Very good description JaMi. 

I think that broadness of experience weighs heavily on rightfully tacking
the title 'Engineer' on the back end of any Designer's professional
moniker...  Being non-degreed has always been an impediment to breaking
through the 'glass ceiling' placed to keep the separation between the hourly
and the salaried employees. Most of the PCB designers I have known have
never had a degree from any college... and I have known many EE's and ME's
that had a long history of being successful at project development and were
paid as much as their degreed peers even though they did not attend a 4 or 6
year college program and get a degree... in fact some commanded greater
respect for their years of experience and the fact that they worked their
way up from the bottom rather than chasing after the degree.

But the managers always take into account the level of education you have
achieved as a mark of your intelligence and ability to 'run the gauntlet' so
to speak. By passing the curriculum, you go through an initiation of sorts
that afterward makes you 'equal' in their eyes I think... or maybe I am
still suffering from some sort of juvenile jealousy that I have carried with
me all these years... it's hard to say. 

I can see now since I am almost 50 that it would have helped me early in my
career to a degree to have spent the time in college and obtained the piece
of paper that represents an standard rounded out education but I would have
missed out on some of the years of experience that I can now draw upon when
faced with a design challenge... still, monetarily it would have helped me
advance to more challenging rolls in the engineering field... possibly. So
much of your career depends upon chance and opportunity to land a job in the
field of interest... most of us took whatever came along because we needed
to eat and pay rent. 

I'm still fascinated with what makes a designer a designer. I have met a lot
of designers in my life and most of them seem to have a stronger 'right
brain' influence in their natural skills. Music, art, creativity are large
influences in their personalities... A few are not like that of course but
they apply their math and analytical skills to design problems. There's no
real explanation for 'why' they become designers other than exposure to the
opportunity to work in this field and the personal curiosity and
satisfaction that comes with the rewards of taking on a design challenge and
seeing it through to being manufactured. 

Those of us that are still doing design are in my opinion 'addicted' to the
field and find the challenge of bringing all their 'jack of all trades'
skills you speak of to bear in solving a design challenge and there really
isn't any college that can teach that... you either have it or you don't.

At least Certification recognizes a designer for their level of knowledge...
and it sets a goal or level for others to achieve when going into this
profession. I still believe there needs to be more work done on a classroom
curriculum and a text book or books that will help bring new people into the
field of PCB design and attempt to capture the knowledge we have acquired
over the last 40 or so years and put it out there so they have a way to get
where we are at a younger age with the advantage of not having to make the
mistakes that some have made along the way... Many of us will be retired
before long and who will carry keep the profession alive?



Bill Brooks, 
PCB Design Engineer, CID+

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