My UNSW Talk - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 08:49:58 am
content: Part of my talk at UNSW Sept 2023:Part 2: Q&A00:00 - How important are qualifications? And a huge engineering job tip!00:46 - My worst university experience02:35 - Where did you get components before the internet?04:16 - Will I do more low cost lab videos?04:57 - Engineering Contractor vs Full Time06:06 - Freelance Engineering?06:57 - Estimating design time frames. Gantt charts, feast & famine contract work08:19 - How do contracting roles start?09:18 - What if you don't have lab space?10:15 - Australian University vs the USA10:46 - Would I ever return to working in industry?11:43 - Not everyone is cut out to start their own company12:20 - I went to NIDA, I'm the 2nd worst actor in history13:14 - How to find a niche product market14:03 - Have I ever lived overseas?14:50 - How much of my income comes from Youtube?16:28 - One of the first full time Youtubers in Australia17:29 - Would I ever be a university lecturer18:35 - I was almost a teacher18:50 - I hated this about university

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 10:31:48 am
content: "in this country nobody cares about your qualifications it's different in other countries here once you get your first job your degree goes to the bottom of your resume no one cares sorry but it's just it's just the way it is no one cares it's it's it's what you can do right it's what you can do for them"You're right it is "what you can do for them".You're wrong "nobody cares about your qualifications".Why? Because as an interviewer for deeply technical jobs I knowusually this company's job requires significantly different technical experience to your current job. Hence your current job is a very imperfect guide as to how you will perform in my companythe quality - or lack of quality - of an engineering degree is a strong indicator of what you can/cannot be expected to manage in my company now and in the futureIn addition, I was using the stuff I learned at university for most of my career.The fundamentals last a lifetime; one specific tool's details are useful for at most 5 years.Having said that, towards the end of my career, I became heavily software oriented - and appalled at how few fundamentals the typical employee knew. You know, little things like finite state machines ("aren't they part of a compiler"), the Byzantine Generals problem ("oh, the framework guarantees distributed transactions ACID properties"), Partial Ordering ("oh, this distributed system has the same time everywhere").TL;DR...To get 10 years technical experience and growth, then a good degree is invaluable.OTOH, for one years technical experience repeated 10 times, you needn't worry about the degree.Too much software avoids engineering, and relies on crossed-fingers plus <sing-song voice> "la-la-la-la-lah".

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 12:41:36 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 16, 2024, 10:31:48 amThat's the majority of how it works in Australia. YMMV of course.And even if they do care about the qualification, they generally don't care where you got it, unlike say the US, where if you went to MIT then that goes at the top of your resume.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 01:23:58 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 16, 2024, 12:41:36 pmQuite possibly. I have zero experience of Oz/Kiwi engineering, other than working with a few Oz/Kiwi engineers in the UK (all of whom were very competent).However perhaps the key word is "majority". To put it bluntly, most jobs (engineering and otherwise) are pretty boring and crap.I've always aspired to better, and mostly achieved it. I try to encourage youngsters to aim high and not settle for mediocre. Occasionally I succeed.

author: Tony_G
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 03:12:08 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 16, 2024, 08:49:58 amAm I the only one who is actually interested in if they told Dave who the worst actor in history was?TonyG

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 10:14:33 pm
content: Looking from the perspective of Poland and IT, I see the same thing Dave described.A well done, active project on GitHub is usually worth more than a degree and two years in a company nobody heard about. This isn’t universally true for all companies, because many have nobody to evaluate you properly. But the proportion of those, who can, is large enough. And they are not stupid. Their choice is simple. A newbie with half-outdated, half-forgotten theoretical knowledge and a nice paper, whom they will have to pamper for the next 5 years, or somebody who has solid hands-on experience and has shown they can tend for themselves, including acquiring new knowledge as needed.However, there is an important, yet easy to miss conditional. Whether the job requires skill and experience. If not, if you are applying to be an unskilled drone, then you do need all the documents. That’s not because your education or previous experience matters. Because it does not. You’ll be a gear on the production line just like hundreds thousands others, replaceable with any indistinguishable copy. But the market floods the HR with thousands and thousands of almost identical “gears” and somehow they must filter the dozen they currently need. The simplest way, which gives some semblance of rationality, is ranking them by features like earlier employment, education, languages they know, having a driving license, traits beneficial to the employer etc.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2024, 11:20:49 pm
content: Quote from: golden_labels on August 16, 2024, 10:14:33 pmThe counter-statement is "a bodger that throws something together and fiddles with it until the declare it 'working', understanding neither how it works, nor the theoretical limitations, nor the envelope limits, nor whether it can be manufactured/used reliably - or someone who understands what is and isn't possible, and can work out how to implement and improve it".I've encountered too many of the former at crap companies; they drag everybody down. The good companies I've worked at have the latter (and reject the former), which allows everybody to achieve more than they might otherwise expect.Assessing potential employees is vital. At HP the divisional manager met every promising candidatebeforean offer was made.

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2024, 01:14:15 am
content: Yes, assessment of a candidate is essential. So why did you remove this step in the first sentence? Or do you believe that, after assessment, a notable portion of people gets a job with no skills and basic knowledge and just being lucky somehow throwing things together on GH? I’d say that’s shitty assessment then.Not sure, what’s the other end of your dichotomy. I believe it’s supposed to negate what I wrote, but it implies what I wrote must be true.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 17, 2024, 01:15:33 am
content: Quote from: Tony_G on August 16, 2024, 03:12:08 pmYes, you had to be there to hear who it was. Edited that bit out.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 17, 2024, 08:18:47 am
content: Quote from: golden_labels on August 17, 2024, 01:14:15 amThe point was to illustrate that your characterisation was rather extreme and one sided. I did that by giving a different equally extreme and one sided characterisation. Reality is, of course, more nuanced.The world is shades of grey, not black and white. What you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts.Social media thrives on steering people towards extreme and simplistic statements - and thoughts. That is not good for society, and should be resisted.

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2024, 04:54:44 am
content: On that I agree. I was using extremes. Of course it’s an entire distribution and it’s multidimensional. And the options are not mutually exclusive either, so it’s not like we’re choosing between one or the other. I would certainly prefer a person showing both their own projects and their formal education or past employment, over somebody with just one of those. And yes, practical ability to develop a program is not a replacement for solid knowledge. I hope I wasn’t understand suggesting this.But let’s map this onto a single line. One end focusing on showing actual projects, the other just waving some documents. I believe this is the simplification Dave made and what’s being discussed here. If we funnel reality into those categories, my opinion is that we are getting much better employer material on the “actual projects” end. Not that certainly one end is good the other is bad, but the weight of the distribution leans strongly towards one of them. This is what I wanted to show.My personal experience in choosing people to employ for a commercial project is limited. I can easily recall only 4 examples, which is a very lowN. One only formal education, two mostly hobby projects. one being on both ends. The outcomes were as follows. The first one didn’t do his job at all: called me about 2 hours before the deadline and asked, what he was supposed to do. In retrospection earlier interactions were warning signs, telling me he’s incapable of working on his own, but I ignored those and chosen to believe in his honesty. The second one did great until one day I heard he disappeared and stopped responding. Depression apparently, no malice or negligence on his end. The third one was the best coworker I ever had: not a single bad word about him. The commercial part of our coöperation was focused more on graphics things than coding, but we did coding on non-commercial stuff. The fourth one is a stereotypical Eastern European programmer: will write you anything in a blink of an eye, it will work perfectly as specified, low bug rate, and exceeds performance of any competing code. The catch? He implements exact use case scenarios. Deviate from it a little bit and everything falls into pieces. Basically acts like a very efficient translator.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2024, 05:41:07 pm
content: Quote from: golden_labels on August 18, 2024, 04:54:44 amWe agreeHowever, too many people on this forum (and elsewhere)doloudly proclaim that practical experience is important and that theoretical knowledge is unimportant. That's often associated with them thinking there is no difference between being an engineer and a technician. In such cases it can help to point out there are important differences between doctors and nurses; sometimes you need one, sometimes you need the other.QuoteBeing an interviewer isn't trivial, and requires thought and care and preparation and listening - and humbly appreciating what the interviewee has to offer.My normal practice was to get the interviewee to talk about what they have done in the past; bonus points for doing something beyond what was necessary just because they liked doing it. Then gently push them to describe why they did itthatway, why notthisway, and - with 20:20 hindsight - what they would dodifferentlynext time. If a candidate can't give sensible answers to those questions, they are unlikely to be useful as a design engineer. (They may be very valuable as a technician, field service engineer, etc)Then ask them some general theory-biassed technical questions relevant to the job and their background. If they don't know about a particular subject, they should say so, and we just move onto another technical question.Then ask them how they would approach a simple abstract problem. Explain that you don't have any "correct" answer in mind, you just want to see how their mind works. Bonus points if they ask questions to narrow down possible answers. Example problem: "a toy manufacturer wants to add some traffic lights so a child can play with push-along cars on the carpet. What do you say?".

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2024, 08:28:15 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 16, 2024, 12:41:36 pmYes that's what I've heard many times. It's different in other countries of course.Generally speaking, in Europe it's much more important.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 18, 2024, 10:25:19 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 18, 2024, 05:41:07 pmWho ever said that?QuoteCorrect, I was trying to tell they need something else beside the bit of paper when a dozen other people with the same bit of paper are going after the same job.And that's it's generally truehere in Australiathat your qualifications go to the bottom of your resume.As always, YMMV.

author: golden_labels
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 01:50:20 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on August 18, 2024, 05:41:07 pmTo be clear, I wasn’t an interviewer. I also knew 3 out of those 4 people pretty well before, so I had a view of their background better than most interviewers could get.I did know interviewers, but I wouldn’t include their experience in “my experience”, obviously. Of course what I know from them, what I know from people trying to get job, and in fact also from people I made get a job,is majority of what I built my view on that matter.Quote from: tggzzz on August 18, 2024, 05:41:07 pmI like that question. That reminds me one case, when I was helping a friend judge a student and his semestral project (programming). It was evident it’s not his own project and we squeezed out of him, that the code was written by his brother, a professional programmer. But we gave him a chance, started pointing to random fragments of the code, and asking, what the code does. His responses were spot on. He received a passing score. With minimum number of lab points, so he would still have a hard time on the exam, but we didn’t reject him. The reasoning was simple. A complete newbie analyzing code of another person that efficiently and well, that he could easily outcompete seasoned programmers. Plus his brother passed a lot of practical knowledge, which he understood too.Quote from: tggzzz on August 18, 2024, 05:41:07 pmThis is the kind of a question I’d hate being asked. One may fail simply because of things completely unrelated to their future job or even them themselves. If not that such law would be hard to formulate, I would support banning them. To me it’s playing a psychologist, while not understanding even the basic limitations of human’s mind. Getting a pretense of rationality, while any negative outcome usually reflects shortcomings of the interviewer, not the person answering.This is very different than observing, how a person deals with an on-topic question. There the interviewee is expected to deal with a problem, because this is exactly the service they are offering to the potential employer. Of course the interviewer may still fail at properly evaluate that thinking process, but this is mostly due to picking up wrong signals or assigning them wrong weights. Not because the process itself is inherently flawed.With off-topic questions and, worse, completely random, abstract and irrelevant questions, this is not the case. It’s unlikely in another person’s brain such a question will map to the same notions and invoke the same references as it did in your head. Quite opposite: it may map to something completely different. From the beginning you are not even on the same page and from there it only gets worse. With on-topic questions, you more or less stay within the bounds of industry practices, norms, and knowledge. With off-topics the way a person approaches the question and how you interpret their approach is a function of personal beliefs and experience, of both of you. You can’t peek into their head, you can’t tell what influenced their approach. You’ll interpret it through lens of your owntruths, explaining it within your ownreality. If that wasn’t bad enough, the person may not be able to produce a reasonable answer at all. The question map map to void. No need to seek far: to me the example you gave above is producing an empty head. Totally blank. It’s not that I don’t know what to respond… I don’t even imagine what kind of a response you’d expect. I tell you that straight. If that was an interview, at this point the person could simply become overwhelmed. Or try to wiggle out of the situation, answering just anything to not fail. It will be random rambling, not representative of how the person thinks while facing an actual problem to solve.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 09:56:00 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 16, 2024, 12:41:36 pmSame here. My education is listed on my resume but none of the companies I went to for a job interview asked for any diplomas. They where always more interested in what I could do for the company and whether I have the skill / aptitude level they need. Some companies have their own tests which are worth more than a diploma obtained years ago. When I'm interviewing applicants myself, I let them take a test to detect the bullshitters and get some in-depth conversation going.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 02:30:16 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on August 18, 2024, 10:25:19 pmNot in this thread.My remaining life is too short to chase down historic idiocies. I sometimes point them out when they occur, but not always.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 03:21:28 pm
content: Quote from: golden_labels on August 19, 2024, 01:50:20 amI first encountered the techniques while an undergraduate. I mentioned I had selected a Doug Self audio preamp, and was pushed as to why I thought it was a good preamp. The interviewer listened to my responses and asked follow up questions. At the end I remember saying something was claimed to be some sort of advantage, but I didn't understand why it was a significant advantage. The interviewer liked that, and moved onto other topics.From that I also learned that if someone (especially a salesman) is prepared to say "don't know" or "no" when "yes" is the obvious easy answer, then you can trust their answers to other questions.Overall, that interview at HP was the best I experienced, hence I remembered it. I didn't join HP then for unrelated reasons, but did a decade later.QuoteI understand why you say that; purely "psychological" questions irritate me too.However, for the "traffic lights controller" example I mentioned, too many people jump straight to asingleanswer based on their previous experience. I want to see them generatemultiple possibilities, e.g. MCU+software, FPGA, discrete logic. Bonus points if they suggest a purely mechanical solution.QuoteYes and no. The more interesting jobs don't have a single specific technology, and the technology will change over time.For example, in an R&D consultancy potential clients often state thesolutionthey want developed, but it usually beneficial to understand the client'sproblem. That often requires gradual elucidation of their situation, followed by considering solutions that are completely different to the client's thoughts. While the client might think a microprocessor+software is required, often a solution involving FPGA and analogue processing is optima. And sometimes their problem isn't even technical, even though they are trying to use technology to solve it!For brevity I didn't mention that I alsoadopt the technical aspects of the questions so it is relevant to the job in handtell the interviewee that I use the flow of questions to illustrate the kind of things that happen during a project, so they can appreciate how the company works. Good candidates pick up on that and then ask their own questionsQuoteThere we agree. I especially dislike "trick" questions to which there is an answer that you either know or don't know. Classic example is "why are manhole covers round". Such questions allow an interviewer to project superiority, which does nobody any good.As for "tell me about yourself", the best response is "which part of my CV don't you understand?"Or "why do you want to work here?" => "that's what I'm trying to find out during the interview".OTOH getting inside someone's head is valuable, since it can inform how they might fit in a company and job. What might be very valuable characteristics forthatjob might be unhelpful forthisjob.Provided it is done sensitively in a way that allows an interviewee to express their better qualities (and doesn't belittle the interviewee) both parties can gain. Interviews really should be a two-way process.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 03:28:01 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 19, 2024, 09:56:00 amI was never asked for any references, nor were any of my claimed qualifications/jobs formally checked. Clearly the companies relied on their ability to detect people that would fit and be successful.Obviously I don't know whether lack of qualifications meant I wasn't invited to an interview.That's partly because my paper qualifications were very acceptable, partly because I only applied for jobs where my qualifications were relevant, and partly because my CV indicated relevant theoretical and practical experience.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2024, 08:37:50 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 19, 2024, 09:56:00 amSure, but as golden_labels says, if you didn't put an education in, HR would filter you out and you'd have essentially 0 chance of getting the job.Its easy to lie, but, also usually easy for a knowledgeable person to sniff them out. Which is why you always want an engineer in on the interview.