March 15, 2010
Salary Survey
By Jack Ganssle

From time to time I run a salary survey. Readers on Embedded.com and subscribers to my newsletter responded to the most recent one at the end of 2009, and I've finally compiled the results.

The data sample is pretty big. 983 responses passed the sanity filters. Surprisingly, over 60% are from the USA. I expected more from emerging countries, but only 9% were from India/Asia and only 2.5% from emerging countries like in Eastern Europe.

Some highlights:

We're getting old. At least those of us in the West. In Europe and the USA the average age of an embedded engineer is just a hair over 40. Canada is close and Australia/New Zealand not far behind. Other than Europe and the US, nowhere else had engineers over 60, and only here in the States were there any respondents 65 or over.

In India, Asia, and the emerging countries the average age is under 30.

There's a lot one can read into these figures. Engineering undergraduate enrollment in the USA continues to decline, which, when one considers how the firmware content of products is growing, worries me. In some countries engineering is considered a stepping stone to management, so a lower average age is inevitable.

In many countries salaries increase somewhat linearly with the years of experience reported. Important exceptions are the US, Europe and Canada, all of which show either a plateau or even a drop-off at 25 to 30+ years in the work force. In these areas, after about a decade and a half stop expecting much in raises for the rest of your career.

American engineers are somewhat less happy with their careers than in 2006, the last time I gathered such data. Those in Australia/New Zealand are, just as before, the happiest on the planet with Canada and Asia closely behind. I found no significant correlation between happiness and income, except for those deliriously jolly folks down under. There it does seem money buys happiness.

The complete survey results are here.

Jack G. Ganssle is a lecturer and consultant on embedded development issues. He conducts seminars on embedded systems and helps companies with their embedded challenges. Contact him at jack@ganssle.com. His website is www.ganssle.comComment on this blog entry

March 08, 2010
The Non-Quality Revolution
By Jack Ganssle

I'm leery of assuming anything anymore, since companies work hard to bury information behind a blizzard of PR "image consultants." But an awful lot of email from engineers speculate that firmware is at least partly to blame in the recall of so many of Toyota's cars.

It's hardly surprising that the code could be at fault.

Sixty years ago Deming taught that improving quality would lead to improved productivity and lower costs. The Japanese eagerly listened and embraced this philosophy. Those of us with lots of gray hair remember how "Made in Japan" was a synonym for "junk." Thanks to the quality revolution, the opposite is now true.

Today, Japanese cars are world renown for their quality. My Prius has 102k miles on it and has only been back to the dealer once " for a software upgrade several years ago. The only service it has ever gotten are replacement tires and oil and filter changes. It still has original spark plugs as their scheduled maintenance interval is an astonishing 120,000 miles. My old VWs needed attention every 3000 miles for valve adjustments, plugs and points.

Our last Toyota had 170k miles on it when we gave it to a son. It, too, required virtually no maintenance. Two kids learned to drive on it so the body had more than a few dings, but even the clutch was original.

I have no idea how Toyota manages their firmware engineering. But, in general, while many industries have adopted revolutionary programs to improve their quality, that effort has pretty much missed software development.

Since so much of the magic marketing goo of so many products derives from firmware, in my opinion the quality revolution is over. Kaput. You can't pretend to focus on excellent products without doing the same to the code. And few companies have paid anywhere nearly as much attention to the latter as they have to bending sheet metal and stamping parts.

Why is the market for software quality tools is so small? Simply because there is no demand. No urgent call for quality.

Why are so few software engineers trained in quality? Simply because there is no demand. No urgent call for quality.

Quality is no longer job one. Software has derailed Deming's vision.

And that's a damn shame.

Changing to a quality culture for software will be expensive, just as it was for making cars. Detroit scoffed at the idea for years till they learned that the up-front costs yielded massive back-end savings. The same is true for the code.

One thing is clear: if a nation (or perhaps even a company) starts a software quality revolution, like Japan they will corner the market for their products.

(Editor's Note: To participate in a survey on this important question, go to the Embedded.com Poll on the Embedded.com Home Page.

Jack G. Ganssle is a lecturer and consultant on embedded development issues. He conducts seminars on embedded systems and helps companies with their embedded challenges. Contact him at jack@ganssle.com. His website is www.ganssle.com.
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March 01, 2010
What's Your Take on Tabula?
By Dylan McGrath

When I met with Tabula executives recently for a briefing on the company and its

But if all it took to hit it big were impressing me with a PowerPoint presentation, the list of successful companies would be quite a bit longer than it actually is. I may be a sucker for a strong pitch and nifty graphical animation, but ultimately I'm not going to buy any chips.

And so I open it up to you, readers of Programmable Logic DesignLine. You are out there on the front lines using programmable logic. You know what's important to you and what risks you simply cannot afford to take. Based on what you know about Tabula and its Spacetime architecture, what do you think? Is Tabula bound for stardom? Or will it be another startup that talks a good game but can't deliver? (I know you still have many questions about this technology and Tabula's prospects. Please share those here as well.)
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February 22, 2010
Why did you become an Engineer?
By Jack Ganssle

There's a mildly interesting article on the EETimes site titled:

As of this writing there are two responses; the one from betajet is both very well written and extremely insightful. He laments that engineering in the USA is a dead-end career, but writes about how his childhood obsession with knowing how things work drove him to this calling.

It's fun to ask people why they chose this path. Some answers get quite involved. With me it was and is simple: I like to make stuff. As a kid it was all about banging nails into boards. Then it was forts in the back yard, which became such an obsession my grandfather regularly hauled salvaged boards over for me. Around 8 years old, oh happy day, my dad gave me his old electric drill. What havoc I wreaked with that aluminum-cased Craftsman!

We moved to Maryland two years later and I claimed a small corner of the basement for a "lab." Pretty soon people were asking me to repair their TVs, an easy task then when most of the problems were bad tubes. The drug store tube tester was just a short bike ride away. Ironically, after a lifetime in electronics I doubt I could repair a modern TV given the mass of high-integration chips.

The TVs were a treasure trove for parts and pretty soon my friends and I were building vacuum tube amplifiers and Morse code ham radio gear. My best-ever contact on the radio was when the FCC picked up my second harmonic clear across the country. Their stern notice led to some modifications to the transmitter, but I was so proud of a 3000 mile contact I pinned the official letter on the wall next to the other QSL cards (postcards hams mailed to each other to confirm a contact).

We built rockets. Rebuilt engines, cars, eventually boats. Various projects led to the use of transistors and ICs; by late high school there was no doubt that my major would be electrical engineering, a term that still sounds odd to me. Shouldn't it be "electronic engineering?"

Why EE? Simply because it was so much fun to build stuff, and the EEs I knew used a soldering iron as much as a drafting table (uh, for the younger readers, we used "pencils" and "vellum" before the CAD era). Designing circuits was an intellectual challenge, and working with my hands on the prototypes satisfied my need to build stuff.

A very close friend, also an embedded developer, recommended "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work," which I have ordered.

The book's thesis is apparently that working with one's hands connects us in important ways to the world around us. I hear he dismisses cube dwellers for their disdain of the trades.

But we engineers, prime examples of white collar office workers, make stuff. It could be an iPod or a well-crafted ISR. Maybe specialists assemble the circuits due to the high-density SMT. But turning an idea into a device, picking up the scope probe or loading the debugger to make it work, and then seeing a product emerge, is a hugely satisfying endeavor.

What do you think? Why did you become an engineer? (Editor's Note: This is the Embedded Poll Question this week. To vote, go to the Embedded.com Home Page. )

Jack G. Ganssle is a lecturer and consultant on embedded development issues. He conducts seminars on embedded systems and helps companies with their embedded challenges. Contact him at jack@ganssle.com. His website is www.ganssle.com.
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