On 15 July 2015 I worked a twelve-hour day at Intel, Corporation. No one expected me to do this; especially my management because on 15 June 2015 they informed me that I met a formula– I was to be laid off. There was a lot of emotional and intellectual confusion about this unhappy event. While…
Tag: Working Well with Others
Creating Your Own Work- 1973 Oil Shock and Silicon for Space
When you’re working for a big company, like Union Carbide, they will have a big project of interest. The management has certain goals they want you to achieve- –very specific business goals. They’ll assign you the engineers you might need. You have a defined budget you have to keep within. You begin work on the…
Three Patents for PLD–That was Good
Let me share my experiences with Programmable Logic Devices (PLDs). Intel had a small group down in Folsom working on this technology. Because of re-orgs, my wife and I moved to Folsom and we lived down for eight years (1988-1994). As part of that team I came up with three patents. And it was just…
Six Months to Satisfaction- Large Team Frustrations
Q: What’s your most frustrating experiences as an engineer? A: Basically not being listened to. Like most people as an engineer not being listened to ranks up at the top of my frustration. While it’s easy to manage this in a one on one working relationship it becomes much harder in a larger team. Let…
A Difference in Ovens
I first heard this story as part of Kwabena’s presentation on OpenMV, a camera board. He spoke at the Oct 2016 Open Source Hardware Summit in Portland Oregon. As he described the path from idea to product I had an inkling this would be a good story for The Engineers’ Daughter. –Anne Meixner Ibrahim dreamed…
Attributions in the Engineering Community—From the Weak Write Test Mode Saga
I had approximately 500 Pentium (P54CS) parts that uniquely failed the Weak Write Test Mode (WWTM.) In the lab I ran the test on an IMS debug tester to diagnose the failing cell location–engineers always want more data. I talked to engineering managers regarding additional tests. The resulting list would require help from other engineering…
Proving You Can Find a Needle: From the Weak Write Test Mode Saga
Needles don’t occur in every haystack. Suppose you have developed a new method to detect a needle. Now prove it! Easy, you say—just toss some needles into a haystack and go find them. I faced this scenario with proving that Weak Write Test Mode would work. Two things needed to be proved: Did the new…
Facing John Waicukauski: From the Weighted Random Pattern Chronicles
Last year my friend Rick and I were talking about a mutual friend, John. Rick mentioned that some people found John intimidating; I stated I did not. Rick stared me in the eyes and stated “Anne, no one intimidates you.” Rick has known me nearly 20 years, mostly via our mutual world of ski instruction….
When I Really learned Ohm’s Law
Doc Fry first taught me Ohm’s Law; V=IxR. As a high school senior I joined my younger sister Margaret in Introduction to Electronics. For labs we played with vacuum tubes, voltage sources, resistors. I recall the countless times we had a mess of wires on our breadboard and nothing worked. We quickly learned the first…