To land the job you want, it pays to be grounded and groomable.

Starting a new job is a big deal even if you're not leaving your current company. It's a commitment to learn the ropes while being humble and deferring to those in the know. In the field of PCB layout, a lateral move is often as good as moving up if the move expands your skill set in a way that helps your long-term goals.

Long-term goals should be about more than money. What is your dream company? What is the role that would keep you engaged or become a step toward the top rung of your personal career ladder? My niche is in wireless. Once that die was cast, the industry kept pulling me back into its orbit. It is nearly always that the employer initiates the contact for a new opportunity.

Proper planning can protect a board's victims from noisy aggressors.

Good fences make good neighbors, or so they say. That said, some folks can get along just fine without a fence or wall to provide peace of mind. The signals that run around on a printed circuit board are similar in that regard. Aside from the presumably inert ground domain, all the energized copper contributes to the overall noise factor.

Just as there is an audible difference between a major city and a wide-open prairie, location matters. A high-density layout is more likely to run into locations where a so-called victim finds itself in proximity to an aggressor. So, what is an aggressor and why does it bother the victim? Defining the aggressors is easy. They're everywhere.