Analog companies center on small set of engineers
By Adam Marcus, EE Times
Aug 17, 2000 (4:17 PM)
URL: eetimes.com
Picture three overlapping circles and the tiny patch where they intersect. That picture is what vexes Dave Pietruszynski every time he
reads a résumé. Just as Bill Gates once called the prompt window of a PC the most valuable real estate on earth, Pietruszynski, director
of engineering at Silicon Laboratories Inc., calls that patch golden. In case you haven't figured it out yet, the three circles represent
engineers skilled in analog, digital and DSP, and the intersection is the rare person who combines all three in a single, ready-to-hire
package. "The center that holds analog, digital and DSP is the ideal designer," Pietruszynski said.
What makes the search so difficult is that most engineers don't have a personality suited for analog design, Pietruszynski said. "It's a
specialized discipline that [requires] a certain personality. There's a lot more structure and rigor in digital. It appeals to a certain type
of technical mind," he said.
"I'm not saying that analog designers aren't structured thinkers," Pietruszynski said. "They are. It's just that they're, well, different."
Silicon Labs now has roughly 70 engineers on staff. But the Austin, Texas-based company is hoping to add at least five during each
quarter of the coming year. The company is looking chiefly for mixed-signal designers — "If you've concentrated on analog, you have to
have a background in digital," Pietruszynski said.
Robert Dobkin, chief technical officer at Linear Technology Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.), looks wistfully toward a time when his company can
hire the 25 to 30 "good-quality" engineers it needs.
"That would be great," he said. But it's unlikely to happen anytime soon. "The analog engineers are hard to find anywhere," said Dobkin,
whose company has openings at its design centers in Boston; Colorado Springs, Colo.; Raleigh, N.C.; and a new facility in Santa
Barbara, Calif.. So frustrating is the lack of designers, he said, that Linear is now looking overseas, particularly in the United Kingdom,
for technical talent.
Maxim Integrated Products (Sunnyvale, Calif.) is another analog chip maker with plenty of job openings....
Analog Devices Inc. (Norwood, Mass.) has scores of openings for analog and mixed-signal engineers. The company needs analog design
engineers with a BSEE (MSEE a plus) and three years in analog product development.
Finally, National Semiconductor Corp. has analog jobs to fill...... Snip<>
Lets hope they keep the one's they have already!
Jim |
