Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 118 posts

Re: Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

#101

Post by stillsut »

fake-name wrote: post #38
turnip1979 wrote: post #24

I'm a SW guy .. been mulling getting a job in hw at some point. I watch a lot of YouTube and do hw projects in my spare time. Is there something like sw boot camps for developing hw skills? I'm almost considering getting an ee bachelors or masters as a part time student.

Not really, because hardware is not amenable to boot-camp style things. Basically, hardware is way /way/ harder then software. Imagine software where each compile took multiple weeks, and cost lots of money (hundreds of dollars for the simplest of projects, to tens or even hundreds of thousands for really complex things). Changing the layout or design almost always involves a complete board respin. There is no easy g…

Can you specify what SO MUCH HORROR amounts to in the arduino community?

From reviewing these posts, it seems like EE spend most of their day frustrated trying to get the device to simply boot or do the simple thing. If there's a tool for beginners that snaps together and avoids these headaches, that seems valuable in itself, almost anti-HORROR.

Re: Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

#102

Post by mungoid »

Yaggo wrote: post #41
antoineMoPa wrote: post #23

This year, I left my electrical engineering (EE) studies for software engineering. I had a lot of personal experience with coding before going in EE and I wondered if some hardware would make my life more interesting. After 1.25 years, I realized that I was spending all my life in a lab with no windows, to the smell of toxic soldering fumes, fighting against extremely annoying software (altium & other proprietary ove…

EE & programming skills combined are superb if you are into robotics, embedded stuff, physical products in general. I do front-end web programming for living but spend my freetime in my "EE lab", self-taughting¹ myself to get out of "yet another React app" limbo. ¹) I don't expect to find a real EE job without a degree, more like a generalist who also has clue about electronics.

Yeah I have been doing software for a long time and a couple years ago I started getting into embedded software and loving it. I have found some embedded developer positions I could get into without an EE degree but would have to take a cut in pay. If that's something you can afford to do, that's probably your best bet. I can't afford to take the cut but some people are better with savings than me lol

Re: Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

#103

Post by [deleted] »

dan1234 wrote: post #83
cushychicken wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love a recommendation for a good KiCad intro tutorial. I tried to just hack through learning it once and I couldn't pick it up. Any suggestions?

I used a YouTube playlist[0] to get the basics down, goes from installing KiCad through to soldering a finished board. [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy2022BX6Eso532xqrUxD...

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

#104

Post by cushychicken »

dan1234 wrote: post #83
cushychicken wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love a recommendation for a good KiCad intro tutorial. I tried to just hack through learning it once and I couldn't pick it up. Any suggestions?

I used a YouTube playlist[0] to get the basics down, goes from installing KiCad through to soldering a finished board. [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy2022BX6Eso532xqrUxD...

Thank you! I'll check this out!

Edit: ...is that Chris Gammell? How did I not know this was a thing he made?

Re: Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

#105

Post by cushychicken »

pepijndevos wrote: post #93
cushychicken wrote: post #8

I'm an electrical engineer by trade, and do embedded systems design for a living. I do a lot of board placement and layout planning, plus writing test plans for verifying that what we build is good at scale. I also do a reasonable amount of debug, as that just comes with the territory. I'd say it's about 70% software time for planning and CAD work, 30% hands-on lab time. Note that it's not uniform - I might be in the…

> It's very, very gratifying to see something real, that you can hold in your hands, work. Doubly so when people actually use your stuff and tell you how much they love it. (Yay, consumer electronics!) This is why I quit my software job and started to study EE. I'm currently waiting to get my PCB back from Oshpark. It does worry me a bit that some people here describe their EE job as more boring and frustrating than…

I've heard people compare EE to building up tolerance in an addiction. As you gain experience, the thrills of discovery and problem solving end up being higher peaks, but the high is shorter and less frequent.

Re: Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

#106

Post by cushychicken »

posterboy wrote: post #98
cushychicken wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I said "a lot more standardization", I had things like DRAM or PCIe in mind, which are spec'd by their relevant consortiums (JEDEC and PCI-SIG, respectively). As in, there's clear limits on the way to make it work, and if you meet those limits, it's fine. I do a lot of POL planning for purposes of thermal management, so yeah. I'm definitely not that specialized.

> DRAM or PCIe Well, that's also a better example for my point. the sppeds they achieve require some research

Maybe for a flyby topology, but I mostly work with point-to-point topologies. That's basically an exercise in good impedance control.

Re: Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

#107

Post by codewritinfool »

bass_case wrote: post #49
cushychicken wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think Altium is bad, you've never used Orcad. If you think Orcad is good, you've never used Eagle.

If you think eagle is good, you've never used KiCad.

For home use, I use Diptrace. Bad name, maybe, but excellent software and the price is right.

Re: Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

#108

Post by northern_lights »

antoineMoPa wrote: post #23

This year, I left my electrical engineering (EE) studies for software engineering. I had a lot of personal experience with coding before going in EE and I wondered if some hardware would make my life more interesting. After 1.25 years, I realized that I was spending all my life in a lab with no windows, to the smell of toxic soldering fumes, fighting against extremely annoying software (altium & other proprietary ove…

I honestly cannot understand why anyone would call Altium an "overpriced piece of technical debt." It's an extremely powerful piece of software, and fantastically easy to use (especially compared to some of the crap out there, cough OrCADcough). Perfect? Of course not, but it's not bad.

Re: Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

#109

Post by sunstone »

madengr wrote: post #99
sunstone wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey what's with that 'path loss' equation? Looks sketchy to me.

I'd say it is sketchy as people say path loss increases with frequency; well it doesn't if you have the same physical antenna apertures (think parabolic dish). Though the formula is called a loss since it's used that way from a circuit perspective, and you treat the antenna gains as not related to aperture, so loss does then increase with frequency.

Yes that frequency term is precisely the sketchy bit. Because of that the equation doesn't conserve energy which is normally considered a bad sign.

On the other hand to do it properly you have throw out the 'reciprocity' of sending and receiving antennas. They are not really the same at all.

Re: Ask HN: What does an electrical engineer actually do at work?

#110

Post by phyllostachys »

cushychicken wrote: post #104
dan1234 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used a YouTube playlist[0] to get the basics down, goes from installing KiCad through to soldering a finished board. [0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy2022BX6Eso532xqrUxD...

Thank you! I'll check this out! Edit: ...is that Chris Gammell? How did I not know this was a thing he made?

He became something of a huge KiCad evangelist there a while back. I've heard that this list and Contextual Electronics are pretty good. I think he still works for parts.io too.
Post reply on HN