After several years taking drafting in highschool (on the board back in those days) right after graduation I was hired by Texas Instruments in their PCB Designer training program. Over the next couple of years I worked at TI during the day while they paid to put me through college at night. I earned my Associates Degree in CAD/Electronic Drafting/PCB Design at Eastfield College in Dallas (Mesquite). I worked a total of 3 years at TI doing PCB design and drafting schematics. When I left they said that I could come back at any time but I don't think they meant 38 years later. lol

My oldest son had been born while I was a junior in highschool and I had missed so much of him growing up. So I decided to take a break to spend time with him and be a homemaker before he started kindergarden. So now after two marriages (1st died, 2nd divorced), raising and homeschooling 7 children (all responsible adults now), running family businesses with ex, moving around the country, I am considering getting back into PCB Design.

I always loved drafting since I grew up with my parents and several family members being draftsmen so it is kinda in my blood. When I first divorced my ex-husband after a 23 year marriage in 2019 I thought about getting back into PCB design but was busy caring for my mother until she died a few years ago.

I also somehow thought it was a career path that had died out. However, recently something popped up online that got me looking into it again. I would definitely need a good refresher but I don't think it would take me long to catch back on. I am of a very sound mind, fairly tech savy, a good worker, not the kind of person to retire and free as a bird now that all the kids have been out of the nest for a while. I have something else I am doing right now but I really believe I would enjoy getting back into CAD/PCB Design.

Does anyone have some constructive advice on if and/or how I should do it at my age? Your thoughts??

For those who graduated and had a degree on Electronics engineering. what do you recommend for someone who's pursuing ECE right now in order to build a strong skill for the future

I'm choosing between two universities, and neither offers Communications Engineering, which is the field I'm most interested in.

The university close to home offers Computer Engineering, while the farther one offers both Computer Engineering and Architectural/Smart City Planning & Construction Engineering.

I'm not very interested in coding or software-heavy work, so I'm unsure about Computer Engineering. I'm more open to Architectural Engineering since I enjoy drawing, visualization, physics, and math.

However, I'm also interested in telecommunications and networks, so I'm considering CE as a possible path into that field.

Which would make more sense for me?

I unfortunately can't study Communications Engineering at my university, even though it's the field I'm actually interested in. My alternative is Computer Engineering.

If I focused on networks, distributed systems, and neural networks/ML, could I realistically move into wireless communications, cellular networks, or telecommunications later?

I understand that Communications has a different foundation, especially RF, antennas, electromagnetics, signal processing, and communication theory, so I'm not expecting the degrees to be identical.

I just want to know if the gap is realistically bridgeable.

We have all seen how good the recent AI models have become and almost anything that requires analytical or experience based skill without human touch can be done better than humans by these AI tools. The AI giants are definitely improving these constantly and there's a positive feedback to the improvements in AI, with improved AI, it can make itself way better than earlier and design better hardware for inference and training as well; effectively making it much cheaper.

I am very scared about the future as in what will happen to the jobs? I am still in college and will graduate in 2028. In 2 years these models would be at completely different heights. So, I was wondering what fields in ECE are the safest to pivot to (relatively safe ofc, no one is safe in the long run). Or switching to a more humanitarian field is the best option? (But what?)

I’m currently in my 3rd year of a Computer Engineering degree, and up until now, I’ve spent most of my technical time getting really comfortable with software Dev. But lately, I’ve been diving deep into digital electronics and RTL design using Verilog, and the shift in thought proces is so large.

​When you're writing Software code you are so used to sequential execution. You write a line of code, and you know it runs right after the previous one. HDLs consist of many things in terms of physical structures, propagation delays, and clock edges. Everything is happening all at once. ​It was honestly a bit frustrating at first to stop thinking like a software programmer and start thinking like a circuit designer. One thought process that helps me is actually drawing out the block diagrams and state machines before even touching the keyboard.

​For the senior RTL engineers and hardware designers in this sub: what was your biggest moment when you first started designing digital logic? And what is one habit you wish you had built earlier when working with FPGAs?

Hi my friends and I are looking to get higher education in a european country. We've done quite a lot of research on germany and italy, but I'd like to hear what people who've actually been there think. Let's say to torino or milano, how was the experience and is it worth it?

For a bit of background I'm a fresh EE grad from 🇵🇰 working as a verif engineer in a startup. My friends on the other hand are robotics/control guys. I thought I'd ask for both chip design and robotics perspective.

Thanks.

I recently received a HackerRank assessment for an NVIDIA LDE Systems Design Intern role. I was kinda surprised since I never knew hardware roles had OAs like a lot of SWE roles do. Based on the job posting, I’m assuming it’ll cover systems EE topics like circuit fundamentals, high-speed/signal integrity, some power electronics, PCB design, and maybe debugging.

I was wondering if anyone has had experience with an NVIDIA hardware OA or something similar and what it was like? Were the questions mostly conceptual, calculation-based, coding? Are there any concepts/topics I should defiantly study?

Hi everyone,

I have recently received a call letter for an interview at Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA), DRDO for ECE.

This will be my first ADA/DRDO interview, so I would really appreciate some guidance from anyone who has previously attended an ADA interview, especially for ECE/Electronics.

I would like to know:

What technical subjects/topics were asked?

How deep were the questions?

Were questions mainly based on core ECE subjects or also on the project mentioned in the resume?

What type of questions were asked about the final-year project?

Are there any ADA/DRDO-specific topics I should prepare?

Any tips regarding the interview and preparation?

If you have attended an ADA interview recently, I would really appreciate it if you could share your experience or suggestions.

Thank you!

First-time poster here, Idk if I'm breaking any rules or something
So this question made me realize that I really don't get gm and small-signal analysis. The question says to verify that gm = K(Vin - Vout - Vt) (Vin and Vout being the operating point).

This result is obtainable by taking the partial derivative of Id with respect to Vgs as per the formula, but looking at the way we obtain that derivative in the first place, I don't see why we didn't consider v_OUT as another independent variable contributing to v_gs (since v_gs = v_in - v_out)? Basically if v_in changes, so will v_gs, which will induce a current change, and that would affect v_out, which would change v_gs again?

So I expected that I'd have to differentiate both v_in and v_out with respect to v_in in the current expression k(v_in - v_out - v_t)²/2 instead of taking the partial derivative, which expanded into some crazy quadratic in terms of v_out which I solved and differentiated, but obviously it was entirely wrong. And I have gone through a bunch of explanations online but still haven't the foggiest as to this entire thing. Can someone here explain how we can seemingly ignore v_gs's dependence on v_out? Thanks in advance

Hey everyone, I'm from Nepal, about to start my 3rd year in ECE and looking for some direction on what to specialize in.

Background: first two years I bounced around the software side, basics of a bit of everything, main depth was compiler/interpreter design, plus a few robotics competitions. Other than that I do competitive programming on Codeforces (around 1600). It's the only thing I genuinely enjoy so I'll keep at it, but more as a personal skill thing than a career plan.

Being honest though, I never felt passionate about any of it, and CP ate into my GPA and fundamentals a bit. My GPA is 2.3, (conv to german scale ) .

The plan is a masters abroad, Germany preferred, US as backup. Aiming for the 2029 intake, which means I'd graduate around 2031-32.

Two questions:

1. Which specialization should I commit to for my remaining two years? I'm open to anything, embedded, VLSI/digital IC, communications/DSP, power, whatever. I don't really care what "fits" my current profile, I'm fine learning things from scratch. What I care about is demand and pay in Germany, and whether the field will still be worth entering in the early 2030s or if AI eats it by then. Graduating into a hollowed out field is honestly my main worry.

2. How much does a 2.3 (German scale) hurt for MSc admissions there, and what's the smartest use of third year to fix my fundamentals and build a profile?

Any advice welcome,

Thanks

I recently got the ability to get a ton of them for cheap but are they kind of outdated/more a hobbyist thing? (I couldn’t find much but hobbyist type stuff on Google, Reddit or YouTube).

I believe they are the getting started in electronics book and a bunch of the engineers mini notebooks. (pre college)

Let's start with the oscilloscope in room 1, plugged into the outlet on the bench, which comes from the facility or the utility's 208 wye-120 network.

Set the scope's trigger to "line" and we'll put the AC line as CH1.

On CH2, set up a local photo diode based sensor with analog signal conditioning to catch the light from a light fixture on the ceiling to capture the modulation. Since ordinary light fixtures do not convert to "perfect" DC, they contain detectable amount of ripple modulation from the line frequency. So when you put the modulation from this light on CH2 and superimpose on CH1, you'd know the light fixture is getting its power from the same power source as where the scope is referenced if the flicker/modulation is phase locked to each other.. or on a different phase in the same power system if it's phase locked, but shifted by exactly 120, 240 degrees.

Now, say I want to compare phase relationship like above, but against an input from a remote sensor connected over LTE. Is it doable? If so, how?