Motorola's Government Electronics Group, in Scottsdale, AZ.
1987-1991
I worked at Motorola in 3 different capacities, first, during the summers while I was attending ASU for my B.S. in Electrical Engineering, then I was hired by Motorola as an engineer and spent the first 6 months in their Engineering Training Program that they had all new hires complete, then in their Radar and Transponder Division.
Custom Test Equipment Facility (Electronics Technician)
Summers - 1983-1986
While I was going to Arizona State University getting my B.S. in Electrical Engineering, in the summers, I worked as an electronics technician at the Motorola Government Electronics Group in Scottsdale (now a part of General Dynamics) in the Custom Test Equipment Facility. This was a small engineering team with just 3 engineers and 4 technicians which developed custom test equipment for a variety of military programs.
Things I did...
(click an assignment for more details)
- Drafting
- Assembly Language Programming for a shock test device
- BASIC Programming for a Sidearm missile testing system
Engineering Training Program (Electrical Engineer)
1987 (January - June)
When I graduated from ASU, I took a job at the company I had interned at over the summers. Instead of hiring engineers for specific projects, Motorola first placed all new hires into their Engineering Training Program, a 6-month program where we learned about how the company operates, toured various parts of the facilities, and also worked together on a number of small design-related projects. There were about 40 engineers in the program, which culminated in what they called 'the model project' which was a scaled-down version of an actual program under development somewhere in the company.
Those who were more software-oriented worked on an encrypted telephone system and at the end of the program were all moved into the department which was designing the next generation of secure telephones for the White House.
Those who were more hardware-oriented (including me) completed the following project in just 3 months (click for more details):
Radar and Transponder Division (Electrical Engineer)
When the Engineering Training Program ended I was placed in the Radar and Transponder Division.
Things I did...
(click an assignment for more details)
- APX-78/APX-105 Idenitification Friend-or-Foe and PPN-19 Radar Transponder Manufacturing Support Engineering
- Manufacturing Support Engineering for the Automatic Carrier Landing System (ACLS) for Naval Aircraft Carriers
- Research and Development of Microwave Filter Designs
The reason I left this job...
I had fully expected to work at Motorola for my entire career, which was still possible in the 1980s. However, a downturn in defense spending left Motorola scrambling and they had one of their first ever layoffs. In this layoff, their policy was that no department could let anyone go who had more than 10 years of experience before all people with less than 10 years of experience were laid off, so with only 5 years of experience, I was laid off (even though I was the only person in the department who knew how we were keeping the manufacturing lines running).