[YOUR Issue] Are You Earning What You're Worth?
As a whole, the engineering profession in the U.S. remains in a state of flux as globalization continues to move jobs offshore. For some, that means loss of work and flat wages. For others, it means new opportunities and higher income. According to the latest data compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of employed electrical and electronicsengineers shrank by 101,000 from 444,000 in 2000 to 343,000 last year, a...
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Jay McSherry
[YOUR Issue] Through Your Eyes: What Satisfies You The Most
As an engineer, you have a unique opportunity to design products that can improve quality of life, fuel economic activity, or simply entertain. But engineering takes a serious commitment. You never know enough, so you're always reading and studying technical journals—like Electronic Design—and it's usually on your own time. Your primary tools are your knowledge and your creativity, so you're likely to find yourself back in school honing your...
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Jay McSherry
[YOUR Issue] Offshoring. Outsourcing. Out Of Work
It's a crazy game of Catch-22. A loud call for more U.S. EEs comes from the likes of the IEEE-USA, the Semiconductor Industry Association, the American Electronics Association, and several other groups that want to maintain and promote the United States as the world center of technical innovation. Yet jobs are scarcer than ever, as they move offshore or get eliminated through industry downsizing and restructuring. Hewlett-Packard recently announced a massive...
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Ron Schneiderman
[YOUR Issue] It's Time To Take Out The Trash
Comedian George Carlin seems to have unwittingly captured the attitude of much of the electronics industry in the daily musings of his 2005 calendar. On August 12, he looked at the American Businessman's 10 Steps to Product Development. Question 5, "Will it harm the environment?" was halfway between "Can I cut corners in design?" and "Will it force smaller competitors out of business?" Could Carlin have heard about the European Union's (EU's) Restrictions on...
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Ron Schneiderman
[YOUR Issue] The Shifting Design Cycle
The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village," wrote Marshall McLuhan in 1962. In the late 1960s, this University of Toronto media professor predicted that electronic communications would radically change our lives by speeding up the transfer of information, turning the world into a global village. In 1976, the film Network said that the modern world no longer comprises individual countries. Instead, it's a network of interlocking...
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Wayne Labs
[YOUR Issue] Challenges Persist For Minorities And Women
The U.S. is in danger of suffering a serious shortage of engineers and scientists. No shock there—during the past two decades, such warnings have emanated repeatedly from government agencies and professional societies that keep tabs on the engineering community. The failure to produce a new generation of EEs will lead to the "graying" of the engineering workforce. Consequently, graduate schools will have to recruit more engineering students from abroad. And the cycle will repeat...
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Jay McSherry
[YOUR Issue] It's Your (Changing) World, And Welcome To It...
Welcome to our third annual edition of "Your Most Important Issue of the Year," in which we step back from technology to focus on you and on the career issues surrounding EEs. This issue offers a look at how the profession is doing and how your compensation and other job-satisfaction influencers measure up. The heart of the issue is our annual survey. We'd like to thank the thousands of you who participated. Thanks also to those of you who talked to our editors ...
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Mark David
[YOUR Issue] A Day In The Life
Finally, we come to the daily grind. Many of you entered our "A Day in the Life of an Electronic Engineer" photo contest, provoking many reactions—awe, envy, sympathy, and even laughter. We also marvelled at the variety of work you're tackling out in the field. Thanks for participating! Unfortunately, we could only choose two winners. Jeff Lehto is a lead design engineer with Intersil's office in Milpitas, Calif. He sent in a number of photos, illustrating everything from...
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Richard Gawel
[YOUR Issue] Our Annual Look At EEs In The Workplace
Rising political tensions. Dropping interest rates. Near total globalization of markets. Regulators cranking out a dizzying array of rules. With so much change happening all around us, it's natural to want to get some perspective. Electronic Design's editors share their annual view of the current state of the engineering profession in this special issue. As in the past, the information published in this issue comes from the annual Reader Profile Survey conducted...
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Jay McSherry
[Design FAQs] PoE Networks Sponsored by: POWER INTEGRATIONS
What is the basis for Power over Ethernet (PoE)? The IEEE 802.3af standard for PoE enables data terminal equipment (DTE) to receive power over the same cabling used for data in an Ethernet network. The standard specifies the protocol for delivery of a nominal 48 V dc over unshielded twisted-pair cables (such as CAT-5). This eliminates the need for a local power source. What does IEEE802.3af cover? The IEEE 802.3af standard presents...
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Sam Davis
[Hall Of Fame] William Lear: Aviation Legend Makes Waves In Audio, Too
Don't tell your children this—William Lear left school in the eighth grade and joined the Navy at age 16. Then after World War I, he learned to fly. Partly from those experiences, the designer of the Learjet piloted his genius to create electronic inventions that made an impact on the radio, aviation, and sound industries. Most commonly associated with corporate jets, William Lear earned more than 100 patents for aircraft radios, communications, and...
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Doris Kilbane
[Hall Of Fame] Joseph F. Keithley: Quality. Service. Innovation. Integrity. QSII.
Early in the history of Keithley Instruments Inc., company founder Joseph F. Keithley passed cards out to employees and customers. These cards read "At Keithley Instruments, we want to be famous for Quality, Service, Innovation, and Integrity (QSII)." Nearly 60 years later, long-time employees use those precise words to describe Keithley the man. They're keys to what made him and his company recognized globally for designing and manufacturing electronic testing...
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Doris Kilbane
[Hall Of Fame] Ray Dolby: A Breaker Of Sound Barriers
What do the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Star Wars, and the San Francisco Opera have in common? The answer is simple—Ray Dolby, inventor of the technology that eliminates the hiss from analog tape sound. His company, Dolby Laboratories, has helped define the sound of everything from audio cassettes and movies to DVDs and digital TV. In 1963, a two-year United Nations appointment to India led Dolby to...
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Doris Kilbane
[Hall Of Fame] Harry Nyquist: A Founding Father Of Digital Communications
When electrical engineers hear the name "Nyquist," they think of what Harry Nyquist is best known for: his Sampling Theorem. Evidence of its importance is everywhere. Products like cell phones, audio CDs, and iPods are all based on the broad-shouldered foundation of the theorem, and that alone is enough to place Nyquist among the industry's greats. But Harry Nyquist had many other, lesser known accomplishments, a number of which resonate strongly today. Harry...
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Lisa Maliniak
[Hall Of Fame] Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli: A "Classic" Visionary
As a high school student, one of today's foremost authorities in EDA loved the classics. Yes, Dr. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli probably would have followed that track in college if not for the influence of two of his father's friends. "I loved philosophy, history, and ancient Greek. I actually hated anything that had to do with building things," he says. But in his hometown of Milan, all good students were expected to go into engineering, the most challenging...
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Doris Kilbane
[Hall Of Fame] Elmer A. Sperry: One Part Inventor, One Part Entrepreneur
Brains and business sense. This extraordinary combination helped Elmer A. Sperry found eight companies and earn close to 400 patents. His designs spanned many decades and industries, starting with dynamos and arc lamps for outdoor lighting and progressing through mining equipment, streetcars, batteries, and railroad safety devices. Chief among them, the gyroscopic compass, made piloting ships, airplanes, and spacecraft more reliable. This invention earned Sperry the...
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Lisa Maliniak
