What should I look for in electronics designer?

[Harvey1999]

Hi guys,
After far too much time on the prototype bench aka my hobby table, I'm finally ready to push on past the concept stage and try and take this design further. I'm looking for an electronics design company / electronics engineer that I can work with on this job, and I'm after advice. As you can expect, this is an important decision. I don't want to throw away time and money on something that doesn't work out. Design, I'm find with. Social side of things...less so.

I've been reading a bunch of posts like this recently, but i'm curious if anyone else here has had experience working with / choosing an electronics engineer, and what you'd suggest I look out for doing the selection process? Questions I should ask? Things I should look out for? Any telltale signs that something might be too good to be true?

Thanks in advance!

 

[itsmoked]

That's a pretty hard answer to get here. I live in a tourist town and as a 'local' I'm often asked, "Where's the best hotel?" No locals have any idea, we never use them!

Likewise we don't typically work with a design bureau or consultant because we do our own designs. You'd have to ask non-EEs this kind of question.

You ask here, 'What kind of company', 'What kind of engineer'. There are a lot of them, they're all different, most are probably fine, most are probably exceptionally competent in a few narrow aspects and good enough in the rest. All of us would have different things that we'd consider 'most important'. Most of us would be able to tell you when certain competencies would be required depending given a particular project.

What I'm saying is besides the basics of any job; are they honest, generally competent, and dependable, it depends mostly on what your project is.

All I can recommend without knowing anything at all about your project is to talk with a few places about your project in general and see how you feel about:
1) The fidelity of the communication.
2) A feeling of their competence.
3) Their experience.
4) Their interest in helping you with your particular project.

If they can't give you a good feeling on these 4 points - move on.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[IRstuff]

One option is a job-shopper; there are lots of temp engineering agencies with a cadre of retired engineers that get paid by the hour

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[Harvey1999]

Thanks for these replies! You're right itsmoked, looking at it now I was a little vague in the original post. More info would have helped! However your list of general tips is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for that!

Also thanks IRstuff. I hadn't considered that, but given the relatively small scale of my current project, this could be exactly what I need!

Thanks again

 

[Sparweb]

Hi Harvey,
I've only once given such an "interview", and found the candidate at a trade show. While talking to the candidate, who represented a company of about a dozen people who specialized in custom electronics, I realized that I recognized one of the products on his display - it was a "black box" that a classmate of mine was selling. This revealed this was the sub-contractor that did the electronic prototyping for my classmate's company, and gave me a much better sense of their credibility than anything else the guy had to say.

So my advice to you is to interview candidate companies, and while you interview them, identify products they have made that are similar to yours, and then get references from the people who used their services. Not too similar of course - otherwise they will smell a competitor!

I'd also like to note that a lot of electronics seem to need testing before approval for service, and need to show compliance to many design standards. Make sure any candidate you choose is experienced with these procedures and will assist you with understanding their applicability to your project.

STF

 

[mukulcd]

Hi Harvey,

Yes, its very difficult to hire a good person. Although its completely depends upon what you actually want from him, but for startup you must hire a person which is multitasking.

Its ok, if He/she should not have deep knowledge of subject but he should be able to understand and can be able to handle multiple works. Of course you need to guide him, for any new or out of scope task but thats how you can utilize him fully.

Or second method of hiring, is to give away some task to him to check his capabilities before hiring.

Thanks,
Mukul
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