Egide:
EMC is just one part of the more generalized field of Regulatory Compliance. I started off in 1968, right out of college, with some background experience of being a TV station engineer, a ham and an electronics hobbyist (my experience in mowing lawns, unloading semis and selling ice cream seems to have been wasted). I walked into a small manufacturing operation making RFI filters, at a time when they were in flux immediately after being bought by a mini-conglomerate and having their couple of knowledgeable owners walk away with a wad of cash and no looking back. My first task was to support manufacturing, and then to figure out what could be done with a bunch of test gear that nobody understood. Turns out they had bought the estate of an old EMC guy, and I was fascinated by those wide-band receivers and weird boxes and funny gadgets. Pretty soon we had a test lab up and going, generating filter business for the production group. Testing eventually eclipsed production. And then we got re-organized and moved and re-organized and. I eventually spent most of my career doing one form or another of EMC, components through platforms, materials through site surveys, and a mountain of paper. OTOH, in retrospect, the industry has changed so much that my path may not be worth much current illumination (but thanks for asking, son). Many young engineers would see EMC and try their best to escape; reliability and compatibility were just not capable of engaging their spirits and talents, and they fled to the more glamorous programs or specialties. Two trends I noticed in EMC; the first is that the World used to be smaller. As an independent test lab, I dealt with clients, often very inexperienced in EMC, typically selling to a customer who had an in-house EMC guru. You dealt with both ends personally, establishing your competency and quality almost in person (there were no certification agencies or credentialing boards). Today, those services are provided with much more openness and transparency, and much more oversight. Under the old way, the same guy being picky about your test work could also be a guy who would explain a technical issue to you on another day. That doesn't work that way in today's business environment (and that's one reason why we are all gathered here in this electronic guild hall meeting). The other trend has been the shift from technical engineering to legal management. Towards the end, I spent more time on the definition of legal (contractual) issues, standards interpretation and customer / agency negotiations than I spent on knob-turning. And that may be a better description of Regulatory Compliance; an RC professional might really be closer to a lawyer or a manager than an engineer. And with that in mind, I wouldn't really recommend Regulatory Compliance to someone who really wanted to do Electrical/Electronic Engineering. Ed Price WB6WSN Chula Vista, CA USA - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://www.ieee-pses.org/list.html (including how to unsubscribe) List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <emcp...@radiusnorth.net> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com>
