I've been away, and just saw the CID Exam thread and lots of excellent
comments.
Let me add my two cents worth, as the current Chairman of the Designers
Council:
The idea behind certification is to establish a level of design
competence that is recognised internationally. Looked at for the long
term, it helps to achieve recognition for board designers as
professionals in their own right, in a field that is becoming more
complex almost daily, and where a board designer can have a huge impact
on a company's design and profit-making activities.
Think of the EE as a comparison. They have well-established college
programs that will give them a certificate of competance which allows
them to work in the engineering field. Without that certificate, their
income and responsibilities are usually limited because they haven't
shown the discipline that it takes to reach a recognised level of
competance.
Board designers traditionally get no respect, and the Designers Council
educational programs will eventually give board designers the respect
they have deserved for many years, and deserve even more these days.
Do you have to be certified to be a good board designer? Certainly not.
Is a certified board designer a good board designer? Not necessarily.
The fact is, on the surface the CID or CID+ means nothing more than the
fact you have passed a specific exam. Dig deeper, and anyone with the
certificate has had the drive and motivation to do some extracurricular
study in their field, especially true of the CID+. So a prospective
employer immediately has a highly visible pointer to a prospective
employee's outlook on his or her own career, and his or her drive and
motivation. Other things being equal, the certificate will swing the
balance when you're one of twenty applying for one job.
There's no doubt in my mind that board design will eventually carry the
same gravitas that an EE does now for engineering, with design
specialties like high speed, RF and EMI etc comparable to EE
specialities like digital, analog, IC design etc. I believe that
eventually, getting into board design will no longer be the ad hoc
process it has been, where competent technicians get to become board
designers because things are a bit slow in the lab. Just like the EE
today, it will be important to have achieved a proven level of
proficiency before a company will let you loose on a board that will
have a major impact on profitability, especially with shrinking time to
market windows that demand that a design is right first time and gets
through fab and assembly without problems.
I've had plenty of excellent designers say that they don't need
certification, that they've been designing boards for twenty five years
and have a handle on the process. The really good ones keep up to date
with seminars, conferences, magazines and text books. Add certification
to that mix, and you have an already excellent board designer that can
add an official recognition of his learning. Waving the certificate in
the air at your next job interview proves that you have been keeping up
with the technology.
Having said that, the certification program is not yet complete. There
are a number of Focus Modules yet to be developed, and there are some
rough edges in the Basic and Advanced workshops and study guides that
need polishing. A lot of hardworking volunteers got us to this point,
and hardworking volunteers are needed to take us to the next levels.
That takes time, but in my mind the effort is essential to get us, as a
body of professional board designers, further up the food chain.
Andy Kowalewski
Chairman, IC Designers Council
SyChip Inc
Phone (972) 202 8852
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