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28 The PCB Design Magazine • April 2014 Also among our ranks is a deep-sea fisher- man, a hiking aficionado, a vegetable farmer, an expert pub crawler, and much more I've left un- mentioned. These guys are so interesting, enter- taining, smart, and darned productive at work. I admire every one of them. Let's all be dorks together! I love this industry. Myth 2: PCB Designers are Just CAD Monkeys This one can really get my blood boiling! I can feel the heat of yours too. My first years in EDA were spent training to be a PCB designer. When I rubbed up against the EEs in my company, they would scoff at me like I was some bottom-feeder trying to get into the "in" crowd. I couldn't understand this, because I was pulling in big contracts for my company. What did it matter if I went to a five-year university as op- posed to learning a trade on the job? But you all know you are not CAD mon- keys! The training, experience, and creative as- pects that go into designing a board have got- ten more complex over time. And while many of the EEs are tied more closely to the physical design of the board now, a whole lot of them still need the experienced designers to complete a successful layout. Things may change over time, but I have no end of respect for the older designers who had to lay out boards with primi- tive systems, and the newer designers who have to understand sophisticated software to accom- plish a difficult task. Keep up the great work, folks! Myth 3: Girls Can't Work in Engineering As an athletic youth, I decided that I would prefer to be a boy. Boys could run faster, bike farther, and climb higher. I was so frustrated that I couldn't do the same, until my mother asked me, "Why not?" So I set out to be the quintessential tomboy, running the boys off the streets with my dirt bike, killing them in basket- ball, and generally emasculating them at every turn. I was bewildered as a senior in high school when I lamented to a past flame that it seemed like no boy ever "liked" me. He said, "Abby, you're one of the guys." After college, I was recruited into Intercept Technology as a database translation expert; this had been my summer job throughout high school and college. Migrating customers to our software was a full- time job back then, with all the shifting the EDA industry was doing, not to mention the incredibly slow proces- sors on our motherboards. When I was moved to the Mozaix project, our electri- cal engineering schematic application, the waves of ef- frontery were palpable. The notion that a non-engineer, and a girl at that, could have any input on whether a sche- matic application worked prop- erly caused my manager to go into fits of rage on a daily basis. I was told that I was too stupid to run this high-level software (yes, I really was told that), and that it didn't work for me because I had no idea how engineers do things. Someone at the top could see something I couldn't. My manager was eventually fired, and I was promoted deeper into the project. I'm now the product manager for that project and others, and most of what I designed and imple- mented since then was accomplished with the help of very intelligent engineers. These en- gineers work side by side with me every day. Granted, it took many years to earn their re- spect, but persistence was the key. For all wom- en in this field, I can only say that confidence and persistence is everything. For some of the less open-minded men, I would like to ask that you try a little more respect up front so we can all get more work done without the tension. The female brain can do a lot of amazing stuff, so eyes up, boys. The notion that a non- engineer, and a girl at that, could have any input on whether a schematic applica- tion worked properly caused my manager to go into fits of rage on a daily basis. I was told that I was too stupid to run this high-level software (yes, I really was told that), and that it didn't work for me because I had no idea how engineers do things. " " EDA MyTHBuSTERS: TIME FOR A NEW ERA continues software bytes