Jesse Lackey said:
Obviously something smartly designed in Eagle - which you learned on
your own - will be more impressive than someone who knows
(orcad,pcad,...) from a school class and didn't do much real work with
it. IMHO anyway.
Unless you're hiring someone specifically as a PCB layout guy (or schematic
capture guy, although in my experience it's very uncommon for anyone other
than the design engineer to perform schematic capture anymore), which
particular EDA tool some guy I'm considering hiring has used in the past is
pretty close to the bottom of my list of things I care about (somewhere in the
same ballpark of how well they dress
). EDA software is just a tool, and
if it's clear you've already mastered one brand of hammer, it stands to reason
you can readily do so with any other hammer as well. On resumes I've
provided, I've always listed two sets of 'tools' experience I have -- one set
is software I feel I have well-above-average to expert competency in, whereas
the other set is stuff that, yeah, I've used it, but I'm no better than
average (if that) due to a lack of experience with it. This was in direct
response to my getting resumes from people where they listed every package
they every double-clicked on regardless of their experience level with it, and
my dismay at discovering this 5 minutes into an interview process. (I liked
the guy who said he had FPGA experience with "Xylinx" -- yeah, sure he did...)
In the long run (and a full-time salaried hire counts
as this) smart go-getter people are the best employees to have.
It's not particularly realistic to expect individuals to learn a full blown
commercial EDA tool on their own given that the license costs are typically
four digits if not five or even six. For instance, I've yet to meet anyone
who's learned how to use analog IC layout tools outside of a commercial or
(formal) educational setting.
In response to the original poster... OrCAD and PCAD are decent programs, but
arguably both of them are so popular these days mainly due to being around a
long time and being "good enough" -- not because, IMO, they're examples of
really, really good pieces of software (particularly OrCAD, which Cadence is
not even really actively developing anymore). Any employer who thinks that
someone having done one or two school projects with OrCAD or PCAD is somehow a
lot more qualified than someone using Eagle, is, IMO, an employer you should
be very cautious with in thinking you want to work for them -- it suggests
that they might be a little out of touch of what they really want in an
engineer (or else that the company has very undemanding projects to work on).
---Joel
