of a brilliant library in Darlington) and went to a recruitment evening hoping to be taken on as junior engineer but was taken on as a fully fledged engineer. After a while moved on as a test engineer, designing and programming custom test equipment for the company and never looked back. No qualifications at all other than school exams. It's a long way from valves to micro-controllers.

 

I qualify in both the "Entrepreneur, own business" and "Licensed professional engineer" categories... but a more fitting description would be "self-employed". I don't have employees, but rather a network of suppliers that spring into action every time a new project is green-lighted.

 

Hello,

I have no degree.
All qualifications needed for my job where aquired by following in-house courseses in the factory of the company.
When I started my job (almost 30 years ago), you went to the custommer with a case of tools and spareparts and the scope.
You where very often able to resolve the problem at the custommer site.

Nowerdays, the boards are so complex that repairs on site are not possible anymore.
You switch the board, test the system and go home again.
You sent the defective board to the factory for repair.

Bertus

 

@strantor
Maybe another category...I am State Licensed to design heating and air conditioning, unlimited, but that's not the same as P.E. because it's only one field of endeavor. It's a political distinction about licensing. Am I a P.E.? Not in the political sense. Am I a Licensed Engineer? Yes

.
I made 2 new entries. I'm 100% positive at least one of them fits your specific situation.

Strange results on the poll numbers. Right now you have 10 answers but a (1) vote is showing up as 14.3%. Right now, the poll has 143% out of 100% of the votes.

Yes I know. You didn't cause that. Just pointing to a situation that is difficult to understand.

Probably due to enabling multiple answers from each person

 

For me, three entries also apply.
Max.

 

I got my start as a tech. Worked for TI for about a year, repaired large campus wide security and environmental systems for a few years. After that my skills started to slide a bit getting into PC install and repair way back when there was almost no one doing it. But it was still too easy as it was only board swapping.

Had been using my programming skills most of my career, as the electronic skills started to dwindle the programming skills started to build Now as a profession software development is pretty all much I do.

So my hobby revolves a lot of working with micro controllers where I can use my coding skills. I still struggle with the analog portion of the hobby.

 

So my hobby revolves a lot of working with micro controllers where I can use my coding skills. I still struggle with the analog portion of the hobby.

The story of my life...

 

When I started my job (almost 30 years ago), you went to the custommer with a case of tools and spareparts and the scope.
You where very often able to resolve the problem at the custommer site.


Bertus

This is how I worked for years. I did board swapping if I had a good board with me bu that was a rarity. Usually I would trouble shoot to the board. We had one board in particular that had major design flaw. Under normal conditions it would switch a line from +24V to -24V. There where 4 channels on the board and up to 8 boards in the system. Once in a while one of the voltages would not switch off so both +24 and -24 would be on at the same time on a single channel. This would cause a cascading effect on all the boards installed and it would take out the whole rack of boards. It started with a fizzing sound. When you heard that you would know you were in trouble. The next thing to happen was a huge cloud of smoke rolling out of the system. ;(

 

The story of my life...

What? Do you mean struggle with analog? How can you as an engineer or don't you do analog design?

 

If we are talking about just the realm of electronics at the component level (i.e. not the business), I'm a hobbyist and that's how I answered. I've also been accused of having "the knack" since I was two, but you didn't include that as a choice.

 

What? Do you mean struggle with analog? How can you as an engineer or don't you do analog design?

I meant to say I'm just like you; an expert coder with limited analog electronics abilities... but I'm getting better by the day, thanks to this site and its very generous participants

 

I meant to say I'm just like you; an expert coder with limited analog electronics abilities... but I'm getting better by the day, thanks to this site and its very generous participants

I am afraid my analog skills will never get any better despite the herculean efforts of folks on this forum.

So what type of projects do you work on professionally? What is a typical project?

 

I'm still trying to finish school so hobbyist would be the most fitting answer for that poll at the moment.

 

If we are talking about just the realm of electronics at the component level (i.e. not the business), I'm a hobbyist and that's how I answered. I've also been accused of having "the knack" since I was two, but you didn't include that as a choice.

I wouldn't limit you to just electronics. Honestly in world, actual electronic design only makes up a small portion. I'm more in programming and system design. "Controls Engineer" is my title, and that's how I answered.

So I'm curious about your "other" that you seem reluctant to identify outside the confines of electronics. Are you a mechanical engineer or what?

 

Here's my timeline up til now:
(Begin 2004)

Military technician

technician (just as job for money)

Technician & hobbyist (grew more interested in the work I was doing and started tinkering/studying on my own time)

Technician with engineering latitude (got tired of fixing old stuff, grew passionate about designing updates and retrofits)

Self employed (struck out on my own, field service troubleshooting and retrofits system design)

Controls Engineer (customer hired me for more than I was paying myself, plus benefits).

I'm getting tired of working for the man. Every day thinking a little more of going back to self employment.

 

If we are talking about just the realm of electronics at the component level (i.e. not the business), I'm a hobbyist and that's how I answered. I've also been accused of having "the knack" since I was two, but you didn't include that as a choice.

 

Technician holding an FCC GROL license. My original FCC third class license was issued in 1971 with broadcast endorsement. It was a requisite for my after school job (high school) engineering talk radio shows and doing maintenance at a class d radio station.

Currently retired.

on edit: clarified I was in high school at the time.

 

Does this just pertain to electronics? There I'm a hobbyist. But am a master die/mold maker by trade and training. So not sure how to answer the poll.