Question of the Month: Should professional engineers have home labs?

I'm a self-employed hardware consultant so I have to have my own lab. It is a mix of gear from surplus stores, things bought privately, things that I built myself, and (rarely) something I had to buy new (ouch!). For development software, I use FOSS almost exclusively, except where I can't

From what I have observed there are two types of electrical engineers. Those who are passionate about electrical engineering in general, and those who do it as a job only. In my experience, If someone has a passion for electrical engineering they will have some form of home lab.

I think this is a very complicated question to unpack, but at the face of it, I would be very supportive of engineers having their own home labs. The difference between having equipment "at home" at not having the equipment can mean the difference between being able to explore possibilities on the weekend and doing your own experiments or having to wait to get into "the office". But of course, this points at a bigger thing - the home lab doesn't have to be used for work ... nor does it have to be funded by work. I know many who have decided to shell out money out of their own pockets just due to frustration of having to "wait" for answers or have their experiments sabotaged by the shared nature of lab equipment which can be frequently stolen or damaged (especially in an academic setting). Having it at home also allows you leisure to learn about automation and techniques which can make you more effective at work - especially for debugging and repair.

As someone who has been very fortunate with both RoadTest reviews and direct donations from vendors, my personal outlay has been relatively limited (mainly lower-end supplementary gear and accessories), but I am in a very fortunate position where my home lab (which is in my bedroom, literally) is actually better-equipped than my lab at work (although we're working to change this as we speak). Modern instruments have a lot of great features - such as web-based remote-front-panel capabilities and VNC remote-access which means that collaboration with test equipment has become a bit easier than trying to move a laptop around the room to get the webcam just at the right angle. The big plus is that because I know I take good care of my equipment - it's always there when I need it (and usually works).

I can't imagine a world the other way. A lot of my own personal interest has been enabled by having this test equipment at home - many organisations may not have such availability of equipment in a work lab and they would certainly frown on doing "personal" experiments in work time (especially those which might be somewhat dangerous). Further to that - I just don't see any substitute to hands-on time with an instrument in terms of becoming familiar with its operation (in spite of very detailed manuals being available).

It would be nice if companies were happy to sponsor and enable workers to have a home-lab, but the expense can be crippling and the logistics are not always straightforward due to the fragility, physical heft and (potential) calibration requirements. Sensitive work is also an issue, especially as the separation between work and private intellectual property can become quite troublesome - the rule in our organisation is that if you did it using our equipment, and you are an employee, then the IP would be claimed for the organisation regardless of the time in which it was developed.

In the end, I don't use any company-based equipment at home - because I don't have to! My colleagues often do, in which case the lower-cost items can be loaned from the lab. We have frequently done this to support field-based experiments and operations - so extending this to work-from-home is not a particularly big step. But whether there is enough "supporting infrastructure" is another thing - you lend out a power supply, then you realise you need a DMM, cables, test leads, an ESD mat, a grounding plug ... and then maybe you realise that a DSO would have been better. Sometimes having half-the-equipment is more frustrating than waiting ...

That's my (rather long) 2c ...

- Gough

I sort of fall into the same category as you michaelkellett. On and off throughout my career, I have worked for myself (part and full time consulting). After retiring from full time work (the very next day) I continued to consult.  Back when I was starting my own company (and also doing consulting), I started to seriously build up my home office.  Now, after 7+ years of retirement, I am continuing to expand my home office (buying and building tools/instrumentation, along with getting some great pieces of equipment from element14 roadtests).

More directly, to the question, "Should professional engineers have home labs?" I think that there are good reasons to provide/loan employees equipment to allow them to be more efficient in their product development.  There have been times where I have been allowed to work from home for extended periods, and I was provided with the necessary tools to preform my job, from computers to a wide range of test equipment.  While developing some automated test equipment, I had built a desktop version of one of our testers that I had in my office, so that I could easily test the code that I was developing.  When I had a serious injury, and I was unable to drive, I had some friend load up my computers and test equipment from my office and deliver it my house.  While I was recovering, I was able to work from home (and this was back in the late 80's when working from home was not very common). Should an employer supply their engineers with everything they need to work from home?  I am not sure that in all cases that would be financially feasible.  I have had difficulty justifying the purchase of equipment that could be used by all members on site, having to do that for all engineers working at home would be nearly impossible. 

Dropping around 28,000 of them into the Pacific Ocean in 1992 probably didn't help

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_Floatees_spill

A good mentor is .... (fill in your own superlative).

Those rubber ducks really get around...

Good points. Bouncing ideas could  be, should be, would be a useful activity, but even in a building full of staff it can be rare. You have need-to-know directives, silo mentality, turf protection, idea hoarding, IP paranoia, personality conflicts, fear of ridicule, image protection, credit competition, introversion and fear of negative criticism that can all effectively torpedo any hope of decent interaction. It would be nice to be able to combat these road blocks, but it can be a full on war zone, complete with land mines, snipers, mortars, drones, cruise missiles and IEDs. Maybe even chemical warfare. 

Sometimes being a one man operation isn't so bad.

I think in this community it is called "Blue man debugging". Sometimes they respond with wild hand waving. 

michaelkellett said:

bounce ideas or problems off other people

I think there's a lot of unspoken value in this. Regardless of if the other person is even technical.