Re: kids these days

On Mon, 30 Sep 2024 08:16:56 -0700, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:

On Mon, 30 Sep 2024 11:12:25 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:
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On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 18:02:38 -0700, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:
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On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 18:29:42 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
wrote:
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On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 14:13:26 -0700, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:
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On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 21:53:30 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:
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On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 10:36:26 -0700, john larkin <JL@gct.com> wrote:
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On Sun, 29 Sep 2024 13:22:31 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:
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On a sunny day (Sun, 29 Sep 2024 10:10:33 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
<cd@notformail.com> wrote in <d56ifj1angpnq16qhhb0vplmlr3tt7opnf@4ax.com>:
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On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 08:42:27 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:
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On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Sep 2024 16:21:31 -0700) it happened john larkin
<jl@glen--canyon.com> wrote in <v1rbfj18eqbgr1t9bfvdfqqmn1q91gcfof@4ax.com>:
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bosses-firing-gen-z-grads-111719818.html
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Oh. I just hired one.

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There is a lot of truth in that article.
I have had to work with newcomers, some knew nothing
But then when I started... in my first job designing a.o. mil stuff
I had to figure it all out for myself the same day the requests got on the table.
One old guy, who had some experience with electronics but had a lot with high power stuff..
and a manager to rule us, was the environment, and a big factory floor building the things we came up with, and
a test room (HV stuff 100 kV etc megawatt stuff.. and a little corner and oscilloscope for me to test what I came up with,
build  proto circuits.
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Later when starting in broadcasting we got 6 month in the school benches in their own studio, while getting payed,
and exams after that, everything from audio, video, satellite, management, politics (who can do what, red phones sort of
thing), the works.
As that (video, audio etc) was my real interest, I found it relaxing and fun.
Then when you are put in charge of a real event, I remember the first day I ran alone in a head control room
I had to call my boss back from his dinner in some restaurant.. could not find the cables we had to swap
to sync some remote location,
turned out those were hidden under the floor boards ..
Did not they tell you that?
(Must have missed that :-) ).
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It all depends,.
Do you give the poor new guy training? ANY kind of training?

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He doesn't have to. John has this screening technique he uses for job
applicants. He shows them a diagram of two 1k resistors in series with
10V across them and asks them what the voltage where they join is. If
they freak out, burst into tears or defenestrate themselves, he knows
not to hire them. :-)

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Yes I did read that posting
Its hard, lemme see, e=m.c^12 likely does not help.
to make it easier for me I use volts, so if 3k3 + 4k7 in series gives 8 volts
then we know 3k3 gives 3.3 V across it and 4k7 4.7 volts across it
Best is to use trimpots to get the right value, no math needed...
And of course you need to bring the (multi?)meter impedance into play, especially for high
value resistors and moving coil meters from old boat anchors for example.
And there are LDRs and NTCs and PTCs, so we need to know all that
and the temperature and light intensity...
for the NTCs and PTCs we also need to know the current and time since switch on...
So no wonder if they defenestrate themselves.

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I wouldn't hire someone who complicates a simple question into
paralysis.
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An other issue maybe length contraction due to near light speed that may affect both measurement equipment and resistors.
And reading those colored bands around some resistors to get the value.
and wirewound, carbon composite, metal,
And then J.L. did not specify if it was DeeSee or AH!See

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I draw a 10 volt battery connected to two resistors, 9K in series with
1K.
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What's the voltage across the 1K?
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I hired a 3-month intern a month ago who failed the test. He said 9
volts. I hired him anyway and fired him as an intern on Friday. He's
full time now. He's mostly a software engineer. I'm teaching him basic
electronics now.
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I dream of some day finding a kid who gets the voltage divider right
and has something intelligent so say about the next test, an NPN
emitter follower.

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What do you ask them about that?

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V+=10. Two 10K resistors up and down to set the base voltage. Emitter
1K to ground.
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What's the base voltage? Some people have said 0.6, because base
voltages are always 0.6.
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What's the emitter voltage? Collector current?
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Anything else to say?
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Trick question: what's the collector voltage?

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Smart-ass answer:  Who knows ... nobody uses vacuum tubes or bipolar
transistors any more.
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Joe Gwinn

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So assume a common n-channel mosfet, like a 2N7000. What are the
answers?

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Where's the Microcontroller Programmers Guide?
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Joe Gwinn

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So many people here prefer snarks to parts.
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Probably few actually understand simple circuits.

Both true.  I would have gotten the bit about emitter followers being
able to oscillate, because while they have no voltage gain, they do
have power gain, so can be made to oscillate nicely with a
multi-tapped ferrite pot core inductor and a film capacitor.  This is
how the old Touch-Tone keypads worked, with Germanium transistors
even.  Later were silicon.

My equivalent to your emitter follower test is higher-level, because I
was in the software labs in those days, but we were interfacing to
hardware.

I would give the candidate a 11x17 inch sheet of paper and a pencil,
and ask the candidate to draw a diagram of the components of their
senior project, and walk me through it step by step.  This was quite
effective at eliminating the poseurs, as they could not get much
beyond high-level platitudes.  People who had actually designed a
built something would not run out of deep details.

And I was on the receiving end of such a question when I was job
seeking in the 1970s or so.  There was this startup which was building
something that ran on SEL 32/55 midi computers, an IBM 360 clone
optimized for process control.  (SEL 32/55s are now a chip.)

The question was to diagram and explain how an I/O Channel Control
worked.  It's a linked chain of data blocks, each block specifying an
action or setting.  In those days, these blocks were data structured
usually generated with macros, but in earlier days one just wrote the
data structure directly in hex. 

Anyway I passed, but the company was a bit too anarchic for my taste.
Many years later, my main interviewer applied for a job (not knowing
that I was the manager), and I hired him.  The very fact that he could
follow what I was saying back in the day was enough proof of
capability.  Small world.

Joe Gwinn