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The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

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Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#71

Post by mike50 »

This person knows nothing about RF and is just another applications monkey. Without taking fields and waves you are at best a technician. Anyone who actually worked in defense knows that minicircuits is a notorious company that pays very poorly and has massive turnover. Many of the other defense/space RF subs are just the same. The author is just mangling all RF communications applications into one big ball. And of course the authors pathetic theory background means that RADAR is the only sensing application they "understand".

Read this https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/where-are-they-n... and tell me how well this next big surge is going to work out any differnt.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#72

Post by monero-xmr »

bikelang wrote: post #45
GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " ...stuck with hardware out of passion... " At least you don't hate your job, I hope? The recent maturation of AI revealed how many people in software seemingly loathe their own profession.

And then there’s those of us that loved writing software and loathe what AI has reduced it to.

[dead]

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#73

Post by Kirby64 »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #58

But when will RF engineering pay 500k (common mid level SWE)?

Hardware engineers can get paid that, although it’s rarer. That said, there’s also a much broader base of hardware engineers than just the Bay Area… so cost of living is a lot lower, therefore salaries don’t need to be as sky high to compensate.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#74

Post by stiglitz »

commandlinefan wrote: post #24

Unfortunately for us software types, somebody with an EE degree can go into software and then pivot back into RF engineering. I doubt that somebody with a CS degree could (as in, I think they'd be intellectually capable of it, but they'd never get hired).

As someone with a EE degree followed by 12 years of SWE work, that pivot is quite daunting. A degree is just a piece of paper to get you an entry level job to do some real learning IMO

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#75

Post by mike50 »

sitzkrieg wrote: post #64
commandlinefan wrote: post #24

Unfortunately for us software types, somebody with an EE degree can go into software and then pivot back into RF engineering. I doubt that somebody with a CS degree could (as in, I think they'd be intellectually capable of it, but they'd never get hired).

i have done firmware development, pcb design and light ee work and basic rf and antenna design professionally with zero degrees. like anything else it’s a matter of getting your foot in the door first, then outperforming the academic nerds with zero experience

With the exception of firmware development those are all designer tasks that have never required a degree.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#76

Post by angry_octet »

There was never a decline in RF engineering demand, it's actually going up massively. But not in the US, Canada, Sweden... all the work is in China.

It will actually be impossible to catch up with China on RF unless the US and Europe legislate for IP (not manufacturing!) to originate in the West. No Huawei 5G, no cheap Chinese SDN/ethernet, etc. Core switching and 5/6G edge. Remove patent protection for 5G designs.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#77

Post by angry_octet »

antonvs wrote: post #38
dTal wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit older than 8 years but even cramming a working GPS reciever into a phone was a huge, nontrivial achievement.

Was it? My memory is that there were GPS watches (e.g. Garmin) before GPS became common in phones. Wasn't the miniaturization already there by the time phones started integrating GPS?

It's all about power -- the computation required for processing the signal in the presence of noise, multi path fading etc. The RF part is not the limitation.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#79

Post by angry_octet »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #67

>>> The underlying physics (electromagnetics, thermodynamics, materials science, manufacturing tolerances) don't reduce to algorithms. You have to build intuition for it, and that's not something you can shortcut. Just wondering how an LLM replaces that job …

It's such a dark art I think they will be bad for a long time, until someone invests in a giant corpus of simulated designs and some better spatial understanding in LLMs.

A basic RF design LLM good enough for low end work will kill the development of human talent, leading to an eventual crunch in lack of advanced skills.

Re: The quiet resurgence of RF engineering

#80

Post by mcmcmc »

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #28
WarmWash wrote: post #10

I'm one of the young(er) few who stuck with hardware out of passion rather than follow the comfortable allure of software that all my peers did. You make less money, often half. You need to commute to work. Work prospects are narrower and heavily military biased. You get exposed to harmful materials/chemicals. Hardware development is slow, tedious, and punishing compared to software. Having a home lab requires far fa…

> " ...stuck with hardware out of passion... " At least you don't hate your job, I hope? The recent maturation of AI revealed how many people in software seemingly loathe their own profession.

I think you’re kidding yourself if you think the majority of software engineers are in it for anything other than the money.
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