Working for manufacturer engineering couple years. Sharing the manufacturing experience, skill, DFx, design, and information. Be care of this blog is personal share and content may not be 100% correctly.
An engineer must be grounded, hands-on, and unafraid to get their hands dirty — learning by doing and using practical experience to verify theory.
Because of his job, Workingbear often visits various professional electronics manufacturing service (EMS) factories and spends a lot of time on production floors. He frequently interacts with process engineers and test engineers. To these engineers, Workingbear always emphasizes two things:
1. Do it yourself. 2. Always ask “why.”
Workingbear never hesitates to explain why something doesn’t work, or why it must be done a certain way. But over time, he’s noticed that after one or two years on the job, many engineers start believing they’ve already mastered everything. Then they begin to “talk more than they do.”
In fact, just take a walk on the production line and test them a little — you’ll often be surprised to find that many engineers actually know less about assembly details than the line leaders. Sometimes it even makes you wonder who the real engineers are. For products that have been in mass production for a while, this might make sense — line leaders work with the product every day and naturally know the assembly steps and testing procedures better. But during new product introduction (NPI), if engineers still understand less about the process than the line leaders, that’s a serious problem. Engineers might not have the same manual skill as operators, but they must understand every detail of the new process.
Engineers are called “engineers” for a reason — they understand how products work, how they’re designed, and how they’re built. Honestly, engineers are really “hands-on people.” Regardless of whether you’re experienced or new, the true way to grow as an engineer is to learn by doing. You can read as many documents as you like, but only by doing can you truly apply what you’ve learned. That’s how knowledge turns into skill — and experience.
So while you’re working, keep thinking: Why is it done this way? Could there be a better way?
Every product has its own characteristics, and every type of engineer should master their own field. A design engineer should at least know why a product is designed a certain way — why those dimensions, those tolerances, those resistor values? Don’t just copy the previous design. Likewise, a process engineer should be deeply familiar with the assembly process — and always look for ways to improve yield or reduce labor time. If an engineer doesn’t understand the details of their own process or product, can they really be called an engineer?
Workingbear appreciates people who learn like sponges — those who take initiative to absorb all kinds of knowledge. He believes there are two types of learning:
Learning from books — absorbing other people’s experiences and knowledge.
Learning from hands-on practice — gaining new insights through doing.
Practice makes perfect. Only by doing can you discover the little details that affect product assembly and understand where improvements can be made.
When analyzing problems or finding root causes, you often need to check the entire process step by step — or even perform the operation yourself. Many times, the “devil is in the details.” That’s why Workingbear strongly encourages engineers to embrace the spirit of learning by doing.
But being hands-on is not enough. Engineers must also learn to use their brains — and keep asking “why.” Why is the product assembled this way? What if we assemble it differently? Why does this part need this structure? Why is this area hard to assemble? Why does this circuit need an extra capacitor or resistor? Why are some traces deliberately curved instead of straight? Why did the previous generation set certain rules?
You may not find the answer right away, but you can think it through, or ask your seniors and colleagues, and verify the result. If an engineer doesn’t think critically, they’re no different from an operator or technician on the line — and can be easily replaced.
Take hand soldering, for example — one of Workingbear’s favorite questions for engineers.
“Why does a solder joint turn out bad? Is it the trouble of soldering iron? The operator’s poor skill? Or the product design? Have you verified it?” If it’s the iron — is the temperature dropping too much during soldering? Did you use a thermocouple to measure and record the actual temperature change?
Another soldering question: how can we get a good joint? Where should the soldering iron tip touch to heat most effectively? Do you just touch the pad briefly and quickly feed the solder wire? Or should you let the iron contact both the pad and the lead for a while before feeding solder? Most people can guess the right answer — but do you know why?
Temperature is the key to proper soldering. All parts being soldered — both the pad and the component lead — must reach the solder’s melting temperature to form an intermetallic compound (IMC). If only the pad is hot enough while the lead is still cold, the solder will wet the pad but not the lead, resulting in a cold solder or false joint. The reverse situation causes the same problem.
That’s why an engineer must both do and think — that’s how real understanding is built.
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