About HW Engineers, Electronics and Youtube ( with Dave Jones EEVBlog )

"How to become a better hardware design engineer ...", that is my first question in this interview. Thank you very much Dave.
Links:
- Dave's channel: / eevblogdave
- Dave's website: www.eevblog.com/
- Dave's forum: www.eevblog.com/forum/
Chapters:
00:00 What this video is going to be about
00:38 How to become a better hardware design engineer
04:44 Building a smartphone after watching a video
07:10 Testing high volume products
12:44 Being an engineer is not only about knowledge
16:06 Hiring a junior engineer
19:30 How to get experience
25:13 About CV
28:04 Aha moments in electronics
38:55 KZbin - Do it / Don't do it?
41:45 What to expect when starting a youtube channel
43:55 What to keep in mind when making videos
47:50 Can you make a lot of money as a youtuber?
50:13 About debunking videos
52:15 About people watching videos
55:40 Mistakes in videos
1:01:40 How to learn and know a lot
1:05:14 Solar energy
1:07:28 How Dave started with electronics
1:08:39 What knowledge are engineers missing
1:13:01 Sometimes, there is no universal answer
1:15:50 The most complicated video Dave has created
1:18:50 How do you manage your time
------------------------------------------------------
Would you like to support me? It's simple:
- Sign up for my Hardware design and PCB Layout online courses: academy.fedevel.com/
- You can also support me through Patreon: / robertferanec
- Or sign up for my Udemy course: www.udemy.com/learn-to-design...
It is much appreciated. Thank you,
- Robert

[@EEVblog]

Nice work on the edit and timecodes, thanks for having me on the show I really enjoyed it!

[@RobertFeranec]

Thank you Dave for your time. I had a great time creating this video!

[@electromatic2014]

Two of my Idols together, what a way to start the day!, great video!!

[@CollinBaillie]

You're a test engineer? Dave, I'd love to see a series on making a DIY test jig for a project. Hardware and software topics covered. I've watched a few of your videos which talk a bit about it, but never a complete walk through from go to whoa.

[@jamesheller2172]

You're a legend Dave. I learned a lot from both of you.

[@EDGARDOUX1701]

subscribed to both!

[@thosewhowish2b693]

I'll keep this quote: "The worst thing you can is to learn something without an end-goal". Killer. Great interview, with two great men.

[@cipher2infinity52]

To all the freshers and university students or the people who want to make their career in hardware domain its worth watching this video. Great job Mr. Feranec. I really appreciate your efforts for creating this video.

[@FPGAsforBeginners]

Thanks so much for this, it's fascinating to watch! As I've discovered, KZbin is a lot of work, but I've found it to be really helpful in my career to make me aware of what knowledge I'm missing in my own field, the gaps in my knowledge. It's made me look at the work I do with a critical eye and improve myself professionally. I also really appreciated the comments on mistakes. I've always had a problem with being a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to videos and I have had to learn to let that go too.

[@Stabby666]

Glad I found your channel from your comment here - I'm an EE, with quite a bit of experience of MCu based designs, but want to work with FPGAs, and have found it's hard to know where to start - which architecture is most accessible and suitable to begin with etc. In my case I'd love to find a series that progressed from choosing the right part, through setting up an IDE and programming a dev board, to maybe even making a custom board with the FPGA and supporting parts. I understand it covers quite a lot of different areas though, so probably asking a bit much! Thanks!

[@doublepiengineer9347]

I really admire both of you! you share with us so much knowledge and yet you are so humble and real! Best wishes!

[@thirtythreeeyes8624]

Learning from failure is so true. There is a quote that comes to mind from Thomas Edison in regards to inventing the lightbulb “I have not failed 10,000 times-I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

[@Gengh13]

I've Learned a lot watching Dave's videos over the years.

[@excitedbox5705]

But you gotta do it to become an engineer ;)

[@mrechbreger]

Test Engineering... ya I also figured out that this is very tough. I have built some devices and finally we end up not selling that particular product since the IC had some fault when increasing the temperature between 50-60 degree (once it was warm - it had no problem). The next chipset fixed that issue... however it cost a lot time from my side as a self employed person ...

[@fjonesjones2]

Great video and interview. As mentioned willingness will lead to experience, most important. I'm self taught and from the 9 years of age, started building and repairing stuff, came to Australia from UK and am still learning to day, age 73 years young. I was an electronic tech working in industry for 50 years and then ran my own electronics/computer repair business, before retiring ... If a person is interested and has passion in anything, they will succeed...Don't worry about theory too much, some is needed but, get the Basics first, experiment, then you'll understand and learn a lot more theory, to solve the magic smoke problems... Most importantly find out how things work, anything....;-)

[@albertluna1001]

This is so inspiring, greetings from Dominican Republic You absolute legends

[@tlangdon12]

Dave is right that working on a project that is interesting to you is the best way to learn a variety of skills. You will learn so many different subjects just to get a working electronic project. So to learn more, you need to set yourself the goal of producing something that works, and keep at it until it does. Then try a slightly more advanced project, but get the first one working before you move on.

[@barnea10]

This video is just super important for fresh EE looking for a job, even for experienced EE. gold value advices

[@dimonasua]

Oh, that's so great to see you both together in the same video! :) Thanks, that's a lot of fun!

[@cinamnspc]

So great to see you both in a video, thanks for this video. Y’all have helped me so much from when I was in college studying EE to now being a hardware developer by title :). I can’t thank you enough for your content ☺️❤️

[@jlysiak]

That made my day! Thanks you Robert and Dave!

[@ChEsArE9000]

You both are legends, loved and respected around the community, many thanks you for all your great content !

[@tlangdon12]

I'd recommend to anyone starting work (in any professional field) to keep a journal of what they have worked on and when they worked on it. This can be enormously useful when it comes to tailoring your CV for a particul job. You won't have to try to remember all the relevent projects or initiatives you worked on, you'll have a list!

[@peterthepeter7523]

Awesome interview thanks to both of you.

[@radman999]

Excellent video, thank you to both of you for your time. This is invaluable advice from two industry professionals.

[@bnosam]

Two of my favourite youtubers! What a treat! Thanks Robert!

[@andymouse]

Oh yeah, Dave's op-amp tutorial is great and I'm not surprised that did well it can get you going or top you up on the stuff you need to know, I like your longer vid's as well Robert I always feel like I can get settled down and get into it....cheers

[@siddharthmali5841]

Great video. You both are my favorite youtubers. I learnt many things by watching your videos.

[@unprintable469]

Great video! I've also learned so much from Dave's videos over the years. It is just pure practical engineering knowledge which I really enjoy a lot. Also to you Robert, you do a great job! :)

[@manu808]

Always interesting stuff, thank you

[@musenzerob2181]

Thanks to both of you,it was really fun

[@emc1018]

It was absolutely educational and informative dear Robert ! Thanks from the bottom of my heart for sharing this and all the other videos on your channel which are super cool and useful ...

[@TangoMikePapa]

Thanks Robert and Dave for the great conversation.

Thank you very much for this beautiful content and interview.

[@ahmedamraniakdi2143]

Thanks, I found your channel just by coincidence, this is like that moment "I was searching for copper but I found gold".

[@RobertFeranec]

:)

[@gnuemacs1166]

Great questions thank you both fantastic interview

[@TeslaAtoms]

This video is pure gold! Wish i had seen this 10 years ago... basically, i spent the last seven years of my life catching up on my mistakes, which is (mainly) not following the advice you give away here for free.

[@666aron]

That remark about students being lazy or they don't care really hit hard. I'm an assistant at university teaching practical micro-controller and digital signal processing (mostly based on ARM), and it's sad what I see. The student expect the most boiled down version of the boiled down version of the lectures, and even then it's too much for them. Most of them know very little of linkers, architecture, PCB design electronics, etc. (somehow they passed all those classes). Which would not be such a big deal, because I'm willing to teach everything from ground up. The saddest part is they lack willingness, and passion. I once asked what are their hobbies, the answer was to sleep (not playing games, not drinking, not even to party just ... sleep). Btw I do not call myself an engineer because I feel like some hobby projects and a half complete ECG product is are not enough to be a proper engineer (or maybe I'm just too harsh on myself),

[@tlangdon12]

That is disappointing to hear, but at least the students are being honest with you. This means that you can quickly reject them, and select only the one or two who have applied themselves.

[@dharitrihazarika248]

This is a great video! Enjoyed watching every bit of it. Dave and Robert speaking about electronics in one platform is just WOW! (Posting questions in forum rather than in email - ya I have got that comment too from you :) but yes you are right, it helps other people as well who might have the same question)

[@kushlavr]

Great interview. 2 in 1. Both of my favorite channels are on the same screen. Super! 😀

[@chathurafernando1299]

This is made my day !!!!! 🤩

[@bartek153]

That was very entertaining :) Great vid mate

[@juliorrsantos]

Watching Dave saying that he couldn´t solve a triple integral nowadays makes me feel a huge relief. In fact what we learn at the college gives us just a base to our carreer. But what we learn with the practice complementing the theory becomes much more valuable.

[@steini19o4]

44:25 I think Dave hit th nail right on the head when comparing your two channels. When I found your channel, Robert, I pretty much abandoned Dave's unconciously because your content fits what I'm interested in just so much better.

[@PCBeKiCad_gabrielemarocco]

Many thanks! The Ah-Ah moments section is a part that every hardware engineer should see at least three times

[@amirsaeed9163]

When two of my heroes are speaking together and I am listening. ♥

[@NickElectronics]

Great talk. Enjoyed all 1.5 hour)

[@thorwalez6753]

Dave and Robert, great! You both forgot more, i ever will learn :D. But i try hard and you support me well, all the way long, with your videos. Thanks for that!!!

[@hareeshmr127]

Good job, I really like it !!

[@brightpan9219]

you know, I like these 2 guys.

[@magnuswootton6181]

Learnt alot thanks!

[@LubosMedovarsky]

Interesting catch, Robert!

[@BiqBanq]

Dave and Robert:D Perfect video:D

[@jeff-oi7cl]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!!! DAVE!!!!!!!!!!!

[@AltayBrusan]

Thanks Robert

[@vetal-mq9ce]

Hello Robert. Thank you for your videos. Can you make a video about mixed signal board which include analog and digital circuit and they have interconnections? For example, some analog signal goes to comparator and compared to some DAC voltages. How to divide it to digital and analog parts? How correctly route it?

[@ThePing98]

that video make my day😀

[@Amirkheir]

Two good utube channels go together... nice👌

[@romancharak3675]

Thank you Robert and Dave, for an interesting video. Also I want to thank you Robert for the amazing series on PCB design. When I first tried following along and creating the schematic, I got frustrated with my progress, so I wrote this comment "Hello Robert. I started designing the schematic for this circuit board September 2021, and got frustrated, as many of the components you use are no longer in stock. So the footprints were no longer accessible for placing on the schematic. Also, I didn't save my work properly, losing a few hours work when I closed my computer for the night. GGGrrrrrr. I might start again, because this an extraordinarily interesting project, and would like to follow along. I have been producing nice quality, double sided boards at home, but without solder mask. Regards from Toronto, Canada.". Since then I decided that your instructions were superb and the failure was all on me. I am well on my way to having the board ready to order for production. I used footprints of components that ARE available : 5mm RGB LEDs for one example, in lieu of the SMD part which is unobtanium at the moment. Thank you for your diligence and hard work. Regards, Roman.

[@RobertFeranec]

Thank you Roman and great job! PS: If you mean the Tiny project, recently I bought the 5mm LEDs from amazon ( www.amazon.de/dp/B0897KG2TQ/ref=pe_27091401_487024491_TE_item ). The component availability keeps changing, but Tiny project is simple and if really needed, it can be updated or components can be replaced.

[@yaghiyahbrenner8902]

Tests for mobile devices for Android has a special menu called Developer Mode, manufacturers (mostly chinese phones) add special menus that will do low level checks against the Linux Kernel Driver for Android, testing things like...Charger IC checks (battery percent, charge rate, discharge), LCD render checks (rendering of lines, colors, FPS), RF modulation checks, Base Band its very similar to the PASS/FAIL checks high end electronic instruments has, some features are only testable during boot mode using special hold press using the power button sequencing.

[@Sailingon]

I didn't do well in school but had a passion for electronics after watching our tv repair man bring out tv back to life. Me and a friend decided we wanted to make a radio so off to the back of the electrical repair shop we went on the night climbed over the fence and raided the scrap for boards. We spent months in the library studying and searching for knowledge and created our push bike radios powered from nicads charged from the dynamo. Just wish we had the knowledge we have now from videos like this then I'd be working in the job I only dreamed about. Now at 58 I repair thermal printers and hand held terminals to component level complaining how badly some of the things are designed lol. Could do with friends interested in the same but electronics enthusiasts are few and far between. Currently working on a street lighting control system that communicates through the power lines. Probably been done already but enjoying the challenge. Also working on a remote monitoring control system for my boat, trying to stay away from using third a party server, more of a software job, the hardware is the easy bit for me.

[@shapshooter7769]

You're looking at self-hosted stuff. Homemade server racks are fun until you need to start maintaining them yourself. Hosting services would be a great compromise, they rent out CPU time, RAM and networking for a price but you roll out your own virtual machines for your own projects

[@xortan666]

Hey, my two favorite KZbinrs :)

[@remy-]

1:19:00 Robert, maybe you need little bit more time to make videos and polish etc; but English is not your native language. So that’s normal! And i have to say: the moment you pause en joke are the moments we know to double think and understand (!). I see a lot of videos, mostly it’s entertaining.. but yours are learning us to understand. It’s gold.

[@RobertFeranec]

Thank you very much Remy

[@jlysiak]

I think the best moments in this video are just moments where you both are laughing 🤣 it's just so funny and I can't stand and start laughing along with you :P awesome Yeah, question/answers are good too ;)

[@RobertFeranec]

[@quickrd2095]

EEVBLOG this man are really Happy mind with Smile...

[@ashok_ign5623]

2 genius In one screen 🔥🔥🔥

[@exapod23]

Yes yes yes. This collab could easily break KZbin.

[@IgorPshynyk]

How to click 2 likes? The first for Robert and the second for Dave ;) Hallo from Ukraine.

[@LawrenceTimme]

Yes you need knowledge and experience.

[@paulpaulzadeh6172]

Nice Robert , please make one with "The Signal Path" with Shahriar too

[@Graham_Wideman]

Signal Path, unless you are referring to a biking channel, or maybe "men going their own way" :-)

[@tejeshwvardhan1165]

You start with path and then they become waveguide.......... definition of success!

[@RobertFeranec]

[@orbita1]

Two people who helped me through university / my first job.

[@FPGASystems]

WTF!!!! AWESOME!!!

[@LastofAvari]

TIL: Dave is a qualified fitness instructor.

[@RobertFeranec]

LOL

[@tlangdon12]

I would say that it is 'relatively' cheap to work on your own electronics projects - you can certainly do things on a budget, but many graduating engineers will need convincing to spend their own money on the basic tools (such as an oscilloscope) when they have been used to having access to their University's lab and expect to go to work for an employer who also has all the equipment they need. But you have to do whatever it takes, especially if you are trying to get into the field without a degree.

[@tombouie]

Nice

[@p_mouse8676]

Unfortunately experience seems to be a rare thing these days. I have seen many, MANY students and starters which can ramble on forever about just stuff. Yet, some, and that is NO joke, don't even have soldering skills. Which made me realize, ALL my PCB design skills way back then, come from making proto boards. You know, these little boards with islands and stuff. Doing the physical work and manually laying out your design will teach you a lot (and yes, you will fail a lot) Back in the day (and still today) I made hundreds of projects. Anyway, I am coaching quite some interns and students. The part that makes me really really sad, is that this attitude (or sometimes the lack thereof) is basically being taught from school. Exactly like Dave says, the amount of people who are enthusiastic is very low, and most schools also only seem to bother to keep it that way. In the end you just get this weird twisted expectation even from companies. I have seen extremely talented people being turned down just because they didn't have any formal education, yet they had more skills and knowledge than the entire departement.

[@tlangdon12]

I would say not to worry to much about talented people being turned down for jobs that they would crush - those people will succeed in spite of daft employers. This is one reason why I am sceptical when employers start bleating that they cannot get the staff they need.

[@hanli4977]

It is very difficult to find a HW related job in Canada. I traveled many cities and spend many years' time before my curent job. By the way, Robert and Dave looks like brothers.

[@mohamedtebbo6095]

FINALLY THIS HAPPENED !!!

[@IPridek]

Best crossover real world 😀

[@samamani5423]

two of the heavy weights in electronic engineering

[@WilliamHinojosa]

Please please please do a project together!!!!! I will be in the first line with my notebook. Thank you both.

[@LastofAvari]

BTW, I like how you asked 7 "last" questions. Good questions still :)

[@RobertFeranec]

This happens a lot when I do interviews. Often we suppose to finish at specific time ... so we just do one last question ... and then we decide to talk for another 10 minutes ... and then for another 10 minutes ... and that is how I ask 7 last questions :D :D :D

[@MAYERMAKES]

Ooh that is a good topic..... Do you know why this is good?.....

[@hadireg]

👍👍

[@StereoSpace]

It used to be said that a degree qualifies you to begin learning how to do that job.

[@tlangdon12]

This is even more true now days when fields, and therefore the degrees, have become more specialised. Universities can only scratch the surface of what you need to know, but with your degree you should be able to have a conversation with another engineer and understand some of what they are saying, whereas for a lay-person it would all go over their head!

[@StereoSpace]

@@tlangdon12 And you always learn the most by doing.

[@gwrasanarzary6841]

Sir I am from India who keep watching your video. I want to work with you to learn something from you

[@marvelknight-dx7sp]

Dave Jones meets Dave Jones xD.

[@RobertFeranec]

:)

[@andymouse]

Bell End's in the Bell Curve...cheers.

[@jimcrowjoe451]

Dave Jones is a KZbin engineer...just like the KZbin rappers.

[@demirmhmmt]

1:13:15 actually there is no perfect implementetion it's all about app specific choices.

[@michaelslee4336]

Dave “Like when you were kids and you bought kits from D……………your local electronics store”

[@xxJerry19xx]

Aaa yes... when you will finish the power supply...

[@RobertFeranec]

[@Graham_Wideman]

Spoiler alert -- Robert has a topic for his next video!

[@buenos4799]

17:00: Hobby experience should be required for every designer job. Unfortunately, companies go the opposite direction, they dismiss hobby experience. If they have 2 candidates, one designed 10 hobby boards and worked as junior designer for 1 year, the other candidate did no hobby and only worked as a test engineer for 5 years, most managers and HR will choose the second candidate for a designer job. Of course they are wrong in doing that.

[@Streamtronics]

I was shocked when you suddenly talked faster than in your normal videos once the interview started. I had to switch from 1.5x playback speed to 1x. It's so much easier to follow along if you doooon't speeeeeak sooooo slooowlyyyy. To me, usually it's like one of those LED message signs where the text scrolls past so slowly it becomes annoying. But from what I've read many people prefer this very slow way of explaining things. To me it just feels like I'm being spoken to as if I was a 4yo child lol, with all the excessive pauses between individual words.

[@RobertFeranec]

I feel the same about my slow talking. I wish, my English was better - when I talk faster, for some people it's harder to understand what I am saying (because of my accent). I have tried to fix my accent (for several times) ... I have not find a way yet how to do it (I have not found the person who could help with it - it was always just wasting money on hours with a teacher who didn't help much). The slow speed ... is slow, but it is not so bad - many people watching the videos are non english native and it helps them to understand the videos better. Also, there is always option to increase the speed, so I stopped thinking too much about it. BTW I personally watch almost all videos at speed 1.5x or 2x, I guess many people have learned to use that feature as it saves tons of time.

[@myetis1990]

Double giant at work in the same video(lol), great!👌 probably the next person will be Elon Musk :))

[@nameredacted1242]

I am a test engineer at job#1 and an adjunct professor at job#2. Comments and complaints: * Math is indeed bull in engineering (at the university rigor that is pushed onto us). You won't use it as an engineer. Anything that a TI-89 or spreadsheet can't solve you won't need. * Education is bull. It is just an absolute basic requirement. It teaches you nothing practical. It is just dry theory, most of which you won't use. The stuff you will actually use (transmission lines, control system stability, reliability, RTOSes, etc), the university can't manage to cover to its conclusion, they just start on the topic, make it too dry and impractical and useless, and the semester is over, and the student happily forgets all the basic stuff they hated anyways. * Liberal arts forced upon engineers is bull. Engineering students are not even taught basic stuff like ceramic capacitor variation wrt applied voltage, temperature, stress, etc, etc nevermind a thousand of other important topics. Thanks for Dave to say the absolute most important thing in a young engineer's life: SELF-MOTIVATED CHALLENGING PROJECTS ON YOUR OWN FREE TIME. Both YT channels are a good starting point for a young engineer. Anytime you hear something you don't understand, start researching and practicing it! Complaint: Dave got overly excited and forgot to differentiate regarding product testing. There are four classes of products (look into J-STD-001): 0 Chinese Ama$on junk. 1 Mass consumer junk. Low reliability. 2 High reliability / prosumer goods. 3 High-reliability products (military, industrial, avionics, space, weapons, medical, etc). There are also three types of testing: * Preliminary / Design-level (SPICE, field solvers, etc). * Design Assurance Testing. Verifies your design meets design criteria. You test a prototype. * Qualification Testing. Makes sure product meets strict test standards. You only test one or two representative products, and results hold unless you redesign or make another design. * Production Testing. Tests a certain fraction (for high-rel, every product) of each manufactured piece. For Chinese junk and million-items per year/month, there is very, very little production testing done. We used to say that statistical methods eliminate need to test every single consumer product, but these days it devolved that YOU are the testing of Ama$on junk. If it works, that product was faulty to begin with, or it was damaged during S&H or from your unpacking, zapping it with ESD, of from crappy design and materials anyways, whatever. Nobody cares... * Repair and refurbishing turnaround, but almost nobody does this anyways. So what Dave forgot to say was: Consumer-level junk does not really get tested anywhere as rigorous as high-rel products. We DO test each and every avionics unit at my work many times in the manufacturing process (bare PCB bed of nails, assembled CCA flying probe, assembled-unit level, our customer tests the unit again after they receive it and plug it in, etc, etc). I would really like for every young engineer to be at one point to be involved in a high-rel manufacturing environment. My particular job is doing multiple layers of testing on high-rel products (DAT, Qual, etc). P.S. Do not poo poo an entry-level job as a technician in a manufacturing environment before moving on to a "real" "design" "engineer" with your BSEE. If you have not done a multitude of personal projects since you were a kid, starting as a tech is your only option other than just realizing you fail from the start since you learned NOTHING useful in school.

[@bharadwajbs9349]

It is like new God interviewing Experienced old Legendary god on how to become Good God...Its Awesome thanks .

[@PauloConstantino167]

"Hardner design"

[@nndorconnetnz]

Ha! putting the wrong value component in based on what was thought to be whatever based on what was expected for a given circuit? Who has not does that in any field? It's when the weirdo designs come out that trips people up. I wonder when insurance industries will catch up with weirdo designers.