Last week I went to the Open Hardware Summit with a skeptical eye to the ability for someone to generate a realistic business model when giving away everything they design. How can one pay the engineers to design a product when the competition get the same design files without having to pay them? And I’m [...]
I’ve always been interested in topics of failure, motivation, and rewards. Especially in the context of personal achievement in the design process. When speaking with a friend over a couple beers which were his reward for doing everything that could be done in a failing situation, I suggested he take a different approach when placed [...]
My latest Element14 article is based directly on my experience as a new engineer at Keithley. Anyone will tell you how tough an error budget can be to work out, but I was amazed at all of the things it did for my job there and my career for years to come. After all, if [...]
I am a firm believer that contracts are a GOOD thing. Not only is it an opportunity for reasonable people to write down their expectations and assumptions at one time, but memories have a habit of drifting from reality. Issues on responsibility, payments, ownership, etc… need to have some reference point that both parties agreed [...]
Have you ever worked on a project that gets canceled for some political or other reason not related to the technical potential? Kind of drives you insane. I just canceled a project of mine for strictly political reasons, and it gave me a better understanding of why it happens. Always good to look at things [...]
For my next installment on the E14: DIT blog, I wrote an article with some of my most useful steps to completing a schematic review. I’ve found these to work great on big reviews that involve lots of people as well as small reviews that consist of just me and the designer. Check out the [...]
Sometimes engineers get a bad rap for not being very emotional. And being friends with many engineers, I can totally understand this notion. It is not strange to have a conversation that starts with, “Why don’t you get out of my car and walk from here? Your house is only 100 meters away, but there [...]
I put up a new post on the Element14 DIT blog talking about things I’ve missed out on and wanted to share it here. I’m sure the older generation would approve! …the part of our history that I look back at with the most envy is the engineering work completed from the period of the [...]
Okay, so maybe the author goes a little hard on my friends who were trained alongside me as an engineer but have chased a career in finance. But I think a lot of solid points are made, so I thought I’d share it here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/26/friends-don%E2%80%99t-let-friends-get-into-finance/ The long and short of his complaint is that engineering [...]