Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1532278
60 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2025 What topics and disciplines would you recom- mend for them to study: SI, PI, RF, EMC, etc.? I don't like to generalize by saying, "Every- one should do XYZ." But if I had to make a firm recommendation, I'd start by developing a firm foundation in basic signal integrity. From there, you can branch off into any or all the other three you mentioned. You told us last year that you're always studying and trying to improve your knowledge base as an engineer. What resources do you study? I have a lot of books on signal and power integ- rity, as well as EMC. I don't like to single out specific books or authors, per se, but if you cornered me and I had to recommend a start- ing point, it would probably be Eric Boga- tin's Signal and Power Integrity—Simplified because it's pretty readable and at the sweet spot between equations, prose or explanations, and images and graphs. It's pretty linear too, as far as progressing between topics. ere are a lot of other good books. I like buying them on Kindle so that they're search- able and with me wherever I go. I also like the Printed Circuits Handbook because it covers so many topics, including manu- facturing. By the way, I like the I-Connect007 book series too, especially my stackup book, e Printed Circuit Designer's Guide to… Stackups: e Design Within the Design. How can we attract more young people into careers in PCB design engineering? One OEM CAD manager says she now visits high schools to demo the similarities between playing video games and designing circuitry. Well, I've never had to recruit people into this particular industry, but if I was in that role, I would view it like a college recruiting pro- gram for sports, or like the baseball farm sys- tem. Going beyond the obvious idea of intern- ships, I would speak at local universities and tech schools about the cool technology your company develops and have recruiters there to answer questions at a table and exchange infor- mation with interested attendees. is should be happening all the time. You might want to have someone in HR drive the logistics, and if you're ambitious about driving demand, you should develop a high school program in con- junction with some of the universities and tech colleges that you're recruiting from. You just need someone to drive the logistics. Do you think AI will have a bigger role in a design engineer's work life in the future, or even replace some design positions entirely? Every decade seems to bring something new and big. I'm old enough to have seen some tec- tonic technology shis that were initially fuzzy in terms of potential applications, but that gradually filled in over time. I didn't invent the internet like Al Gore, but I had accounts with CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL because I was interested in real time communications. at was back in the day when it was cutting edge to snail-mail someone a 3.5-inch floppy disk for work stuff. Another engineer told me about the internet in roughly 1992, and I asked, "How's it different? What can it do?" As I recall, at that point you could only pull up NASA satellite pics and a few other things. Now look where we are. e same thing happened with smartphones. My boss gave me an Apple Newton, which I view as the predecessor to smartphones. It had a stylus with handwriting recognition and I could write my name and it would come back with Fred Flintstone or something. But look where we are now. It will be the same with AI. Once more people touch it, it will move pretty fast to areas we might not anticipate. I won't even speculate where that will lead, or how it will affect people in their individual jobs, but I can definitely make a recommendation about how to benefit from it and avoid becoming a casualty. Bill Hargin