Originally posted by: rjc3656 Its good to hear from people working in my field, the response I get from friends/family is that you are an engineer, isn't there a skills shortage? you should have no trouble etc.
Yes, I think many of us are frustrated about that. There are two issues here: 1) There is an anticipated skills shortage in the future because not enough young people are following science/technology education at the moment 2) Companies are finding it hard to recruit the staff they want, but it seems (to me at least) that - as I mentioned above - it is because they are so squeezed that they cannot afford to train or mentor staff, so they have to look for the perfect fit, which of course is hard. Every company seems to be hoping that someone else will solve this problem.
With regards the high volume manufacture scenario I completely understand where the company is coming from however its again a case how is one supposed to obtain this specific experience without working for a high volume manufacturer.
Always the problem with all experience, again it's finding a company that has the resources to mentor you in the skills and can't find anyone else already with them.
You mention that FPGA designers are all around, what in your opinion are the most sought after skills at the moment?
Unfortunately I'm not the ideal person to ask as I work in a very niche sector. Basically I suggest looking at all the job sites with key words 'electronic engineer' - for example 'www.thecareerengineer.com' - and see what crops up most often.
Are these skills that that one could learn at home for example?
Certainly building andf debugging circuits at home may help you in an interview if - for example - you get a circuit diagram or lump of VHDL waved at you and you're asked 'can you explain this?' You will probably be expected to have some competance in most of: - One schematic capture/PCB layout CAD package - Interconnecting logic circuits - Power supply management (e.g. decoupling, use of on-board regulators) - Processor implementation (e.g. use of 'C' on at least one processor family) - FPGA implementation in VERILOG or VHDL - EMC requirements - Ideally a-d and d-a implementation - and if you know anything at all about RF you have a huge advantage
You don't have to (and won't) know everything about these, but enough so that the employer can be sure that you won't collapse in a gibbering heap when you're asked 'just make us one of these'
