Rant - Dumb EEs at my work! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2023, 02:45:15 am
content: It seems someone with bad sight hired some "hingeneers" 30 years ago - they probably where even bad at making hinges lol.It's been several times I have some technical speak with them and couldn't believe how these 60+yr lads, considered the top tier here, could miss such things.Today I discovered a design error from 30 years ago!Basically the device switches between two different supplies (14 or 18V) to the output, it has a npn bjt that does something I have not yet figured out, it's the old schematic style, 20 traces from A to B, no tags, no busses, a nightmare to read!Some came with that bjt burned out ( I still had not figured this), no shorts, nothing damaged, hmm so strange, let's put new transistors and see what happens.Everything works until I run the short circuit tests, 5 seconds later the blue smoke appeared!The problem comes when the system is outputting 18V and it overloads, the current protection works, dropping 18V to 10..8..2.. 0... whatever to keep the current under limit.In that specific case the npn will suffer reverse voltage, 14V at the emitter and close to 0 at the base and collector.Did I hear avalanche?Tested a new transistor applying reverse voltage with a PSU, over 13.9 it went into avalanche. That's it!But why do the others work?Well, I found that the older transistors had marginally higher breakdown voltage, holding up to 15V, that's the only reason they worked well so many years!Went to have a talk with the enginneers- Nah the npn is like a diode, will hold just nice! If a reverse voltage is applied it will just block it.- What?? 99% of bjts on Earth are rated to 5Veb max, more and they might go into avalanche!- Naaah, how many volts does a diode hold? 100... Even 1000!- A transistor is not a diode!- Erm... i have to certify something (He flew away).Having 50+ for repair I went again to the enginneers.- Hey pal, tell me this is not a design flaw from 1980...- Hahaha, you, finding a flaw? How did it work so many years then? (Like, shut up you uneducated peasant!)- Because they were lucky with those 1983 transistors, they work at 1V away from shorting everything out...Hmmm... We'll have a look. Where's that Veb parameter you say?(Crawling the datasheet like it's the first time they see this)- Naah it must be the max base voltage!- No way you can't apply 5Vbe in a bjt!? It's the reverse breakdown voltage!Much, much later, they reached me:- Meh, the output overloading is a rare condition, just make the shorting test for 2 seconds so it doesn't burn.OMG...Attached greatly simplified circuit.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2023, 07:51:27 am
content: You don't know why they decided to do it that way. Maybe they had 1 week to make the entire board. Maybe they run out of budget. Maybe someone came along a decade later and replaced the part with another one from a catalog, without understanding what the part actually does.

author: AndyBeez
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2023, 09:04:08 am
content: Back in the day....1980s EE : Bwoss, I got this circuit I found in Practical Electronics.1980s Manager : Hmmm, that's a lot of symbols on that diagram. Let me cross out the ones we don't need in our bill of materials --- What's this symbol?1980's EE : Transistor. Possibly. They use them in cheap Russian radios.1980s Manager : A Russian transistor? Sounds pricey. For the customer. Pick a cheaper one than they have here.What goes around....2020s EE : Bro, I got this circuit I found on Stack Exchange.2020s Bro-Manager : What's an Arduino?2020s EE : Cheap.2020s Bro-Manager : Perfect.

author: Terry Bites
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2023, 10:08:48 am
content: I’ve never felt comfortable about causing death and destruction so I often used to ask my colleagues to review and sanity check my ideas. Sadly, I’ve had plenty of experience with colleagues who either resented being asked or red inked things that they simply didn’t fit their preferences and/ or fully understand. Like earthing!I was still fairy fresh outa college when I got a in a design office for a telecoms company. They made instrumentation and coms systems for then National Grid, the BBC, Network Rail and many other chunky clients. How they got away with their crap for so long still baffles me. Aussies will be glad to know that it was a bulshit detector at the RAAF who finally did them in.I found to my horror that the senior engineer (aka the Fat Controller) was superbly incompetent and he kept reusing his same little box of ignorance over and over. I sat between the Fat controller, who thought CAD was "cheating and we’ll have none of that", and the then draughtsman. We’re still in the mid 80’s.My pointless- as it turned out- job was to check the fat C’s pencil on fag packet scribble against the exquisitely inked A0 Velum. I found plenty of problems, some niggling and some pretty disastrous. This guy used to go ape and refuse to modify anything or correct any errors. I’m sure he thought he was invincible. Was it the haze of cigarette smoke and ammonia fumes from the dyeline making him crazy? I had to keep going to his boss to get his bad stuff fixed. I thought I’d been sorting most of it. Then the test engineer and the cable harness guys kept calling me out for not catching obvious FUs. “Checked by….. That’s you sonny boy”.The test engineer then pitched in with me after he discovered that the fat C was going behind our backs to bully the poor sods who taped up the mylar and the people on the shop floor. In the end we told them where to shove it. It was my first experience of telling the boss man where to shove it, what a rush! I thought that my next job would surely be in a wanker free environment, how naive I was.

author: magic
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2023, 10:38:22 am
content: This transistor will conduct current even without avalanching, operating in reverse (C-E swapped). Very low β, so maybe not a lot of current.Not sure what it is doing there.

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2023, 11:45:45 am
content: Ah sure it did, I measured -3A and it became crazy hot after just 2 seconds!There're lota of small things with these guys that you say, wtf!A n-ch fet that was conducting at 0Vgate in a new board batch, told him hey but for this to work get we should have at least 10V or so, they're coming defective from factory (Indeed, measured 20 from the reel, 15 were shorted).The hingeneer: Huh I don't remember how MOSFET works, go talk with somebody else. LOL.It's not they are human and commit errors, what annoys me is that they behave like carrying the entire wisdom of universe, kind of snob attitude, then I hear utter no sense.Last one was a 74xx TTL logic with the gate output shorted.He ran to power off PSU "ahh it's gonna short the power and blow up!!"What? How? A TTL can only supply 20-25ma at best!I had to show him the datasheet!

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2023, 03:56:04 pm
content: Quote from: DavidAlfa on June 29, 2023, 11:45:45 amAnd now you know exactly why I get so damned irate when people do not admit to making an error, just to 'save face' or keep up their 'popularity score'.I've never had a problem working with people making errors; hell, I do them quite often myself. It is the dismissive attitude, always shifting blame, being careless of what their behaviour causes to others, that really irk the hell out of me –– and those tend to be the 'popular' ones that higher-ups think know their shit.If only you knew how common this is in the software industry, you would not wonder why most of software is so crappy, fragile, and insecure. Most bugs are caused by careless people. Only very rarely are the bugs of the interesting kind, that arise from complex interactions in ways that us humans did not see earlier.I'll stop ranting now and go brew my hatred under some rock or something. This is a subject I could rant for hours, given half a chance...

author: Conrad Hoffman
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2023, 04:41:40 pm
content: Based on everybody's location I have to believe the situation is the same world-wide! I think it's better today and I work in a completely wanker-free environment. The only problem is when you look around and can't find the wanker...

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 29, 2023, 11:26:10 pm
content: @DavidAlfa, a hint:Don't post this kind of stuff here. It'll come back to haunt you. Facebook, Twitter or Truth Social are a better fit.If you want to get rid of aggressions, buy a punching bag.And if you feel you're in a career dead-end, look for a new job. There are plenty.Yes, engineers make mistakes, back then and also today. But if you see yourself as Einstein, think again.I've seen some of your answers/suggestions here. I'll say no more on that.Cheers, take a deep breath, and try to get on with our colleagues.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 12:52:45 am
content: If the design is from 30 years ago, you probably know more of its function than anyone there, even if they had a hand in designing it, they've probably long forgotten.Figure out the issue, and what should be done to fix it. Easiest is usually to spec in another part instead of asking for the whole thing to be re-designed. Are you saying the old transistor is a different part or the same part number?Of course, worth asking if anyone knows why its there, etc. but if no one is interested just move on.Calling or thinking of them as dumb is pointless IMO, sort of as Benta says. But I think its fine to post the other details here for discussion.

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 04:36:17 am
content: Since the 1980's I've worked with bad engineers, average ones, and brilliant ones. I learned a lot from the brilliant ones. I also learned a lot from the bad ones. Key point: "learn".

author: thermistor-guy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 05:11:31 am
content: Quote from: DavidAlfa on June 29, 2023, 02:45:15 amThe older parts might also have higher parasitic resistances and lower reverse Beta, helping to ward off catastrophic failure.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 05:29:28 am
content: Quote from: thm_w on June 30, 2023, 12:52:45 amMany years ago (circa mid 1980s), I was at a remotely controlled MW AM Broadcast site in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, doing one of our routine yearly Test & Maintenance visits.It was something of a "sentimental journey" to me, as in 1967/68 I was stationed there, looking after, along with some VHF & UHF comms links, a HF radio system which was used as a backup to the open wire pole route, which snaked its way south to Geraldton, nearly 3000km away.It was long gone, but the cupboard full of parts was still there.We had just about finished our "after hours" testing, when the off-air Programme Fail Alarm operated.We quickly checked it by patching the line PFA in its place, so it was definitely faulty."No problems" as it was a simple circuit with one active device, a BJT.Looking at the beautifully drafted schematic, the device was called out as a fairly unfamiliar transistor in the "BFY" series & was shown as a PNP device.We dug through the parts cupboard, but there were no devices of that type, so we had a cuppa coffee.The coffee must have revived us a bit, as at 3am, blearily looking at the schematic again, we realised that a PNP wouldn't work in that configuration, so we started digging around in the parts again, this time looking for an NPN device.We had hopes of a BFY51, or similar, but there was nothing like that in the Broadcast parts.In desperation, we turned to the ancient HF Comms parts bins, & found many MM1711 transistors, which the Comms Tx maker seemed very fond of.We tried it in the PFA, &, of course it worked perfectly!Definitely "a trap for young players", but luckily, we were just old enough & suspicious enough not to take the drafted schematic as Gospel.There were many such things over the years, including, at a later employer, the very neat workshop manual for a piece of equipment that I can't recall the function of, but it was made by a smallish UK manufacturer.All was "sweetness & light" in the manual, until the second page of the schematic.Even then, the first quarter of the circuit was neatly drafted, but after that, it turned into "chicken scratches" for all the world like someone had scribbled a few ideas on a paper napkin!

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 01:43:56 pm
content: Quote from: thermistor-guy on June 30, 2023, 05:11:31 amOlder parts had a higher base-emitter breakdown voltage.It is possible that they just used the wrong bipolar transistor after design. Maybe the purchasing manager could not find the originally specified transistor and changed it not knowing that there was a difference. "Chopper" bipolar transistors used to be available which had symmetrical construction and equal breakdown voltages and hfe in reverse; their collector and emitter could be swapped as they worked both ways and they could hold off high voltages in reverse.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 01:50:10 pm
content: I'm 100% certaint that you are currently, liketoday, putting something on a board that will become high comedy for a junior engineer 30 years down the line.Also: don't forget there was no internet in the 80's. No quick way to check datasheets (just a closet full of datasheet books). No websites full of explanations or examples.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 01:57:49 pm
content: There is no problem in making errors, we all do them.The stupidity is when you refuse to acknowledge or fix the error, perpetuating the problem, just to soothe your own ego. That hurts everybody, especially the employer.

author: Seekonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 03:16:27 pm
content: There was a legacy design that one purchaser said he had to replace every two years. The engineer in charge thought the guy was nuts as every time he tested the device worked fine. Well he complained again and that engineer was on vacation, so I had to deal with it. The customer was using it on 50Hz which we had speced. The engineer always tested it at 60Hz. With 50Hz the relay would just buzz. Unit had a 75V relay with a dropping resistor. It heated so much it dried out the supply capacitor. Measuring the internal temperature and using the capacitor charts, yup, it was going to fail every two years. I love it when calculations turn out just right. The funny thing is we had the same relay in out system that was 120VDC. No UL or anything, just change the part. I don't know why the customer put up with us for years.I went back to assembly one time and I saw a dozen assemblies taken apart to change a timing resistor. Half of production order! Was told the test procedure said to change the resistor if timing was out of spec. An engineer years ago changed the transistor when it became obsolete. Changing the resistor solved all the failures. Nobody thought half the products failing test was an issue.

author: Karel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 03:33:53 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on June 30, 2023, 01:57:49 pmI guess many people fear the fact that when you admit your mistakes, it will often used against you, even after years.As a result, people want to protect themselves. It's not always about ego.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 04:20:22 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on June 30, 2023, 03:33:53 pmWasting employer resources and throwing your coworkers under a bus in order to play social games in the hopes you won't be targeted, is horribly destructive and wholly harmful in my opinion; and purely about selfishness and ego. It is the one type of person I hope I will never, ever have to work with again.None of the people at the true top of their field I've discussed with (including a Nobel laureate) have been afraid or have avoided admitting they are, or have been, wrong. It is only the mediocre-poor ones that need to cover their lack of ability with such social games, and I have no compassion or respect for them at all.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 06:29:08 pm
content: Quote from: Benta on June 29, 2023, 11:26:10 pmYou completely missed the whole point. Mistakes are fine. Even getting agitated and defending your mistake for a while is OK, as long as you either fix it or allow others to fix it. But actuallypreventing the correctionof your mistakes just to save face is disastrous and total bullshit, and DavidAlfa described such actions.Making mistakes and admitting them should be encouraged by company policies, because to err is human.I can reveal based on my own self-observations that admitting one's mistakes (if you are finicky person like me, you don't always have to admit them to others if you don't feel like*; it's most important you admit to yourself!) is the way which allows you to learn and become a lot better engineer.*) that would be desirable, though, so others can learn and avoid doing the same mistakes

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 06:36:51 pm
content: Quote from: Karel on June 30, 2023, 03:33:53 pmI can admit that sometimes in the past fearing this, I have hid doing mistakes from others. But I have never ever used it as an excuse not to learn and avoid doing the same mistakes again, so bare minimum, don't lie to yourself. Now I'm lucky enough to work with people to whom I can admit mistakes just fine. But finally, the fear was probably always unjustified. So I don't recommend anyone doing what I did, try to be honest not only with yourself, but others too. Admitting mistakes purifies company culture and others will probably follow. If that does not happen and your mistakes are being used against you, then... I think it's beyond salvation anyway and you should just get the hell out of it.

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 07:06:10 pm
content: In the past I never had any issue when comitting mistakes.- Heyy David you f** up here lol- Damn! I missed that, sorry/let's fix that!- Later in the coffee - So David f** up with that, beware if he fixed anything yours, it might explode - lol.Everyone laughts, no need to say I need pay more attention! I take my work very seriously.But this job is the ee & cia mafia club, ee mostly only talk to ee, only if really required... let's do it like he has syndrome - He grew up with monkeys.So to avoid you from looking anywhere smart or anything that could get close to their ego.And if he finds something strange - act like no no no you're not ee, you know s** lol go away I'm busy!

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2023, 09:51:44 pm
content: I really don't like even the 'friendly' needling about errors myself; I object to anything that hinders exposing and fixing errors and mistakes.When a mistake/error/accident is found, it is much better to mention a similar one in the past, and steer the discussion into how that one was dealt with. That reduces the social friction (and reduces the likelihood of future problems being hidden), and increases trust between employer/lead and workers.If the one responsible for the most recent one then starts suggesting ways to deal with this one, it is the most positive sign you can get, because that not only indicates they want to fix (and not just hide and forget) the issue, but most likely they and others will learn from this. Remember, even the employer wants solutions, not ass-covering and blame-shifting. The latter costs companies a lot of money, unnecessarily, when the flaws bite end users.I do understand the instinct to hide ones own errors; it is only natural. Especially early in ones career, the pain and uncertainty and pressure can be excruciating. We just have to learn to ignore the ego and ones own fragile feelings, and be professional about it. Fact is, these things do happen. What matters is how they are handled.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2023, 12:24:34 am
content: Quote from: Ice-Tea on June 30, 2023, 01:50:10 pmOr a Tech 5 years down the track.They are the ones that usually are confronted by a "stuff up" & have to fix it "now"!QuoteI prefer the "closet full of datasheet books"!

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2023, 02:42:16 am
content: Quote from: Seekonk on June 30, 2023, 03:16:27 pmYears ago, we had a Comms transmitter which was being converted from attended to "semi-unattended" status.As part of this, it needed to be able to recover from a Mains break which was long enough for the standby EPP to come on line.One of the EEs stroked his beard & determined that it needed a relay to operate from a low voltage ac point in the Tx, initiating the startup which would then proceed automatically.To this end, he designed a circuit using a single silicon power diode & an ordinary "Post Office" type DC relay.We dutifully installed this elegantly simple solution.Small problem-----the relay just sat there and buzzed!We told our Supervisor, who went off to his office muttering to himself, looked up a few catalogues, came back & said "Buy one of these!It was, of course, an ac relay suitable for the low voltage supply.The diode went into the useful bin, & we rewired the thing with the new relay, which did the job perfectly.I'm not sure if there was any feedback to the EE, & if it was printable if there was!QuoteOne place I worked made simulators for various mining & industrial machines.The founders were "talented amateurs" & had designed the original so-called "Mother Board", which translated various control functions into a form a PC could understand---a bunch of interfaces, in effect.The prototype used potentiometers as the transducers from Driver/Operators control actions to a usable signal.Each of these signals went to individual ADCs on the "Mother Board".When the company got "up & running", they found they could source some OEM foot pedal controls from one of the large makers of real equipment in these fields.The output from these was PWM, but instead of changing the associated MB inputs to be suitable, they interfaced a small board with a passive integrating network consisting of a 47uF electrolytic cap & a1.1kresistor.At one time, they ran out of1.1kresistors, & held up production for 2 days till they got some in.I pointed out that they had a lot of 1.0k & 1.2k resistors in stock & as they were using electros with something like + or - 20% tolerance, the resistor value wasn't really critical.I was quietly sneered at, after all what would I know? --------------30 plus years in electronics doesn't count for anything!This wasn't on the real working EEs, though (the Boss was an EE, but was really a manager).Another legacy thing was that one of the sub-boards was supposed to have a resistive load across two conductors of a multi-way connecting cable, but the PCB was designed without them, so it was standard practice to solder a 10k resistor across the appropriate pins on the "DB 15" connector.The EEs did revisit this, & decided for various purposes that the resistor should be much lower, around 1k.Thus the "die was cast" & we were supposed to "drop everything" & produce a bunch of new cables with the connector "Bodge" resistor at 1k.All the "Reps" throughout the World would then have to dig into the guts ofallthe existing equipment & replace the whole cable---a very exhausting & messy process.Looking through a catalogue revealed a bunch of DB15 style "breakout boards".I showed this to one of the EEs, & he "nudged" the Boss, who under duress agreed that we could make adaptors with 1.2k resistors across the two conductors, which could be plugged onto the end of the cable so that, in parallel with the existing 10k resistors, you got 1.07k-----near enough.The Reps still had to open all the simulators up, but the job was now half an hour instead of half a day!

author: nigelwright7557
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2023, 03:18:01 am
content: I went to work for a plastic welding machinery company.The main system had been in use for many years.They had always had a problem in the factory with noise on the input of a sensor.I spotted someone had just put a op amp front end on it and not made it differential.A couple of components routed differently and all the noise went away.Amazing none of the electronic engineers had spotted it.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2023, 04:08:41 am
content: I made some circuit once with transistors that were backwards and it worked and I think it stopped working nice when they were properly put in (rushed breadboard)

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2023, 12:07:57 pm
content: Consider a workplace where instead of needling, after a problem has been found and a fix applied, you have old hands like vk6zgo and nigelwright7557 describe old problems and their fixes to the young'uns over a coffee (or whatever beverage happens to be preferred). This would make the workplace 1) knit together (as in "shit happens,wefix it"), 2) more effective (because issues arefixed, not hidden or pushed away as "somebody elses problem"), and 3) so much more interesting: there'd always be stuff to learn from.I do claim that in any well-working efficient workshop doing design work and solutions, you'll find something similar.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2023, 01:26:56 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on July 01, 2023, 04:08:41 amI had that happen once when my design deliberately used a transistor backwards for lower saturation voltage. They got installed forward to correct the "mistake" increasing non-linearity to unacceptable levels.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2023, 01:48:48 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 01, 2023, 01:26:56 pmThat is why schematic notes are so valuable! Just like comments in code, schematic needs note boxes to describe the intent, orwhy. (Whatis already visible in the schematic.) Or did they "correct" it without looking at the schematic at all?

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2023, 05:30:22 pm
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 01, 2023, 01:26:56 pmmine was some kind of window comparator that was supposed to be as simple as possible, with what I had that configuration was the only thing that seemed to work reasonably well.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2023, 12:01:18 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on July 01, 2023, 01:26:56 pmVery much "back in the day" (circa 1960/'61) real "Bipolar" transistors which could be reversed & still have substantially similar gain were an unusual device, but still sufficiently mainstream as to be taught in "Semiconductor Courses", rather than the exotica they are today.That is why I always refer to non-FET transistors* generically as "Bi-junction Transistors" rather than "Bipolar"ones.* PS ; I know this is a tautology, but trying to avoid it makes the sentence more cumbersome.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2023, 12:14:43 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 01, 2023, 12:07:57 pmOne of my early jobs was as a Tech on Shift at a attended AM Broadcast/HF Comms site.The Shift leaders & Boss were very clever, experienced people, & each Shift was like a "masterclass" in applied electronics.I guess I was a bit geeky, though, I remember one week on Midnight Shift, which was a solitary one at the Comms section, having a "whale of a time" building various types of multivibrators on an old Broadcast receiver chassis & observing the waveforms with a Telequipment "Serviscope". (There were lots of 12AT7s in the store).

author: b_force
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 11:15:26 am
content: As a consult I have seen many companies from the inside. Some very well known and bigger companies.It always amazes me how not just plain mistakes are made, but rather the incompetence there is sometimesWe are not talking about total mistakes as in faults (which also happens), but more like just using weird solutions that can be simplified.Like using a pretty expensive FPGA's for just some extremely simple channel switching.Or when a external company was being hired to solve a very easy grounding problem, yet they got a whole bunch of extra stuff back for it as well.Which than is deemed to be "holy".Very often the excuse "never change a winning team" is being used.After all these years to me this now simply means: "We don't know how it works and are to afraid to even touch it".Or it's just excused with, "this has been "working" for 20 years".Which is quite alarming in combination with the first excuse and even more so when it comes down to basic safety en general regulations.This can be a really big problem here in Europe because how the CE system and principles works.I have seen cases were a company violated basic regulations for like 22 years.Luckily not any major safety hazards, but they were big technical violations nevertheless.But yeah, it can sometimes be very hard to deal with these things, especially when there is some culture with (especially older) people that can't deal with any critique or feedback. As if they are some super human that never makes mistakes..... "but I am an engineer"I am not a fan on politics in development and research, it's not only very toxic but can be very destructive in a technical sense.

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 01:42:07 pm
content: Ah, yeah, the usual FPGA for toggling a led.I see this all the time here at the forum lol

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 02:22:10 pm
content: Quote from: b_force on July 04, 2023, 11:15:26 amKickbacks? Perhaps not as in cash money because that'd be illegal, but perhaps something in the grey area, like "gifts" and "extra development assistance" that happens to be outside that project but something the buyer happens to be personally interested in?

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 03:00:06 pm
content: I'm not excusing illegal or dangerous designs, but you have to consider the full operational costs to "fix" a stupid but working design that's been in production for a while. It's often not worth doing.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 05:54:44 pm
content: Quote from: DavidAlfa on July 04, 2023, 01:42:07 pmIn the Good Old Times before the MCU forum was split (it was "microcontrollers and FPGAs", what a weird combination), I remember every other "how do I blink LED every ten milliseconds" question received "oh you will need an FPGA for that" as a reply. And this was before the days of simple/cheap FPGAs, they were always starting at $50+ and required three supply voltages, configuration flash chip etc.

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 04, 2023, 06:20:44 pm
content: I guess the FPGA companies made their best to place their products.Commercials would be like"You can blink a led with a simple $200 6-layer PCB, just $50 for the bga FPGA (+$20 in the complex power system), while consuming *only* 5W!"

author: Daixiwen
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 06:48:43 am
content: yes sure but at least with a good FPGA you can have a nanosecond accuracy on the blink period

author: b_force
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 05, 2023, 11:58:16 am
content: The question should be how much accuracy is needed.Not: more is more better (or less in this case).

author: thermistor-guy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2023, 03:07:02 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on July 01, 2023, 12:07:57 pmI had the good fortune to work in a particular telecoms company's engineering dept., at a time when it almost a pure competency hierarchy.The higher up the department you went, the smarter and more capable were the people in those roles.It was frightening how smart the engineers were, including the dept. head. There was nowhere to hide. If you didn't know what you were doing ortalking about, everyone knew pretty quickly, and quietly bypassed you. That happened rarely, when HR would somehow recruit the wrong person.The in-house gurus were university medal winners, inventors with patents, a few PhDs, expert consultants to ITU-T standards committees, brilliantproduct developers and problem solvers. They had seen technologies come and go, and remembered the lessons from each. They didn't come offas anything special, because there were so many of them and that level of excellence was considered normal.I've never worked in another place like it, before or since. Pure competence hierarchies are rare. Pity.

author: EggertEnjoyer123
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2023, 06:33:54 am
content: I saw a PhD student (who was my TA) plug a board into a network analyzer by holding the nut on the SMA connector still and physically rotating the board to screw it in (causing the middle pins to grind together). Easy way to destroy those expensive $2000 phase matched cables.My biggest regret was not saying anything to him.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2023, 11:07:21 pm
content: Quote from: DavidAlfa on July 04, 2023, 01:42:07 pmIt does happen indeed.Thing is, it's sometimes just incompetence, but otherwise often just a matter of personal experience.Some engineer who has always designed around FPGAs for instance and rarely or never touched a MCU will be tempted to suggest a FPGA as a solution for almost any problem.It's like, if all you have is a hammer, you're going to see nails absolutely everywhere.

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 15, 2023, 07:48:21 pm
content: Sorry, I had to revive this.Yeah, it's the same engineers I already argued several technical details with, had to contain myself from doing an epic facepalm everytime!We're producing a new board, also for a new customer.It's pretty component-heavy: two huge BGAs (MCU and FPGA), tons of 0402 parts, tssops, sot23...The customer wants a test report for each board, noting down typical stuff like S/N, ohmics, currents, voltages... there's a lot of measurements, some with tolerances down to 0.03%!This is a "small" batch with only 200 boards, but I think following orders were going to be ~800.Now the actual rant.The report is a plain table in PDF, no checks, nothing, I could write "Big Boobs" in the resistance test and nobody would notice, and here it goes, right to the customer!Q/A was complaining as they had to make a final check, testing every damn written value to ensure it was under tolerance.Due "It's fcking 7am, let me die" reasons I accidentally wrote 15 instead 12, just my thick fingers making my life harder while struggling to stay awake.Noticed it a bit later when reviewing my work, but for some reason QA had already made a offline copy and didn't get the fixed one, so I got a call.- Why 15v here?,We'll have to recall the board from the customer for verification blahblah (Alaaaaarm, panic mode!!)- Huh? I fixed this 6h ago, then sent the files to the engineer, telling him the old ones were wrong!- ... Damn we had old files? No problem then! (Cord removed from my neck), good that you noticed!- But... Who made those charts? For sure Acrobat must have some option to verify the input, avoiding this stupid errors.- Yeah we spoke to the engineers and they said this wasn't possible, what a bugger, would ease things so much!- Not... Possible??? No fecking way. Can't AutoCAD make circles either? WTF? I bet I got this done for tomorrow, and I haven't made anything in Adobe for a decade at least!Arrived home ... Open PDF, edit fields.. properties... Type=number, 1,2,3 decimals (As required).Data verification: Ensure the value stays between 1.111 and 2.22.Fu***ng done!! Now I simply can't put anything over/under range or I'll get a warning that I must acknowledge by clicking on it.So the fields can only be empty or have correct data.I really hate those lazy bastards, I recall other boards few years back with about 400 measurements we had to check and note down!I'll show the PDF to them (And to QA so they drop all kind of sh*y at those pigs) See?No, I won't give it to you, make your own.Want it? $100 for my private timeDo your damn job, earning 3x more than me and doesn't have a fucking clue / makes our life (We, technicians) so much harder, really kicks my balls!And that's it. Have a nice day! Thursday is coming, weekend is near

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2023, 09:12:44 am
content: Quote from: vk6zgo on July 02, 2023, 12:01:18 amBefore JFETs became available they had "chopper" bipolar transistors with symmetrical construction and doping which operated exactly like that; they had equal gain and breakdown voltage in both directions.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2023, 09:22:54 am
content: Quote from: David Hess on November 16, 2023, 09:12:44 amWhen Philips & Mullard were pretty much "the only game in town" in Oz for learning about semiconductors, they both specifically mentioned "Bipolars" as a variety of BJT, but didn't go far into them.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2023, 10:35:04 am
content: Quote from: DavidAlfa on November 15, 2023, 07:48:21 pmGood story, and this horror always repeats when you scale up. Therightmoment to add real processes is maybe at batch size = 50. Below that, you can do all that manual work, and it will cause some waste of time, but as you, at that point, won't know yet if larger batches are going to be ordered, or how their specifications are (e.g., what is being measured), you can't automate the process too early.In other words, youneedto struggle manually filling those tables to learn how the automated, verified process must work, before implementing it. It is just problematic that if this automation design is postponed, then you get overwhelmed by this manual work, which then prevents you from doing the automation! The transition has to happen during a hectic moment and can be hard to explain to those who make the decisions.Correct timing of building processes is therefore paramount and it seems you are past the good date, and it becomes progressively more difficult to do manually, until a point of total breakdown of everything which either leads to a failure of the project, or finally taking the time to Do The Right Thing while production stalls.Nice find that PDF auto checker feature, but really the verification should be done in automated testbench, the very same which creates the excitation and measures the output, so that out-of-range parameters would be caught immediately, probably with automated label printing which marks the device as QC FAIL, for further investigation. The failed device would generate a totally different-looking failure report, and the customer only gets passed devices, where every value is within limits because the test process only prints the table when this is the case. No manual copy-paste work.

author: DavidAlfa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2023, 05:38:15 pm
content: But this is not an isolated case, no such "When it scalates".It's been like this forever, things made at the very minimum effort for then, causing huge pain for everyone else,. anything from 20 to 1000 orders, several per year.BTW automatic test benchs are a thing, we have one somewhere...Guess it. Exactly, must be setup and programmed by those same engineers.So there's a very expensive dust collector somewhere in the warehouse.It's already a miracle they -sometimes make test beds!This company is about 25 years old, before that it was Alcatel. Whatever happened in the year ~2000, Alcatel took what it thought was good enough and left/sold the remaining.We only have snotty engineers now!I've had an issue in a test bed where some testers kept breaking every 200-400 boards (Not bad either).You brute peasant! Be more careful!Today I spent some time on my own diagnosing it... The board was getting pressed very unevenly/unleveled, and too much, so the testers were always having some shearing force on them.After 10 minutes of tuning it goes crazy smooth now.I'm definitely not seeing myself in this company for much longer!