Is aerospace a good industry to gain experience? FPGA specific. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: pigtwo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 12:57:52 am
content: Hello all,I'm in the process of searching for a new job and I'm seeing a ton in the aerospace industry. The company I'm looking at seem to design systems for satellites. I have about 5 years of experience(3 PCB design, 2 FPGA design). I'm mainly interested in doing enjoyable work and getting good design experience. My main concern with aerospace is that I imagine there is a lot of overhead with little allowance for changes or new designs and that you might not really get the opportunity to learn new things.Does anyone have any experience working in aerospace? If so did you feel like it provided experiences to grow in a technical sense? I don't know how much it would change but I'm primarily looking for FPGA experience.Thank you!

author: bob91343
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 02:52:53 am
content: I worked in aerospace for many years and it's pretty much the same as any other industry. It's driven by tight specifications, budget, and mostly the ego of management. As with any big company you have to maintain an image and be a team player. The latter means not much room for innovation. You gotta follow the rules.That's why I got out. I opened a retail electronics repair shop and it was great. I set my own hours and decided how much I wanted to get paid and with whom I would work. I did that for 13 years.

author: winniethepooh_icu
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 04:37:44 am
content: Don't listen to bob, sounds like he was an under performer and was not treated well.There is certainly opportunity in this industry to be involved with FPGA designs but you must carefully choose your employer based on what aspect you wish to be involved in.Aerospace is very careful and slow to evolve (not in a bad way, due to well-placed caution) and you will find that working with FPGA's in many aerospace companies will involve more minor changes than actual ground-up design. At some companies, companies which may confirm they work with FPGA's, their true involvement is simply integrating an existing FPGA design into new/different platforms with little or no changes, and much of the involvement is top level validation testing without any actual FPGA design at all.Honestly, if you really want to be involved heavily in FPGA design, a better choice might be the consumer electronics industry. This would allow you to be involved with the latest FPGA technology, and move very quickly to new projects.Make sure to select an employer with good mentoring available (that is, avoid startups full of young people, they are like chaotic lemmings and you won't learn much from them).

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 04:30:24 pm
content: One special thing about aerospace is, that you're required to document every single move you make with a design. If you like paperwork and are a stickler for accuracy and perfection, fine. If you're a "normal" engineer, you'll probably drown.

author: bob91343
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 06:14:27 pm
content: And drown I did.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 14, 2020, 06:32:36 pm
content: Quote from: winniethepooh_icu on August 14, 2020, 04:37:44 amIn my experience there is NO correlation - much less causation - between performing well as an engineer and being well treated by poor managers.

author: bob91343
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2020, 12:42:04 am
content: Thanks for your comment Andy. I look back on my record of technical work and have some pretty good accomplishments. One manager went out of his way to tell me how much he appreciated my efforts and wanted to make sure I knew it didn't go unnoticed.Unfortunately that same manager got promoted and brought in an old crony as my boss. This new guy would sit on my desk smoking a cigar trying to tell me how to think. It didn't take long before our paths diverged.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2020, 03:21:15 am
content: Quote from: winniethepooh_icu on August 14, 2020, 04:37:44 amThe biggest use of "big" FPGAs in consumer products is automotive, which is still pretty tightly regulated although much less so than aerospace. If you want to work with high end FPGAs in an environment where you actually get to do a lot of code development with lots of flexibility to change things, most likely you'll have to go into the research field.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 15, 2020, 06:04:15 am
content: One thing to bear in mind is that even though the aerospace industry is tightly regulated and highly conservative when it comes to equipment that will actually fly, behind the scenes there's all kinds of work done to discover whatmightbe able to fly in future.Right now the industry is in poor shape, though. Commercial airline manufacturers aren't exactly flush with cash, but even government funded businesses are finding that the world has better things to spend its (increasingly) limited resources on.Other FPGA 'strongholds' that you might like to look into are data centres and financial trading systems. The former are why Intel bought Altera a few years ago; they certainly believe that FPGAs are the way to make servers, AI and other resource-intensive equipment run faster on less power. Since that's still very much a growth area, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, that's where I'd be looking.