EP#435: Prioritize to learn to Prioritize - Engineering Career Paths - Circuit Break - A MacroFab Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Parker Dillmann (00:10):
Welcome to circuit break from MacroFab, a
weekly podcast about all thingsengineering, DIY projects,
manufacturing, industry news,and career reflections. We're
your hosts, electricalengineers, Parker Dillmann. And
Stephen Kraig. This episode is435, and we have 2 special
guests this week. We have ChrisGammell and James Lewis.

Chris Gammell (00:33):
Am I supposed to say

yo there? Say whatever you want.

James, you're you're supposed to say yo. Yo.
Yep. Always drool. Always.

So we're gonna be cross posting this to the amp
hour podcast, which Chris Gammelis part of. So we're gonna kinda
just do Part of.

All of. All of? Come on. I have the heart and
soul, Parker.

We're gonna do, introductions for everyone
including ourselves. Steven, doyou wanna go first?

Stephen Kraig (01:03):
Sure. I am Steven Craig. I am cohost of the
Circuit Break podcast and acomponent engineer in the
aerospace industry. Mybackground includes oil and gas
sensor design, contractmanufacturing, audio electronic
repair, and synthesizer design.

I am Parker Dohman, cofounder and lead
electrical designer here atMacroFab, a company changing the
PCB manufacturing process withtransparent pricing and
efficient production solutions.I have a background in embedded
system design and digital signalprocessing, and I've been in the
manufacturing industry for over10 years now. And y'all y'all

(01:40):
fight on which one goes next.

James, you go you go you go ahead.

James Lewis (01:44):
Yo. My name is James Lewis, and I'm a freelance
content creator for BaldEngineer Media. You might know
me from my YouTube channel, adohms, or as a video host on
element 14 presents, or maybefrom some of the product and
project write ups I do over onhackster.i0 news.

Great. Your turn, Chris. Okay. Thanks, James. Yo.
Thanks, yo. I am the host of theamp hour podcast, 14 years
running, and I'm developerrelations lead at Goliath. We're
an IoT SaaS startup that,connects stuff to the Internet.
And I get to build hardware thathas things like Bluetooth and
cellular and WiFi and Ethernetand everything else. And I use a

(02:19):
lot of Zephyr real timeoperating system, which I I love
and I love talking about.
Thanks for having us, guys.

Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Yo. Sorry.

So we're gonna have a episode this is kinda
gonna be unusual because becausewhen we talk about engineering
career paths, which is somethingwe we and actually just
engineers in general just don'treally like to talk about. We
have 4 engineers that alsoprobably don't like to talk
about that kind of stuff, butwe're gonna do it anyways.

Who is the target audience for this then, Parker?
Is it like yeah. The young ones?Is it young pups than who we're
trying to talk to? Or are theymore like the advanced engineers
that are looking to beretrospective about their
careers?

You know, I should know what our target
audience is with this podcast.It's whoever downloads this this

silly thing.

Whoever's fastest on the donate button, click now.

The So I think

I think if we you know, I think it'd be easy to
say for college new new collegehires or people going to school
or maybe people that are midwaythrough their careers. But I
think if we kinda step back, youcan almost say, at some point,
everybody has thought, at least,where am I at my career, and am
I going in a in a gooddirection? Mhmm. And, you know,

(03:35):
while I I don't like to ever saythis can target everybody, I
think there's a way that ouraudience could target everybody.

Yeah. I mean, probably not like someone who
doesn't care about electronics.They're probably still in the
electronics sphere. So they'rethey're, like, coming here for,
like, generic career advice.They're probably gonna be
underwhelmed, you know.

But but

I I I don't think they'll be coming back if that's
the case. Yeah.

That's right. Yes.

But but but okay. The 4 of us all kind of landed
in engineering entertainment.Obviously, we're all here.
Right?

Are you not entertained?

Would you would you say that any of the 4 of us
have had a generic career or astandard career. I I would argue
absolutely not.

I I don't know if that exists any what is the
standard? I yeah. I don't know.Like Well, I think

the standard

is your your your picture of the standard
engineer.

I I guess I I guess it goes back to, you know,
being younger and talking to myfather about the the workplace,
and it was go to school, getyour degree, get a a job right
out of school, and do yourdamnedest to stay there for 30
something years. Save all yourmoney that you can you can and
then retire. Right? And that's Iguess, that's more of the air

(04:45):
quotes generic.

Is that the best standard for an engineer
then?

I don't know. I've never I I I have yet

to make an engineer who this standard
peanut butter sandwich. Right?

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Actually, that's
funny to think about becausethat's I mean, my dad didn't
have what would we call a cons aa standard because he wasn't a
chemical engineer, but then hemoved over to business.
And so he kinda transitioned outof a standard engineering role.

Wait. Do you all have parental figures that were
engineers?

My dad was an engineer. Yeah?

My father was a geophysicist.

Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. I my my parental figures were not, but
there were members of my familythat were engineers.

Wow. That's great. Sales. I come from the
sales sales family. My dad andmy my grandfather were salesmen.
And I knew what I didn't wannado with sales because my dad was
traveling 3 to 4 days a week formy entire childhood. Great dad.
Don't don't get me wrong.Wonderful. Wonderful dad.
He just traveled a lot. So Iknow I didn't wanna do that.

Yeah. So that that actually leans right into
the first first question we gothere is, how did we pick
engineering to study? Why? Kindalike some background there.

I think the easy answer was you didn't have to
spell very good. And so thatworked out well for me.

Fully, honestly, you don't have to write as many
papers. And that was amotivating factor. One of the
motivating factors.

Really? Interesting. Yeah.

No. Honestly, it was I I got into electronics in
in high school, and and it wasone of those things where I
enjoyed it enough where I waslike, what can you do with this?
And then realize that there'sentire fields that are devoted
to it. So I was like, I will dothat.

Yeah. I actually have a really similar I started
in high school. I took a class,I think it was my sophomore
year. The title of the classwas, communication technology.
And what's interesting about itis it covered all different
types of ways that humanitycommunicates.
We had a little bit ofphotography. We did some screen
printing on t shirt t shirts toto, talk about advertising. And

(06:47):
then we had these little heatkits that, we had set up, LEDs
to basically show that you couldcommunicate by making, lights
flash. And then there wassupposed to be an electronics
component to that, but nobodyelse in the class cared at all
about the electronics, but Idid. And so that was as soon as
I started playing with thatthing, I knew what I wanted to
do.

No. I was always building stuff as a kid,
helping my dad, like, fix carsand and all that stuff. And my
dad was an engineer, and I waslike, you know what? If if being
an engineer lets me keep doingthat kind of stuff, then that's
what I was gonna be. And I was aI actually went to school
originally to be a petroleumengineer, and then I actually I

(07:29):
I started meeting people likeSteven's dad was geo
geophysicist in, like,sedimentary rock classes.
And I was like, I I I'm not thatexcited for rocks. I can't do
this. And I was I was at thetime, I I had just made my first
printed circuit board as a sideproject. I'm like, you know,

(07:51):
what about electricalengineering? And then I was the
only person that transferredinto the EE college that
semester.

I was too.

So Have

you guys known each other that long?

No. No. No. We met in 2015 when I Yeah. Knocked
on Macra Fab's door, and I waslike, I want a job.
But you

can't you can't even get boards made.

Parker said Parker said Stevens You said
like Stevens. I think I thoughtyou meant you were actually
learning from Stevens' dad.

No. No. No. No.

No. No. Yeah.

Like Stevens' dad. That geophys that class was
eye opening. That's way better.It was eye opening on, like that
was the first time I was everwith other people that were so
excited about something I didn'tcare about. Which okay.

By the way, my my father still has rock
collections that he brings outevery once in a while just to
look at. And every time he hasvisited up here in Colorado, I
will come home from work orwherever, and I will find random
rocks on my front porch that hejust went and found on a walk.
And he's, I'm just gonna I'mgonna bring him home with me.
Okay, dad? Cool.

They they followed me home. I swear.

That's awesome. Do you let him keep keep them?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. His luggage his luggage on the way home is,
probably pretty heavy.

And and and and he'll just be like, yeah. They
were cool. I wanted them. Okay,dad.

That's great. That's great. Yeah. You know,
for I always felt a bit, selfconscious, you know, like so on
the amp hour, we'd have peoplewho are like, yeah. I was like,
doing electronics, you know,since I you know, Dave, my co
host, of course, has, you know,been doing electronics since he
was like 8.
And I'm like, I I didn't knowwhat I wanted to do. I just
kinda I took a shot, honestly.Like, I knew I like physics. We

(09:33):
did some physics in high schooland then I don't and then I like
had some old walkie talkies Itook apart and that was
basically like the guess that Itook and it it honestly, it
didn't work out that well incollege. I was much more
interested in a beer and, youknow, talking talking to ladies.
And and and it was until, like,much later in my career that I
actually, like, kinda came backinto it and started focusing and

(09:55):
and enjoying it. Yeah. I don'tknow. I just feel like if
someone is listening who's acollege student, you're probably
not listening if you're notinterested in electronics.
Right?
But if you were listening andyou're an electronics student
and you're like, oh, I don'tknow. Sometimes it just doesn't
hit at the beginning, you know.I don't know. I could it didn't
hit for me. I got through it, ofcourse.
I let I, you know, I I was okayat it, but I didn't really get
into it much later until muchlater.

It it's interesting hearing you say that
because it earlier on in mycareer, I kinda got, like, FOMO
because I was kinda jealous atpeople who were into electronics
sooner than I was. Does thatmake sense?

Totally. Yeah. Same.

But but why okay. I'm curious why why you would
feel that way. What what was itthat you feel like you were
missing out on?

The experience and just up with that kind of
stuff. It's the same thing withoh, not not in just engineering,
but, oh, I I had it on when whenChris was talking. I I can't
remember what that point wasanymore.

I'll start talking again. I mean, for me,
it's yeah. I look at kids now,and I'm like, you know, so I
watch, you know, Mark Rober'svideos, and I see, like, the the
kits that he puts out. Oh, the,you know, the KiwiCo and all the
kits that are out there. Thesponsors this episode is not
sponsored by any of them.
But, you know, just like theresources that are there, I'm
like, oh, my god. I wish itwould I don't know if that
actually would've hit with me.Like, when I was a kid, I was
interested in sports and likeother, you know, and like other

(11:12):
traditional, you know, like,Thundercats and, you know, the
good stuff in life, guys. PowerRangers. And yeah.
So I don't know if it would hitnow, but I look at it and I'm
like, yeah. I wish I I think inI think what Parker's saying is
in is the thing that inspired mewas, like, I just wish I would
have kind of this thing I knowthat I actually like now, I wish
I would have liked it thenbecause Exactly. More time would

(11:34):
have been better. You know?

Yeah. I I feel the same way with all the
automotive stuff that I do toobecause I didn't get Yeah. You
know, I've always worked on mydad's cars and stuff, but I
didn't really get into workingas a hobby, I guess, until after
college. And I see, you know,people these days that are,
like, 16, 17 doing that kind ofstuff. And I'm, like, it feels
like I have to go and catch up.

(11:58):
Is that and also a good goodexplanation to you? It feels I'm
like Yeah. I have to go harderat my hobbies just to feel like
I am trying to catch up withthese people. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

I know

that's not the right mentality, but that's what
it feels like. I said that wasthat was earlier on. I've I've
Yeah. Yeah. I've come to reckonwith age effects hits everyone.
Was the the the best time tostart was yesterday, but the
second best time is now.

So So, Parker, now I'm now I'm starting to be able
to relate to what you and Chriswere saying, but for me, it
wasn't during school when Istarted studying electronics. It
was immediately after I got outof school, and I was surrounded
by people that had 20 years ofexperience. And, I felt like, on
day 1 of my job out of school, Iwas like, holy cow, I have got

(12:46):
to get caught up with everythingelse that's going on. And and I
think what you're describing isthat is that they would
everybody I worked with wouldtalk about how things over the
last 5 10 years had hadculminated into a certain
product or decision somebodymade. And I just felt so out of
place because I didn't have anyof that context.

(13:06):
But for me, that didn't happenuntil I got out of school.

You know, I've I've had actually something it's
funny. It's it's similar tothat, but in the opposite
direction. We at work, we justhad an intern start the other
day. And hearing this this I'mgonna say kid talk who, about
intelligently about electronicstuff, sure, I can keep up with
his conversation because I'vegot 14, 15 years on him. But I

(13:35):
look at this kid, I'm like, youare so far ahead of where I was
when I was your age.
I am almost having FOMO of you.I

yeah. I think that is actually the same thing.
I think that is the same thingof, you know, seeing the Utes
the Utes and how far aheadadvanced there. But, you know,
yeah. It's it's great.
It's good for them, I think. No.I

think yeah. It's really good.

That might also just be a personality trait of
what was it called? It's notFOMO. It's the imposter
syndrome. It's kinda it'srelated to that.

Are you saying the intern's an imposter?

No. No. No. You you yourself

part part

of You

are the imposter.

Part of these feelings are kinda like imposter
syndrome, meaning that you'renot good enough to be doing the
the jaw. I'll I'll post itanyway. Anyone listen everyone
gets that.

Yeah. I hope because I do.

I Yes. Totally.

If I ever get to a point where I don't suffer from
it, I'll let somebody know.

Yeah. Yeah.

I I think that's actually one of the, reasons why
we even go into engineering. Ido think our mind is is wired in
that way where not knowingsomething or not feeling
comfortable with something ornot being capable can drive us
insane. Right? And and so, thatrelentless pursuit of knowledge
or capability is part of beingan engineer or at least some

(14:52):
portion of it? Yeah.
Actually, you

know what, Steven? Now, if I think if I think about
it, you know, we all kind ofsaid we had this moment where we
had this fear that we've missedout on something, and none of us
said we were afraid to getcaught up. It was the feeling
that we had to get caught up.Whether that was true or not,
that's debatable. Probably not.
But isn't it interesting that weall saw that as a challenge and

(15:17):
took it on instead of said, oh,clearly, this isn't for me
because I'm not as experiencedas everybody around me or or as
into this stuff as everybodyaround me.

Do do you guys ever go into work and and just
look around and be like, oh, myGod. Everyone is smarter than
me. Like, everyone is 50 timessmarter me. Is that just me?
It's just me.
You know

what's funny? And and I'm I'm really not trying to
be conceited when I say this,but I've had jobs where, I was
clearly the the dumbest personin the room, and those are
always my favorite. And I've hada couple of jobs where I felt
like I was the smartest personin the room, and I really
disliked those jobs. They justdid not they weren't as fun.
Right?
I liked being surrounded bypeople that every every time

(15:58):
they talked, I learnedsomething. Or I had to pretend
like I was learning somethingbecause I I just couldn't
understand what they weretalking about.

I guess, let's let's move on and talk about
what our first jobs out ofschool was. Actually, Chris,
would you mind starting us offwith that?

Oh, really? Okay. I might be a little non
standard. I I I thought that Iwas gonna be touring with my
terrible terrible band at theend of college, and I did not.
And, you know, no no offense tothe old the old pals.
We're still very good friends,but we were not we were not
good. And it would have gonevery poorly. But one of them
ended up getting into a doctoralprogram at John Hopkins. And so

(16:37):
it was like, alright, you shouldprobably go do that. Anyways, I
was not paying attention thatwell.
And then I got a interview atSamsung. And Samsung was
building a brand new chip fab inAustin, Texas. And they had seen
on my resume that I worked ondry etch machines on the design
of dry etch machines. And, thenthey're like, you could be a dry
etch engineer. I'm like, okay.

(16:59):
And then they, you know, broughtyou down to Texas and showed you
all around and took out all thefancy bars and restaurants, and
that was in 06, and they'vegotten a lot fancier. And yeah.
So I started working at a chipfab without any knowledge. And,
yeah, that was that was a a wildride. You know?
Bunny bunny suits all day, allnight. Oh, man.

That that that's interesting. I didn't realize
that about you, Chris, becauseone of my one of the jobs I
interviewed for out of schoolwas at Austin semi Austin
Samsung Semiconductor.

Yeah. Samsung Austin Semiconductor because
what you just spelled would beass. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But SAS is a very common yes. SoSamsung Austin semi yes. Yeah.
That's interesting. Yeah.
It you know, it's really so,like, silicon processing, super
cool. Such a cool experience. Ilove my coworkers. I got to work
with a bunch of people in Korea.I got to visit Korea for 7

(17:48):
months 7 weeks each other.
Super great experience.Terrible, terrible, terrible
working conditions. Like on theEmpire, we talked about, like,
some of the stuff t m c TSMC isrunning into right now with
moving to Arizona and, like, allthe they're trying to open a new
chip fab and just like theculture clash of, you know,
Taiwan people that work, like,996 and, like, Arizona engineers
were, like, no. And and I feltthat, like, in my bones. You

(18:10):
know.
It's it's real. Cool experience.Do not do not recommend.

Yeah. My my oh,

real quick. How long were you there for,

Chris? I was there about about 2 years, a
little bit less than 2 years.And I was one of the ones that
stayed the longest, except forthe lifers. The lifers, I would
say by of the starting class,probably 20% are lifers. And
then probably, they had a prettysignificant, like, probably 40%
were gone within a year.
Rough.

Yeah. I I I worked for an oil and gas
company, a pipeline company inOklahoma after college, because
it was, like, basically, it was,like, the first people who
would, like, respond to myresume. So and I was a
instrumentation electronicstechnician out in the field up

(19:00):
in, Elk City, Oklahoma, which isin, like, the middle of nowhere
near, like, the Texas Panhandle.And and that was yeah. That was
going out to the field stuff wasactually not bad.
I actually liked it a lot. Itwas having to deal with because
I was like the only it was likeit was like the company culture,
I guess. I didn't really like itwas if it was like, oh, if you

(19:22):
put your your hard knocks in,we'll get you a desk job at the
Tulsa building, and you can be areal engineer was, like, the
term they used. And I was like,nah. And so I was there for 5
months, and then I moved backdown to Houston.
So, but I did learn a lot aboutjust field work. I actually
field work was, like, myfavorite thing. But having to

(19:46):
drive 6 hours to go to acompressor station just to flip
a switch and then drive 6 hoursback, that was a lot of fun that
day.

Sun, you need IoT.

Yeah. No. That was the problem is the IoT part
of it went down.

I know. I know. Yeah. You always need the backup
finger that resets the originalIoT. That's what you need.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. It was an
interesting job.
It was where you you werewearing bunny suits. I was
wearing f r 2 fire resistanceevery day. So hard hats.

Yeah. Yeah. Mine was much more air conditioned, I
think.

No. It was hot, but it was it wasn't too bad.

Company vehicle. So so, James, you said you you
interviewed at SAS. So wherewould you end up?

Yeah. So I I ended up as a application engineer for
Agilent based in Austin, whichthe interesting thing was the
year before, I was interning atDell in the server group, and
absolutely hated what I wasdoing. Yeah. Round Rock.

Just Round Rock.

Like Fluker Rock. Yeah. And I really wasn't happy
with what I was doing in termsof my team because everybody on
my team had stock options thatwere all worth 6 or 7 digits. So
they didn't really work veryhard. Uh-huh.
So I started as I was talking tovendors in the lab, I was kinda,
like, asking people what otherkind of engineering jobs are

(21:08):
there. And one of the people Iwas talking to was from, at the
time, HP, and he was theapplication engineer for, their
logic analyzers. And he told meall about his job and why it was
cool and why I should thinkabout something like that. And I
was like, that's really cool. II'd love to get a job like that.
Well, it turns out he had justgotten promoted and moved, away
from Austin. So the followingyear, they hired me for his job.

(21:29):
So I literally got the job. Isaid, I wish I could get a job
like that.

Wow. And and everybody else, I'm sure, will
have the exact same experience.

Yeah. Precisely.

That is that is pretty awesome though.

Yeah. Yeah. The the one thing I wanted to say about
that, though, is that was I feellike I got really lucky that I
talked to somebody other than awe were talking about
traditional engineers earlier.You know, I had no idea about
something like applicationengineering or, in this case, a
field application engineer doingeither pre or post sales support
of a of a product. Now, in thecase of test equipment, I think

(22:04):
it's pretty obvious the kinds ofstuff you can do to to support
equipment.
But then later on, I found youcould be an application engineer
for components or system levelstuff for all kinds of things.
And I think that sometimes getsoverlooked as a engineering path
simply because it's I think alot of people think of it as
just sales. And while there'sdefinitely a sales component to

(22:25):
it, you know, I I sort of,especially for the first part of
my career, really stuck to thetechnical side of it. You know,
for a long time, I I I couldn'teven tell people what a total
system would cost. I I had noidea.
I was not interested in any ofthat. But it was just
interesting to me that my firstjob out of school was I thought
I was going to sit behind a deskand play an Allegro or OrCAD all

(22:46):
day, and instead, I drove arounda car and talked to a different
a different company almost everyday. That's really cool.

Right out of school, I it was 2,009. And at
that point, I was just lookingfor anything I could get and
hopped over to a company in inHouston that did oil and gas
sensors, mainly vibrationsensors for gas turbines and
things of that sort. And I wasoriginally hired on as a
hardware design engineer, but,frankly, didn't end up doing a

(23:19):
lot of hardware design there,not because they didn't trust
me, but just because theirdesign cycles were so long and
they had tons of legacyequipment that they just didn't
weren't really designing a wholelot of stuff. So I I really got
a ton of time withmanufacturing. I was I was very
rarely at my desk.
I was almost always on the floordoing something with, you know,

(23:42):
fixing whatever manufacturingprocess was messed up or or in
in improving the processes. Andso it was it was really I feel
like that was a really fantasticexperience, because, first of
all, I knew nothing about any ofthe electronics going into it. I
knew nothing about what theywere doing. I was just, like,
great. These people wanna giveme a job.
And by the end of it, I had aton of experience with we have a

(24:05):
a thing in our mind, and wewanna actually get it built and
we wanna make an assembly lineand we wanna make a 100 of them
a day. How do we actually do it?That was it was it was
fantastic. But by the end of 4years, I was kind of it just it
just wasn't right for me. Endedup getting fairly sick of it,
and I just decided to go off anddo something else.

So so I was I was actually, I was going to ask
you, what what did you not likeabout it? Or at the end of that
4 years, why did you why did youdecide to to move on? Okay. So
earlier when we

were talking about why did you get into
school, I I started doing audioelectronics back in in high
school, and that was really thewhole reason why I even got into
electronic or went to get mydouble e degree. And it was
always my intent to make my wayinto that industry. And I was
working in oil and gas, whichwas fine, but it was just
generally boring. And gettinginto audio electronics is

(25:03):
incredibly difficult becauseit's just super competitive and
there's not a lot ofopportunities out there. So I
said, you know what?
I I'll just do it. I'll justmake it happen. So I left I left
that company in the 1st placeand started my own business
doing audio electronics. Just Ifigured it was so hard to find a
job doing it. I'll just justbuild a job doing it and ended

(25:24):
up doing that for a handful ofyears, which was really a lot of
fun.

Yeah. So we all had we're not doing our original
jobs anymore.

No. This is a good

segue into changing jobs. A good good and
bad reasons to change jobs.Like, for me, the I and E jobs,
like, I wanted to do actualengineering work. I didn't wanna
be a technician out in thefield, and I wasn't gonna wait 2
years to do that. And I found II found a job post for a funny
effort, like, on the I wish thatit still existed.

(25:55):
Adafruit had a job board around,like, 2011, 2012 era. And, yeah,
I used that and found a job. Iwas able to move back down to
Houston. But that that wasmostly I wasn't doing what I
wanted to do. I went to schoolfor embedded system design, and
I was drawing wiring diagramsand pulling cables.

But think about how strong your forearms were
getting. You know?

But but but wait. You work on car wires wiring
systems all the time, which isjust drawing wires. I can't even
see how it's coming.

I can choose if I wanna do that or not and not
have to worry about food.

So I think I think there is twice in my career that
I I moved for at the time, areason I thought made a lot of
sense, but, in retrospect, Irealized it was really silly and
it was money. There were therewere 2 jobs I took, 100% because
I could get paid more money, andI overlooked so many red flags
that I in one job, I I was evenwarned before I went in that I

(26:51):
was told I was gonna look aroundand realize that the caliber of
people I was surrounded bywasn't the same as I was used
to, and I realized that, like,on day 2. And it was only within
a few months I started lookingfor something else because I
knew that I had made a mistake.And one of I what I found is,
yes, there are certain timeswhen changing jobs because of
money makes sense, but if thatis your only and primary

(27:12):
motivator, I would reallyquestion if whatever you're
about to take really makessense. It can't be the only
reason you change jobs.

Yeah. That's a that's a interesting point
because I've certainlyexperienced this and I've been
been told this for sure. But ifyou're looking to get a
significant pay bump, most ofthe time, that changing jobs is
a good way of doing that. But II agree if that's your your
primary motivator, you can veryeasily step in in something you

(27:43):
don't want to.

Yeah. I wish you know, one of the things on on
our list of things to talk aboutis things we wish we would have
known, and I got completelylucky when I made my first job
move. It was because I I had abad working life balance and
just everything was everythingwas rough about it. And I wasn't
working on electronics. Right?
It was I was a chemicalengineer, a process engineer,
which is interesting, but notwhat I wanted to do. And and my

(28:07):
buddy who worked at Keithleytold me about an opening and
helped helped me figure out whatI should be studying in order to
kinda get through get throughthe process and stuff like that
which is really helpful. And Itook it because it was just the
only thing that was, like,grasping for like, literally oh,
how about this? I am the onlyperson who has ever moved from
Austin, Texas back to Cleveland,Ohio in February. That is the
only that is the only I'm theonly person who's ever done that

(28:29):
ever in history.
So that's how desperate I was.But the thing that was wonderful
about it and the thing that I ifI would've if I could point to
one thing that made mesuccessful because of it, it was
because I was going to work with30 20, 25 analog engineers,
like, working on analogelectronics. It was like, oh my
god. If I could point to that ifI could do that again, if I and
every time I get give advice,it's just do that as much as

(28:50):
possible at the beginning ofyour career. Right?
Just find as many smart peopleas you can to work around. And
and if you do that, the moneywill come at some point. It
might not be right at thatpoint. But, man, if you could
just load up on it was like itwas going back to school.
Basically, that was my graduatedegree.
That's the closest I've evercome to a graduate degree is
working at Keithley and, yeah.Working with those those those

(29:13):
nice those nice midwesternsmarty pants that I used to work
with.

So I I wanna I wanna dovetail that because I
know we're not quite to thepoint where we're talking about
things I wish I would've known,but relate it to surround
yourself by smart engineers,especially analog. I remember I
was talking to not an officialmentor of mine, but somebody I
kinda, like, said, okay. I'mgonna use him as a mentor. I

(29:37):
said, yo, so and so is a reallybrilliant engineer, but he is so
impossible to talk to becausehe's just so rude and gruff and
whatever. And my mentor, my mypseudo mentor told me, learn to
look past that and just learnfrom him.
And, you know, I'm not sayingput up with people that are
terrible people. Just, I thinkone thing is to sometimes you

(29:57):
have to look past a person'spersonality and listen to the
things that you can actuallylearn from them. And that's
that's something that I didn'tdo enough of, but I wish I had
done more of throughout mycareer. Because I let too many
times their personality wouldstop me from wanting to learn
from them, and that that wasvery silly because there's lots
of those people that you canlearn good engineering stuff
from. And in some ways, you canalso learn people skills from

(30:18):
them because you just sort of

not do whatever they do to. Yeah, exactly.

Okay. You know what's funny about that? I
actually turned down a jobbecause of an individual like
that. I I I once had aninterview for a job that I
thought was gonna be super cool.I I interviewed, I think, 3
times over the phone across amonth and then they flew me out
there and my my in personinterview started at 9 in the

(30:44):
morning and I didn't get back tomy hotel until 9 at night.
I interviewed with 10 differentengineers. I interviewed with
multiple different departmentsand the CEO of the company. And
everything about that jobsounded so cool, except there
was one guy there that was justa complete ass. And and he was
just he was just not great tointerview with. And and,

(31:07):
frankly, I just got a really badfeeling about the whole job
because of that one individual,and I turned him down.
I mean, I I took a flight backand and when I landed, they they
called me and offered me thejob. I'm, like, I'm I'm sorry. I
can't do this. And, you know,you just gotta watch out for
those kinds of things. And maybethat was a bad decision on on my
behalf.
I don't feel like it was,though.

Yeah. I think there's a real thin line there,
you know. And I think I think inthose situations, you really do
have to listen to your gut.People can have kind of a gruff
exterior, but they're still goodpeople. They're just kind of,
you know, maybe a little bitrough.
But when there's somebody that,especially during the interview
process, that just just rubs youthe wrong way, usually, it's

(31:49):
probably better to to go withthat because Yeah.

Yeah.

There there's something there. And, you know,
it's that's one of those thingsthat, boy, if you get into a job
and it's not put up with thisperson, it's, oh, I don't know
that.

Or that was or that was the one person that let
the facade down.

That's another way to consider it too.

Yeah. This guy didn't tact wasn't in this guy's
book. Let's just call it thatway. I I remember the the the
person I was interviewing withwas in the room or who would
have been my manager and and hewould call in an engineer every
15, 20 minutes and I'd I'dinterview with both of them all
day long. And when this guyentered the room, he didn't come
and shake my hand or whatever.

(32:27):
He walks up to the whiteboard,grabs a marker, comes puts it in
my hand and goes, draw theinternals of an op amp. And and
so, like, he just wanted to seeit. And what was funny was,
like, I was it's it's maybe itwas serendipitous, but I I
studied that actually beforegoing for for this. So I was
able to answer all these guys'questions, but it's just, man,
didn't really like the way youhandled that. Why don't

we Our name and shame. Let's hear these people's
names. Let's call them out rightnow.

I actually don't even know what to do.

This is why we started doing media stuff, so we
can get back at people. You knowwhat I mean? Get back to
Exactly. 15 years later, you'regonna hear from me on a podcast
you never listen to. You knowwhat's funny?
Friends do either.

It's really funny about this this this that
a particular individual likethat. At my first job at the oil
and gas company, when I put inmy 2 weeks, they haven't they
asked me if my supervisor wasthe reason why. Because he was
that person that had the thatedge to him, I guess. And I

(33:27):
actually I didn't have that anyproblem with this person at all,
and I learned a lot from him.And I was like, no.
This don't know why. I haven'theard this in the interview
process. You'll be working forthis person who's kind of a, you
know, an ass. And I'm like, he'san Austin Samsung semiconductor
company. And I I didn't get thatat all.
Sure. Yeah. He was a littlerough on around the edges, but,

(33:47):
you know, got along with himjust fine, and that was the
reason why I switched.

I actually just had a conversation with my boss
the other day about this exactsame topic. And I was mentioning
to him, I was like, you knowwhat? This this team is really
cool. We don't have anyone who'sreally rubs anyone the wrong way
or has just a sandpaper attitudeabout things. And and he and my
boss just turns to me and goes,yeah.
I don't hire assholes. So whydon't we get to the question of

(34:17):
things I wish I knew back then?What are things you wish

you knew back in your first job? I wish I knew
what y'all knew, which was golearn with or go go get hired by
a place that has 20 engineersyou can learn from. Because
that's actually never been anexperience I've been able to
have. Like, the oil and gasplace, I was always I was the

(34:42):
only

Don't you work at a monster electronics company
now in Parker?

Yeah. But I'm, like, the lead electrical
engineer. I never I never workedunder someone.

Beginner's mind, man. Beginner's mind.

I never actually, I I do. When we when
we started actually building theengineering team here, it was
really weird because I was,like, the lead, but I was the
one who was, like, hiringexperienced testing engineers.

Parker in interviews is, alright. What are
you gonna teach me?

Yeah. What yeah. Interview me.

Yeah. Exactly. No. Don't interview me. Just
tell pour your knowledge into mybrain, please.
That is

Yeah. I like, when we I had built a test
engineering team. I'm like, Ihave no like, I know some stuff
about test engineering, but not,you know, 10 years of test
engineering. So having to figureout what makes a good test
engineer, what makes goodprocesses for all that, like, I
had to go learn that from peoplethat have been doing it, and I
had to hire them. So that wasreally weird.

(35:36):
So I wish I wish I had thatexperience of actually working
with senior engineers that I wasunder. That might contribute a
lot to that FOMO and and Would

you like to hire one of us as the senior senior
lead engineer at MacroFab, andthen we could tell you what to
do, Parker?

There we go. I need people to tell

me what to do. Maybe we could be co lead
engineers.

Co leads. Yeah. No, I I could I switch to
marketing recently and I'm like,Guys, you need to tell me what
to do. Like, I'm fish out ofwater in the marketing
department. Tell me what to do.

Something something analytics. Yeah. I
yeah. I I don't know. I wish Iwould have I think I wish I
would have gotten started coding

sooner?

I I I think this is something that they even my
coworkers wouldn't have told me.It's just like being more kind
of one of the downsides, maybethis is a good, counterpoint to
this is so I went to a placewith tons of really in like
super deep technical knowledgepeople. They were clueless
though about they, you know, I II love I love them. They're many
of them are still there andthey're they're designing great

(36:44):
products. But there are no otherplaces.
Like when you look at what otherso this is one thing that scared
me away from Samsung as well. IsI was looking around and there
were people that were there 15years senior to me. You know,
who were, you know, senior titlewhatever. But they were doing
the same thing I was. Just atand then they were telling me
what to do.
And and I was like, I don't wantthat. I don't like that that
kind of thing. And and so thenlooking at the same thing at a

(37:05):
Keithley, where do you go fromhere? There is no up. You know,
like, there is no there is noside.
You couldn't even you youweren't even you know, so you're
an analog engineer. You'reworking on this super high end 8
8 and a half digit DMM, supercool stuff. But, like, the next
thing is to design another oneof those. You know, it's not go
learn FPGAs because there's nomoney to go and do that sort of
thing. So for me, the thing thatI wish I would have known sooner

(37:28):
was just like get as muchknowledge as you can, learn as
much in this deep area and thenhop.
Hop to the next the next holdrabbit hole to dive down. And
that's something that, like,even now I struggle with it.
Right? I because I think thereal hard thing is that you're
putting yourself in a positionwhere, you know, as we get as I
get older and I get grumpier andI I don't know a lot of things,

(37:49):
I'm just, like, frustrated,like, all the time. And I'm
trying to reintroduce that to mylife a lot.
But it's tough. It's tough to dothat. So but pushing myself to
do that more, I wish I wouldhave known that sooner. You
know? Because you you expand andyou can do cooler things.

Yeah. I think related to that, I was going to
say, I wish I had known to havea plan, but it's okay to change
your plan. Right? And so when Ifirst started, I thought I
wanted to know everything aboutdesigning wide bandwidth RF
amplifiers, and very quickly, Ididn't like that at all. Right?
And but I was really afraid toever talk about that because I
thought, oh, then people aregonna think I'm flighty. But, I

(38:27):
think it's important it'simportant to know to have a plan
and that that plan can change.You know, I think I think
there's some people that arelike you, Chris, that, you know,
you wanna learn everything abouteverything, and then there are
some people that just wannalearn a lot about in one topic.
Right? I think I'll bet thereare some people who heard you
say you could only move in youcouldn't really move upward or

(38:48):
was, laterally or horizontally,or is that the same thing,
within a company, but there's, Ithink, some engineers that want
that.
They wanna keep doing the samekind of thing

for Yeah.

Yeah. 20 or 30 years. And that's okay, and I
think the important thing isthat's okay, and if that's your
plan, then fine. Make that yourplan. If you want to be able to
move around, then yeah, you needto really think about how you're
going to change do that.

Know thyself, you're saying. Yeah?

Oh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. The the less serious
thing I was gonna say is I wishI had learned how to use Git or
any kind of version control atsome point in my life before the
last, like, I I would only sayin the last 5 years have I
actually finally understood howto do something other than git
clone?

Git command line still scares me.

Oh, yeah. I mean, the water's fine.

I I use I I use a GUI all the time.

I use a GUI

all the time too.

Yeah. Unless I find something that says you have to
put this magic command inbecause as much as I love using
command line interfaces, getcommand line also scares me.

There you go. Make yourself uncomfortable.
You'll get there. You know, theother thing I was thinking
about, career wise is I wish Iwould have bought Bitcoin and
Apple at the bottom. It's just

Now you're just coming up with

Yeah.

Now you're just coming up with regrets. I mean,

come on. Why not, guys?

I think one of the things that I wish I
would've known back at thebeginning was how to say no. I I
said yes to absolutelyeverything. And I said that
because I really wanted to learneverything and just get involved
and be useful at everything. Andin a lot of ways, that made me
not useful at a lot of things.It could just just I said yes to

(40:34):
way more than I could handle,and everyone was willing to give
me what I said yes to.
And I ended up failing at a adecent amount of things just
because I couldn't handle it.And and and I I really wish I
learned that quicker to just belike, no. I can't handle this.
This is my workload. This is myknowledge base.
This is where I'm at right now.So

I I wish I could still learn how to do that.

Yeah.

Prioritization doesn't matter if you if your
list is so long thatprioritization doesn't even fix
it. Right? At at some point,you're just you're just always
working on the thing on the topof the heap, but the heap never
changes.

You're attacking every single person
that listens and is in thispodcast right now. Yeah. Because
that was that was one thing is,like, having to pit the pivot on
that one. I wish I learned thatjust buying the parts isn't the
biggest problem with theproject.

That's a good point. I'm gonna

shove all these parts further underneath my my
bench here.

In the opposite way too. You can't be afraid to
say no but you also need to beable to use that appropriately.
I I mean, there's there's nowords of wisdom here. Just just
learn. That's all I can say.

I think I think I I might be able to rephrase what
you're putting together is, youknow, you need to learn when to
say no Yeah. And it's probablymore often than you realize. I I
and I think that's one of thosethings that I wish I I had
gotten better at that early inmy career, but that's definitely
one that if I look at all thethings I could work on at any
point moving forward, learningto prioritize and say no is

(42:20):
probably always going to be onthe list. Or at least I hope it
is, because it means I wanna tryto learn how to do everything.

Prioritize to learn to prioritize.

This reminds me of something somebody said to me
when I was this was my 1st orsecond, year out of school, and
I'll never forget how weird thissounded. So, he called me, this
co worker called me up and said,

I'm so sorry it's taking me so

long to call you. I am planning to become more
proactive in the future.

I like that.

I just thought, why don't you just do it now? How do
you plan to become proactive?That that's like the opposite.

It's like there's this date where they're like, I
am proactive now.

Maybe they have a KPI where they can measure
their proactiveness.

Proact man, that would actually be how would you
measure that? Would would it belike getting things done without
putting them up, putting them onyour to do list?

No. You put them on your to do this and then
immediately cross it out becauseyou've already done it. See, I
started doing that on theweekends and that made my life
so much better.

You have a lot less to do now.

It makes your list look more impressive. This
is, like, one of those interviewquestions. Right? Which is so so
we talked about our our careersin the past and stuff like that
and present. So where do we seeyourselves in the next 5 years?
And then on on the flip side ofthat is, what was the answer to

(43:53):
that question 5 years ago?

5 years. I would say as for me, I'll repeat what
I I've told my boss when we he'sbrought up career before. He's,
you know, like, where do youwhere do you see your career
going and and whatever. And I'veI've said, you know, no matter
no matter what, if if things goreally poorly or things go
really well with the startup Iwork at, and I I I think it's

(44:17):
gonna be the latter, then I'mprobably gonna be a hardware
consultant again, you know. So Ithink probably designing
electronics for people formoney.
It's probably it's kind of mygoal and talking about
electronics with fellow nerds.

Well

Yeah. I think

Go ahead.

Go ahead, Parker.

No. No. No.

No. Go ahead.

Oh,

yeah. That's kind of where I'm at, I guess.
It kind of threw a littlecurveball when I had to move
over to marketing to help outthe marketing team here at
Macrofab because I was doingthat. I guess I I had finally
gotten into a position where Iwas like, okay. We got the
engineering team all dialed in.
We have a test engineering team,we have quality, etcetera

(44:57):
etcetera. And I'm like, cool.Now I can get back to like
building stuff that's helpinglike us build other things. And
then I was starting to drum thatup and they're like, hey,
Parker. You know what?
You should move over back overto marketing again because I was
like when Steven was at atMacroFab, I was in marketing,

(45:17):
and I was also, like, productproduct and stuff. Anyways, they
I so so I went back intomarketing. So that was kinda
like something I did not foreseesee happening again. Was moving
back to marketing full time.They start doing some projects
in marketing that allows me todesign stuff.
We'll see though. It's alwaysthe wish.

You can always make demo boards.

Yeah. I found is it's it's really hard to get
customers to allow you to takephotos of their stuff. Designing
stuff that I I own is easy totake photos of doing that. Make
our own content easier.

Yeah. So when I when I when I use this 5 year
sliding window, like, I didn'tthink about the 5 years ago and
then 5 years from now, you know,the one content, and every time
this question has ever beenposed to me, I, you know, I
always struggle with, I I Ican't tell you where I'm going
to be in 5 years. I can tell youwhere I think I'm going, and,

(46:16):
you know, to me, what's what'scontinuing to be interesting
about my my path forward is it's

it's always going to be electronics related, or at
least today, when

I look forward, something I'm going to be doing
is going to be electronicsrelated. Maybe I won't be a
content creator in 5 years, butI'll I'll be doing something
electronically related. In termsof career and making money,
there's not a lot of otherthings that really interest me.
Now, I've got plenty of otherhobbies that I'm interested in,
but I don't wanna make those ajob or a career. I think that's

(46:46):
at least the one con content,not content, one constant that I
can see in that sliding window.

You know, I I think if you had asked me this
exact same question a handful ofyears ago, I would have probably
a lot more specific of an answersaying, oh, in 5 years, I want
to be x y z engineer doing thisparticular type of work. And and
as I've gotten a little bitolder and throughout, a handful

(47:14):
of job changes, I'm not reallythat, unfamiliar or scared of
making drastic changes to what Ido for a paycheck. And so, I
think in 5 years, basically, allI can say is regardless of what
I I do, I just want to be atrusted resource and a capable
engineer at whatever that is. Sopeople can rely on me to execute

(47:39):
on what I need to do regardlessof it.

You know, you said something, Steven, right at the
start there. If you asked mewhen I was a year or 2 out of
school, what do I what do Ithink I'm gonna where where do I
think I'm gonna be in 5 years? Ihad a, I wanna be this title
doing this job in 5 years. Andit was probably after about 10
years that I stopped having thatas my my my end point or my

(48:05):
plan. It was I wanted to kindamy pan my plan became much more
broader than this specificposition, which is, like, why I
I think, like, today, I wouldhave a hard time saying this is
the job title I want 5 yearsfrom now.
I just don't see how I couldcould pick that.

I I think, honestly, for me, a good day of
work is I go in, I I I see thechallenge that's ahead of me for
that day or whatever is requiredof me and I execute faithfully,
and I feel confident of the workthat I did and I leave. That's
like a just a a definition of agood day for me. If if I can be

(48:43):
in a position in 5 years, Imean, it's not that I'm not
doing that right now. It's justI would like to also be doing
that in 5 years.

So I think the answer to all of all of us is 5
years from now, we would stilllike to be making money doing a
job.

I like that. Yeah. That's a good one. More

related to electronics.

Which may or may not be related to electronics.

I think it'll probably

That's a good career advice. Is

the definition of electronics is probably gonna

change for me.

I think, you know, you know, I

think about what's how

things are different now than when I
started, whatever. But, yeah,there be electricity involved,
right?

Yeah. I guess I guess it'd be maybe it's more
accurate to say engineeringinstead of electronics.

Mhmm.

I don't know. At least for me,

I could

see Yeah. Problem solving. Yeah. Yeah. What

I hear James saying is that Chat GPT is
coming for all our jobs. That'swhy I hear the fear in his
voice.

I'm not worried about I'm not actually worried
about Chat GPT taking my job.I'm worried about people
thinking they can replace mewith Chat GPT.

And then you have to fix all their crap. Yeah.

That's gonna be that's gonna

be a good

AI. AI fixers.

That's gonna be the job for many years. Yeah.
Yep.

Alright. I have some random other questions here
I wrote down right before thestart. So what is the most non
engineering job you ever had?And did that influence your
decision to go into engineeringor taking another job?

I wanna go first.

You go for it.

When I

was in high school, I worked at a

pizza place. The positive to that is we did
everything by hand and fromscratch, and it was awesome,
which is something I still tryto do as

a hobby today. But I'll never forget one of the
guys that had been he was adriver. He wasn't even working
in the kitchen. He'd beenworking there for, I don't know,
almost 10 years, and he came upto me and he said, hey, James. I
heard you're going to go tocollege instead of stay home and
and and, you know, just get ajob here.
I want you to rethink thatbecause they're talking about

(50:47):
making you the assistantmanager, and you could be making

Assistant to the regional manager.

Actually, it would have been because at the time, I
I would I was only 16 or 17, soI wasn't even 18 yet. So it
would be a year before I couldbecome the actual man be be a
manager. But he he finished theline with, so they're thinking
about making you the assistantmanager. You could make 6 or
even $7 an hour if you stay.Nice.

(51:14):
And I made sure after that, Inever had a job where I had to
consider that as an option.

I had in college, I worked for any of
furthest away from engineeringby work for the engineering
departments, but I was sortingmail, making sure the printers
had toner. And then so, youknow, we're, like, at the end of
the year, you always do.There's, like, a survey. You do
if, like, how much you hatedyour professor. So I had to go

(51:41):
and collect all those and thenpush them all to, like, the one
building on campus that would doall the sorting for that.
And what was interesting aboutthat was I got really good at
just talking the shop with otherpeople around the campus because
the other people had access tothe lifts in all the other
buildings because the campus Iwas on was really hilly and so

(52:04):
you got I got to the point whereI never had to actually push the
cart up a hill. I knew where tomaneuver it to what building I
can get to what level to, like,just go straight out, around.

So you you optimize your path?

It was long it was it took longer to push it,
but at least I didn't have topush it uphill in a 110 degree
weather or in snow. I didn'thave to push it uphill in snow
either. But that was the funnythat I worked for the
engineering department was thefarthest away from engineering
you could possibly be.

One summer, I worked at Walmart in the in the
garden department and this was asummer in Houston, Texas. And I
was the guy that lawn crewswould come up and they would
order a 100 bags of mulch orpallets of bricks and the entire
crew would get out of the carand just sit there with their
arms folded and watch me stackbricks in the back of their

(52:58):
truck or throw bags of mulch ina 100 110 degree weather. And,
you know, I was really skinnythen. It was that was that was
nice, but I couldn't I couldn'twait to get back to college
after doing

that. Well, I had very similar, you know, similar
kind of experience. So I'll talkabout a little bit different one
where I I I exited engineeringfor a while, where I went to go
work for supply frame and I wasdoing management, whatever. You
know, I looked I love supplyframe. I love the hackaday
folks, stuff like that.
But I was basically, like,learning how to do product
management for websites. Right?So it was like a it was right

(53:38):
turn for me. And I, you know, II knew marketing sort of the amp
hour and past stuff and blogsand whatever. But, yeah, that's
not for me.
And so I couldn't, you know, Ilike I said, I love working
there. I love, you know, thevariety of things, but that was
very non engine even though itwas the engineering adjacent, it
was like, I was not not handson. I was very grumpy a lot of

(54:01):
the times. Yeah. Wasn't doingelectronics in my spare time
because I was so exhausted fromthe the things.
I was working remote. Learned alot of things there but learned
that I really liked designingstuff and got my jollies from,
building stuff.

You know, it's interesting you saw that you
said that you stopped doingelectronics for fun as a hobby.
When I switched over tomarketing, that actually kinda,
like, reinvigorated my hobby forelectronics because I was doing
that kind of stuff at work, andI was just, like, kinda
exhausted of doing that at home.And then Yeah.

That's a good point. Yeah. I guess I did do I
did contextual electronicsaround then, though. So there
was that. Yeah.
I was already doing contextualelectronics as like the the
other thing. But then thattailed off too because of just
other things, you know. So Yeah.Alright. There's only so many
hours in the day and how much,like, brain space you can put
towards things.
Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. So I don't have an answer for
this question. But if you couldhave dinner with any famous
engineer, dead or alive, Ididn't know there was famous
engineers, but maybe we can makefamous engineers. Who would it
be and what question would youask them?
And then also, what are youeating?

Parker, who wrote that question? Was that chat
GPTU or is that you?

That's totally chat GPTU. That's not

me. I knew it.

I like this question a lot. I've got a quick
answer to that.

Yeah.

Okay. You don't like this

one, Chris? I don't like this one. I mean,
it's it's alright. I'll answerit. I'm here, you know, I'm here
to play, guys.
I'll answer it, but you goahead, Steven.

Okay. Yeah. I I I got a quick one. One thing
that's fascinated me, I don'tknow if you guys have ever
researched this, but back inWorld War 2, the US was cranking
out B 17 bombers. A new bomberevery 45 minutes or something
like that.
I would love to meet theengineer who planned the entire
manufacturing facility of Boeingto be able to do that without

(55:58):
computers whatsoever and be ableto manage supply frame or supply
frame supply chain and all ofthe processes to get that just
right? Holy yeah. That that guyshould be a famous engineer.
What are you eating? Jalapenojalapeno lime pistachios.

Did they have that in the forties?

No no other famous engineers?

James James has got one. He's got one, Bruno. I
could see. Yeah. I could see.

Yeah. I've got it. I've got one, but it's it's
somewhat timely. It it it'd haveto be Steve Wozniak. There's a
whole bunch of applications Ireally wanna ask him.
And in terms of dinner, we'dhave to go someplace to serve
steak because I wanna find outif he actually does use his
metal business card to cut speakwith it.

Go ahead, Parker. I'll go last because I I'm still
I'm still

Yeah. That's the thing is I saw that I
Chatchip PD splat out thisquestion. I'm like, I like it,
but I don't have an answer forit. Mhmm. You know, because I do
a lot of car stuff.
The engineers that were behindthe kinda like how the model the
model a was, like, the firstreal ish assembly line for

(57:09):
automotive. What that was liketrying to set that up? I don't
know if Ford is actually behindthat or not. I think he's
credited towards that, but itcould've just been his idea and
not he didn't implement it. Idon't know.
But that that's what I wouldlike to to talk to is, like, how
was or I would like to have onthe podcast is that person that

(57:32):
implemented that's that goingfrom hand fitting everything and
having the hand make everythingand one off batches to now we
are going to try to build anassembly line to just build
something that's interchangeableparts. I think that whole
interchangeable part thing wassomething that, like, fascinated

(57:53):
me when I was a kid. And we usein electronics, everything is an
interchangeable part.

That also fascinated me as a kid because I
couldn't see any other

way to do it. It just

seemed so obvious to me that why wouldn't
everything be built that way, sothe school learned that we used
to build everything by hand or,you know, one off was it just
didn't it just just didn'tresonate with me.

And I would be eating probably a burger. Burger
and fries. Steak fries, though.

Not a burger place that does it on an assembly
line?

No. By hand. No handmade burgers.

Yeah. Each each French fry has to would come
back together into the perfectpotato it came from. You know
what's interesting is is we'llsee what Chris says, but James
is the only person who'sactually put a name to who
they'd be eating dinner with.

I I do I do if if maybe if you use the question in
the future, if you change it togroup of engineers, maybe that
makes it a little lessintimidating because I like both
of your answers so far. ButChris is going to have the best
answer.

We we I'm really not. I don't know. I yeah. I've
been thinking through, you know,ones that I've, yeah, quasi
idolized, but they're alsoidiosyncratic too, you know,
like Bob Peace and Jim Williamsand all them. I don't I don't
think I wanna hang out withthese guys, you know.
I I think, like, like, they wereexperts. I would have loved to
learn from them, have a mealwith them, maybe, you know, I

(59:18):
think What

about lunch? What what if you could have lunch
with one of them? Would thatmake it different?

Yeah. If I could have lunch with a group for like
a couple months, that'd be cool.That's asking a lot, I suppose.
Guess I'd be working can I goright there? You know?
I don't know.

You know, that's actually, you know,
rephrasing to be what engineeryou would like to work with in
history Yeah. Would be better,

I think. Yeah.

We

can change the question just for you, Chris.

No. It's okay. I don't I don't really have a
good, you know. And then there'sall the Bell Labs folks too. You
know, like, if you read, like,the idea factory

Mhmm.

That's a great book. Excuse me. Yeah. I think,
you know, people in that, ClaudeShannon, sure. Let's go with
him.
And I'd be eating whatever's Iprobably wouldn't be eating
whatever's on the menu at theBell Labs cafeteria because it's
probably boiled. You know,cuisine back then was pretty
bad. Salad. Jell O. I've beeneating a lot of pudding lately

(01:00:13):
actually.
I've been rediscovering Jell Opudding. I this is here's a fact
you guys didn't need to knowabout me. I have kids, so I've
been eating jello pudding, andit's joyful. I do recommend
picking some up.

Stephen Kraig (01:00:24):
Does it bring back good memories?

Chris Gammell (01:00:27):
Brings back immediate memories. I mean, I'm
I'm having the time of my liferight now, guys. Pudding. I got
some pistachio puddingdownstairs.

Nice.

Ways to sound old. 101. Looking forward to one
of those cup of soup. Somepistachio pudding.

Parker Dillmann (01:00:44):
That's the most bizarre request you've ever had
to handle and how did you makeit work? That one I did right,
Chris.

James Lewis (01:00:53):
Champ. Champ.

Be quick on this one. I got I once got asked to
to to to design the distributionstation for a very large weed
growing plant, and this was notin Colorado. And I very quickly
was like, nah. I don't wanna bea part of this. This does not
sound like fun.

Would've gotten paid in cash probably.

Probably. Under under the table.

This isn't super bizarre, but I felt it was
awkward. I was asked to handdeliver a basically a probe. It
was like a $30,000 probe to acustomer. So I was living in
Austin. I had to drive it toHouston, drop it off at their
front desk, and then drive itback home.
For reasons, they did not wantus to send it by courier. It had

(01:01:39):
to be an employee, so I wasasked to make the 4 and a half
hour drive to literally drop offa box.

White glove service. Okay.

I've done that before, though, but with
customer products here inHouston, I I never had to drive
to Austin to do that that driveyet.

I I carried a box the other day through our office
that had many 100 of 1,000 ofdollars worth of parts in it,
and it was not a courier. It wasjust like UPS that just dropped
it off.

It's insured just the basic $100 amount.

With a lock? No. It was just a cardboard box.

It's like, cool. I guess. I'll I'll
actually gonna make it, like,awkward things is when people
ask me to work on theirprojects, and it's not that
interesting to me. That might belike everyone here, though.

Yeah, that that's a really good time to learn how to
say no.

Yeah. Because I I

have said yes to a lot of those and end up,
like, hating myself down theroad.

You know, that that's a good way to learn
because it's not that hard tosay no.

Right? Mhmm.

And I

always feel like I'm letting that person
down or and I I what I'velearned is I try to pivot to be
like because clearly they'reasking you for a reason, and
it's because they might thinkyou are better at doing it or
you have information. And so Itry to pivot to be more like a
consultant for that projectother than just saying flat out

(01:03:07):
no. That way I don't do the realwork. I get to do the fun work
of drinking a beer and talkingto them about it.

For me, I I had a internship or coop, really, when
I was, like, my first my firstjob in I still in college. And I
don't remember how it got out,but one of the product managers,
she was very boisterous and shelearned that I had I was, like,
taking Japanese classes. Andshe's and so one day, she's,
hey, Chris. Come over here. I'mlike, okay.

(01:03:34):
Yeah. What's up? I don'tremember her name at this point.
Peggy, maybe. I don't remember.
She said, hey. Come in here. Shepushes me into a room and she
says, these men are fromKawasaki. Speak some Japanese to
them. And I'm like, oh my gosh.
I did not do well, guys. I didnot do well.

Did did they land the deal though?

They did. They did.

Then you you successfully completed the task.

And they were probably entertaining. Of me.
They yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm surethey I'm sure they were giggling
much later about the the poorcollege kid from Ohio.
Yeah. Turns out when you bringJapanese businessmen to
Cleveland, Ohio, not a lot ofthings going on there for

(01:04:21):
Japanese language.

Go figure. That's so weird. I would have thought
that'd be, like, a epicenter.

Yeah. Right. Right. Actually, Columbus is,
though. 2 hours off.

We wanna wrap up the podcast, I guess?

Yeah.

They won't have anything else to add about their
careers or anything?

The best days are ahead of us, boys. You know, we
didn't talk about contentgeneration at all. I thought
that would have been part of it.I guess I didn't should have
added that to the list. But weall kind of pivoted to being on
screens, talking to otherpeople.
Yeah. I guess the question wouldbe, you know, would you
recommend this kind of stuff inaddition to you know, we're all

(01:05:01):
still hardware, hardwareadjacent, interested in
hardware, whatever. But is itworthwhile? Should people be
considering it as part of theircornucopia of skills that they
bring on? I'm going to juststraight up say yes.
I think social media issomething that's here to stay.
It's not new anymore. It'singrained in, I think, a lot of
people that might be graduatingfrom college right now. They

(01:05:22):
grew up with it, and I

think you need to learn how to present the work
that you do. Even if you don'tparticipate in social media,
there's, like, a culturalexpectation in the way that you
present the information youshare with others. Even in, I
think within an engineeringgroup, I think being able to
create to have an idea about howcontent gets created and is is
consumable by people is going tocontinue to be important.

Yeah. Even slideshows is content creation.
It might not be a 100% public,but it is to your peers. I I
never thought I'd still be doingthe podcast after 435 episodes,
but here we are and I enjoy it.This is probably my favorite
thing at macro fad to do sohopefully it keeps going.

(01:06:06):
Yeah. Chris has 660 I thought itwas 666 a couple of weeks ago.

671 this will be. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
I think I think look at whatpeople are doing now and assume
that, you know, the the 4 of usare talking over audio, and it's
probably not the medium that'sgonna be, you know, like, it's
been going a long time, but it'sprobably not just this and it's
probably not the highest growthrate sort of thing. So I think,

(01:06:34):
yeah, kinda like what Jamessaid, be able to talk about your
own work, be able to, you know,get yourself out there. Put
yourself in Hacker News. Findlike minded people. I think
finding community is probablythe most important thing there
even if it's not.
You don't have to be a contentcreator in the the TikTok sense
of the word or even the podcastsense of the word. But I think
finding people to get excitedabout a topic with and it

(01:06:56):
doesn't have to just beelectronics either. It could be
it could be a super niche area.It could be kind of higher
level. It could be, you know,generative circuit board design
or something like it.
Right? But just find your findyour crowd and then geek out,
you know.

Find find that form. I still have

some some people, yo.

Yeah. Find that form that's got that niche.
Yeah. Yeah. That was theMacroFab Engineering podcast.
No. It's I've done that how manytimes now, Steven?

It's it's still ingrained.

Yeah. It's burrowed into my brain. Thank
you for listening.

Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap. This is circuit break.
Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap,zap, zap, zap, zap. Yo. Editor,
keep that in.
Editor, keep that in.

Thank you for listening to circuit break from
Macrofab. We were your hosts,Parker Dohman. And Steve and
Craig. And thank you, JamesLewis and Chris Gammel for,
bestowing your knowledge on thispodcast. Thank you, guys.
My brand. Blessing.

All Episodes

EP#435: Prioritize to learn to Prioritize - Engineering Career Paths

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}EP#435: Prioritize to learn to Prioritize - Engineering Career Paths