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This week on the show we cover our usual stomping ground topics, including some of our favorites like chip printing and complaining about former employers.
- Tektronix just released another basic scope, adding to what Dave says is an arsenal of outdated scopes.
- The Atlantic magazine talks about the new trend of in sourcing,versus the MBA Playbook™ approved method of outsourcing which was so en vogue for all those years.
- Dave points out a video alerting president Obama to the lack of advanced physics education in the USA.
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGL22PTIOAM[/tube] - President of National Instruments, Dr. James Truchard, talks about the lack of engineering graduates and how that will affect industry. Shouldn’t this means salaries are increasing?
- The show TerraNova demonstrated a chip printer, similar to what Chris has dreamed about (and threatened to just go make, if no one else will).
- If Elon Musk complete his mission to send 80,000 people to a colony on Mars, would we need a chip printer out there?
- If you’d like to buy a piece of the Hubble space telescope history, you can buy some heavy equipment for $75K on eBay.
- Ageism continues to be a problem in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the technology world. Some people are going to extremes by dying their hair and getting plastic surgery to hide the fact that they are older.
- Resumes are a key part of getting hired into any new firm. Dave and Chris have lots of tips for getting yours noticed.
- if you can get a hiring manager to do you a favor, you have more likelihood of being viewed favorably by that manager. This is a result of the human condition known as “the Ben Franklin effect”.
- Jeremy Blum in former guest of The Amp Hour has a great example resume that people should check out.
- Chris promotes the benefits of stalking on LinkedIn even if that sounds creepy.
- An episode of The Engineering Commons talked about the importance of influence in the workplace and in getting hired.
- Altium’s Board of Directors finally removed the president, Nick Martin. They will now go back to “their core” and focus on the layout tool like we all care about.
- Chris has been trying to reteach himself programming specifically C programming. It is not going well.
- Why do startups always seem to have food and who pays for it? Doesn’t this just mean they want you to work more hours?
- If you do work at a startup, you likely will have a higher than average salary for some reason or another. Perhaps because there is venture-capital money to go around?
- Why are enclosures always the hardest part of electronics designs?
- Tesla Motors is raising the cost of their latest model S. While this doesn’t happen often in electronics, it has happened before for Tesla.
That’s all for this week. Please try to give us a rating in iTunes if you haven’t already. Or check this out over on Twitter or any other variety of social networks out there.
Thanks to Yanec for the picture of the resume cloud.
The Ben Franklin effect is a lot more common than people realise. Ever been to a car sales showroom (or kitchen, bathroom, real estate…) and been offered a cup of coffee? That’s Obligation. Better still, they make it really hot, so you have to wait around until it cools, which glues you to the chair for a few more vital minutes, because you feel obligated to repay their kindness, either by giving your time or by buying something.
What happened to Club Jameco? Sponsors drop the ball? I was just beginning to get used to the ad slots….
After reading the summary I was about to point out that not all startups pay above-average, then I was glad to hear Dave point out during the show that there are a variety of types of startups with not all of which have pools of venture capital.
I’m working at such a startup that doesn’t have gobs of cash, but I certainly don’t regret it because I get a lot of satisfaction out of the interesting challenges I get to work on.
Chris might like this, newest SDR radio from Flexradio will be UIless black box with whole UI as a Tablet app 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCdxAmMsoC4
I come down completely on Chris’s side regarding the professors’s claim that Arduino is too easy. Chris said maybe “it’s NOT a new reality,” but it’s the same reality. At my first job in the 90s, I started designing an analog multiplier from scratch with discretes. My boss told me this was a waste b/c there was an IC from ADI that did that. This actually seemed like cheating to me. 15 years later I can’t imagine thinking that. You should always go the easiest route possible. Half my job is finding the easy route. I have to be prepared to dig down into the next layer, but if I have a black box with a trustworthy model defining it, I want to keep that a black box.
My boss in the 90s said it was amazing schools didn’t teach this concept and how to talk to vendors and look through databooks to see how much of this has already been done. Indeed. IMHO projects where you can’t use an Arduino should have a reason why you can’t use it. A big part of engineering is creating spreadsheets of parts and quantifying their figures of merit.
You laugh about having an energy drink dispenser. Four Lakes Technology has someone stock the fridge with energy drink, pop, and junk food every Wednesday.