Wanted: Experianced Embedded System Developer with a Brain

"I am a consultant and I am frequently hired by CEO's and CFO's who are at their whits end with the 'kids' that got hired by the other kids that got the job then decided the lights were brighter and more sparkley someplace else..." --- by FlyingGuy (989135) on SlashDot.org.

That seemed like a good introduction to this real Want Ad I saw on Craigs List this week. I have all of the experience they are looking, would you sign up based on this Ad (not that I'm looking right now)?:

EE / Embedded Control Hardware / Software Robot Instrumentation

Needed: One damn hot engineer to finish a robotics project for a very established company in East Pittsburgh Area.

This is a full time position but if you are some hot talented Carnegie Mellon University Robotics student we'll consider part time, as long as you perform and deliver ( unlike the previous degreed graduated CMU student.)

This is a robotics project but the robotics are simple. The little robot is designed to carry instrumentation into a tight, hot crack where no instrumentation has gone before.

Personal Requirement:

1.A brain. 2. A watch 3. A cell phone that you answer 4. Ability to give up girl friend for being paid professionally. 5. Working with us professionally between the hours of 7am and 7pm, and not the reverse.

Professional Requirements

An excellent understanding and experience with digital circuit design, layout and interfacing. You had darn well better know how to lay out circuit boards and use a hot air rework station to put down SMD if you have to. You need a full understanding of VLSI circuits as well as discrete circuitry. Motor control and instrumentation associated with robotics. Servo Motors, DC Motors, Step motors Motors, Encoders etc..

A phenomenal understanding of the ATMEL AVR type of chipsets and supporting circuits and an excellent command of the C language used for writing code for those chips. You must have a complete mastery of all of the chips features, A/D, I/O, all TX/RX methods, Counter Timers etc..because they are all in use. Reading the articles in Make Magazine do NOT count. Read the first line again; Phenomenal Understanding.

I would hope that you also have a competent ability to write software in a windows environment for the display of the data the robot sends back. Even if its liberty basic / visual basic that is ok, but we'd prefer a full C++ development environment expertise.

You need to have enough understanding of analog electronics to digitize, transmit, store and display the information as well as the use of DC power supplies and supporting instrumentation such as digital storage oscilloscopes. Don't go getting a funny look on your digital experience face if someone asks you about the impedance of your connection.

You must be able to produce and provide documentation. Schematics, illustrations, photo documentation of progress, component lists etc... so they don't have to be extorted from you if you no longer work for us.

You will be signed up with a non-disclosure and confidentiality agreement. You will have a police & background check performed on you as well as drug testing. No criminal history and no history of drug use. Period.

I personally don't care if you are a student, have a BS, MS, or a Ph.D. What we need is ability and capability along with a high desire (even desperation) to work and finish the project. We are looking or talent and I personally was probably doing assembly language programming and building circuits by hand before you were even dumping in your diapers...and I'll be the chief person interviewing you. Come prepared IF you make it to the interview process.

As with any project, there is a point where it ends but of course...what project have you seen that ever ends. A success of a project always moves to improvements and expansion of that project so there is the very very real potential for this to be full time unending employment. Full professional pay, full benefits, vacation time, medical, house, picket fence, 2.5 kids etc.

The work environment is professional in every sense. Nice office, large lab and work area, new Dell Computers for everything, excellent people to work for and just good natured and nice all around. No jag offs trying to make a joke at your expense. We guarantee that.

So you have a choice. The red pill or the blue pill. If you decide the blue pill than please wake up tomorrow and forget all about this. If you decide the red pill then please send back an email with your interest as well as your resume, experience, links to your website with photos /video of accomplishments/project (not your cat) etc...

The USA is basically in a depression and there millions of people out there with extreme talent looking for professional positions so if you want this position you had better make your submittal good.

Thank you, Steve.

Article: http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/egr/1049407629.html

Steve sums up my view, and the views of many of today's HR departments. Some of the HR blogs indicate that they have turned into babysitting services, to keep the newly degreed young people from moving on when they are hit with the least bit of negativity.

Like FlyingGuy in the introduction, I do my own part time consulting gig. I get called in to clean up the mess left by people with lots of letters after their name.

I once went in to clean up a project that was designed by a committee of people spread all over the world. The unit was large moving equipment that if something went wrong, people might die. The unit was composed of several different CPU modules communicating on a property bus. Each modules software was written by a different group in a different part of the world.

The operators requested speed was input in Feet Per Minute. The output to a Variable Frequency Drive was in tenths of Hertzs. The tachometer feedback was in RPM, and to top it off all the internal calculations where done in Radians-Per-Second.

The first thing I did to get the project back on track was to adopt a standardized variable naming convention, that included the units. For example the Operator Request became operator_request_fpm_u16. You then knew immediately you where dealing with Feet Per Minutes, and that it was a 16 bit unsigned variable. After the variable name clean up may of the bugs became self documented, when you saw something like "operator_request_fpm_u16 / vfd_hz_s32" in the code, you knew there was a problem that needed fixed...

What has been your experiences with hiring people? Do you turn away people with experience in favor of people with degrees?