Brian
7/22/2012 4:51:19 PM
User Rank Guru
Re: My first job
@Crusty: Thanks for sharing; very interesting! You make the rest of us sound so boring... :-)
Crusty
7/22/2012 3:17:51 PM
User Rank Blogger
Re: My first job
Well Crusty has to come clean about this and as I am now retired, all the jobs are first jobs now.
I left school at 16 with the head masters comment ringing in my ears "it will be very surprising if you achieve anything of any merit in your working life."
Post war demobbed armed services technical engineers were so numerous, jobs in electronics got filled with people who had a proven history, so my only passion at that time died a quick death.
So I Joined the ranks of trainee Medical Laboratory Technologists (these are the vampires and the ghouls of a Hospital laboratory). By the time I got to be 28 I had qualified as a Medical Laboratory Scientific Officer with my specialism in Histo Pathology. At least I no longer had to hold conversations with the patients, i now dealt with.
This biological training has left me with one lasting vision, you have to understand the whole system as well as the bits that make up the whole system.
During those 12 years I had still kept in touch with electronics as an amateur. A growing family and a hospital wage, not keeping abreast with inflation, stimulated a need to change profession.
So I blagged my way into the Physics and Engineering section of London Transport Executive Research Laboratory (Buses and Tubes then). I had a brilliant electronics mentor in John Ewins (a prolific contributor to Wireless World magazine). He built everything from scratch and put the polish on my amateur status and patiently put up with my errors of judgement.
It's said that if you stay 2 years with London Underground you are there for life and this proved to be the case, though not in the same department.
Kings Cross fire disaster happened, this required LU to install fire alarms in every underground location. I was permanently seconded to the then fledgling Fire Protection department and I was given the task to define the electronic control panels and systems that would form the backbone of the automatic fire detection systems. It was here that I was able to expand my grip on electronics. Most equipment that was available was unsuitable for the conditions it would be installed in. I had to prove to the fire equipment manufacturers that I new more about their product when it was deployed in the conditions they were to work in. I did this by basically reverse engineering their products on test beds (hardware and software), not all of my findings were appreciated.
So I finally ended up maintaining and reducing the running costs of the installed fire systems.
Does this work history make me an electronics professional?
I do not know, but I have had an absolutely fun time playing with all the expensive electronic components and test equipment that came my way.
Along the way I have had massive amounts of help, encouragement and assistance from accredited experts and it's been a pleasure learning and working with them.
Retirement lets me have my attic electronics workshop where I am free to follow my electronics interest.
As a last thing did I say I went to night college and learn the art of watch and clock repair, funny thing is most analogue escapements are actually digital.
Crusty.
Re: First Job
@Robbiev: "...since i'm only 24..."
Show-off! :-) I was 24 once :-) In fact, I recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of my 24th Birthday :-)
robbiev
7/19/2012 3:54:59 AM
User Rank Beginner
First Job
Well my first "on field" experience was an internship at Barco NV avionics division. I've worked on a high-speed video to pcie bridge on Altera and Xilinx FPGA's. After graduation i started at a university research group on a two year project about multicore embedded software. I'm still working there today (since i'm only 24 :-p).
Re: My first job
@Piney David: Thanks for this -- and I just got the pictures you emailed me -- you look SO YOUNG when you were at college :-)
My first job
My first job after college was was in manufacturing. I was working near Austin, TX with a company who produced epoxy-based products for use in Laboratory settings. If you took a chemistry or biology class in college, you probably remember the black lab tops. That's what they made. All sorts of things, and eventually other colors as well. My job was to fix the automation system, which was purchased, but never ran correctly. Not knowing any better, I jumped in, stayed late (very late) after the production was done for the day, and figured out how their PLC worked. Over time I developed fixes for the original problems, and eventually rewrote the entire program. Along the way I worked with lots of analog and digital transducers and eventually I developed some custon microcontroller interfaces to retrive data form controllers which didn't want to talk to the PLC. I've always been more into controls and applications of microcontrollers in industrial controls. I got my start working with electronics when I was about 10 years old. I remember hacking the TRS-80 to get lower-case letters. I tinkered with audio and voice synthesizers along the way. I just received the Papilion from Sparkfun, so I'm wrapping my head around what it can do for me.
Re: First Job
When did you work there I worked for them from 2000 until 2005 we may have communicated ;)
Re: My first engineering job
@Gina: Thanks Gina -- now I need you to send me a photo of you from your first job so I can add it to th eslide show I'm pulling together :-)
My first engineering job
My first job as an engineer was with Westinghouse which became Northrop Grumman a few months later. They had a great grad student program where they allow us to rotate between different groups before settling in on one.
I took assignments in digital and analog design groups and finally I settled in with a great group of gentlemen in the airborne transmitter/high voltage group. They said I was the first female to come into their group in over 20 years. That last lady got scared off when an Einstein type engineer blow up an o'scope.
They said this was a group of crazies because they liked working with the high voltage. Guess I'm one of the crazies too because I loved working with the high voltage. I even got an award for one of my high voltage designs. They taught me so much and I developed some really good skills and habits that I still use today.
Re: First Job
Hey!! Adam... I worked for Raytheon in MD designing & managing IFF more specifically transponders with a little interrogator work. It was my 2nd job out of college and last one before I started my own company. Had a lot of fun there it was a great job.
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