Job Interview "Electrical Engineer"

Electrical Engineer

Research:

Definition for an Electrical Engineer:

Works in a branch of engineering that deals with the practical application of electricity especially as related to communications, the distribution of power, and the design and operation of machinery and equipment.

This occupation typically involves the creation of circuits for computers, lights, screens and all other modern technology to even be what it is.  The reason I picked this field of study is that it doesn’t get more computer or tech savvy then this.

This occupation is growing at a substantial rate with the growth and knowledge we gain by creating and studying technology and electronics.  Electronics have become apart of modern day life and often gets overlooked.  I mean when you think of a circuit you think of power going into a switch going into a load, such as a light bulb then into a grounding source.  An electrical engineer makes thousands of circuits on one microchip and has to figure out and decide when and where that power has to travel and split to make the creation work the way it needs to.

It takes a whole lot of math and will power to design these circuits, and that was just one field an electrical engineer can venture.  Another field is coding and software.  Once you get the device built and to simply power on, what now?  An electrical engineer must then create a code of on and off to make the thing “talk”.  Its crazy to think all your smartphone knows is 1-On and 0-Off, This language is known as Binary, it is like knowing another language if you can figure this out. 

Interview:

Company: Quantronix Inc.

Job Title: Electrical Engineer

Job Holder: Brandon Taylor

Me: What made you seek a career in engineering?

Brandon: As a kid I had fun taking things apart and figuring out how to put them back together.  This career is almost like that.

Me: What does your job consist of?

Brandon: I design different weighing and dimension systems for distribution companies.  I do both the hardware and software or in other words I build the thing and teach it how to talk.

Me: What is the hardest part of your job?

Brandon: Teaching the thing to speak, there are always brain blocks in the hardware so fixing and getting them to talk the way you’d like them to is the most difficult part of my job.

Me: What is the best part of your job?

Brandon: I love every part of my job but probably getting the thing built and talking, or pretty much seeing it work how I had envisioned is the best and most rewarding part of my job.

Me: Last question, what would you recommend to anyone seeking a career in this field?

Brandon: Don’t let the math get you down, why you use a lot of math in this career you learn it so much more easily by doing this stuff.  It almost becomes second nature once you get seasoned.

136-199 "The World Is Flat" Offshoring and Modern Business

1)    What is offshoring and how is that different from outsourcing?

Offshoring is when a company moves a department or the whole company outside of its origin.  A typical example is a lot of United States based companies setup their manufacturing in another country such as China.  They do this to save money on the labor and the taxes in many cases.  The difference between this and outsourcing is that it is still apart of your company; you aren’t having another company do the work for your company.

2)    What is a supply chain and how to Wal-Mart use their supply chain to their advantage?

A supply chain is a basically a large distribution of goods, or a sequence of production.  Wal-Mart is a huge corporation; one way that they can do that uses a supply chain to their advantage is always having a location readily available for consumers to come purchase goods.  This is a huge advantage to Wal-Mart, having the physical location for many consumers to go to.  One advantage to that alone is the fact that many other companies use goods from Wal-Mart.  The best example I can give for this is restaurants.  Wal-Mart owns Sam’s Club, which is a place where many restaurants go to purchase groceries, and other commodities such as plates and silverware.  Wal-Mart essentially being convenient for people to go to makes a huge difference in the buying world.

3)    How has Google affected businesses?

Google has both its benefits and downfalls to businesses.  I will start with the upside.  With being so well known and used, if a business can get their name put on Google to come up readily in a search, that brings in a lot of business.  The other benefit is it helps people not go to large corporations and go to the little guy’s cause you can look up whatever good, or service you need and typically you’ll see a little business nearby to you that it’d be nice to support.

Now for a downside, Google brings up businesses close and far, typically if somebody can save a little bit of money buy purchasing online they are going to do it, bypassing a lot of companies for dollars.  It makes the world a much more competitive place when you can literally save hundreds or cents on the same product or service.