One of the first things you do in hardware is recruit talent, but finding good engineers is challenging, and judging their quality is even harder.
If you are not an electrical or mechanical engineer yourself, it may be difficult to judge the experience or quality of the work of other engineers, especially if the Internet is turning into hardware.
Wei Sir Engaged in intelligent lock products, the company in order to recruit a qualified embedded firmware development engineer, after the interview for more than two years, and in the two years the CEO, CTO can only personally on the code code.
Train new grads. Startups often don’t have the time, energy or money to spare to hire experienced engineers.
Because smart lock products involve structural parts, and the company does not understand the structure of the engineer, before and after the recruitment of several, on and off, after several replacement.
In the middle, I once recruited a structural engineer with 80 years of experience. Although he had work experience, he was a part-time worker and could not be integrated into the entrepreneurial team. When confronted with problems, he always took the blame attitude and often had conflicts with other colleagues.
Later, there was a problem with the product, and we had a serious conflict with the director of Shenzhen Office. The company thought about it for a long time. Although he could produce products quickly, the company wanted a talented person with passion who could make products with extreme experience, so we finally gave him up.
Like medicine, electrical and mechanical engineering is a broad field of study with countless expertise.
If you hire unqualified engineers, your project can take twice as long, cost twice as much, and end up not even working as a prototype.
There is a basic rule in product development that “the sooner you find a problem, the less it costs”.
Product development is largely a matter of identifying problems as soon as possible, and engineers are already involved in the product life cycle at the start of development.
Almost all of the “accidents” that occurred during product development were negative, “the power chip used in the design didn’t work properly”, “no manufacturer could make a mold for the design case”…
Such “accidents” often lead to changes, such as new power chips or redesigned enclosures that are easy to mold.
It’s easier to make changes in the early stages of product development, so review your product from the beginning.
The chart below, from a paper published by NASA, shows the relationship between the time it took to discover errors and the relative average cost of correcting them during commercial aircraft development.
As you move forward in the product development phase, the cost of making changes increases exponentially.
Let me give you an example.
Imagine a surgical robot with algorithms built into its software that determine the correct way to drive the various actuators (engines), depending on the operation to be performed.
In some cases, however, the algorithm may have given the wrong Angle for the scalpel to move, or the actuator may have malfunctioned and not moved as expected.
These problems may lead to surgical accidents. In order to reduce this possibility, adding an independent software and hardware system to monitor the robot’s movements is an effective option.
The hardware and software system acts as a second pair of “eyes” to ensure that all the robot’s movements are normal. When the robot goes wrong, separate hardware and software systems can call medical staff for help or stop the operation.
No matter what engineer you hire, one of the most important things to do to protect yourself and reduce risk is to hire another independent engineer to review the lead designer’s work.
Of course, if you have a strong learning ability or experience, it is ok to do your own review.
Hiring low-cost engineers with less experience can really save you money. Often, hiring low-cost engineers can be disastrous because of the time and cost constraints of hardware products.
Most electrical engineering graduates have little experience designing circuits, and during college, engineering students spend most of their time analyzing existing circuits rather than designing new ones.
Being a good designer requires years of practical design experience, so it is often impossible to learn from a textbook.
Of course, engineers need a lot of “book knowledge,” but to design proficiently, you need practical experience.
Some hands-on experience is possible if you participate in various electronic design competitions or creative projects in your spare time during college.
It is crucial for start-ups to hire experienced engineers from the start.
Types of Electrical Engineers Electrical engineering can be divided into many specialties, and it is important that you choose an engineer with experience in the project area.
You wouldn’t ask a dentist to perform brain surgery, so don’t expect all electrical engineers to have all the skills they need to design products.
- Analog/digital circuit design
The type of electrical engineer you hire depends on whether you want to design analog or digital circuits.
We live in an analog world, where an analog signal is a signal that can have an infinite number of values, whereas a digital signal consists of only zeros and ones.
In general, designing analog circuits is more complicated than designing digital circuits, which is why so many electrical engineers now work in digital rather than analog circuits.
Sir Wei has spent a long time has not recruited a qualified analog circuit engineer, in the process of making products to pay a great deal of trial and error costs.
For example, the problem of static electricity caused by improper circuit design.
Because analog circuit design is difficult to automate, custom design is necessary. If your product involves analog circuits (almost all engineering projects have some), be sure to hire an analog circuit designer.
- Low power/high power design
Designing high-power power transmission systems for power companies requires completely different skills than designing small mobile devices, and most electrical engineers are experts in only one of these two areas.
Sir Wei participated in the development and design of large-scale electric power testing equipment in an enterprise during his university years, and the product is mainly used for high-power and high-voltage equipment.
More skills are needed in other areas than small electronic devices, otherwise unimaginable accidents can occur.
- High-level/low-level design
The hierarchy of circuit design is similar to software with lowest levels of 0 and 1 and highest level of graphical programming environment.
Low-level circuit design usually requires a deeper understanding of the principles, while high-level design is more about the system.
Below are some of the electronic design levels (from the highest level to the lowest).
1) Development suite
The highest level of electronic design is the use of development kits such as Arduino, which are only used for very early prototyping and proof-of-concept POCs.
2) Electronic module
Electronic modules are fully tested and certified solutions that can be integrated into other products.
Modules allow for mixed designs, with custom circuits and modules with more complex functions.
For example, many products are starting to use modules with wireless capabilities (WiFi modules, BLE modules, etc.).
3) Chip level
Designs using existing microchips are at the highest level of abstraction, and the engineers who design the chips have solved the most basic problems at all levels of principle.
For almost all products, chip-level design is targeted at the level where your product needs to be mass-produced.
4) Equipment-level design
A small number of products may require some discrete level design that uses more basic components, such as transistors, than integrated circuits (microchips).
5) Integrated circuits
This is probably one of the lowest levels of circuit design. When designing integrated circuits (that is, microchips), designers consider the principles of semiconductors while using very basic devices (e.g., transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc.).
- Wireless RF communication
If your product design includes wireless components, be sure to hire an electrical engineer experienced in designing RF (radio frequency) circuits.
In non-RF circuits, the electrical signals mainly follow the PCB, allowing some simplified assumptions to be made.
But RF systems propagate outside the wire, complicating the design. Most electrical engineers lack experience or knowledge of RF design.
- Embedded systems (microcontrollers)
Almost all modern electronics require a “brain”.
For example, the microwave oven has a microcontroller chip that detects the buttons you press and performs certain functions based on the execution of those buttons.
Most of Sir Wei’s projects involve a microcontroller and analog circuits, most of which require experience in embedded systems and analog circuit design.
How to find qualified engineers
- recommended
The best option is to get referrals, because you’ll get some immediate feedback on the quality of their work.
Referrals from your family, friends and colleagues are a reasonable place to start.
The two best types of referrals to engineers are referrals from other engineers or former customers.
Referrals from other engineers are very valuable, because it really takes an engineer to know a great engineer.
But not all great engineers are great choices for startups, so getting feedback from previous clients can be very beneficial.
- The university of
Another strategy for finding engineers is to keep in touch with any nearby university. Consider visiting the university’s engineering or electronics department.
- Professional job hunting Platform
- Online forums or groups
There are a variety of forums and groups on the Internet. Sir Wei will send requirements to professional groups when seeking cooperation in some scenarios. These are places you can try to contact engineers.
- Other hardware companies
Another option for finding engineers is to find other hardware startups, connect with them, and then ask a design engineer for advice.
This approach has several problems, but can be used in some situations.
The first problem is that small hardware startups are sometimes as hard to find as engineers.
Second, if you do find them, chances are they will be too busy developing their own product to respond to you.
- Prototype design website
If you are looking for an electronics designer or structural engineer, check out the PCB or structural prototyping web site.
There are usually a number of open, free design documents available on the site, and authors can be contacted to establish collaboration.
Finding the right engineer from the start is worth your time and effort, because changing engineers in the middle of a project can have varying degrees of adverse impact on the product.
Finally, no matter who you hire, be sure to get independent reviews and reviews of their work from other engineers.