Are You a College Educated 46+ Male?
erco
Posts: 20,256
Jameco thinks so! Interesting survey of electronic hobbists. Just 2% girls!
http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?27589-Interesting-survey-of-electronic-hobbyists
http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?27589-Interesting-survey-of-electronic-hobbyists
Comments
-tor
Next question?
(I'm only partly college edumacated, never gradgeated.)
So to Tor's point, the Jameco customers willing to take a survey are college educated 46+ males.
I liked the question one of the Picaxe folks had - what do the demographics for Sparkfun or ADafruit look like in comparison? Younger? more fmales?
But then I worked for a couple of years before going to college (and never graduated).
I learned very little, especially about computers. To be fair, I learned about computers in high school, but even then the school was many years behind the real world (still using punched cards in 1982 for most courses).
The little I did learn was from, of course, the dedicated instructors. One of the best was an IBM gentleman on loan to the university, I wish I could remember his name.
But to go back to your original question...
I am a school-of-hard-knocks (mostly) self-educated 46+ male.
[Start of rant]
A few years ago, I looked into going back to school to get an associates degree. Despite 30+ years of development experience, and 70+ hours of college credit, I was still going to have to take "introduction to computers" and "introduction to basic programming". I even talked with one of the instructors; she agreed I "probably" didn't need to take the intros but that I should because I "might learn something". In other words, they need the money.
And what's with the requirement that you have to graduate within a certain number of years? Has anyone thought about people like me who can only take one class per semester due to time requirements? It might take me 6-7 years to graduate (especially if I have to take those intro classes). Just in time for me to retire.
[End of rant]
Walter
Yep. I have no doubt Adafruit's survey of the same thing would show a younger customer base, and more females, considering its founder is of the female persuasion, the outreach they've done curating products designed by females, and the types of products they are developing. It's just more interesting stuff for a younger clientele.
I love Jameco, but they're on the stiff side, just under Mouser, and then Digikey. That's going to attract a certain type of customer base.
For me, it's two out of three. Like some of the other respondents here, I had to go to work to support the family. No time to finish this here college thing. And like the sage Paul Simon once said, I don't believe it hurt me none.
Thank heaven for thermal ovens!!!
Time challenged? I don't think that's it at all. I would venture to guess that Xers, Yers, and Millennials have plenty of time-consuming hobbies -- just not electronics, unless you count video games. Electronics is the hobby du jour for a certain age, just like ham radio fills that niche for even older folks. The people playing with electronics now are the same ones who had TRS-80s and Apple IIs growing up and learned to enjoy programming and tinkering.
-Phil
Old hams never die, they just skip away. (Okay, it's a really old and stupid amateur radio joke my step father used to always say.)
And some hams are not only old, they're famous, too. Fans of classic 70s rock will instantly recognize this ancient fella, who is also a ham, and owner of the same Collins set I had as a young whippersnapper.
I'm guessin' Joe Walsh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_YXAEKJ054
Yes on the first try!
Not much of a guitar player, but a heck of a ham radio operator.
Really? From Mr. Walsh's wiki page: If I was a guitar player, I'd take props like that from either any of those three.
I'd put him in a very elite group of rock guitarists for sure.
Well, I have no idea, I have never heard him play the ham radio
Apparently, humor can sometimes be an elusive thing.
Of course I was kidding. Anyone who has seen Joe Walsh play knows his skills are second to none. Even when he was stoned out of his mind he played in the top 1%.
Sometimes the written word is taken literally!
Your comment did cause me to stumble across youtube clips from the Fender 50th Anniversary/Birthday concert.....wow!
...and of course one of my favorites, Eric Clapton playing "backup" to Mark Knopfler on Sultans of Swing......
Yes...yes I am.
I just wish I had something like The Art of Electronics at the time. Those guys knew how to write and teach.
2% girls doesn't surprise me given that electronics is a acquired taste to some degree. What girl wants to isolate themselves for hours and days on end learning the intricacies of Digital or Analog electronics, learning how to use a O'scope and Logic analyzers?
1) It assumes that electronics as a hobby is a solitary affair.
In my experience this is not true. I first started to get interested in such things at age 10. I had some friends around who shared those interests. We talked about it, we hacked on things together, we swapped parts and so on. Admittedly we were few compared to the number of kids more interested in football and such. At uni in the late 1970's there was an electronics group as part of the student union, we had a proto "hacker space" on campus. Then what about the amateur radio guys, always having social gatherings. Then there were the computer builders of the late 1970's / early 1980's and their meetups. In the modern world we have hacker spacers, the Maker Movement, things like this very forum. All in all electronics, like many human activities, is very social.
2) It assumes that girls cannot or will not pursue an activity that can take hours of solitary study and effort.
This is clearly not true. Is it really so that you have never seen girls doing such things?
I'm wondering what happened in the last four decades. In my school, then technical school, then university the were girls pursuing technical fields, maths, physics, electronics, engineering. Admittedly not many but at least some. Starting work in the 1980's there were girls around. I kind of assumed this trend would continue. Recall that women only became "people" around a hundred years ago when they got the right to vote. They entered the modern work place during the first world war and mores so in the second when the boys were away.
Recently I have come to realize that I don't remember the last time I saw a girl in a technical/engineering position in the work place.
Girls? Well - I am in a age where they say 'Sir' to me.
Not interested anymore.
Mike