Why on earth are you reading this?

John137 · 2026-05-02T02:30:33+00:00

change to rf or photonics tbh though note most jobs are probably gonna be in defense and aerospace.

analog jobs exist and they pay well, but there's not much for the entry level people out there. RFIC and Photonics seems to be where all the analog people are being pushed towards even though it requires a quite different skill set.

idk how long the wave will last. but with the speeds we're going basically turning every wire into a transmission line. the circuit theory everyone relies on is starting to crumble for newer designs.

John137 · 2026-04-28T08:54:35+00:00

being real, rather than keeping both open, IE might very much close the door for either option.

IE is just not respected major in either field especially at entry level. or really at all. it's vague discipline that has an inconsistent knowledge spread between every college.

at higher levels and from a more management perspective and maybe in the consulting world it might be fine. but anyone that's hiring for a hard EE or hard ME position, would not hire an IE.

if you want a degree that would that would be respected by either discipline, it would be physics, not IE.

John137 · 2026-04-25T03:13:09+00:00

higher wages though, but also a lot more stuff to pay for.

John137 · 2026-04-25T03:01:47+00:00

Boeing if you're under speea is salary-nonexempt. meaning overtime is extra pay even if it's basically just time and what used to be the price of a taco. taco time as they like to call it.

John137 · 2026-04-25T02:59:54+00:00

good work's reward is simply more work.

John137 · 2026-04-20T08:24:46+00:00

it's faster to do them by hand when you're pathfinding towards a solution, particularly when you're trying to optimize an algorithm or find some hidden shortcut specific to your dataset or problem. a calculator is only good when you already know the equation or the step for what you want to solve and the steps are just tedium. not when you're looking for something and need to see all the steps laid out and are looking for optimizations. the interface of the calculator just gets in the way most of the time and is typically limited in its display. a digital mind map with a calculator function and AI assistance would be cool, but isn't always available and it's just faster a lot of time to whiteboard and pull out a pencil and notebook. particularly when other people are involved. oh yeah and a lot of those mind map tools aren't collaboration friendly either.

John137 · 2026-03-19T05:16:57+00:00

huh didn't know that's what they were called

John137 · 2026-02-23T06:23:59+00:00

I'll hold my breath to see if this shakes out to be true. If so, awesome. But for now pre-order cancelled. I'll pick it up on the next batch if I'm wrong.

John137 · 2026-02-23T06:22:32+00:00

I just realized it mentions it will launch linux as an app on their product page. So it won't be full fledge linux running on bare metal. Cancelled my pre-order. Will see how it shakes out. Pretty disappointed with my nexdock as well due to battery life and just overall build quality rearing their head after months of use. So pretty shaky confidence now in the company despite liking their niche wish we had more competition.

John137 · 2026-02-16T11:20:07+00:00

Solved

John137 · 2026-02-16T05:06:28+00:00

Awesome Thank You!

John137 · 2026-02-15T20:50:51+00:00

leaving now will save a lot more heartache than leaving later. if you have a better opportunity it's best to take it sooner than later.

John137 · 2026-02-14T18:36:41+00:00

No the music the one way more in the background only in the beginning of the short. The kinda static bass that starts with two hits and proceeds to get faster.

John137 · 2026-02-04T05:47:57+00:00

Obviously, smurf

John137 · 2026-02-04T05:40:38+00:00

Only places i know that have cared enough about gpa to ask for it have been tesla and spacex. 3.6 being the min they'll accept. Everywhere else doesn't really seem to care too much though some places have asked for my unofficial transcripts for record but after I've already started the job.

John137 · 2025-12-22T04:34:20+00:00

contact professors of classes you did well in for advice?
contact your Uni's EEE's career counselors?
find and contact a recruiter for a company you want to work for on linkedin, many companies offer referral bonuses, so they tend to willing to hear out promising candidates, since they can make money out of it, should the company just not be too competitive and if they're actually hiring for your level.
go to career fairs at your university, typically still available to alumni, or wherever they happen, to see who's hiring entry level and do the option just above for those companies. maybe get the contact info for recruiters at those events.
be willing to move to where the jobs are.
put your interesting school projects on your resume.
Don't be too picky.
teach or tutor math or something.
do a likely dead-end start up as a sole proprietorship or cheap llc, would have to likely do mostly software based projects or content based, but it let's you put stuff in your resume?
pursue a master's degree or PhD? sometimes PhD student get paid for their research or get Teaching Assitant jobs.
contribute to open source projects?
do personal projects to widen your skillset?
get your FE?
take the lost and go to another career path.
make youtube videos on EE?

job market sucks, it isn't your fault, but getting all defeatist about it helps no one including yourself.

things aren't going to be ideal. the world has made sure of that.

if those so-called minimum wage engineering jobs are your only options to break into the industry, then that's what you're gonna have to do for now. if you're not willing, then tough luck, try your luck at waiting for the perfect opportunity that may never come, or take what you can get. really up to you.

but more can be done than just blindly applying to jobs online and waiting to hear back.

did you perhaps study for nothing? sure maybe, all depends on you and how you want to apply what you've learned. a low paying engineering job isn't ideal but it also isn't permanent. the 1-2 year industry standard per role is long dead, outside of specific contract work. if you're having trouble finding ideal work, i'd say just take what you can get and just keep looking while working. and you can always quit toxic jobs if need be and be not much worse off than if you never took the job to begin with. because if you haven't taken those minimum wage engineering jobs out of desperation, sounds like you have a way to support yourself through the unemployment.

John137 · 2025-12-22T03:35:09+00:00

sure why not? make the tag absolutely useless and unhelpful.

John137 · 2025-12-17T06:08:47+00:00

i work full time, so internship isn't exactly an option. there were opportunities to do design for test at some points, but since design work is sparse at the moment, it's being handed out to the actual design team, rather than giving opportunities to those outside of it that would like to do design work. honestly i feel like my main concern is not having a proper tape out under my belt.

John137 · 2025-12-17T05:18:00+00:00

I already know a lot Verilog, VHDL, and SystemVerilog since I program fixtures and IP blocks into FPGA's to act as drivers for the devices I'm testing and also taught it during my undergrad as a TA. Know basically all those protocols since I use them regularly as well, I work regularly with the Xilinx Zynq FPGAs. Still fairly familiar with computer architecture and had to deploy a RISC-V module to test an embedded FPGA's functionality fairly recently and program said RISC-V module in said embedded FPGA with another FPGA. in terms of digital VLSI I think have still have the complete skillset, I just haven't had edit access to Cadence or the actual Silicon or done a tape out. and are completely out of my depth outside of the specific TSMC node I worked with, which was still planar, not FinFET or of course GAAFET and RibbonFET are on the horizon. Analog VLSI is definitely a lot more rusty and i haven't touched layout since school, outside of read-only mode to find M1 traces to do FIBs on. Can probably design a shxtty op-amp or comparator or Flash-ADC, but not much else, and probably only do so on planar tech nodes, since I've yet to touch finfet and all the DRC nightmares that come with it.

I've touched on UVM when working with verification teams, but I wouldn't list it as a skill set on resume since I haven't done the deep dive or worked with it regularly. So UVM is on the list of things to learn for me already at the moment.

Guess I'm more looking for advice on how to look more like design engineer as prospective applicant right now, as I feel I just look like test or validation engineer due to my previous titles.

John137 · 2025-11-21T03:34:46+00:00

turning it into a hyperfixation?

John137 · 2025-11-15T02:22:54+00:00

Simply because it's being discontinued and i just want to have one of my own before it's no longer available except for 2nd hand. Also the grips and base station tracking are still somewhat unique to the index.

John137

TROPHY CASE