Vote for the best Career path: Analog design heading!

best career path

I am in course of deciding my career path, I am wondering which career is the most rewarding in terms of:

- Work load and tension compared to salary
- Future: The ability of the engineer to keep a constant performance while being older
- Satisfaction
- Salary
- Availability

analog design career

I would be glad if you state the reasons for your votes!

Re: Vote for the best Career path

Here are some thoughts (I voted Analog).

- Analog is one of the few niches that still has aspects
of "art" to it. This makes you less of a commodity and
the more you develop your skills, the more you can
stand out. I spent about 5-7 years in digital and the
only thing that ever changed was the tools and the
number of possible transistors, which began to seem
like simply tiling larger and larger rooms with smaller
and smaller tile.

- Workload is a function of management, but tension
is a function of how well you think you can do the job
(workload is part, but not the key, once you
learn to push back on schedule). The more you are
"part of a team" (like almost all Big Digital has to be
anymore) the less you control your own fate and
the more stress. The more "commoditized" a field
the more management feels they can abuse those
they've got, and whip schedule by hiring more
bodies (despite those newbies, contributing nil for
a good while and maybe costing).

- Art grows with age while ability to take up new tools
does not (or, at least, I am less and less enthused
about Yet Another And No More Useful Than Before
tool or "methodology". And boy, do I pity those
digital ASIC guys who labor beneath a flock of failed
designers who have slid over to become Corporate
Methodology Harpies. Anyway, "analog guys" command
more respect as they age while "digital guys" seem to
just get older and marginalized on their way to being
laid off and replaced by some kid whose resume has
the right buzzwords du jour.

And software? Fuggedaboudit.

Re: Vote for the best Career path

Hi dick_freebird,
I appreciate your reply, your opinion matches mine!
But what about Telecom? I was always dreaming to be an analog guy but people disapointed me saying that IC design (especially Analog) is very hard, rare oppurtunities, requires more than the undergrad. studies, requires a long time to master, and in addition, the salaries are not as telecom guys.

I think telecom is the best career (even if I adore analog design), but it only requires taking few courses, you get employed with a B.S.c and get promoted with time with improved salary. It is a clear path, with no tension or high work load. The reason the salaries are high in telecom is that they make large profits.

I am really confused! I love Analog design, but I wouldn't take the risk of an ambigous, long, and hard career path with no finanicial reward while I can simply be a telecom engineer!

(Note: In Egypt, my country, we are an outsoucing country, thus, salaries are low for designers because they do low price work to US. While Telecom engineers work in companies that earns huge profits from mobile subscribers and thus salaries are far higher for engineers doing easier work than design)

What is your opinion?

I don't really have an opinion of telecom, have never
worked in that field.

I slid over to analog from digital by way of some time
doing "interface" products. I did not like the analog
oriented "stuff" in college, digital was easy "gut" course
work and my real interest was semiconductor physics.
But the jobs were in digital at the time, and I took the
best one I had offered to me at graduation.

From there, interest moved me toward the analog
side and I "learned by doing", dirty jobs that the
"real analog studs" were too busy or important to
waste on. Eventually I became a "good enough" one
myself. But no way would anyone have hired me at
the beginning.

There's more than one road, to where you want to
go. Perhaps longer and muddier. You can always
take the paycheck and set about finding the next
opportunity, less the pressure of rent and food.