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Is Microprocessor/Controller Design Dead?
blanchae asks: "I work for a Canadian post-secondary institute and I have been scouring the web job sites, newspapers and newsgroups for career adds for microprocessor/controller based electronic designers at the technology level (2 years training). We are re-evaluating our curriculum and are looking at the job market as one way of warranting specialization training to existing programs. There's lots of career adds for embedded controller designers with University degrees but not a thing for technology level microprocessor/controller design. It is very puzzling. So the question is: Is microprocessor/controller design dead? Has it moved offshore? Is it off the radar and mainly in small upstart companies (5 to 25 employees) that hire word of mouth and not through the big corporate media methods?"
You work for a Canadian post-secondary institute and it is very puzzling and you turn to Slashdot? God help our post-secondary institutes.
Don't you think 2 years is perhaps not enough time to have someone be competent at something as complex as microcontroller design? A 2-year degree is generally associated with technicians/technologists that are not hired for design work.
just far too hard for anyone with a two year degree (and for most people with bachelors degrees)
At the bare minimum, to be able design even a relatively simple chip you need the following classes:
1.5 years physics (mechanics, em/wave, and quantum)
3 years math (calc 1, calc 2, multivariable calc, diff eq, linear algebra, stats)
3 years electronics (intro to electronics, digital logic, basic design i.e. intro to hdl, analog signal processing, solid state devices, advanced design) 1 year CS (CSI/II)
Anyone capable of covering that much material, in addition to general school requirements, in two years destroyed their college admission exams and already has a good scholarship to a 4 year school (where they can get the degree in 2 years if they really want).
(There's others who've hired programmers and try very hard to keep them away from their embedded designs, since your typical CompSci grad thinks a MB of compiled code is compact!)
So, I'd suggest equipping your students with the sort of skills that will get them a foot in the door of companies doing embedded design, and suggest that they get a couple of cheap design kits for popular MCUs to play with in their own time.
"At the bare minimum, to be able design even a relatively simple chip you need the following classes: "
You two are talking two different levels (OP mentions controllers). A computer engineer is the one designing the microprocessor.* Then there's the person who takes both ICs and discrete components and lays them out onto a substrate (PCB usually).
*several someone's actually.
As far as microcontrollers? Not dead by any means.
Ah, sweet BCIT. I worked on embedded systems development (Not exactly chip design mind you), and I delt with the challenge adequately. Another friend, same school, same company ended up being one of their most proficient developers. Just because you don't get the entirety of the education to be entry 'qualified' doesn't mean you're incapable of ever picking it up. Given the chance, many can perform quite well above their current educational level.
With that said, I think 2 years experience would be a challenging task. Then again, they don't necessarily hire entry level chip developers. They could start you off with more remedial jobs and make you work in-house a while.
The question really is, are there -any- chip manufacturers still around in the Americas? Well, there seems to be a few big-houses still around, and if you're really questioning to keep the program or not, why not ask these companies personally? Maybe you could even arange career seminars with soon-to-be graduates?
Bye!
I wonder about this, and worry a little bit. These companies certainly need people with those skills, so ... would society benefit from a return to some form of indentured servitude? Perhaps if companies had protected their image over the past 30 years instead of letting hotshot MBA's slit their cash cows' throats and ride it into the ground, screwing all their customers in the process, then the stable companies could be trusted to provide a lifelong career for someone who chooses to learn these skills. I think that in the current environment, there aren't enough jobs to entice someone to get the necessary training. Turnover in skilled disciplines -- from both the employer's and employee's sides -- is way too high to justify the kind of dedication it takes to learn to do these things well.
It would be nice to have enough faith in the long-term plans of a company that, eg, when IBM or Ford Motor Group needs someone who can do this, an employee could be sent to school for 2-4 years with a reasonable expectation of some long-term benefits.
Lately, it seems like you need 10-15 years of experience just to be an asset rather than a liability in some fields. So why would an employer hire a college graduate for a reasonable salary, when the chances are next-to-nothing that this person will work for them long enough to contribute to the company? And who will guarantee that some new MBA won't fire him for some stupid reason? I once lost a job because some middle-manager decided that being "late" to work was defined as punching in more than 3 minutes after your scheduled time, and if you were late more than 8 times a year, you should be fired.
Back to the core of the topic: It's the question of Freddy Fastfingers, the coder who can churn out functional code super-fast, but for every hour of his work, the company invests 2-3 hours of manpower fixing, explaining, or otherwise ameliorating the effects of solveable flaws in his code. Does he even deserve to have a job? Probably not. The question is, is it reasonable for the company to nurse his career for 10 years until he's learned his way around in his field, or should they find a way to do his job with less-skilled labor, using tools that (while overpriced and underperforming) aren't filled with amateurish, glaring bugs?
Employers can't trust Employees to stick with their company, and Employees can't trust Employers not to fire them. It's a vicious cycle, and it's destroyed much of what made this country a leader in high technology in the first place.
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
There's a lot of these chips selling, so somebody must be buying them. Have you tried putting your question to the local offices of the chip companies?
We do plenty of board-level design using microcontrollers, FPGAs, DSPs, and internally-designed ASICs.
But... we don't hire 2-year degrees for design positions. Most university graduates we hire have GPAs of 3.8 or better and still start out with a year or two in applications engineering before they transition to R&D, or sales, or marketing, or manufacturing. (It's a good place to work.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
As a former board designer I can tell you someone with a 2 year degree will not be getting hired on as a board designer fresh out of school by all but a very few places. Frankly they are not going to have the combination of skills needed. Add in some good industry experience and some personal initiative and they might have a shot. A good board designer will need to know logic design, low level programming (assembly and/or C probably), tranmission line and power analysis skills. I really don't see packing all that in to a two year program, especially not with time to build up a firm math and physics base. We did hire layout people with two year degrees that simply routed the traces on the board but that is mainly a CAD tool job, not engineering.