" I certainly doesn't share it (nor does most of the company in Montreal)."

LOL that's because of government interference, not because of actual results...

Good luck making the kind of boards I've done with Altium, you've already said that your only experience was ONE board, what the hell do you know?

" I work with Bombardier so I you can sleep safe knowing Bombardier doesn't hire PCB designer."

There you go. Finally you're starting to see. There are no more electronics companies in Montreal.

" I really wonder what are those odd orange mechanical things I've been working with in the last few years."

They're the things you *maintain*, certainly not *design* or build. ETS is the new technician factory. You don't have what it takes to design robots. You're an "engineer" the same way an aircraft maintenance engineer is an engineer, because the government says so, not because of what you can actually *do*.

Quebec was also the only place in the world AFAIK that had a tax on tax, they shamelessly added the provincial sales tax on top of the sub-total with the Canadian sales tax...

Even the corrupt, greedy, selfish psychopaths running this banana republic had to agree this was excessive, they changed the formula but adjusted the rate to come out to the same total in the end. But now they can say they no longer tax tax.

This place is so absurd and laughable.

Because electrical engineering is a shrinking profession ? You can't see that? There is nothing left to *do* in electrical engineering, but everywhere else you look in Montreal it's just lawyers and notaries and accountants and MBAs blowing each other to manage this or that.

I think I need to sit down with you and explain a few things to you. You're headed for trouble with your naive tech-only worldview. It *will* explode in your face like a grenade launched by a fat Quebecois pig into an 18 year old's face. Wait for your first gray hair. You'll see.

And if you don't see the problem of being with a hot woman you can't have sex with, you're either very gay or very young. Past a certain age, young women don't look at you anymore, and women your own age start looking LIKE you.

Your engineering job can be done by anyone around the planet, and one day will be. Getting a degree in something that is tied BY LAW to be *local*, that's much better. No one is going to get their condo managed by someone in China, but all your precious robots are already all being built there.

Compris?

Here, go support Quebec and borrow the book locally:

http://iris.banq.qc.ca/alswww2...

He thinks Quebec isn't "corrupt", it *IS* corrupt. It's not even a question! I mean it's just written by a police officer with a foreword from the president of Interpol.

Can you name the equivalent of the Commission Charbonneau for Ontario? If the worst they can do in Toronto is Rob Ford, I'll choose that!

http://www.macleans.ca/news/ca...

You telling me you can look at your paycheck, your property taxes, all the other taxes in this province and look at the state of the province and you don't think it's more corrupt than anywhere else?

"(wanna talk about the hundred billion tax break of the oil company in the US?)."

Sure, but what does that have to do with the price of poutine in Longueuil? The US sure has a better economy than we do!

So with all due respect, you know maybe 10% of Altium and 5% of Allegro, and 0% of the PCB design landscape as a profession.

So much for humility. All your claims about the programs being similar are garbage.

And "robotics" is probably a fancy word for "I assemble PLCs to put labels on lipstick containers and use ladder diagrams to adjust the timing of label maker". Come on, there's no "robotics" in Quebec. Lots of silliness, but no real companies, no real products. There used to be EMS in Ste Anne that worked on the Canadarm, but with the Shuttle gone, yeah.... That was 20 years ago.

I really want to know where you work so I never have the misfortune of working in the same building as you. It's bad enough we're in the same province.

http://www.ameq.org/membres/re...

Just give me a hint, or give me the NEQ.

But you're right about one thing, I have to work harder to get out of this inbred province of retards. And yeah, you ETS guys are the laughing stock of all the real engineers I know. They resent you for not having the same workload and same quality of education as they do.

I know a guy who graduated from ETS from when it was just a technical college, so I know very well the history. Spare me, ETS is just a meat-grinder to get kids to pay for an education that may very well never materialize into jobs. How about that Hydro Quebec work program hm?

Quebec, the province, or Quebec, the city? Because what you're describing is more of a Quebec city thing!

Over 50. You might as well shoot yourself in the head at my age. I tried already to go back to university, you think I enjoy being surrounded by women I can never touch and little pipsqueaks with no knowledge?

I tried Concordia, got accepted no problem in their EE program. I had to re-do basic chemistry, which was fine because most people in that chem class were young women in nursing. For some reason, the hottest woman there teamed up with me. Like, crazy hot. Like, movie hot. That never happened to me before!

Anyways, I was a junior chemist in high school and was already making nitroglycerine and various propellants on my own. You think I have a problem with the Periodic Table of Elements?

First lab we did we had to hand in the lab report, I was shocked to see the amount of reports still hand-written and on spiral-bound paper ripped from the binder. I handed in a professional-level formatted document with perfectly laid-out equations and no spelling mistakes. I even calculated the volume of the bottom of the test tube to account for experimental error.

The T.A. took away marks at random from my report. I went to see him and he said "I didn't like what I saw". You didn't LIKE it? You're having sex with 23 year old women and you have the energy to criticize my choice of fonts?

I went as high up as I could in that department to get my fucking marks because my report was 100% accurate as proven by the dep't head.

I dropped out right after because if I have to fight every step of the way for this shit, just to end up working with people like you, hand me the 12 gauge, put both barrels in my mouth and pull both triggers.

"you should have access to a huge scholarship "

You're delusional. I could cash in my REERs to do a LLP, but certainly never in engineering, I'm not THAT stupid. I'll go into law or administration.

You talk about society valuing paper more than skill, wait til you get old and see how the technical sector treats you!

But you gotta admit I have you Altium guys figured out!

"No, I know both program and I've done multi-layer and high speed. Granted, faster I've make is about 300MHz on 4 layer b"

So, DC on hobby boards. This is the sign of a healthy tech sector in Montreal?

For sure, there's nothing special about the day care rates here if in any case you're being robbed from all sides with school tax, welcome tax, income tax, etc...

Oh, so I have to be super-confident and positive to apply for jobs, but if I repeat what others tell me, I have a humility problem? *I* don't think I'm that good, I'm just repeating what I've been told.

I'm sorry, so should I keep that to myself in an interview and just say well, *I* think I'm not that good?

Learn to read what is written instead of projecting your own horrid personality onto other people.

" greatly similar to the one you know already?"

OK, you're clueless. They couldn't be more different if Cadence ran on a Difference Engine. Ever used Allegro? Ah, you're a manager, got it.

" learn the damn program "

Sure, where can I download it legally when I'm unemployed? Should I enter your company name perhaps? Try it with "self" and see how far you get with Altium. Cadence on the other hand has a program to keep unemployed PCB designers up to date with Cadence products.

" you can be certain that all the new engineer from the ETS with a shit-load experience in Altium will kick your ass in every interview around Montreal. "

ETS is a hand-holding kindergarten of a failed college that became a "university" through lobbying. That new ETS engineer can't wipe his ass without first reaching for his big TI calculator. Concordia is hardly better, I've dealt with their "mechatronics" people and holy crap, I'm amazed they don't need helmets in everyday life.

I don't think they'll have a "shit load" of experience after 4 years at ETS... LOL, come on.

" I've found easily a dozen job offer for PCB designer in the USA (and even a few in Canada) in a few minutes."

You think I didn't find those "jobs" too? Think I didn't apply? You think I have an ego problem but you think you can read my mind? You think a "dozen" across North America indicates a lot of jobs?

I never hear back from them. Ever. You think there aren't 25000 qualified PCB designers in the States? What employer would go to the trouble of hiring someone from Canada in what is, at best, a semi-skilled profession? In *this* economy?! I know a guy who did it back in the telecom boom times, sure.

Now???

"Do you even know how to use Google?""

Arrogance, much?

Ho boy, thanks for the eye-opening insight into the mind of a psychopath, and a good belly laugh. I think I'd rather go back to the prisoners in the warehouses than the kind of sour, crappy person you are. At least with the prisoners they stab you in the face, not the back.

Because I don't have a bachelor's degree. I could learn to make an ARM from sand I find on the street and HR will just send my CV to /dev/nul and that's the end of that.

And please explain how I will learn Altium when I'm unemployed and can't download the legal eval copy?

Plus Altium sucks. To me it almost guarantees the kind of employer who thinks 35 parts on a board and 4 layers is on the same level as solving nuclear fusion power.

Look. This is the kind of complexity I've tackled.

http://tinypic.com/r/detlat/8

You think I'd have a hard time learning Altium? For what?

Please tell me more. Not about the idiots, I know about those, but what you did to leave, what you work in, are you on quitterlequebec.com?

Aerospace? You mean like CAE that is a depressing, miserable place to work for? Hydro? You mean a technology that can't be exported just anywhere? Videogames? This is your idea of an economy? A bunch of kids drawing pictures so other kids can spend their days in front of monitors? Fuck me! If you're 40 and still give a shit about video games you need a life re-appraisal.

And no other province can do that? They sure can, without the continuous background of corruption and high taxes.

Absolutely untrue. I've been told many times I'm the best PCB designer engineers have worked with, and I do know the biggest tool in the industry, Cadence. Now that the economy is crashed, everyone wants Altium experience.

The reality is that I'm a stubborn and very naive person, I persisted in doing PCB design even though I know that Montreal is dead and finished in high tech. Or in *that* kind of high tech. There's an abundance of startups working on increasingly baffling (to me) products that obviously have no meaning or use whatsoever. Yes, yes, that intelligent internet enabled wearable t-shirt is the future of mankind. Fuck me.

I've worked on all kinds of materials to 12GHz, I've done 24 layer multi-material boards with blind and buried vias, I came up with novel power-bypassing schemes, I can solder, prototype, write scripts, automate boring CAD tasks, worked with suppliers, ordered prototypes, etc..

I'm not just a PCB designer, I can handle all kinds of tasks.

"Oh but we see a gray hair, and you don't know the ARM architecture? What's this? Cadence? Buh bye!"

The few contacts I still have left here don't like me. One guy said I "betrayed" him when he hired me as a technician but then I was drafted (ha) to PCB design by *his* boss because of my previous experience. What did he expect? Blood ties after a year of work soldering wires?

Then this guy left to start his own company which apparently isn't a betrayal. I can't deal with the kind of soap-opera drama that people bring to the table.

The double-standards, the back stabbing, the fact that people will hang on to a bad joke I made 15 years ago but forget the 100 hour weeks I can do to finish a project, I'm barely able to get work to stack boxes in a warehouse. (I really did do that, the guys there are kind of scary, they're all on prison-work programs with tattoos and broken noses, and they see me with my baby face and lady fingers.... get it?)

Sorry, my quality of life is miserable here. I tried to get a simple job with the government for 14$/hour, which is lower that I made 20 years ago, they wanted to do a RCMP background check on me, I then asked them how come Arthur Porter was able to be hired at the CHUM to defraud the government out of millions of dollars even though everyone knew he screwed over the Detroit hospital. Why check me and not the real robbers? People who lose millions are OK, lose a pen and HR escorts you out?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.montrealgazette.com...

Needless to say, I didn't get far there. I'm fed up of being robbed and defrauded by people who will suffer no consequences while I pay their retirement with my taxes for the rest of my life with my 14$/hr job.

I'm more and more outraged by where we are heading as society, excuse me if I don't have the same eagerness that I had at 20 about yet another microprocessor, yet another LED, yet another logic gate, etc.

I am outraged that employers don't even offer long term employment but then have the gall to say "but with your experience, if we hire you, you won't stay!"

OF COURSE I WON'T STAY YOU COCK KNOB, YOU'RE NOT OFFERING ANYTHING WORTH STAYING FOR!

I need to EAT, what am I supposed to do? LIE?

Is that it?

"Oh yes, I saw your website and am very excited to work on yet another disposable tech bauble while we are being robbed daily! Sure!"

There are no more large hardware electrical engineering companies in Montreal. Forget it. You want an example?

OK, here goes, there's a company that builds simulators for large equipment here. My friend, an engineer, had to go through three interviews, including one with the CTO. He had to make a whole song and dance routine. The company acted like they are building a Tokamak.

The job? Wiring joysticks. A switch, a connector, a cable, a light, maybe a second connector. Ooh, and then making a drawing. Yeah, exhausting.

My cat could do that job, yet the job had three pages of "requirements".

I can't deal with this kind of Kafkaesque theatre of the absurd anymore. Let's just say I understand depressed people, and I look at old people and I'm more and more sure I'll never make it to that age. And knowing that my parents definitely have longevity genes, I can't even count on a nice, fat heart attack to take me out.

With you on that. This province is getting more surreal and absurd by the minute, and judging by the rightful student protests, it's not just old-man grumpiness talking here.