Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1004549
14 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2018 Shaughnessy: That's true. We hear about the "brain drain," where a lot of designers retired or left the industry during the 2002 and 2008 downturns. Webb: Yes, I see it as not a "brain drain" but as "expertise drain." But yes, we did lose a lot of people at that point. I also read an article about designers retiring, and within the next five years we could lose 25–50% of designers. Something has to be done so that we don't lose all that knowl- edge. Shaughnessy: It's a real issue. But I am seeing more young people. Are these primar- ily young people in your class? Webb: There are certainly a few people who have been around a while, probably engineers who have never been asked to do that kind of thing, and there are a few of the older people who got out of the business in 2008 or whatever and are trying to get a refresher to get back in. And there are some younger people too. It's a mix. The problem for younger people is that they don't really know about PCB design as a career while they are in school, so they may not know to pursue that area without a gentle push. Shaughnessy: Could an influx of EEs doing design be a good thing? We keep seeing all the signal integrity and EMC problems that design- ers have now. Will designers of the future need to have some engineering background? Webb: Oh, yeah! Every bit of knowledge improves the whole and designers and engi- neers working together would be a very good Image provided coutesy of Mentor thing. Designers didn't need to know what high-speed design was when I first started in this field, much less how it was defined and how to adjust for it. We didn't understand electromagnetic fields and return current and why they would become important in the future. But as technology has changed, so has the need for knowledge. So, yes, I definitely think that whoever's going to design the board needs to have a lot of technical information about how the electronics will work inside the board itself. And neither group has been taught that unless they have pushed themselves. I have bought lots of engineering books and attended a lot of classes and slogged my way through them trying to understand what they're say- ing because I didn't have an engineering background, and so I have learned and trained myself in that way. I think the design- ers have to be their own advocates and find a way to get the training they need. Things are constantly moving forward and chang- ing constantly. I remember when I went to my very first class ever taught by Rick Hartley in Austin. I didn't understand half of what he said, but I stuck with it and I've gone to several more of his over the years. The point is that Rick was also designing at much lower speeds back in the early '90s and yet what he taught was new to me. As today's speeds get faster and faster, all of us have to adjust and figure out what the changes need to be with the way we do things. If we don't con- tinue to learn, we won't be keeping up with what is current.