Welcome to this
year's edition of
Your Most Important
Issue of the
Year. A major
focus of this
year's issue is
"Dream Jobs."
This got me thinking about my own job and how
it all started for me.
As an engineering student at Manhattan College
in Riverdale, New York, I wrote a paper for
my control engineering class - something to do
with damped oscillations of a particular control
circuit. I added all the necessary illustrations,
tables, captions, and so forth. My professor
was duly impressed, which gave me the confidence I needed to apply for a summer job at
Hayden Books, a technical book publisher. I'd
like to say that my paper helped me land the
job, but it didn't. I got turned down based on
my deficient copy editing skills and had to wait
several years for another chance at writing on
electronics engineering topics.
I got the chance in the early 1980s, when I
applied for a position as technical editor at
Popular Electronics magazine. That job was a
great experience for me. Not only did I get to
cover the Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas for the first time, but also got to meet lots
of industry people through the years. I can still
remember the day when I sat in a conference
room at Apple Computer's headquarters with a
few other editors, and Steve Jobs walked into
the room with what seemed to be a backpack
over his shoulder. He put the "backpack" on the
conference table and pulled out a Macintosh
computer - unveiled for the first time!
My colleagues at that job had impressive
credentials, too. Editors Art Salsberg and Les
Solomon were instrumental in bringing the first
Intel 8080-based computer kit, the Altair, to the
pages of the magazine in 1975. If you've read the
book Fire in the Valley or watched the TV movie
Pirates of Silicon Valley, you know that this article
was the inspiration for Bill Gates and Paul Allen to
develop the operating system for that computer.
When my employer at the time decided to
switch to covering computers rather than the
broader electronics market, I was offered a job at
a new computer testing facility that the company
was creating to cover the exploding personal computer
industry. The lab took its name from the
magazine it was associated with, PC Magazine's
PC Labs. I was one of four engineers on staff at
the labs. Bill Wong, who you know from this magazine,
was one of the others.
This period of time was simply amazing. It was
not unusual to see industry people like Bill Gates
at a Microsoft press conference at a restaurant
like Tavern on the Green in New York City showing
the company's latest products and providing a
clear vision of the future of personal computing.
After that stint, I came to Penton Publishing
(now Penton Media), landing a job with Electronic
Design as technology editor for test and measurement.
Although I had travelled to most of the
major U.S. cities in my previous positions, I now
got to travel to places like Munich, Germany and
Paris, France to cover test conferences. As
always, I enjoyed covering new developments in
the industry as well as getting to know the people
behind the products and technologies.
My current position at Electronic Design is a
challenging one, but one that is as exciting for
me today as when I first started in the industry.
Like the electronics industry itself, change is a
constant in the media industry. Whereas 25
years ago, print magazines held sway, information
today is more spread out, with the Internet
playing a major role in satisfying the information
needs of design engineers. The job now is to provide
compelling content for both venues.
There is always opportunity for engineers who
want to take advantage of writing skills to forge a
career in the media. If you've ever impressed professors
or others with your abilities, you might
want to give this career serious consideration.
On to the Salary Survey
It had to happen eventually. This year, our
annual salary survey shows that the average
income for U.S. engineers has surpassed the
$100,000 mark. In this section of the issue,
contributing editor Jay McSherry compiles the
results of the survey for you, showing salaries
by engineering title, geographic region, job
function, and other metrics. The bottom line:
salaries are up 7% this year. On a less optimistic
note, though, Jay reports that bonuses
are flat and stock options and other perks are
down by 3%.
Dream Jobs Other Than This One
For this issue, our talented editorial staff of
Kristina Fiore, John Arkontaky, and Rich Gawel
interviewed readers who told us via our issue survey
that they had dream jobs. In addition, this
issue has a "dream jobs through the years" section.
For the space program era, Rich interviewed
astronauts Rich Mastracchio and Scott Kelly. For
the personal computing era, John interviewed
Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs' buddy at Apple. And
as a representative of today's young engineers,
Kristina spoke with the "Electric Boy Genius,"
Ryan Patterson. The interviews make for great
reading as well as inspiration.
As if the tales of dream jobs weren't inspiration
enough, we also interviewed this year's inductees
of Electronic Design's Engineering Hall of Fame.
This illustrious group includes Paul Baran, Nolan
Bushnell, Aart de Geus, Doug Engelbart, Don
Knuth, and Walter LeCroy.
Nearly 3000 Electronic Design subscribers
participated in this year's survey - our biggest
response ever. Jay McSherry, Kristina Fiore, and
John Arkontaky have pored over the survey
results and written articles and presented tables
that summarize those results. We're happy that
so many of you took the time to answer our
questions and share your insights, and we hope
you find the issue to be both interesting and
enlightening.