The schools these days want you knowing only the minimal necessery for the job aince knowing more makes you dangerous to the government or companies wanting to trick you over a product or sceince claim.

Thanks, I needed a boost.

Yeah, during my 17 year tenure at wireless company involving extensive R&D, it seems that interns that came from universities didn't know the hands on basics, thought they were brilliant theoreticians, and mathematicians. The co-ops that came from community college, however, could solder, design, layout a pcb, troubleshoot their work, and make things happen. Not many of the engineering students were 'tinkerers' at home, whereas most of the college bunch built stuff at home, and/or were ham radio ops, etc. Great article!

The thing about hobbies, all hobbies is that there is an enormous disparity between the most knowledgeable and experienced, and the least knowledgeable and experienced. There are astronomy 'hobbyists' who can point up at the Heavens and rattle off info about virtually every heavenly body up there. There are such hobbyists who have identified new comets, and more than one comet at that! The professionals at the nearest observatory have these people on speed-dial. Every hobby is like this. As for what the 'average' electronics hobbyist should be expected to know, there is no average hobbyist. I'm retired from a career in the electronics business, but I still enjoy it so now I'm a hobbyist. Besides, I'm entirely self-taught. No degree or certificate of any kind. So I'm a hobbyist. But a while back I found myself describing how to design an optimum physically short antenna for 1750 meters. Who was I describing it to? A physicist from NIST who needed an efficient Longwave antenna. I had no idea who he was. I figured he was just another hobbyist. When I finished answering his questions he said something to the effect of, "Thanks. I'm a physicist at NIST, and you have just saved me a month of work researching this topic." So yes, I'm a hobbyist, and yes I can do all of the things stipulated in this job description. I can even edit new product owners manuals because I not only understand electronics, but I can also spell, something precious few EE's appear to be able to do.

So the real question is this. Does the job pay what a hobbyist with that well-rounded skill-set deserves to be paid? Apparently not. People who run businesses always want something for nothing, or very little. That's the nature of business people. It's how they make money. In the end they either grudging pay someone what the job is worth or they have to do it themselves if they want it done.

Yep, that job description described a well-rounded hobbyist, but it also described an experienced tech, they're the same person. The difference between the 2 is that Dave is hoping the hobbyist will show up at work every day and do a tech's job for a hobbyist's pay. But the moment I have to set my alarm clock and show up every day at a job doing what I'm told to do instead of what I WANT to be doing, I stop being a hobbyist and become a tech looking to make a living. The only people willing to work for less than a good tech wage are people who AREN'T qualified for the tech job. If they are, then they want a tech's wage.

No you are absolutely not asking for too much, the problem with todays students and hobbyists are they are lazy and looking for instant joy and moving on, they don’t get to appreciate all hard work and passion being put into the products they use.

I believe that at the core of it you need to have passion for it. Not a dream of it.

"basic design, layout, construction, debugging, and firmware skills"…if i erase the word "basic" will you get a professional range?

The worts part of electronics for me is getting the parts..I mean buying them…I know its silly ..I mean there is eBay ..and the rest of them..but still..can you do a video explaining where to get parts if your from Europe or USA. What companies do you order from?..I would be gratefull..thanks

Speaking to this video in 2021, this is fascinating to me because a new type of hobbyist has emerged that's somewhere in between all of this: the Ardiuno/Raspberry Pi/SBC based electronics hobbyist. This type skews way more into a mix of coding and bare understanding of interfacing, in part because the bar to entry is extremely low. While this has made entry level more fun and simpler, I feel it also has nerfed a lot of intro level understanding that electronics hobbyists previously had to know. Why build a 555 timer when the SBC does it for you to blink that LED? Why build an LED segment interface when you can just wire in a prebuilt panel on I2C? Thus, I feel the knowledge gap you refer to is actually increasing in many ways as this type of electronics hobby takes over. That's not to say I hate it or think it's bad; those who really want to know will always gravitate towards more knowledge. I do think, though, that the knowledge you describe being common to hobbyists is effectively no longer the norm; it's become the exception.

Not asking too much at all except to say there are some hobbyists who skew heavily toward the software side, whiz C/C++ programmers who can't solder well and don't know what a bypass cap is, and some whonskew heavily away from the software side, who'll grab something from GitHub, tweak it a little and upload it with Arduino IDE and spend the rest of the time in the hardware side.

My college has got 2 projects in the first year: a simple amplifier and a line following robot. These projects don't always work as expected but the students are able to design and test basic circuits and write programs in C. Their PCB skills are often limited to soldering perfboard until the second year where they learn how to use kicad.

You are right. Hobbyist are individuals who spend their time doing things they like. By doing that, they would self demand a certain level of standard.

Freshman in high school in 1982-3, Oceanside, CA. Mr. Hochart's electronics class… I have to ask, does california still offer electronics in high school? I had been messing around since about 8 years old, so I even had a head start. I think computers and internet may have killed some of it these days maybe? A few months ago, I saw a lower twenty-something showing off his "soldering"…it was hideous, and his state of the art soldering iron was one of those ten dollar pieces of shiz from the cheap bin at the hardware store…I actually pointed him to your tutorial, and the one with your boy to learn how to do it right.

All of thos3 skills are required for my hobby. There are real hobbiists who learn so they can take 5hier crazy design to the next level, like i did, and there are hobbyists who assemble kits.
As with model aircraft…. some design and build, tweak and tune. Some play with Airfix.
The real hobbists will apply…. the kit builders wil bitch and moan.
If only i lived in aus.

I dont think you're asking too much of somebody who wants to work at an electronics business but you're asking too much of what it means to be a "real" hobbyist. I know this video's 6 years old but you really do sound like an asshole who used a poor choice of words in a hiring ad and decided to blame other people for it.