Kryten said:
I met a guy with an Electronics degree (c. 1997ish) who said he has never
touched a soldering iron.
He thought it was crazy too.
He said he got flustered when he went to interviews.
He never got a job in electronics, and is sorting mail for minimum wage.
I said "Well gee, I wouldn't give you a job either. You obviously don't have
any drive to use the knowledge you have spent 3 years learning, you're so
dumb you haven't figured out this is a major issue, you haven't even got a
plan to address that issue, and you're so bone idle you haven't even built
so much as a crystal set. I don't think any employer would be impressed to
employ an EE that hasn't built anything significant, anymore than a surgeon
who hasn't even practised on a cadaver."
I think he saw the point, but then promptly went back to doing nothing about
it.
He still tinkers around with little .net projects, hoping somehow this will
get him a job.
I point out that taking many months to set up an internet equivalent of a
lemonade stand won't cut it.
Employers want to see you can do stuff under fire, or at least get a 2.1
degree in a full range of knowledge.
Oh well, I can only kick his butt in the right direction.
If he won't use his feet, he doesn't deserve the job.
K.
Well, you have pointed up a related, but separate issue; people who somehow
think that a engineering degree is the goal, separate and apart from the
study and knowledge it takes to achieve it.
In my retirement, I work part time as an instructor, teaching primarily PLC
techniques and programming. Every now and again we get into a discussion
that involves some sort of engineering calculation, for example, we might be
discussing the issue of leakage current through an output module. I am
absolutely flabbergasted at the number of recent graduates who do not
remember the formula for capacitive reactance, because they "learned it four
years ago," or even better,, those who aren't comfortable with numbering
systems and codes. I would guess that 10% of the students I get are
comfortable with the fact that FFFFh equals 1111 1111 1111 1111 binary
and -1 decimal, without using a calculator to do the conversions.
Another interesting attitude I frequently encounter, which may be peculiar
to the PLC situation, is the desire to fit square pegs into round holes
because "I really understand square pegs." Most American PLCs use, among
others, a form of programming called ladder logic, which is dead simple and
is in reality "Visual Boolean." Ladder is great for what used to be called
"Mickey Mouse Logic," manipulating messy truth tables one bit at a time.
Many PLCs also support other languages; structured text, which is frequently
similar to Pascal (!!), Function Blocks, Grafcet, Sequential Function
Chart, etc. etc. Each has a sweet spot. What is absolutely amazing is the
number of recent graduates who want to do everything in Structured Text,
because they are good at C++. The fact that there is a simpler, more
efficient way is rejected, because it involves learning something new.
Now, this is not to condemn all recent graduates. Many are indeed excellent.
Now that I think of it, I guess what I am complaining about is the number of
recent graduates who apparently studied "to pass the test," rather than to
learn the material, and who got away with it for four years.
