Best hardware companies for learning?
Mar 15, 2019
87 Comments
Hi all! Hitting a roadblock in my career where I feel like I'm not growing my hardware skills as an early career employee. Could you recommend your top hardware companies for career development and learning hardware skills? Is it better to go to a smaller company or a larger, more established company for learning?
comments
1) a real mentor on a real product matters
2) at scale, f**k ups and being thorough matters A LOT
3) checks and balances of design documentation (Making sure another engineer can jump right in with a week to read and fully understand architecture, calculations, data sheets, etc)
4) a lot of hardware "just works" aka, half a**ed jobs will let code run even if you mess up some fundamental things. Simple examples are routing, component selection, properly following application notes to the T, and certain techniques for noise mitigation that only combat high volume fallout
5) proper simulation and testing methods that incorporate the latest tools, equipment, and especially proper calibration. I've seen certain FAE's not quite understand too. Also, being thorough and understanding regulatory spec.
To do side projects, you usually forgo a lot of the above steps just to get results
You can also do the opposite: work first in startups to grow and find your niche, you will get a jump start compared to college hires in big corp.