Home > On-Demand Archives > Talks >
Don't Call Them Stupidents
Chris Bore - Watch Now - DSP Online Conference 2023 - Duration: 19:06
DSP remains a skill-shortage area: yet an employer obsession with experience means legions of freshly qualified Masters students - who have literally mastered their trade - are ignored by employers and recruiters.
In this talk I will moan about pointless and pathetic recruitment gatekeeping practices, big up the star quality of the many hundreds of Masters students, and engineers transitioning from othe fields into digital, with whom I have worked, trash the supposed superior knowledge of the gatekeepers, and politely suggest that employers take a long hard look at themselves and start to take some responsibility for growing the next generation of DSP engineers.
When I interview candidates, I often place some company products on the desk in front of them and hope they will pick them up and even just give them a cursory examination. I'd like them to comment on/criticize it, know that we made it, know that we always have competitors and who they might be, possibly even make suggestions for improvement. Alas, most do not. I ask them what they might like doing most. I ask them if they have any applicable hobbies, how they solve puzzles, what software they have used. I want to see if they are continuous learners from the get-go. I don't really care that they know the gain of the op-amp is actually NEGATIVE Rf/Rin, or what computer memory type is used when/where or that MATLAB uses matrix vector math. Sometimes they even know something about DSP. Hell, I don't have all the answers, but I expect them to get off their arse and find out the answers to questions that arise relating to their job. I am looking for intelligence, interest and self-motivation.
Dear Chris, thanks a lot for your motivating talk, which I could affiliate myself. Being self-employed for 33+ years now (I'm in my sixties), I know, how difficult it is to get people interested on board. Sometimes it is to give them a chance and they excel in a small team, since creating a product is mostly a team effort. Being a DSP engineer is only part of the solution. You need to understand the other domains, be it to apply AI/ML nowadays. In todays technology, there's a broad knowledge necessary, even how to use the tools, simulate etc. Therefore it is really hard to get someone in DSP, as lifelong learning is not something very popular. Again, great talk, thank you for speaking to us.
Wow, that was refreshing, Chris! As it happens my previous job was made redudant and have been looking for the past month. Here in Bristol the only DSP jobs are in Defence. I'm not a UK citizen (yet) and maybe for that reason I don't get even a reply. I've started following Christopher, thank you for the tip! - Emanuele
Hello Chris. Thank you for sharing your eye-opening wisdom born from experience.