Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/952929
MARCH 2018 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 59 Matties: That's in line with China. Naicker: Yes, we are competitive. Many com- panies such as iPulse and Sierra Monitor are based in the USA, but their development work is done in South Africa. In the past, I've done work for companies like Flextronics, even National Semiconductor, mainly because of our in-house experience and the lower cost of development. Matties: What do you look for in a designer when you're hiring for your facility? Naicker: Skills can be taught, but attitude is harder to teach, so we always look for the right attitude. Also, a person must have a passion for what he's doing, and he must have a level of competence, obviously. Matties: Those are hard qualities to understand until after you've worked for somebody for a while. How does that process work, then? Naicker: South Africa is very strict with labor laws, so you can't just hire and fire. We go through an interview process which could be two or three sessions and do as much as we can in terms of doing some background checks on the person, an aptitude test, and that's the best we can really do. But generally, the atti- tude is good. Matties: Is there a lot of interest in the young people becoming circuit board designers in South Africa? I know in other regions it's not viewed as a glamorous career and I'm wonder- ing how it's perceived there. Naicker: PCB design is not pursued as a glam- orous career, but we have many EE graduates each year, and obviously PCB design is funda- mental to what they do. Most of the univer- sities in South Africa use Altium Designer, so the nice thing is that when they come out of university they are almost ready to be placed into companies. Generally, we turn out many thousands of engineers every year that are very capable. To give you an example, we are currently doing some interesting projects, such as designing a head for a drone, to detect gas leaks in underground mines. In the past canar- ies were used for this mission. We're doing another project involving a power manage- ment system for autonomous trucks in the mines. So there's quite many interesting proj- ects that we're doing for customers. Matties: How many local circuit board fabrica- tors are in your region? Naicker: I would say less than 10. Matties: So a small pool to choose from for some quick turn stuff, but it's there for you guys?