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I have been working in electronics manufacturing for more than 45 years. I was fortunate to be part of this industry in its golden years, from 1972 to 2000! In this period, all the modern devices that we use today—calculators, mobile phones, tablets, medical devices and portable computers, etc.—were invented and went into production. Since 2000, after the Internet bubble burst, we have been mostly just enhancing those devices. The big boom has been with Internet software applications and the devices that they have inspired.
But this article, and the successive columns I will be writing for I-Connect007, is not about these wonderful devices; rather, it is about the engineering skills and capability that all those engineers demonstrated to have come up with these wondrous new devices. Throughout the years, I have concocted a list of 25 essential skills that I think every engineer should strive to master. Most are not taught in college engineering courses, but are acquired through company training or individual efforts. These 25 skills have led to many of these new devices or software and to the success of electronics in the last 50 years.
25 Essential Skills
The 25 engineering skills are just my opinion; they are what I have observed to be the essential tools that engineers, including myself, needed to complete a project, develop a product, meet a schedule, or solve a problem. These were the important skills that got me the promotion, or the opportunity for a challenging job.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the January 2016 issue of The PCB Magazine.
