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Which university produces good analog EEs?

M

mpm

Jan 1, 1970
0
I work with a couple of good analog cats, but we have a saying that we are
the dinosaurs of our time...most of us over 60 and getting ready to kick
back and enjoy the dollars we put into the retirement fund, never knowing
that some day we would actually use it.

The problem is chicken and egg...back when we were going to school in the
50s and 60s, analog was all the rage. Every engineering department worth
its salt had a ham club and everyone from sophomore year on up had built
their own tube amp for the newfangled stereo gig. Stereo back in those days
was the computer geek of today...hammering together this turntable with that
tape deck, ultralinear 6146s (or 807s if you were poor) in the final and
speaker cabinets (remember Karlson enclosures??) that needed a forklift to
place properly. We all came out of there with a lot of analog and a little
tiny bit of digital.

Then the computer took over and the old analog professors were shunted aside
in favor of those who spoke binary as a native language. Analog was shunted
aside until those who were destined to become professors at that college
never knew the joy of building micropower transmitters or who learned which
end of the soldering iron got hot. If you've got no analog talent on staff,
you won't turn out any talented analog students.

My advice? Go down the list of ham radio licensees and when you get to one
that says: "Trustee for the XYZ University Amateur Radio Club" call up the
engineering department of XYZ and ask them who the faculty advisor for the
ham club is. Odds are you will get silence or "Oh, that club folded years
ago" as the answer. If you actually find a working club, talk to the
faculty advisor and ask how many students are in the club. If there are a
dozen or more, you've at least found yourself a prospective school.

My guess is that you won't find enough to count on both hands.

Jim

--
"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right."
--Henry Ford







- Show quoted text -

Same is generally true of SBE (Society of Broadcast Engineers).
Obviously, with the advent of digital television broadcast and HD
Radio technologies, many older engineers either can't (or choose not
to) keep up and make the transition. So, they become dinosaurs too.
It also seems the "replacement" engineering staff members are less
visible (which perhaps they are from being overworked?), so the whole
"migration" tends to look more unbalanced that perhaps it is in real-
life.

I suspect you could extrapolate this to just about any industry these
days, particular those more impacted by the arrival of the Internet.
-mpm
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Phil said:
It's amazing what a W-2 form can do to motivate someone--ask me how I
know, I've lived in NY for 20 years now.

Has to have the right numbers in there. Big bucks will motivate. It's
just that in the Bay Area it needs to be really big bucks.

It's also a matter of lifestyle. Country folks (like me) may tough it
out for a while but many of our neighbors are Bay Area transplants.
People who packed it all up the millisecond they retired.
 
M

Martin Griffith

Jan 1, 1970
0
viewer. I have a stack of IEE comics on microfiche, and picked up a
viewer for $5 a couple of years back :)

Cheers Terry
Hmmm microfiche to PDF converter..............neat


Martin
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
mpm said:
It also seems the "replacement" engineering staff members are less
visible (which perhaps they are from being overworked?), so the whole
"migration" tends to look more unbalanced that perhaps it is in real-
life.

I honestly think these days there's a lot more paranoia about "intellectual
property" than there was 20+ years ago and companies *instruct* their
employees to be a lot less "visible" than they otherwise might be. The
business guys figured out long ago that, while being the best technically is
nice, if everyone keeps their mouths shut about technical matters, companies
can instead compete on price and (perhaps) "customer service" which arguably
easier to do -- especially if you're a business major. (I suppose the entire
notion reflect sthe idea that there's a bigger and bigger gap between what the
average engineer understands vs. the average marketing guy...)

Hence Joerg's point about how it's quite surprising that you don't see many
reports of ATSC performance in "difficult" (e.g., multi-path) environments.
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hmmm microfiche to PDF converter..............neat


Martin

Microfiche? Our local county recorder has PNG or PDF versions all the
way back to January, 1984.

...Jim Thompson
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Has to have the right numbers in there. Big bucks will motivate. It's
just that in the Bay Area it needs to be really big bucks.

Some people would give a kidney to get a good job in San Francisco or
New York or London. Some people just like cities.

John
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
mpm said:
Same is generally true of SBE (Society of Broadcast Engineers).
Obviously, with the advent of digital television broadcast and HD
Radio technologies, many older engineers either can't (or choose not
to) keep up and make the transition. So, they become dinosaurs too.
It also seems the "replacement" engineering staff members are less
visible (which perhaps they are from being overworked?), so the whole
"migration" tends to look more unbalanced that perhaps it is in real-
life.

I suspect you could extrapolate this to just about any industry these
days, particular those more impacted by the arrival of the Internet.
-mpm

Except that the analog board level guys haven't become dinosaurs. There
just aren't any left. They have usually kept up with technology.
Transistors came, they learned. ICs came and they learned those. Other
stuff like switched capacitor filters came and vanished into the dark.
MMICs came and they adapted to those. It's not an unwillingness to
learn, the schools don't spit out many good ones anymore.
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
Some people would give a kidney to get a good job in San Francisco or
New York or London. Some people just like cities.

I like some, too. Up to pop 30,000 or so :)
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
Microfiche? Our local county recorder has PNG or PDF versions all the
way back to January, 1984.

It would be interesting to find out what resolution etc. they are using.
That would be a neat way to go partially paperless and when they flag
that in an audit you could say "Yeah, but the country recorder also does
it". Tried to find that out in a recent thread but that kinda went into
a high-tech pie in the sky.
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Some people would give a kidney to get a good job in San Francisco or
New York or London. Some people just like cities.

John

I like city conveniences, just not the density; which is why I live at
the outer limits ;-)

...Jim Thompson
 
P

Phil Hobbs

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joerg said:
Has to have the right numbers in there. Big bucks will motivate. It's
just that in the Bay Area it needs to be really big bucks.

It's also a matter of lifestyle. Country folks (like me) may tough it
out for a while but many of our neighbors are Bay Area transplants.
People who packed it all up the millisecond they retired.

I hate the Bay Area--I went to school there, and very nearly went to
work at HP Labs on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, which was about six
blocks from where I lived at the time...but fortunately IBM's offer came
through before HP's. If I believed in chance, I'd feel lucky. As it
is, I feel blessed. ;)

Cheers,

Phil "Same lab for 18 years now" Hobbs
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Phil said:
I hate the Bay Area--I went to school there, and very nearly went to
work at HP Labs on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, which was about six
blocks from where I lived at the time...but fortunately IBM's offer came
through before HP's. If I believed in chance, I'd feel lucky. As it
is, I feel blessed. ;)

Cheers,

Phil "Same lab for 18 years now" Hobbs


Poughkeepsie? That's where my father had to go, looong flights back in
them days. He worked at IBM in Germany.

It would definitely be too cold up there for my wife. Her ideal place
would be where winter simply doesn't happen. Like Hawaii, but there is
no work for me and getting to clients would take forever.
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
I hate the Bay Area--I went to school there, and very nearly went to
work at HP Labs on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, which was about six
blocks from where I lived at the time...but fortunately IBM's offer came
through before HP's. If I believed in chance, I'd feel lucky. As it
is, I feel blessed. ;)

I worked in Fremont at first, and it's the pits. I don't like the
business or personal culture of Silicon Valley... too burby and too
predatory at the same time. San Francisco is a beautiful town, lots of
different cultures and neighborhoods, lots of parks and beaches and
trails and cliffs. I live a block from an actual canyon and a mile
from an almost-official (930') mountain. After growing up in New
Orleans, I'm blessed too.

Pic I snapped this morning, fog moving into the Alemany Gap.

http://s2.supload.com/free/DSCF0780-20070927230418.jpg/view/


I interviewed at HP once. It didn't go well. The guy looked at my
resume and said, in a sour voice, "Look, you've got to make up your
mind whether you're an engineer or a programmer." I said "No, I don't"
and left. What a jerk.

John
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Martin said:
Hmmm microfiche to PDF converter..............neat


Actually, I have another microfiche reader that I am trying to figure
out a way to use my good digital camera, with making any permanent
changes to the camera.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
M

Michael A. Terrell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
I like city conveniences, just not the density; which is why I live at
the outer limits ;-)


Are you sure that it isn't the 'Twilight Zone"? ;-)


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida
 
P

Phil Hobbs

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joerg said:
Poughkeepsie? That's where my father had to go, looong flights back in
them days. He worked at IBM in Germany.

It would definitely be too cold up there for my wife. Her ideal place
would be where winter simply doesn't happen. Like Hawaii, but there is
no work for me and getting to clients would take forever.

Nah, the Watson Lab in Yorktown Heights. Best sandbox in the world at
one point, still very very good (and improving since the low point in
about 2000).

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs
 
F

Fred Bloggs

Jan 1, 1970
0
Phil said:
Nah, the Watson Lab in Yorktown Heights. Best sandbox in the world at
one point, still very very good (and improving since the low point in
about 2000).

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Well everyone ultimately wastes their lives somehow, might as well be
happy doing it.
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
I worked in Fremont at first, and it's the pits. I don't like the
business or personal culture of Silicon Valley... too burby and too
predatory at the same time. San Francisco is a beautiful town, lots of
different cultures and neighborhoods, lots of parks and beaches and
trails and cliffs. I live a block from an actual canyon and a mile
from an almost-official (930') mountain. After growing up in New
Orleans, I'm blessed too.

Pic I snapped this morning, fog moving into the Alemany Gap.

http://s2.supload.com/free/DSCF0780-20070927230418.jpg/view/

That hill on the left somehow looks man-made. Is it?
I interviewed at HP once. It didn't go well. The guy looked at my
resume and said, in a sour voice, "Look, you've got to make up your
mind whether you're an engineer or a programmer." I said "No, I don't"
and left. What a jerk.

Sounds like it was either not an engineer or an armchair-engineer.
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
That hill on the left somehow looks man-made. Is it?

No, that's Mt San Bruno, which is a state park now. Just the other
side of it is Candlestick Park and SFO. There's a huge antenna farm on
top, lots of TV and FM stations to add to our multicultural EMI
environment.

Sounds like it was either not an engineer or an armchair-engineer.

I did't think there was a place at HP, even then, for somebody to do
both.

John
 
E

ehsjr

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
My personal part bins include chips from the '60's ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Do you still have some of the first transistors?

Got a CK722 ? Someone said they've gone for > $700
on E-bay. (I find that very hard to believe.) Anyway,
you might be sitting on a goldmine. :)

Ed
 
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