Category: Engineering Life
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E14 News Article: Error Budgets Launch Careers!
My latest Element14 article is based directly on my experience as a new engineer at Keithley. Anyone will tell you how tough an error budget can be to work out, but I was amazed at all of the things it did for my job there and my career for years to come. After all, if…
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E14 News Article: Don’t Fear Physibles!
You mean to tell me that piracy will become possible with tangible parts? Yup, download a file that can be read by a 3-D printer to MAKE pirated goods. Some manufacturers might fear this notion, but I don’t think it is something to be scared of. See what I mean in my latest blog post:…
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EEweb Featured Engineer!
Check it out! I’m EEweb’s featured engineer today! http://www.eeweb.com/spotlight/interview-with-dave-young
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E14 News Article on Employment Contracts: A Pre-Flight Safety Checklist for Engineers
I am a firm believer that contracts are a GOOD thing. Not only is it an opportunity for reasonable people to write down their expectations and assumptions at one time, but memories have a habit of drifting from reality. Issues on responsibility, payments, ownership, etc… need to have some reference point that both parties agreed…
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E14 News Article: Politically Canceled Projects
Have you ever worked on a project that gets canceled for some political or other reason not related to the technical potential? Kind of drives you insane. I just canceled a project of mine for strictly political reasons, and it gave me a better understanding of why it happens. Always good to look at things…
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E14 News Article: Sparkfun Open House
Sparkfun: a company that dedicates itself to enabling a foray into electronics for those who are inexperienced. Thankfully, their profit is high enough for them to be able to hold some remarkable events! I had an excellent time at their open house this fall and thought I’d share: …..Another great project table was hosted by…
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E14 DIT Article: Engineering’s ‘Progress Feedback Loop’?
We all like to search for truth, meaning, and an understanding of ‘why we are here’ or ‘if what we do matters’ and ultimately, ‘am I making things better?’ So I wrote an article bringing up that exact point for the entire engineering field: In a discussion with a non-technical and environmentally-minded friend about the…
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E14 DIT Article: The Schematic Review – A Few Methods To The Madness
For my next installment on the E14: DIT blog, I wrote an article with some of my most useful steps to completing a schematic review. I’ve found these to work great on big reviews that involve lots of people as well as small reviews that consist of just me and the designer. Check out the…
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E14 DIT Article: Engineers are not always calculating, optimizing robots!
Sometimes engineers get a bad rap for not being very emotional. And being friends with many engineers, I can totally understand this notion. It is not strange to have a conversation that starts with, “Why don’t you get out of my car and walk from here? Your house is only 100 meters away, but there…
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Article: ‘Friends Don’t Let Friends Get Into Finance’
Okay, so maybe the author goes a little hard on my friends who were trained alongside me as an engineer but have chased a career in finance. But I think a lot of solid points are made, so I thought I’d share it here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/26/friends-don%E2%80%99t-let-friends-get-into-finance/ The long and short of his complaint is that engineering…