FPGA Central

Hi everyone.

I'm a relative newby to the professional/paid DSP environment with the
goal of becoming an expert in statistical/adaptive DSP software and
systems. With the current turmoil (from my perspective as a new and
unemployed EE graduate) and outsourcing of engineering positions to
qualified(?) and lower paid foreign workers, what are your thoughts on
job security and opportunities in this field? Also, responses need
not be limited to career; I am interested in hearing your views on
advances in theory and innovative application areas.

P.S.

In order to accelerate the learning curve and improve my DSP skills, I
would like to team up with 1 or 2 other people in a
mentorship/collaborator relationship that I believe would be
beneficial to all involved. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area
please contact me.

Thanks, Nuey.
[email protected]

If you enter _ANY_ field in the realms of electronics
and computing, you have to do it because it is your
heart's desire and not for long-term security.

(Almost all of the products that many of us worked on
30 years ago have long since been consigned to the
scrap heap. This is a trend that continues. There is
no long-termism in high-tech).

If you stay at the sharp end, you'll have to find something
else to do by the time you're 45.

If you rise to manage someone else's company, you'll
be on the scrap heap at 45 when the company fails or
is taken over.

What you must do is have your own ideas which you can
develop commercially, set up your own company to
promote them, make a fortune so you can retire at 30
so it won't matter when you get to 45!

Sorry, but any of us who have ideas on "advances in
theory and innovative application areas. " will keep the
ideas to ourselves, 'cos they're our own pension plans!

"Nuey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected] om...
> I'm a relative newby to the professional/paid DSP environment with the
> goal of becoming an expert in statistical/adaptive DSP software and
> systems. With the current turmoil (from my perspective as a new and
> unemployed EE graduate) and outsourcing of engineering positions to
> qualified(?) and lower paid foreign workers, what are your thoughts on
> job security and opportunities in this field? Also, responses need
> not be limited to career; I am interested in hearing your views on
> advances in theory and innovative application areas.

Nuey wrote:
> Hi everyone.
>
> I'm a relative newby to the professional/paid DSP environment with the
> goal of becoming an expert in statistical/adaptive DSP software and
> systems. With the current turmoil (from my perspective as a new and
> unemployed EE graduate) and outsourcing of engineering positions to
> qualified(?) and lower paid foreign workers, what are your thoughts on
> job security and opportunities in this field?

If you're generally competent you'll stay employed. At the moment there
are still more on-shore engineering opportunities than off, so you have
a good chance at landing a good job. If you haven't graduated yet --
START LOOKING FOR WORK! You really should be looking at the start of
your junior year or earlier. Getting a job at a big company requires
experience, which either means an internship or working for a small
company that takes the "meat grinder" approach to hiring engineers.

Once you have experience if all the jobs move offshore they'll still
need someone to manage the offshore teams -- right? In the near term
there'll be plenty of jobs in the "defense" industry.

> Also, responses need
> not be limited to career; I am interested in hearing your views on
> advances in theory and innovative application areas.

All necessary, but not central. Being able to wring the most out of
what you do know, being able to make things work with what you can get
-- that will cover 99% of the work that needs to get done. Knowing what
is really valuable to your employers is what will gain their trust and
get you steady, lucrative employment.
>
> P.S.
>
> In order to accelerate the learning curve and improve my DSP skills, I
> would like to team up with 1 or 2 other people in a
> mentorship/collaborator relationship that I believe would be
> beneficial to all involved. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area
> please contact me.

Your best bet there is to get a job at a company that has such people.
If you're in a healthy work environment, if you're generally civil and
respectful you'll find such relationships growing without conscious
effort on your part.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

"Airy R. Bean" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]..
> If you enter _ANY_ field in the realms of electronics
> and computing, you have to do it because it is your
> heart's desire and not for long-term security.
>
> (Almost all of the products that many of us worked on
> 30 years ago have long since been consigned to the
> scrap heap. This is a trend that continues. There is
> no long-termism in high-tech).
>
> If you stay at the sharp end, you'll have to find something
> else to do by the time you're 45.
>
> If you rise to manage someone else's company, you'll
> be on the scrap heap at 45 when the company fails or
> is taken over.
>
> What you must do is have your own ideas which you can
> develop commercially, set up your own company to
> promote them, make a fortune so you can retire at 30
> so it won't matter when you get to 45!
>
> Sorry, but any of us who have ideas on "advances in
> theory and innovative application areas. " will keep the
> ideas to ourselves, 'cos they're our own pension plans!

The other option is to bumble through until some company (eg Westinghouse)
spots you are incompetent, get sacked, be out of work, set up your own
company selling software no-one buys (eg at £1700 operating system), and
drink yourself silly.

Care to comment on that from your expereince, Gareth?

Airy R. Bean wrote:

> [ hot air snipped ]

Security is in having your fundamentals down solid.

In the early 60's I pursued a BSEE at an Ivy League institution.
I rebelled at all the "theory" that I was being "stuffed full of".
Quit to see the "real" world.

Had a series of well paying jobs for almost 3 decades because I had that
@^%$#&@@ theory ;}

About fifteen years ago, I chose to peruse some very non-technical goals.

I'm now interested in perusing some technical goals inspired by what
I've been involved with in the last few years.

The solid technical background I forcibly received is allowing me to see
that there is a possible solution to problems of interest and enables me
to ask reasonably intelligent questions in a field that really didn't
exist while I was in school.

"Nuey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected] om...
> Hi everyone.
>
> I'm a relative newby to the professional/paid DSP environment with the
> goal of becoming an expert in statistical/adaptive DSP software and
> systems. With the current turmoil (from my perspective as a new and
> unemployed EE graduate) and outsourcing of engineering positions to
> qualified(?) and lower paid foreign workers, what are your thoughts on
> job security and opportunities in this field? Also, responses need
> not be limited to career; I am interested in hearing your views on
> advances in theory and innovative application areas.
>
> P.S.
>
> In order to accelerate the learning curve and improve my DSP skills, I
> would like to team up with 1 or 2 other people in a
> mentorship/collaborator relationship that I believe would be
> beneficial to all involved. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area
> please contact me.

Nuey,

Unfortunately, the cool stuff in the academic world is often not what the
perponderance of folks in the real market require. To be sure, the cool
stuff gets used often enough but often by a select few. Think of this: if
the Director of Engineering or CTO remains with one foot in technology then
why would he/she give away the fun stuff to a newbie? But, I'm being
skeptical. My real point is this: consider your market!

You don't approach a market with a solution in search of a problem. You
approach the market by asking "what is your problem?" Not many chances for
statisticians in signal processing in comparison to other things.

Maybe think of it this way. If you can design something useful then having
the theoretical capabilities to allow you to do it faster, better, correctly
is a bonus. Sometimes, it may be a necessary ingredient. Other times it
won't matter much because the task at hand doesn't require it.

So, can you design FPGAs? Can you design circuit boards? Can you write
software that implements more than an adaptive filter? What do you know
about mainstream issues and methods - like cell phone communication modes,
etc. I suggest you take a survey of comp.dsp and see if you can filter out
the academic vs. the applied situations for which questions are posed here.
Then, don't expect this group to be a good cross-section of practitioners -
although there are some very good practitioners here!

Start by casting a wider net. Apply for jobs. Find out what questions the
real world is asking. Be mindful that companies vary rather tremendously in
what they're looking for - even if the makeup of their engineering teams are
identical! Vacancies and new applications (thus vacancies) drive what each
company needs.

All is about balance. You need a job and you want to work on things of
interest. These can be conflicting objectives. So, do the best you can to
balance them and keep an eye out for opportunities to improve the situation
if that's what you need. I'm not suggesting that you give up on your
keenest interests - simply that a pragmatic approach is useful.

Fred

Nimrod wrote:

> "Airy R. Bean" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]..
>
>>If you enter _ANY_ field in the realms of electronics
>>and computing, you have to do it because it is your
>>heart's desire and not for long-term security.
>>
>>(Almost all of the products that many of us worked on
>>30 years ago have long since been consigned to the
>>scrap heap. This is a trend that continues. There is
>>no long-termism in high-tech).
>>
>>If you stay at the sharp end, you'll have to find something
>>else to do by the time you're 45.
>>
>>If you rise to manage someone else's company, you'll
>>be on the scrap heap at 45 when the company fails or
>>is taken over.
>>
>>What you must do is have your own ideas which you can
>>develop commercially, set up your own company to
>>promote them, make a fortune so you can retire at 30
>>so it won't matter when you get to 45!
>>
>>Sorry, but any of us who have ideas on "advances in
>>theory and innovative application areas. " will keep the
>>ideas to ourselves, 'cos they're our own pension plans!
>
>
> The other option is to bumble through until some company (eg Westinghouse)
> spots you are incompetent, get sacked, be out of work, set up your own
> company selling software no-one buys (eg at £1700 operating system), and
> drink yourself silly.
>
> Care to comment on that from your expereince, Gareth?
>
>
http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Tim Wescott wrote:

> http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html
>
"But I wore the juice" - I like that one :-)

Steve

Tim Wescott wrote:

...

> http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html

What a great article! I lifted a sig from it.

Jerry
--
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
Charles Darwin
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

Jerry Avins wrote:

>
>What a great article! I lifted a sig from it.
>
>Jerry
>
>
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

Charles Darwin

That sounds like a rephrasing of

"Confidence is a feeling you have before you fully undertstand the problem"

I wonder which came first.

Steve

Tim Wescott <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> Nuey wrote:

> > In order to accelerate the learning curve and improve my DSP skills, I
> > would like to team up with 1 or 2 other people in a
> > mentorship/collaborator relationship that I believe would be
> > beneficial to all involved. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area
> > please contact me.
>
> Your best bet there is to get a job at a company that has such people.
> If you're in a healthy work environment, if you're generally civil and
> respectful you'll find such relationships growing without conscious
> effort on your part.

I agree that Nuey's strategy is a wise one, and that it probably would
be the best, if he can implement it. I also agree with Tim in that these
factors will grow naturally, once one finds oneself in a "healthy work
environment".

Now, the hard part is to find such a healthy work environment. If you fail
in finding one, you might be in big trouble for a long time to come.
So take some care in choosing where to work. If you are so lucky as to
get a chooise, that is.

Rune

in article [email protected], Jerry Avins at [email protected] wrote
on 11/17/2004 21:40:

> Tim Wescott wrote:
>
> ...
>
>> http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html
>
> What a great article! I lifted a sig from it.

it *is* cute, but, it seems to me, a repeat of truth as old as the bible.
perhaps just a confirmation of it.

don't be too hard on Beanie. evidently there are some enablers with PhDs to
help him assess his own competence:

http://www.informatics.bangor.ac.uk/...zes_2002.shtml

still doesn't explain his conceptualization of the dirac impulse function
and the sampling theorem.

r b-j

On 2004-11-18 05:46:19 +0100, robert bristow-johnson
<[email protected]> said:

> don't be too hard on Beanie. evidently there are some enablers with PhDs to
> help him assess his own competence:

Well, what do you expect with his father being the vice chancellor of
the university...? :-)
--
Stephan M. Bernsee
http://www.dspdimension.com

"Fred Marshall" <fmarshallx@remove_the_x.acm.org> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> "Nuey" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected] om...
> > Hi everyone.
> >
> > I'm a relative newby to the professional/paid DSP environment with the
> > goal of becoming an expert in statistical/adaptive DSP software and
> > systems. With the current turmoil (from my perspective as a new and
> > unemployed EE graduate) and outsourcing of engineering positions to
> > qualified(?) and lower paid foreign workers, what are your thoughts on
> > job security and opportunities in this field? Also, responses need
> > not be limited to career; I am interested in hearing your views on
> > advances in theory and innovative application areas.
> >
> > P.S.
> >
> > In order to accelerate the learning curve and improve my DSP skills, I
> > would like to team up with 1 or 2 other people in a
> > mentorship/collaborator relationship that I believe would be
> > beneficial to all involved. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area
> > please contact me.
>
> Nuey,
>
> Unfortunately, the cool stuff in the academic world is often not what the
> perponderance of folks in the real market require. To be sure, the cool
> stuff gets used often enough but often by a select few. Think of this: if
> the Director of Engineering or CTO remains with one foot in technology then
> why would he/she give away the fun stuff to a newbie? But, I'm being
> skeptical. My real point is this: consider your market!

I can agree with that. I wrote a PhD thesis on a certain method
for analyzing seismic data, that avided certain of the drawbacks
the "naive" methods suffer from. The method worked quite well,
it had all the technical advantages we expected, when comparing it
to the "naive" methods.

The problem occured when I tried to teach the processing people to
use the method and interpret the results. It turned out the method
was so theoretically complicated and difficult to understand, that
everybody stuck with the "naive" methods. The "naive" methods still
have their shortcommings, but they (and the shortcommings!) are
easy to understand and they work well enough to get the job done.

> You don't approach a market with a solution in search of a problem. You
> approach the market by asking "what is your problem?" Not many chances for
> statisticians in signal processing in comparison to other things.
>
> Maybe think of it this way. If you can design something useful then having
> the theoretical capabilities to allow you to do it faster, better, correctly
> is a bonus. Sometimes, it may be a necessary ingredient. Other times it
> won't matter much because the task at hand doesn't require it.

Again, the user often wants something that works sufficiently well.
Not perfectly. Not optimized. Sufficiently well.

> So, can you design FPGAs? Can you design circuit boards? Can you write
> software that implements more than an adaptive filter? What do you know
> about mainstream issues and methods - like cell phone communication modes,
> etc. I suggest you take a survey of comp.dsp and see if you can filter out
> the academic vs. the applied situations for which questions are posed here.
> Then, don't expect this group to be a good cross-section of practitioners -
> although there are some very good practitioners here!
>
> Start by casting a wider net. Apply for jobs. Find out what questions the
> real world is asking. Be mindful that companies vary rather tremendously in
> what they're looking for - even if the makeup of their engineering teams are
> identical! Vacancies and new applications (thus vacancies) drive what each
> company needs.
>
> All is about balance. You need a job and you want to work on things of
> interest. These can be conflicting objectives. So, do the best you can to
> balance them and keep an eye out for opportunities to improve the situation
> if that's what you need. I'm not suggesting that you give up on your
> keenest interests - simply that a pragmatic approach is useful.

Most certainly agreed!

Rune

Tim Wescott <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...

> http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html

Very interesting. Do I push it too far if I interpret this paper as
saying "the ultimate sign of being competent lies in recognizing the
limits of one's competence"?

Rune

Rune Allnor wrote:

>Tim Wescott <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
>
>
>>http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html
>>
>>
>
>Very interesting. Do I push it too far if I interpret this paper as
>saying "the ultimate sign of being competent lies in recognizing the
>limits of one's competence"?
>
>Rune
>
>
I think that's usually expressed something like "A wise person knows
their own limitations". I'm not sure wise people do always know their
own limitations, but I'm fairly sure they are always acutely aware they
have some.

Regards,
Steve

The religious loony brigade arrive with their rather childish emotive
and non-intellectual sneers.....

"robert bristow-johnson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:BDC1934B.1F90%[email protected]..
> don't be too hard on Beanie. evidently there are some enablers with PhDs
to
> help him assess his own competence:
> still doesn't explain his conceptualization of the dirac impulse function
> and the sampling theorem.

Steve Underwood wrote:

> Jerry Avins wrote:
>
>>
>> What a great article! I lifted a sig from it.
>>
>> Jerry
>>
>>
> Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
>
> Charles Darwin
>
> That sounds like a rephrasing of
>
> "Confidence is a feeling you have before you fully undertstand the problem"
>
> I wonder which came first.
>
> Steve

Or "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." It's been said in so many
different ways, it must be true!

Jerry
--
.... they proceeded on the sound principle that the magnitude of a lie
always contains a certain factor of credibility, ... and that therefor
.... they more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one ...
Adolph Hitler in "Mein Kampf"
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————

Tim Wescott wrote:

> http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html

An Uncle Al fan by any chance, Tim?


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

Tim Wescott wrote:

>
> If you're generally competent you'll stay employed.

I hate to agree with Airy on anything but his observations
pretty much match my experience too. You can lose
employment for all kinds of reasons other than incompetence.
Layoffs, closings, entire lab missions moving offshore,
etc. Job security as a consequence of being valued is an
absolute myth.

If one is over 50 I can attest to the extraordinary
difficulty of even landing an interview if one chose a
career in technical R&D. You only get hired if you are over
50 to do something exactly like what you've done before and
the posssiblitites can become vanishingly small as the
things you've done before inevitably become less and less
relevant to today. A young person's potential is seen as
his ability to learn whatever needs doing. An older
person's is seen as his having done something quite specific
which might be difficult or time consuming for a younger one
to learn, so that he can be reasonably expected to do it
again without much lead time.

The days of the wise, experienced, older senior engineer
being considered an asset have been gone for nearly 20
years. Now we are pretty near invisible.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

Jerry Avins wrote:

> Tim Wescott wrote:
>
> ...
>
>
>>http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html

Tonight at supper I read about two local 16-year-old girls who were
seriously injured in a car driven by a drunken 18-year old. My guess is
that when sober, he would have realized that he was too drunk to drive.
As it was, he couldn't tell. It's just another example of the same plot.

Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

Bob Cain wrote:
>
>
> Tim Wescott wrote:
>
>> http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html
>
>
> An Uncle Al fan by any chance, Tim?
>
>
> Bob

I hope your reference is at least somewhat obscure, because I have no
idea what you mean by "Uncle Al".

No, I've been following this line of research in Science News, so when
the subject came up I just plugged the appropriate words into AltaVista
and sent a link to the first reasonable article that it coughed up.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Steve Underwood wrote:

> Rune Allnor wrote:
>
>> Tim Wescott <[email protected]> wrote in message
>> news:<[email protected]>...
>>
>>
>>> http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html
>>>
>>
>>
>> Very interesting. Do I push it too far if I interpret this paper as
>> saying "the ultimate sign of being competent lies in recognizing the
>> limits of one's competence"?
>>
>> Rune
>>
>>
> I think that's usually expressed something like "A wise person knows
> their own limitations". I'm not sure wise people do always know their
> own limitations, but I'm fairly sure they are always acutely aware they
> have some.
>
> Regards,
> Steve

Actually I've worked with some geniuses who think they're god -- I'd
rather have an idiot who knows exactly what he can do, and doesn't go
farther.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Rune Allnor wrote:

> Tim Wescott <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
>
>
>>http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html
>
>
> Very interesting. Do I push it too far if I interpret this paper as
> saying "the ultimate sign of being competent lies in recognizing the
> limits of one's competence"?
>
> Rune

That's certainly a good thing to take away. Certainly you can be very,
very bright and still be incompetent just by virtue of not recognizing
your limitations.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Bob Cain wrote:

>
>
> Tim Wescott wrote:
>
>>
>> If you're generally competent you'll stay employed.
>
>
> I hate to agree with Airy on anything but his observations pretty much
> match my experience too. You can lose employment for all kinds of
> reasons other than incompetence. Layoffs, closings, entire lab missions
> moving offshore, etc. Job security as a consequence of being valued is
> an absolute myth.
>
> If one is over 50 I can attest to the extraordinary difficulty of even
> landing an interview if one chose a career in technical R&D. You only
> get hired if you are over 50 to do something exactly like what you've
> done before and the posssiblitites can become vanishingly small as the
> things you've done before inevitably become less and less relevant to
> today. A young person's potential is seen as his ability to learn
> whatever needs doing. An older person's is seen as his having done
> something quite specific which might be difficult or time consuming for
> a younger one to learn, so that he can be reasonably expected to do it
> again without much lead time.
>
> The days of the wise, experienced, older senior engineer being
> considered an asset have been gone for nearly 20 years. Now we are
> pretty near invisible.
>
>
> Bob

I give that a qualified "Hmm". I think you do have to surf the
employment market, and there's certainly a stigma attached to being an
older engineer -- that's why I'm spending my mid-life crisis building a
consulting company, rather than attempting to seduce 22 year old blonds.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com