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Are any of you like me?
4

Are any of you like me?

Are any of you like me?

(OP)
I have been out of school for 7 years. I graduated with a BSEE from a "top ten" engineering school with a good gpa. I have never worked in design or R&D. I work in compliance engineering. My question is how many of you can understand how a circuit works just by looking at the schematic of a product? In my role, I see many products and have a hard time understanding what is going on. I can "read" a schematic but cannot explain how it works and why certain components are where they are. Is this because I never worked in design or do I just suck at engineering?  

RE: Are any of you like me?

I can design parts and tooling, but can't tell you exactly how a watch keeps time.
It doesn't mean you suck at engineering, it just means you don't have the experience or maybe complete training in electronics.

Chris
SolidWorks 09 SP4.1
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Are any of you like me?

De-cyphering why an engineer designed something they way they did can be difficult.  There are many reasons components may be placed in a design.  For example, to help with EMC issues or improve stability.
If you have a good GPA from a good university, I have a hard time believing you are a "bad" engineer. (assuming you didn't cheat) :)
If I was you, I would ask more questions of the design engineers.  Everyone is busy, but they should be able to take 5 minutes to explain their circuit.   

RE: Are any of you like me?

Ditto BSEE, but remember how difficult it was to analyze apparently trivial circuits in EE101?  Amp that by a factor of 10 or so, and that's what you get with the circuits you might find at work.  Don't forget, what you got in school was probably less than 5% of all the possible "simple" circuits, and none of the really complicated circuits.

Moreover, rarely do we talk about technical compromises in school, but the real world is all about compromises, balancing demands from opposing requirements, speed vs. lower power, etc.  These compromises lead to additional circuit complexities, to eke out every last bit of performance.

TTFN

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RE: Are any of you like me?

(OP)
Do you guys know of any books that can help in this area? Thanks for the responses.  

RE: Are any of you like me?

I think that you'll probably still have problems, even with a good book.  Unless you're actively doing designs, reference schematics are just so much background scenery, at least for me.

Anyways, another possible choice is Horowitz' "The Art of Electronics" http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_13?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=horowitz+art+of+electronics&sprefix=horowitz+art+

TTFN

FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Are any of you like me?

2
The people that suck at Engineering are the ones that don't understand their short comings; The one's that march on blindly regardless of what they don't understand.

A good Engineer understands his/her limitations, and gets help.

Charlie
www.facsco.com

RE: Are any of you like me?

I'm agree with FACS,  I'm a mechanical engineer working with electrical installations  with no idea of aircraft harnesses installation and the worst thing is that I have zero knowledges of harnesses manufacturing but here we are trying to do the best.
I think that a good engineer is that one that can found the information that he need by his own, maybe asking others workmates or reading a good book.

RMRM

RE: Are any of you like me?

huda79: I think you made a mistake 7 years ago when you got your first schematic that you did not understand. I can beleive that it is much harder now to start with asking questions. Other engineers will be suprised as they think that you know everything. I think that is the reason why you asked for a book now. But this situation cannot be changed anymore. You have still plenty of time to correct your initial mistake. When I started my career I asked questions from the beginning as I wanted to understand what I was told. I'm 100 % sure that some of my questions were stupid for others but that is something nobody remembers today.

Cheer up! It is definitely not too late to ask others. And to answer your question: No, you do not suck at enginnering when there are things that you do not understand. That is daily business, even after 20 years in engineering.
 

RE: Are any of you like me?

(OP)
micalbrch: I have been asking questions for years. Sometimes the answers made sense, sometimes I was told this is how we do things.

MikeHalloran and IRStuff: I'll check out the books. I have seen the Art of Electronics book online before. I look into my college textbooks sometimes but they just cover the basic building blocks and I don't use 90% of the math at work.

FACS and rosarod: Thanks. I guess there is no end to the questions in engineering.

This brings me to another discussion. How many people use all that math at work?  

RE: Are any of you like me?

Negative pressure sucks.  Positive pressure pushes.

Exert some positive pressure and ask questions.  Your interest in learning should not go unnoticed.

Don't be negative...

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto:  KISS
Motivation:  Don't ask

RE: Are any of you like me?

I think modern electronics education is mush, no matter where you go to school. The demotion of analog has done real pedagogical damage to electronics globally. All the analog stuff comes in to play when you look at  digital circuits in a physical level.

Read the EDN books by Williams, Pease,etc. about analog stuff.

The Navy and other branches produce great fundamentals of electronics and engineering resources. They show things in a very intuitive way. I have a couple of old ones: they illustrate through very good graphics current paths and operations. You can see some of them on scribd.

If you said you knew everything, then you'd suck. The fact you have an open mind & are self critical shows you're on the right path.

RE: Are any of you like me?

"How many people use all that math at work? "

FFTs every day.
Algebra most days
Calculus by hand rarely
Calculus by Mathcad or equivalent quite often
Calculus by numerical integration every day

double integrals by hand once in 30 years
pdes by hand twice in 30 years
pdes by spreadsheet quite often
ODEs very often.

 

Cheers

Greg Locock


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RE: Are any of you like me?

I use math every day.  I got this calander that has a different math problem for each day.  Other then that not much more then basic calculations for stress and strain.  I've always felt that all the math we go through in college is so we can understand the derivation of the equations during class.  As an engineer we use those equations without much need to manipulate them.  If I knew what equation to use I could do my job with the math I learned in middle school.  The key is we need to know the background of those equations to be good engineers lest we misapply an equation or not understand the limits under which it's valid.  

As a mechanical engineer I like the MIT lectures on circuts to dust the ol' cobwebs out of the mind.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science/6-002Spring-2007/CourseHome/index.htm

Probably to basic for an EE, but browse around MIT's OCW web site and see if there is anything you like.

-Kirby

Kirby Wilkerson

Remember, first define the problem, then solve it.

RE: Are any of you like me?

Numerical integration every day.
FFTs every day.
Complex numbers every day (see FFTs).
Matrix algebra every week.
Calculus by hand most weeks, depending on the project.
PDEs numerically, every day.
ODEs most days.
Greene's theorem occasionally.
Vectors, most weeks.
Random numbers, regularly.
Binary arithmetic, regularly.
Logs, powers, etc, every day.
Spreadsheets - NEVER.

- Steve

RE: Are any of you like me?

(OP)
I guess using all the math depends in your job. I haver touched calculus or anything since graduation.  

Kirby, I'll check out the site. Thanks

desnov, can u post a link to the books from amazon?
 

RE: Are any of you like me?

I forgot...

Z transforms, every few months.
Laplace transforms, less often.

- Steve

RE: Are any of you like me?

Actually, I lied about the Z transform.  Got it a bit mixed up with discrete representations of continuous systems.  Like how to implement filters and things in time-based simulations.  Shame on me.

- Steve

RE: Are any of you like me?

ctopher,

Well I can explain how a watch keeps time, but don't know a thing about designing parts or tooling.  Together we may just be unstoppable.

RE: Are any of you like me?

One book that I really recommend is The Art of Electronics.  It explains, in great detail yet in words that the average engineer can understand, much about how and why you do many things in electronics.  For me, even though I read it 10+ years out of school, it filled in a lot of the missing gaps in my education and left me with the feeling of, "Ah, now I get finally it".  I also think that book, coupled with Howard Johnson's High Speed Digital Design really helped me to become better at design.


 

RE: Are any of you like me?

So what kind of jobs do you guys who are doing all this math have?

I have been working for almost 16 years now and I can count on one hand then number of times I have solved a differential equation for work.  I use math quite regularly, but most of it is HS level algebra done with Mathcad or Excel.  I do a lot of analysis, but even there, the computer is doing all the math.

RE: Are any of you like me?

FFT?  I use programs like LABVIEW and MATLAB for that, so while I use things like FFT all the time, I don't touch the math part of it.  Same thing with shock response spectra.  I don't use the convolution integral to find the SRS, I simply plug the time history data into a program and it spits out a shock spectrum.

RE: Are any of you like me?

2
There are lots of people out there like you, that are not able to design.  Unfortunately, many of them are employed as designers.

RE: Are any of you like me?

TheTick...well said.  LPS for you.

Ron

RE: Are any of you like me?

Mike,

That book was our textbook for Junior level Aero Lab classes.  Came in handy a few times.

RE: Are any of you like me?

I use math for work.  I also agree that we learned so much math in school so we would understand what all the equations mean.  Just because I plug and chug manning's equation in excel doesn't mean I shouldn't know how to do that by hand using a calculator.

For the OP, besides asking questions, I always found it useful to ask why they did something a certain way.  And probably even bothered the person more as I then asked something related to those questions so I could get a good understanding of how the topic worked together.  I also could assume you just need more experience in whatever you aren't understanding.

My favorite quote from a project manager was the more someone tells you they know everything, the more they don't know anything.

Civil Development Group, LLC
Los Angeles Civil Engineering specializing in Hillside Grading
http://civildevelopmentgroup.com
http://civildevelopmentgroup.com/blog

RE: Are any of you like me?

spongebob007,

Some of us have the pleasure (?) of writing the engineering software used in our industries.

Some of us get involved with detailed analysis of time series data (mostly NVH people).  This often involves a lot more than throwing data at a cook-book FFT algorithm and plotting a spectrum.

It's all horses for courses.  Finding ones place in the big scheme of things.  I'd much rather be a nerd in the corner imagining the effect of a hilbert transform on some tooth-passing data from an inductive probe than an engineering operations director.

- Steve

RE: Are any of you like me?

Systems engineering, analysis, concept development.
Mathcad and Excel, nothing terribly complex; almost exclusively algebraic in nature, with goal seeking.

TTFN

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RE: Are any of you like me?

I can relate a story, a bit long, but bear with me; years ago, I was about to run a vibration survey on an aircraft propeller. The equipment was a Chadwick Helmuth 177a:
http://www.turbinetraders.com/turbine177.htm
When preparing the machine for use, I noted the test function was not working,

I forget exactly what the symptoms were.

I brought the unit back inside the shop, and and was helplessly perusing the voluminous schematics, hoping to recognize a fuse (OR SOMETHING) that might be at fault. About this time, the head of our small avionics department came by, possibly drawn by the 'smell' of a schematic.

He Asked what the problem was, and then flips through the manual for a minute or two, settles on one page, and points to a component buried in this mess of lines. "There's your problem" he said. "That zener's open"

"Bullshit" is what I replied. "No way"! This whole exercise has taken maybe 5 minutes. Well, he looks up the p/n of the "zener" and says he probably has one for his bench work repairs, in stock.

I'm still not convinced, but get the Bosses' approval for some 'in house' labor. The tech opens it up, unstacks maybe four boards, and locates the culprit. It is replaced, and the box re assembled.

A quick run on the calibrator to check it, and it's good as new. I relate this story, only to illustrate that there ARE people who can think on this level. I personally believe such technicians are like the "Guild Navigators" from the old "Dune" SciFi books. They operate on a different level.

RE: Are any of you like me?

Thruthefence

That's an awesome story.  I was expecting you to end with something like "yeah that same thing happend last month and it took us three weeks to find the problem, but by omitting that fact he'll think I'm an electronics god."  or "replacing zener diode $20.  Knowing which diode to replace $10000".  I hope to have that kind of mastery in some subject by the time I'm a grey beard.  And I need to hurry because it's already getting salt and peppery.

-Kirby

Kirby Wilkerson

Remember, first define the problem, then solve it.

RE: Are any of you like me?

Kirby,

Smart people can get to that level of skill if you work in the same field and are always trying to learn more about it.  Its an easy thing to do for 1-3 years, gets difficult at 5 years, really hard approaching 15.

If you are always pressing to make yourself better you will have those situations when you solve a problem, someone asks you how you did it and then you go into a long explanation of how you connected the dots but it really just confuses people even more than if you told them "Magic!"

This is why companies are always trying to hire someone with "Experience" that is very specific.

this message has been approved for citizen to elect kepharda 2008

RE: Are any of you like me?

Actually, he was quite nonchalant about the whole affair. It was like "Rainman" when the toothpicks fell to the floor. This was may twenty years ago, and the fellow now owns his own successful Avionics shop, still terrible on paperwork, though.  

RE: Are any of you like me?

I'll second the earlier recommendations for The Art of Electronics and also anything by Bob Pease. I'll add in Douglas Self from over here in the UK, not because he is a master of amplifier design (which he is) but because his analysis of linear circuit design is so thorough. If you study and become competent with linear (analog) circuit design then the digital world becomes easier to deal with. Fundamentally it's an analog world we live in, however much we try to digitise it, and most of the problems with digital circuits ultimately have their roots in analog problems.
  

----------------------------------
  
If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!
 

RE: Are any of you like me?

I have The Art of Electronics.  Seemed like such a cool and potentially useful book when I bought it nearly 20 years ago.  One day I'll take it into the shed and start using it properly.

- Steve

RE: Are any of you like me?

I have no qualms going to our most senior electrical engineer with mundane questions every other day.  If I don't ask, I'll never learn.

My engineering skillset is entirely different to his and he defers to me every so often on my knowledge.

drawn to design, designed to draw

RE: Are any of you like me?

Most senior engineer should make sure you are assigned a suitable mentor.

RE: Are any of you like me?

Tick, we are a small company so the most senior is one of five...and to be honest, he's the only one that I'd trust the answer from.  The others are experts in their own fields some fields being much smaller than others.

drawn to design, designed to draw

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