How to train a newly graduated engineer? I can only simulate integrated circuit design from my field, and I will provide some suggestions that are equally effective in other engineering fields, so that readers can make corresponding programs for their own work.

1. First, graduates will be assigned to work as application engineers. Application work is the technical link between the company and the customer public. This team will answer customers' technical questions by telephone, and then help customers solve their specific problems by building various circuits in the laboratory without the help of technical materials or designers. Answering the phone is only half the job of the application. They will use the company's products to develop application circuits, and then write some technical articles, which are usually published in sales magazines such as EDN. They will write some application notes to help teach customers how to actually use the company's products. The application department developed by Welll will also write data tables, which will reduce the burden on design engineers, but also improve the quality and consistency of company documents. This is what I have done in this industry for two years. Once I redesigned a chip because it was very simple. When I wrote a datasheet for this chip, I found that it could not provide enough functions for the final application. Of course, design engineers always think that their chips are good enough. A truly adaptable application engineer can participate in the selection of new products.

The main point of this arrangement is to teach future design engineers what to design, what customers need (not what they want), how to communicate with the factory, and general information in the market. I won't let graduates communicate directly with customers right away. First, they will write data sheets for new products, and then ask them to build circuits similar to those using our chips in the laboratory. Under the guidance of senior application engineer, we will ask him to write application documents. I believe it is very important for design engineers to cultivate excellent engineering writing ability.

In a few months, they will be able to answer customers' calls. I think the first few calls should be accompanied by senior engineers, and then teach young engineers after the call. It is very important for engineers to be as professional as possible, to help customers as much as possible and to show the good image of the company. When most of us call other companies for help to solve product problems, we can only get some useless repetitions.

The application will work full-time for six months, and then for six and a half months, for example, in the morning, for those of us on the west coast.

2. Extracting the equipment model can be arranged in the next part-time working hours (App in the morning and modeling in the afternoon). In analog circuit design, it is very important to use accurate and complex model parameters to apply to circuit simulators. At the beginning, no good model will make us design again and again, and most designers never have a model that is accurate enough. When the speed of the circuit becomes faster and faster, the accuracy of the model becomes fatal. Larger companies have modeling teams or ask process development engineers to write models. In the big company where I used to work, I found that the data of these groups were not accurate. Recently, we checked the accuracy by comparing the equipment example with the model provided by a well-known simulator company. We found that their data was pure rubbish, so we extracted the equipment model accurately.

This is a common design requirement. I will ask young engineers to teach them some tips in this field under the guidance of senior engineers, and then extract parameter models from process examples. This work is also a good opportunity for engineers to immerse themselves in every step of departmental simulation, because the model parameters need to be continuously verified and modified by fitting the circuit simulation data with the test parameters. This is a very boring job, which contains a lot of detailed measurement and calculation, so it takes about three months of part-time job to re-describe the characteristics of a process. The work of extracting device models can really give engineers some basic concepts: in order to meet the requirements of different circuit applications and the limitations of devices in circuit and size, some of these concepts are really amazing, while others are very beneficial to practical technical capabilities, and these concepts can correctly evaluate the accuracy and details needed in design.

Due to the tedious work of extracting equipment, few design companies have accurate models of existing processes.

3. Then it is more appropriate to lay out some layouts. At ELantec, many of our design engineers will complete part of the layout of their new films, but this is very rare in the industry. The usual practice is that the design engineer provides insufficient design information to the layout engineer, and then quarrels with them on the details of layout design, which wastes a lot of time. Designers usually don't check the final layout carefully, and occasionally insist on modifying those places that should have been checked long ago. Designers also blame layout engineers when the project can't be completed on time. This kind of thing often happens.

I will let a young engineer take over a simple typesetting job in the second three months of my part-time job. He will draw a layout for another design engineer, and then observe the inefficiencies piled up on him, hoping to prevent these inefficiencies from happening to himself in the future through his eyes. In fact, we designers think it is very useful to draw circuits ourselves. We can feel what kind of circuit is suitable for layout design and what kind of excellent circuit information is sent to layout engineers, and we will face problems such as device matching and current/power density. Designers will also gain the ability to estimate the circuit layout size before layout design. What we can finally get is to improve the ability of engineers to manage multi-person projects.

The first real design work can start in the second year. To ensure the success of this project, such as connecting the existing circuit A with the existing circuit B, this kind of work does not need innovation, only for economic reasons. This is the trend of modern analog IC design: continue to carefully design and add new functions to successful chips. The young engineer will be supervised by a senior engineer, who is usually the original designer of the chip to be improved. Senior engineers are granted the right to manage young engineers and should be responsible for the results of this project. We should not examine the project management ability of young engineers too early, which is unfair to them. Of course, young engineers will also draw a layout of their own circuits, then test the chips, and then write data tables. This work cycle is five months of full-time design work, not counting the time waiting for the film to return, and then two months of full-time testing work for it.

5. Now the first single-person design can begin. Engineers have gone through every step of the design except product development. Product development is the designer (the chip designed by young engineers will not be renamed until it enters mass production? Designer? Obtain product details from the marketing department, and then reorganize these details into definitions that can be produced on silicon wafers. At the end of the initial product definition, the designer should be able to report the expected product specifications, functions and chip sizes to the company. There are usually many difficulties and sacrifices in modifying the initial demand of the market, which need the supervision of the design manager. New projects may inherit similar existing technologies. Young designers will be allowed to use layout engineers here, but they should be able to test the chip for the last time and write data sheets.

This method takes more than two years, but it is worthwhile for the company from the beginning. In the long run, the company needs about three years to get a mature designer, not at least seven years. This is also a good opportunity to observe where our expected engineers will encounter difficulties without hurting employees' emotions and affecting the project. These graduates can also decide whether the design of this road is really suitable for them, and the apprenticeship process just provides them with many opportunities to jump to other occupations.

I like these concepts of art major: apprentice, worker whose apprenticeship has expired, and master. If you work in this industry long enough, what can you get? Advanced? Or? Clerk? Such a title. Actually, this is a job? Inflation? I seldom see masters in our work. Most of us are apprentices. I don't put the connotation of unity on form, I just want to emphasize skill.

Some engineers are ready to make money for the company right after graduation, but few of them. Most engineers are immature and need to be trained to be real engineers. For the company, it is time to train employees and limit the failures they should not bear. I used to work in a very famous integrated circuit design company for 5 years, and they liked to boast that 20% of their profits returned to work in R&D.. But in fact, the organization of this company is so chaotic that more than half of the development projects have failed. Besides the chaotic project management, what else does this company like? Throw an engineer and a project on the wall to see who can stick to it. . Most of the designers who were driven out were just graduates.

We should guide graduates through the above apprenticeship process to protect their passion and energy and ensure that the whole industry of all of us is better. ;