My work domain is digital (DV), but I am trying to gets my hands dirty with analog design because I think I can contribute to my team in the future. I have started reading about it on my own but the learning curve is steep and is taking time to understand the 'why's of analog design. Most of the fundamentals seem to start at 'how' things work. My intuition doesn't help answer 'why' certain things are designed the way they are designed. I think someone with experience in analog design can help answer it. So looking for mentors. If there are folks like me here, we can plan to create a group and discuss on topics periodically/create discord. PLL, DLL, all kinds of amplifiers etc etc etc. YOE-6 TC- don't even ask Willing to compensate if required. Hoping to form friendships along the way. Don't want it purely transactional, but will be okay if that is what it takes to learn :-) Edit: I am not trying to be analog designer. But just trying to make sense of different design choices analog designers make when I come across an analog circuit. As a DV I do come across analog designs. My curiosity just wants to know why certain design is used the way it is designed. Yes I am sure if I read about it /watch videos I will come to an answer that makes sense to me. But it takes like lot of time in doing so. That is why trying to find a mentor/friend who can just quickly tell what's the rationale behind a particular design choice. E.g. I was reading about basic PLL. I know what it does. Tries to match output to input frequency. But why not use input frequency as it is? Upsampling/downsampling makes sense. Recovering clock from input data makes sense, generating reference clock with higher frequency from low frequency crrystal makes sense. But why the hell some text just talk about PLL circuit where input is frequency is same as that of output frequency. That doesn't make sense, the text doesn't talk about applications of such circuit. Books just list the applications of VCO without much explanation. I had to spend few hours reading about it to really make sense of each statement written. You see the time it takes to understand the applications is prohibitive for a DV Engineer like me. So just trying to find a mentor/Buddy who can just help me navigate in right direction 'quickly'. Design engineers understand the trade-off decisions and how they affect the overall system performance.I am not trying to do design/run Sims etc.. just trying to understand design decisions of expert analog designers. And thats just out of sheer curiosity. It has nothing to do with my TC or where I want to be in my career. And for what is worth, I know python, C, C++(design patterns, template programming etc) and also on my way to learn ML. I understand everyone trying to suggest not to learn analog design, but hey, it's just simple curiosity. Doesn't hurt to have another friend/mentor who works in analog design. I mean come on you guys. Infact I feel analog designers are magicians. Their TC may not say that but boy do I have such a respect for them! They design things I don't know how to read and interpret.
Was in same boat. Just learn something else regarding software / firmware. That stuff is also interesting and rewarding.
Learn machine learning data science or python. Don't do this
Listen to this guy. Go to software. Don’t do it
To give you some context, I am a mech engg PhD with 3 YOE who just moved to the bay last year at TC 150K with a shockingly bad company. 1 year of leetcoding and hardwork and I just 2.5x ed my salary. When you are spending time and effort do it where it matters
Would recommend reading the Art of Electronics if you haven't seen it yet. It's pretty good to explain the general reason why some designs are better than others
I work in this area. (UXR) What’s your motivation here? Underlying passion? Just can’t resist learning it? Second thing: Mentor is a big commit. You could post a short reading list and invite and see if anyone bites?
Posted edit in original post.
As an EE graduate I can tell you this might not be a good idea. Analog design is extremely challenging and does not justify the mediocre TC you will be making. And learning curve will be very steep. As other have suggested pick up some other field to transition into.
I was in this boat before. The issue is that we don't need a ton of analog design - just targeted companies need these IPs, and they are frequently reused across processes (with some tweaks). The effort/reward isn't worth it because of this supply/demand characteristic. Having said that it's OK to understand some basics (e.g. bode plots, subsystem behavior for both AC/DC, open/close loop, startup) but don't spend too much time on this if you are not already an expert, IMHO.
Additionally, since iterating silicon is very expensive (i.e. you don't get many second chances if something goes wrong), companies are only looking for analog designers who have proven experience and hence there's this gap between new designers and people who have been doing this across many processes.
If your design is Analog on top , try to understand the system level behaviour from your team lead so that it can help with your DV, but dont start with basics of Analog Design just as an hobby.As others suggested you’d be better off doing RTL,which increase your choices of potential employers when you want to move out of micron.Let me know if you need a referral to Analog Devices .
Yes that is what I am trying to understand. Posted an edit in original post as well. I think having someone from design background answer your question helps to speed up the learning.
Don't listen to others and do whatever you're passionate about. Most TC chasers are not really passionate about anything and hit a brick wall after a few years. I switched to RF from Digital after grad school.
“hit a brick wall after a few years” pretty ignorant statement considering even the SWEs who rest and vest are still making much more and getting more scope and influence due to the software world being able to create impact more quickly. Nothing wrong with following passions but you can’t just pretend reality is something else to make yourself feel better
I started learning Analog basics lately. It is deeper… every-time I go for an interview, I come across new topics and questions in the same. Also, the comments above kinda demotivates me. Sounds like I should focus on coding equally. I’m <2 years experienced in hardware. Many rejections lately. Hope I learn more from this thread.
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Short answer: Don’t Learn AI/ML/Python instead You will be much better off in 5 years DV has more jobs and is less stressful than Analog design Your TC will be higher if you move to DV in Faang Also learning AI and python is useful in HW jobs also
I am not trying to switch domains. Just trying to learn out of curiosity. Always felt that I was weak in analog design, so just trying to understand it better. Purely out of curiosity, that is why it is even more exciting :-D even if I suck at it
You can’t learn analog design on the side as a hobby. It requires a lot of dedicated effort. You’d be better off learning something related software / firmware.