#573 – Mixed Signal Education with Philip Salmony

Comments

1. Bill Stacey says

   January 21, 2022 at 3:58 pm

   I am glad you raised the question about skills and education.
   I was once very supportive of the position you both agreed on but my thinking has over time changed to the opposite position.
   I considered myself lucky at university to get exposure to skills and basic design practice. It helped me with my confidence and contributed to landing my first job. Employers are always looking for graduates who can hit the ground running.

   However over time having watched people get a degree in the latest thing, rich in specific skills at the cost of a sound understanding of fundamental science and math I could then see the problem.
   When these skilled, trained people were a few years post-grad the special jobs they were so prepared for dried up never to return. The lucky ones then leveraged their basic education (maths, physics etc) to get a job doing the next special thing.

   If you want a full and long career get a good education of the fundamentals.
   You can then learn your trade on the job. Its really tough to learn trade skills (electronics design) at Uni then try to learn advanced advanced maths and physics on the job.
   I had the good fortune to work with a lot of amazing people who have invented things that have changed the world. This group of people share some traits.

   The first is that they are polymaths and generally good at everything. They can have a go at building electronics that will survive at an ocean depth of 5km, then something that survive implanted in the human body. Perhaps then solve a signal propagation problem in a complex mixed impedance domain.

   The key to this seems to be a genuine passion for living a technical life with all its solvable mysteries. Motivation is key.

   The next thing is to get a really good education from people who can teach complex science well. Not a trivial thing to find people who see clearly through the fog and can pass that on to others.

   1) develop your passion, experiment, develop skills make things and play with evaluation boards, software and manufacturing processes while you are a kid. Get as far as you can and get taught the trade by masters of the trade if you can.
   – then hit roadblocks and get frustrated by all the many unfathomable mysteries –

   2) educate yourself from books as far as you can.
   3) educate yourself in a university setting and gravitate towards good teachers.
   Let them show you how to open those locked doors and look inside even if just enough to know that it can be done and you can do it.
   4) learn that a long professional life will be based on continual learning and much is from capable peers and work colleagues.
   5) give back and try to pass on skills to whoever wants to learn or is interested. Its a great way for the world to work with knowledge propagating to fill the available space. Teaching people involves learning a heck of a lot about the subject matter. I found I learned a lot myself by trying to teach young colleagues.

   I was involved as a mentor at a local university for a few months but was confronted by how horrible students are so there is just no way I could ever do that for a job.
   The kids are so intensely motivated by a desperation to demonstrate mastery that they don’t have any interest in listening. Particularly to things they don’t yet know about or understand the importance of.

   Training is useful but its not education. Getting both is very empowering.
   A good education is much easier to get at university from good teachers. The fundamentals of maths and sciences don’t change much with time.
   Good training can be acquired on the job and its a life long process as technology moves forward. Its best obtained from good teachers and may of these will be colleagues.
   Developing a manic passion for subject matter is the most important thing.