Tekmos' Blog

After 6 years at our present location in east Austin, Tekmos is moving to new facilities in west Austin. And we are taking advantage of the move to address the new normal for professional employees. Before the Covid pandemic, we had perhaps 10% of the company working remotely. During the initial lock-down, this percentage went up to 75%, though it has drifted back down to about 50%. We believe that there has been a fundamental change in office organization, and that working from home is not a temporary reaction to the pandemic, but instead a permanent change in the way of doing business. We choose to embrace this change.

The new facilities are mainly for manufacturing. Testing, baking, tape and reeling, and shipping must be done on-site. On the other hand, professionals will work remotely, reducing the need for on-site offices and cubes.

There have been problems associated with half of the company working remotely, with the main one being communications, both external and internal. Externally, the traditional phone system doesn’t work well when there is no one around to answer the phone. So, we are replacing it with a VOIP based system. As a side note, switching to a VOIP system has led to interesting discussions about who really needs a phone.

These days, almost all external customer communications are through video calls. The only calls coming in through the land line are an occasional new customer query, an occasional finance question, and with the clear majority of incoming calls being spam. Does an engineer need a VOIP license, or will he be equally served by transferring the occasional call to him? We decided to drop engineering and most manufacturing from the system, and will use call forwarding to cell phones for those few legitimate calls.

The big communications issue is internal communications, which is mostly resolved with IT solutions. We have provided cameras and headsets, and switched to Microsoft Teams for meetings and informal conversations. That is working well, with most people having adapted to using it as the main means of communication. We are going to switch to a cloud based Microsoft mail server to allow for a tighter integration of email with Teams. File sharing is more difficult, since we are no longer on the same network. We solve this by doing a two-step transfer, using the company servers as an intermediate step. Accounting is also affected, and we are going to switch to a cloud based system.

Do people love remote work? For most, including at Tekmos, they do, and it’s mainly the flexibility. Travel and commute are reduced including the cost of both. There is a reduction of distractions. The ability to travel and live anywhere, including outside of major cities offers workers the ability to be closer to family. A big plus is often an increase in productivity.

At Tekmos we use Microsoft Teams to share, communicate by division and as a company. While we use our company email to share across our divisions, and telephone calls, Microsoft Teams allows us to see, hear, share, and speak to one another as a group or one on one using cameras, microphones and headsets. Tekmos' communication skills have improved greatly which has increased cohesiveness among team members.

US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that 4.7 million people, which make about 3.4% of the US workforce, were already working remotely before the novel coronavirus took the world by storm. Regular work-at-home has grown 173% since 2005, 11% faster than the rest of the workforce (which grew 15%) and nearly 47x faster than the self-employed population (which grew by 4%) (Global Workplace Analytics’ analysis of 2018 ACS data).

What is the most important issue for remote working? Communication tops the list, with 27% of people mentioning it as their #1 challenge. Remote work makes it harder to read body language, hear what people are saying, ask follow up questions in the hallway, or quickly ask a coworker for clarification at their desk. Lacking social interaction and isolation are close behind. Again, Microsoft Teams offers the ability to see, hear and interact with coworkers.

Best Practices to thrive as a remote worker

Tekmos is thinking seriously about what we want our work paradigm to achieve because of this pandemic. We think we can architect and build systems that will allow us to meet our objectives of an engineering design firm and manufacturer of semiconductors, while maintaining clear and open communication, a key factor in running any company.

What do we need to ask ourselves as we look at the future? Our lease will be expiring the 2nd quarter of 2021. We have begun to make decisions about whether we stay in our current location. Where will we move if we do? Do we lease or buy? We have already learned we can save substantially in overhead by moving and creating a new model for Tekmos.

What is our overall vision of our ideal work system for Tekmos in the future? Many of our team have worked remote already due to the pandemic. Do we consider adapting a partial virtual model and how does all of this fit together?

Executives in traditional industries who spent days and weeks on the road are discovering that a well-managed Zoom meeting can be as effective as a face-to-face — and a lot easier (and less expensive) to organize. While the broad impacts of remote work have yet to be measured across industries and for extended lengths of time, initial studies have found that it can increase productivity and lower employee turnover. (Harvard Business Review)

The study, titled “From Immediate Responses to Planning for the Reimagined Workplace,” found that 77% of respondents expect that the number of employees working primarily from home (at least three days a week) will increase postpandemic.

Tekmos makes frequent use of interns, particularly over the summer months. These are college students, majoring in engineering or computing science. The challenge is how to make effective use of a smart, but relatively untrained employee who may only be available for 8 to 10 weeks. Here is how we do it.

Every company has a combination of both low and high priority projects. The high priority projects are customer driven, and all have deadlines. These are not projects for interns. The low priority projects are another matter. Low priority projects are typically for internal use. There is no specific deadline, and they are usually not manned. And so these are what we assign to the interns. If they succeed, then we have solved a problem. If they don’t, then we are no worse off than we were before. Fortunately, we have had a good deal of success with interns, and have been successful every time.

Past projects have included an interface between our tester and our handler that also allowed for a manual start button. Another project involved the use of DSP algorithms for testing a codec circuit. And a third was a test case where we extracted a circuit schematic from a physical layout.

This summer, we have had our two interns, Byron Seaberg and Gavin May, working on a dedicated tester for one of our high-volume parts. We have a handler capable of 7 site testing, but we don’t have a tester to go with it. One of our engineers had put together a schematic, but the resulting board had issues. So, we assigned one intern to hardware problems, and the second intern to software problems. The hardware intern identified several wiring issues on the board where 2.5 volt signals were connected to 3.3 volt flash memories. He corrected the schematic, turned the board, and is now debugging it before he returns back to school (MIT). Our software intern has assisted by writing code to exercise the board, and working on USB protocols to interface the tester with a PC. Again, it is a rush to finish before he returns to school (UC Berkley).

We try to create jobs that will not only benefit us, but will benefit the interns. The main benefit is doing actual engineering work in an engineering environment.  We also try to enhance their experience by letting them participate in engineering design reviews and in manufacturing meetings. This makes the internship a win-win proposition for both of us.

Tekmos Engineer Intern program provides an opportunity to apply what learning in academic pursuits to real world situations, allowing future engineers to enhance skills, further learning, and gain valuable experience. Our interns are technically excellent Graduates who are looking to forge a career with one of the most successful companies within the field of mixed-signal integrated circuits.

Several of our engineers were mentored through our Intern program and currently serve in full time positions including Kelsey Casto, Director of Quality for Tekmos who came to Tekmos as a Junior in college. She has risen up in her 6 years at Tekmos. Clay Abel has worked at Tekmos through high school and breaks from college, and now works as a full-time engineer.

This summer we have a new intern in Byron Seaberg and a returning intern in Gavin May. Byron Seaberg learned about Tekmos in high school through Lynn Reed and Jon Gehm, who were both active in Boy Scout Troop 70. Lynn was Byron’s scoutmaster for a period of time and both Lynn and Jon had a large impact on him through the organization. Byron did reach Eagle Scout alongside several other current Tekmos employees Alan Reed, Clay Abel and Adrian De Leon.

Byron became interested in engineering through his high school robotics team. He always enjoyed math and science classes during school, and engineering provided a hands-on application of those subjects. Byron is hoping to gain some practical experience with the design and implementation of application specific circuits. He is from Austin, TX. And his hobbies include reading, rock climbing, and board games. Byron graduated in May from Texas A&M University with a major in Mechanical Engineering and minor in Electrical Engineering. He will be pursuing his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at MIT in the Fall.

Gavin May learned about Tekmos through the mentor-ship at his school. Gavin had been mentored by Lynn Reed last summer and returned. Gavin has always enjoyed new things, as well as math and science, so engineering was a clear pathway for him. He hopes to gain real technical experience during his time at Tekmos, and to learn all that he can from the Tekmos Team.