A Real-life Story
In this month’s column I have chosen to bring up a real-life story received from one of our readers (name withheld). In summary, it tells the story of an RF engineer who strayed to programming fields and has a hard time coming back.
The Story
Dear Sirs,
I have read with great interest the articles depicting the shortage of EM professionals and the short-sighted government and education policies that do nothing to help rectify the problem.
I have an interesting story for you and perhaps you can offer some advice in return.
I am a systems and software professional with 25 years experience. But it wasn’t always that way. I received my BSEE degree in 1984 and my favorite specialty was EM, RF, radar and antenna systems. I studied under Dr. James F. Corum, then at West Virginia University. I liked it so much I believe I took every EM course the university had to offer—even the Master’s level courses.
So after graduation I was all set to progress down the path to an EM career. All the places I interviewed with required a security clearance and I had relatives in East Germany at the time. They all said I would have to wait but I couldn’t wait as I had a ton of school loan debt to pay off. To bridge the gap I took a programming job. It was easy and well paying and as often happens it shaped my destiny: I never went back to EM.
Fast-forward 25 years and most well paying software development jobs have gone overseas. While the software job migration was taking place I thought about getting back into EM. A year ago I decided to try to re-enter the EM job market. I have had no success whatsoever. If the EM market is so great, why hasn’t anyone expressed interest? I have carefully tweaked my resume and crafted cover letters expressing my interest in an EM career and how I believe my software development experience would benefit a transition to a new facet of electrical engineering. Nada. Really though, Maxwell’s equations never go out of style so what does it take in this day and age to get an employer to take a look at me? I have a track record of success and one would think that employers, seeing the personality traits behind success might just realize that these traits translate to success in most human endeavors and not just software development. Perhaps employers are partly to blame and not just government education policy? Perhaps there is an age bias as I am now 47?
Please help me understand. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
(Name withheld)
Our Humble Advice
Indeed, the demand and hence the “market value” varies for different technology fields of expertise.
RF engineering is among the analog engineering sciences, which exhibit an ongoing shortage for about a deade now. Unlike computer sciences and software engineering, making an RF engineer requires many years of experience and expensive infrastructure and instrumentation. In recent years RF and microwave technologies have diversified to numerous fields of expertise and firms are very intolerant in general to on-the-job training. At the same time, employers’ requirements are very stringent and uncompromising about specific skill-sets and experience.
Going back to the story, lack of practical experience is evidently the negative factor. Firms today are not keen for on-the-job training and age might be playing a hidden role in considerations as well. Yet it might be a good idea to steer the career in according to such radical changes in the industry.
My first and intuitive advice would be for you to pursue a position that incorporates programming with RF in a way that enables you to present your forte and utilize the experience that you have acquired. Your knowledge of RF engineering from college as well as your passion for EM engineering should be the factors qualifying you for this interdisciplinary job, interfacing the RF design. From that point, you might have the opportunity to enrich your RF engineering experience and move deeper into the EM world.
Please note that there are many venues for RF engineering today. Different technologies and markets (e.g. wireless communications, Wi-Fi, RFID, medical, SATCOM, defense, etc.) require different EM expertise and projected levels of demand could vary over time and geography. You will need to make your own research. They all require programmers, though.
To summarize: Review and define your professional experience as a programmer. Your immediate goal is to locate positions that utilize your specific systems and programming experience, while being part of EM project teams so that your formal education becomes an advantage as well.
Beyond wishing our fellow engineer the best of luck, we learn from this story. What we have learned is to look forward. In times of rapid technology changes occur in parallel to radical global economy changes your field of expertise is your asset as well as barrier. For the country, RF engineers are an indispensible asset.
Isaac Mendelson
ElectroMagneticCareers.com
Isaac@ElectroMagneticCareers.com
