Re: Flag desecration?

On 8 Jul 2006 15:54:27 -0700, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:


John Fields wrote:
On 7 Jul 2006 16:02:58 -0700, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:


Michael A. Terrell wrote:
John Fields wrote:

On 7 Jul 2006 07:27:02 -0700, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:

<snip>

This is another good example of why no one will hire Bill. I can just
imagine how short the interview is when they discover what an ass he
is. Not every design is a "Money is no object", or "The customer can
just build a new building if its too damn big" type job.

This is libelllous rubbish. I design around the appropriate
constraints.

If you want to mininmise the parts cost, I can design for minimum parts
cost. If you want minimum power consumption, I can do that. If you want
minimum board space, I can do that too. Designing to minimise parts
cost, board space and power consumption is a little more difficult -
the customer needs to be very specific about the real requirements, and
I'm pretty good at working out what they need from what they say they
want.

If you want a design that final test and service enginers can
understand and fix, I can do that and have been doing it for a long
time.

---
But not lately, huh?
---

No need to rub it in.

---
OK...
---

This is the constraint that is most often important in designing
high value systems that are only going to sell a few tens of units a
year though very few people seem to be aware of it..

---
You ought to concern yourself more with building systems that don't
fail readily as opposed to making them easy to fix.
---

The last time I designed something that came back to haunt me was back
around 1984, when I undersized the transformer needed to turn on a
contactor - it was fine when the contactor was on, but marginal during
turn-on. Happily there was room for a slightly bigger transformer.
Since then I can only recall one service return, which turned out to be
due to an out-of-spec HP opto-isolator. If you do proper worst-case
design, things don't fail very often ...

---
Agreed. :-)
---

John Fields doesn't seem to understand that good design is about
providing what the specific customer needs, and you don't seem to be
much wiser.

---
My current client is a fourth-time repeat, so I must be doing
something right...

If you were doing it right, he wouldn't have to come back to get you to
do it again.

---
Four _different_ projects...
---

There's a line from the shoe-maker's song in Kismet - "the better my
work, the worse my pay, but work can only be done one way".

---
That's not quite right since if, in the limit, perfect work would
result in zero pay and schlock in riches, there _is_ a gradation and
a choice to be made in how to do the work.
---

You, on the other hand, are on the dole, have no clients, no job,
and no prospects. An example I _certainly_ don't want to follow.

I'm glad you found your niche. I was doing okay in Cambridge U.K. when
my wife got her big chance, and the Netherlands has worked out much
better for her than it has for me. Averaged over the two of us, it was
the right career move, though I'd quite like to be doing better at the
moment.

---
Why don't you try opening a consultancy? You certainly have the
time, and since you're around my age and no one's going to hire you
as an employee anyway, what can you lose?


--
John Fields
Professional Circuit Designer
.

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