One of my former Sonos colleagues once told me the single wisest thing I’ve ever heard about hardware product development:
“We’re a product development organization. We don’t actually make speakers. We make instructions for how to make speakers. Our only real output is paper.”
(I originally attributed this to Sara Lincoln, but Sara tells me that she got it, in turn, from Ron Roberts, the mechanical guru who’s designed a ton of iconic Sonos products.
I’m closing in on a year - a whole dang year!! - of working on RTLjobs.com. It’s a job board for FPGA and RTL engineers. (If you’re an FPGA engineer, and looking for a new gig, I’d love it if you signed up for our mailing list.)
I’ve learned a whole lot about building and shipping webapps that I didn’t know a year ago. Knowing what I know now, here’s what I wish I’d done differently at the outset of this project.
I recognized last week that it’s been ten years since graduating from Montana State University. I have learned a vast amount in the field that I never learned in school. Here are ten things I’ve learned from a decade working as an electrical engineer.
Your time is your most valuable resource. Seek ways to maximize the effect of your time. Knowing the right answer isn’t as important as the capacity to find the right one.