SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
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User ID: 84
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
11hr ago
I'm in the fun spot of some old friends claiming I'm the most engineery person they have ever met (and they know quite a few engineers) while also scoring quite low on tests (12% in the one that was posted), and having been tested (for my ADHD diagnosis) without showing any signs of autism beyond typical "yeah, the guy's an engineer"-level things.
Like yes, some Stuff Matters, but only in the right context. Yes, if you fuck up basic engineering principles in a job or when building something important you're a fucking idiot but also I couldn't give a damn about which order the cutlery is in or changes in daily routine.
I generally get on well with other engineers but much less so with people who are clearly on the autism spectrum.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
15hr ago
I'd like to point to UK companies being able to access the European manufacturing base except, oh wait, brexit...
It may have been common knowledge in US but as a EU resident I hadn't actually heard of such issues until I ran into them many times on electronics forums.
I'm working on a side project and if things go well and we get it finished, we'll probably have a small batch manufactured in the Baltics given that we know of a couple of reputable companies there. Several friends' companies and my own previous workplaces have had good experiences when it comes to quality, responsiveness and pricing and if there are issues, it's only a one or two day trip to go there in person to sort things out. Plus the lack of language barrier (ie. everyone in the loop speaks English) is a huge plus compared to China (or even Southern Europe).
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
1d ago
I’ve become much more judicious in my use of the em-dash
The Chad solution to this is to accept that there is only one dash and that it is also hyphen and the minus sign. Aka the ascii character 0x2D.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
1d ago
Just out of idle curiosity: are we talking bare PCBs or complete assemblies? There is a big difference between "I can not find a company to produce a bare six layer board" and "I can't find a company to produce electronics assemblies full of phone-density chips on a 20 layer board with buried and plated vias".
FWIW, here in Europe we certainly have companies which have both the capabilities to manufacture PCBs (like MultiCB, which will produce a bare ten-layer board in six work days in the UK, with initial costs of about 600 Euros). I had a colleague organize the component placement of some six-layer board with a large-pitch BGA with some company in Germany, and that basically worked fine.
I've gotten the impression that the situation is somewhat better in Europe than in US when it comes to low volume orders. If you need eg. 100 - 10000 assembled PCBs made, there are many reputable (mostly Eastern European) companies that will happily deliver that with much higher reliability than Chinese suppliers and without a ridiculous markup. China is difficult if you don't have someone on the site making sure the suppliers actually provide what they promised and just won't suddenly replace components with more "convenient" ones (that have worse specs). Based on several electronics forums in the US it's something of a crapshoot whether you can find a supplier that wants to deliver such orders as many seem to want only high value clients. Maybe you get lucky, maybe you don't.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
1d ago
If there is an obligation to "maximise shareholder value"
As far as I'm aware, there are few countries where this is actually true. Yes, it's the default but if the charter of the company says otherwise, the obligation can be something else (as long as it's legal).
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
1d ago
Right. Which is exactly what I've been saying the whole time and why the earlier Jane Street comment was so confusing.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
1d ago
Ah, right. So Jane Street is one of the places where the electrical engineers are academically qualified, just as I meant to originally write.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
1d ago
And what does that sentence mean in English?
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
Australia is close to Vietnam / Taiwan / China, ie. where you can get shit made.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
And you’re saying the people who design their hardware are self taught and didn’t go to university at all?
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
That's just the Guardian being the Guardian.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
how much of this 1980s nostalgia is a top-down consensus campaign by writers who just don't want to deal with how cell phones negate 90% of the easy ways to create danger and tension in a narrative?
If it means the shows have 80s music I really couldn't give a damn :)
The key is that you knew to leave out the "chill" and "do nothing" parts.
I worked nearly full time throughout my studies, did decently in university (my professor gave me glowing praise over a decade after graduation when asked about me for one job) and still went to a whole bunch of parties and was active in student clubs. The trick was really to learn how to optimize and not waste effort on things that didn't matter beyond getting the required passing grade while saving the effort for those courses that actually mattered.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
Our circuit theory 2 course (basically passive AC circuits + laplace transform + transmission line theory) had a fail rate of around 40% ever year even though the professor was voted several times as the best teacher in the department. That topic was just legit difficult.
Then on the other side there was electronics 2 with massive and completely useless emphasis on mosfet calculations. Luckily I managed to pass that one by cheating and filling my TI-85 with all the required formulae.
I only understood perhaps a quarter of the math they taught us but the trick was to learn just enough that you could reliably pass the course (requiring typically > 50% of points in the exam) except when it came to actually useful things (iow the first semester course with all the basics required for everything else in EE).
The best thing about university was that attendance was almost never mandatory (and still isn't) with the exceptions being almost entirely the occasional lab courses.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
Do note the "and" I put there. Now realize that matrix math is just the beginning and imagine having had to teach yourself all the rest, too.
I take no responsibility for any existential despair that may follow.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
?
You'll have to explain that a bit more.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
Apart from two thirds of the math courses and less than a dozen other courses I didn't find it that bad. Certainly not trivial but really nothing ridiculously difficult or laborous. I suspect a big part of this is Finnish university (and AFAIK European universities in general) not leaning nearly as heavily into making students do mandatory coursework just for the sake of doing work and absolutely nobody giving a shit about your grades as long as they weren't completely shit tier. I spent my summers working full time and the semesters working maybe 3-4 days a week on average (in practise working full time except taking a couple of days off before major exams).
Still, there's no fucking way I would have ended self studying all that or ever working in signal processing if I hadn't studied the topics formally in university.
Am I the only person who actually worked/learned something useful in college?
No. The Motte just has a contingent of college haters who forget non-software related engineering degrees exist. I've yet to see a (edit: typo) self taught competent electrical engineer who didn't either get a college degree or be a rare prodigy. Good luck teaching yourself matrix math, complex variables, calculus, circuit theory and laplace analysis on the job.
So what?
The EU makes no laws about that. The EU has no police force or court. The EU can’t jail anyone. What matters is what the member states do and UK (which isn’t even a member) and Germany are simply not representative about the rest of the EU countries when it comes to free speech.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
2d ago
I suppose it makes some sort of perverted sense if you think everyone except America, Russia and China are just NPC pawn pieces that cannot have their own motivations or act independently.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
3d ago
No. UK is at one extreme end (particularly when it comes to libel) as is Germany in a different way.
People on The Motte like to claim that you'll go to jail or get taken in by the police for hate speech which is very much not the case in Scandinavia unless it involves persistent stalking of specific individuals or outright threats.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
3d ago
We need another reminder whenever free speech comes up that UK and Germany are very much not the norm for Europe.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
3d ago
Its just tired pro-Z bullshit that insists the west is the big bad conspirator funding colour revolutions and that actually everyone would be happy to live under any autocrats thumb so long as the west is opposed.
I'm surprised by how popular this view is here on The Motte, either as-is or as a lite version where it's not directly stated but heavily implied. I could understand Russians saying that but seeing people who are clearly Americans based on their other comments embrace it is just so weird.
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
3d ago
Germany != EU
For a significant portion of Northern and Eastern EU Russia is an existential threat. That a bunch of German youth are mindkilled by pacifist propaganda does not mean that the EU (which has 26 other countries in addition to Germany) is not willing to go to actual war in such situation.
Begone, foul beast of Chaos!
This calls for Ordo Malleus. We may need a full exterminatus here.
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