Summary

This podcast episode features an interview with Caroline Hayes, the editor of Electronics Weekly.

Caroline discusses her career journey in electronics journalism, she initially planned to use magazine work as a gateway to PR but found she preferred journalism.

Caroline highlights the importance of continuous learning in the field, noting that her broad knowledge across various electronics disciplines often surpassed that of specialised graduates.

The conversation covers various topics including the Electra Awards, challenges faced by women in engineering, the state of print publications in a digital world, and recent job losses in the tech industry.

Caroline emphasizes the peer-reviewed nature of the Electra Awards and their significance in recognizing innovation in the electronics industry. She also discusses the ongoing challenges of gender diversity in engineering and the importance of different perspectives in problem-solving.

The interview concludes with a discussion on recent job losses in the tech industry, with Caroline expressing cautious optimism about the future of the electronics sector.

 

Transcript

 

Neale 00:00

Welcome to episode three of the Another Bright Spark podcast by Ignys. Today we’re in Croydon at the offices of EMAP interviewing Caroline Hayes, the editor of Electronics Weekly.

 

Neale 00:10

Thanks for joining us today.

 

Neale 00:12

I had to write these down because there was quite a lot of them. Okay, so we have What’s New in Electronics, Electronic Product Review, EPD, Electronic Product and Test, and Electronics Weekly. Is there an electronics publication that you’ve not worked on?

 

Caroline 00:30

Did you have ‘electronic product new’ EPN Europe?

 

Neale 00:33

I’ve got electronic product tests…. You know I’ve missed that one. I’ve not done my research!

 

Neale 00:41

What led you to the world of electronics? Were you fascinated by it? It was an industry that you fell into.

 

Caroline 00:48

I did fall into it.

 

Caroline 00:50

I was of the graduate training program at Morgan Grampian and someone had told me if you work on a magazine for a couple of years, then you can go into PR So it was the gateway and so I started my first magazine was What’s new in building and then I loved that and I cut my teeth and learn how to sub But how to write features and how to write news how to ask questions all those journalists training course and then I thought right That’s it. I know everything and I’ll go and do PR and I hated it So I came back to Morgan Grampian and I tell to my legs and said, oh my god job I just could you could you find something for me and can I go back to building and they said we haven’t got vacancy but there is one at what’s new in electronics and he’s a lovely editor go and see him and And just were there for a couple of months until something comes up in what you really want to do So I thought that was a good idea.

 

Caroline 01:49

So I went to what’s new in electronics, which was a product magazine back in the 90s, I don’t know if you’ll remember them, but it was new products. You had a bingo number you have and the readers would Mark the number of something they were interested in send it off and the publisher would gather them all up and send them to companies like Ignis and they would then go through all of their sales leads and everyone loved product books and it meant that I was writing about test equipment I was writing about PCBs I was writing about embedded boards. I was writing about components and passives and semiconductors and everything so even though I didn’t know about electronics and you a little bit about all of these things just by dint of everything was a new product and So that was it.

 

Caroline 02:39

We launched what’s new in electronics Europe But I think what I started telling you of how the different Disciplines that I was writing about was that although I didn’t know anything about I didn’t have an electronics education At one press event that I went to I realized that I actually knew more than someone who’d graduated five years ago Because they’d stopped learning And they’d only specialized in one area Whereas I may not have been an expert in anything I was jack-of-all-trades, but I knew lots of people in all of those trades And I knew who to ask to find out more so I carried on from there really

 

Neale 03:18

What did you dislike about PR?  What was the main differences between journalism and PR for you?

 

Caroline 03:24

It was the Morgan Grampian training scheme was superb so it taught you how to write everything properly and question everything. So PR writing was a very different kind and so from what I’d first learned as the correct way to do things the PR writing was going against everything I was I’d been taught really and you also had to serve two masters because I’d be writing something thinking this has got to be accepted by the editor but also it’s got to be passed by the person who’s paying for it the company and you can’t write a press release like that because they have yeah they’re different genders so um I just I just couldn’t do it I was like this is just I can’t write that it’s awful yeah so it just it wasn’t me there are lots of people out there in PR land they do a really good job but I’m just not very good at it.

 

Neale 04:11

You spoke about how you continue to learn and there’s like obviously lots of different elements. In electronics weekly it covers you obviously the design, there’s components, the suppliers. Have you got a favourite area, have you got a specialist that you like to write about or if your story comes up you go “oh that’s going to be interesting”.

 

Caroline 04:33

I do tend to grab any that are broadcast, graphics chips, automotive, I like, the development tools I like, so yeah, they’re probably the ones that I kind of snaffle away if I can.

 

Neale 04:50

It’s been 64 years, I believe, this year, that Electronics Weekly has been in circulation. As the editor, do you feel any weight of responsibility, suppose, for such a sort of prestigious sort of legacy? How do you sort of handle that and go about that?

 

Caroline 05:06

There is quite a weight to it, it is a well recognised brand.

 

Neale 05:12

….and with the Awards attached to it as well….. Absolutely, yeah.

 

Caroline 05:15

And there’s, what’s really nice is when I go even to you know the US there will be engineer and I have a paper copy with me the engineer says oh I remember this and even though I’ve come onto the stand and said I’m Caroline Hayes electronics weekly they go yeah yeah yeah and then you bring out the printed title and then I remember this when I was a young engineer and that’s really nice yeah so there’s a lot of weight to it we’ve got great editorial teams, some have been with us writing on the magazine for decades and people do like it they they respect it it’s got a great it’s got a character of there are certain things that go into EW and people like that and so we’ve got to maintain that but also a lot’s happened in 64 years we’ve also got to keep making sure that we serve relevant contemporary engineers but also look to the future for the future engineers so we can’t waste on the laurels but we have got a very good background which is lovely

 

Neale 06:17

So the Electra Awards are very, I think, ‘unique’ in a way, in that they are peer-reviewed. And our CEO Richard is one of this year’s Judges.  Why do you think that’s important?  I mean there’s obvious reasons, you know, you can pay for a table, you can turn up and you can win a award, that’s very common. But the fact that this an industry reviewed, what makes them sort of stand and is that so important that it gets the peer review?

 

Caroline 06:45

Well, first of all, we’re delighted that Richard’s on board. There is another another discipline, another voice and another experience to to bring on to the judging panel. That’s wonderful.  It’s and that is part of what the Elektras is about. I think you’re right.  It is it’s peer reviewed. It’s by people who who know things so they know that it’s not just a new chip. They’ll be able to say that’s been done so many times before. It’s new for that company, but it’s not new. Or they might be able, as an engineer, to say, this is really going to make a difference, this is if I was working on this and I this came on my desk, it would really move things forward.  So you have to have a certain knowledge and acumen and be a certain personality to be able to do that. And rather than a people’s choice, they’re they’re easy to get your auntie to phone up and vote as well, you know. So it is quite a rigorous process, but it is really quite thorough so that it’s nice to hear you say that.

 

Caroline 07:52

And we like to think if you win an Elektra, you’ve really earned an Elektra. It really means you have been through the motions – through the mill half the time.  And it’s by people who know what they’re talking about and people who are going to appreciate what those design development that time and money that’s gone into that product. So I think that’s part of it.  And it’s been going for 22 years. So it’s a it’s a big event. It’s a bit of an industry party. It is.  It’s glamorous. You can easily take if you’re up for a nomination, you can maybe take a few people from the office and it’s, you know, it’s not Nando’s, is it? You’re going out for a nice do.  And yeah, I think it’s it’s got a nice feel about it.

 

Neale 08:50

How do you keep them fresh? What are the challenges?

 

Caroline 08:53

That’s a good point. Again, in 22 years, a lot has changed. Things have come into the market.  Things have gone out of the market. So there are categories like the Internet of Things.  Who heard of that 10 years ago? We’ve introduced some new categories for this year, the Workplace Award. Again, people are doing lots of sustainable or corporate responsibility.  And that needs to be reflected in our industry, as well as maybe some environmental issues. We’ve also got smart cities, again, because who heard of those 10 years ago? And some startups.  So that’s how we keep it. By always reporting on the industry and analyzing the industry, we can keep up what’s going on. It’s a true reflection of what’s happening in our industry and how people are working towards making that better.

 

Neale 09:53

If you were to offer any tips to make an entry stand out, what would you suggest? I mean, it’s too late for this year, obviously. If a company has got its eyes set on their own Electra, we have three. What would you suggest?

 

Caroline 10:11

Details, details, details, technical details. So run it past your marketing department first and anything they put in, whip that out.  I’m joking.  But “it’s the best, it’s groundbreaking, it’s world revolutionary”, it probably isn’t. So take all that out and as we said, the judges are experts and they’re looking for details.  They’re engineers, so they’re really detail-focused orientated. So when you say it’s fast, how fast, put all these details in, put in as much as you can about use cases, about tests, about testimonials. Just, they’re a very well-educated panel of judges. So the more information, solid information, engineering information you can give them, then that makes their life easier, but it also makes the selection process better.

 

Neale 11:09

You can’t kid a kidder is what you’re trying to say.

 

Caroline 11:11

Exactly.

 

Neale 11:13

I was chatting to Katie. She’s one of our hardware engineers.  She’s the only female hardware engineer that we’ve got. I wanted to take her point of view because I think it is a really really interesting topic. She told me about 20% of her course on her masters were female. Out of those seven. It was like a fairly small course.  Out of those seven, two went on to engineering careers. The other five went to have a career in finance completely, changed tact. Katie’s never worked with another female engineer. The female workforce is just under 50% I believe but in engineering it’s like 16, 17.  It’s still really quite low.  Things like the awards help. Do you think the industry could do more and if so, what could that look like?

 

Caroline 12:05

People are trying, you’ve highlighted one of the issues really, people who go, men and women who go into STEM careers, often get lured away to finance and computers and well paid things, so it’s not just encouraging them, it’s retaining them and I think that goes for men and women in the career. There are things that can be done, having a woman maybe interviewing you for your first job as a hardware engineer helps and some kind of empathy, it has got better, we did a series to celebrate our 60th anniversary, talking to women who started in the very early 80s and they had some terrible obstacles that they had to overcome, I do more than make the tea, can I please contribute an idea?

 

Caroline 12:58

So there has been some ground made but there’s still a little bit and I’ve still been at press conferences where I’m the only woman in the room, I’ve still been at some exhibitions where I haven’t seen many other women, so and it’s not just having a presence, it’s being accepted, at exhibitions I will be talking to an engineer, we’re doing an interview as part of our jobs and we will be interrupted because we must be talking about make-up and they will ask us where are the pamphlets, I don’t know, I don’t work here for a start and the woman who does is not a booze babe, so it’s this kind of assumptions that people and so this is why the women leaders in electronics awards is so important because it’s saying that there are people there, they’re not just making the tea, they’re doing really good work, they’re leading other engineering teams and they are making innovations and they are pushing forward technology in their own right as good engineers,

 

Caroline 14:03

So it’s all about that, it’s a long slow process but we’ll get in there.

 

Neale 14:09

Katie touched on something I thought was quite interesting. She said, when she has gone for jobs as a human engineer, that sometimes she gets a little bit of imposter syndrome in the sense that, oh, am I here because I need to fill a quota? Have you had any experience of that yourself, or any examples?

 

Caroline 14:28

I haven’t knowingly, no, but I’m sure there is a lot of that. I have had what they call the ‘Matilda Complex’, whereas I’ve suggested something, written down something, proposed something, and it’s been overlooked. A man suggests it…. great idea, let’s run with that.

 

Neale 14:50

You shouldn’t laugh, but it’s ridiculous, isn’t it?

 

Caroline 14:54

So, yeah, there are men in my family, husband and two children, they’re grown boys, now, and I get shouted down a lot just because they have deeper voices than I do. But then I also wield the mother card and I smack them across their knees. So part of it is it’s not men’s fault, they do have deeper voices, they can be heard, they can be more authoritative just by that’s what boys are made to do. But there are some women who can cut across that and they maybe should be allowed to do that and you’re not stepping aside because it’s not one person’s given role or not. But I think that’s probably a problem with some women that they have to say something a couple of times before it’s…

 

Neale 15:45

Equality doesn’t mean you’re getting less, it just means everyone gets an equal say, that’s how I see it. We’re trying to get a good range of voices and opinions or something, we quite pride ourselves.  A lot of our customers, it’s kind of like an Ignys sales pitch now, it’s not an Ignys sales pitch. We get a lot of comments, so our engineers come from a wide range of different backgrounds. Neurodiverse, ethnically diverse, we’ve only got one female engineer unfortunately, but what happens is all our work is peer reviewed, very much like they all do. The engineers, we do have hybrid working, but they like coming in, they like some time at home, but they’re all in the same room and they’re all aware of what each of them is working on with Daily Stand-Up.

 

Neale 16:27

If you’ve got all these different brains that think differently and you’ve got a problem, you’ve got 16 different ways to solve that problem. We have customers who come in and they may think they want a certain thing from the product, but actually with this diversity they get a bunch of different solutions they hadn’t thought of and we can work out what’s the best way for them.

 

Caroline 16:48

It is exactly what it is. To solve a problem, again, some of these interviews I’ve had with women, one of the questions is, what does a woman bring to any team that perhaps a man doesn’t? And it’s usually sort of a sense of collaboration or sharing of ideas or just communication ideas.  Sometimes some women generally are better at communicating ideas. And you need all of those in a project. And things like, you know, the seatbelts in cars, women generally are smaller, but they were designed by men. So it’s great if you’re a five-foot-nine man, but if five-foot-three, you get garroted. So you need a woman to say, well, that’s great, the mechanism works, but we need to have a system where we can lower it.  And it’s all these kinds of things.

 

Neale 17:35

It’s a different perspective. Yeah, yeah.

 

Caroline 17:38

All these people are going to be using it. So you just, if everyone pulls ideas, then you get the best result. So that’s…

 

Neale 17:45

In your view, what makes a good startup? What are the sort of personality traits? If you’re thinking of setting up a business, like an entrepreneur is the same sort of thing, what makes someone successful? What’s the secret sauce?

 

Caroline 18:00

Oh, if l knew that, then we’d all know that.  I don’t think there’s one characteristic or trait. It must be you’ve got to be fairly confident in your idea. You probably have to draw on quite a lot of traits in that you have to be able to present your idea to someone. You’ve got to find venture capital and seed funding, which is not easy. And most people will need some kind of guidance from that. You’ll need some business acumen, some managerial acumen. Just plain common sense.  You can’t buy all the new equipment and rent fancy offices until you’ve at least sold one product.  So there’s a lot of many ranges.  But I suppose a lot of it are these traditional female traits of being collaborative. So maybe one person is in a startup. It has to be one person’s the ideas guy, another person’s the finance guy, and knows someone who knows someone, and it’s networking.

 

Neale 19:08

So, a mixed group of personalities is needed to make it work.

 

Caroline 19:12

Like we were saying about the engineering design team. Yeah, absolutely.

 

Neale 19:15

So I started my career 20 years ago in print, in catalogue production, and print buying, because in marketing, I was the go-to print buyer. Back then, like 20 years ago, it was the death knells were ringing.  You know, the end was sort of on the horizon. A lot was being moved to Europe, and now a lot is being moved to China. There were still sort of small print-ups. As a print publication, what are your current challenges? Obviously, we’re in a digital world now.  There’s no getting away from that.  I know you do have a digital copy. What are the main challenges to you for a print publication that you’re currently facing?

 

Caroline 19:53

It’s interesting, there are some people that still like the print over and above. I’m sure the tactileness of the…

 

Neale 20:00

The paper

 

Caroline 20:03

People will flick through it, people will put it to one side, which you don’t always do with the digital issue. People still, engineers especially, still ripping out pages to keep for later and file somewhere. You can never go back to it.  And you can do that with the digital edition as well, of course, but there’s different mentalities.  So, we keep both to serve everyone. The print magazine is only circulated in the UK, although you can pay a subscription if you want it in the US, but mostly it’s the digital magazine. You’ve got, if you click on something, you can see how long someone’s watched it with the digital magazine, which you can’t with print, which is a problem.

 

Neale 20:48

So you can collected a lot of data on how the page is performing and what people are interested in.

 

Caroline 20:53

Exactly. When I started my career, as I was telling you about with the product, and you had the bingo numbers, then you could tell what was a popular story because more people would circle that bingo number. We haven’t got that now with print, but people still want to be in the print.  We’re juggling both, I think.  Like you say, even 20 years on, people are still trying to find their way. And it was interesting, as you say, when the first death knolls were being sounded, there were still new magazines on the market. Some of them, how to write internet speak, all internet related, it was still spurning new. So there is still a place for it, but like we were talking about with our equality, you’re just not going to be able to do that.

 

Caroline 22:19

You’re going to be able to do other news and linking through to things. And you can, if something happens, you can very, very quickly update it and see it and put it out there. And then you’ve got social media and we have to do all our social media channels to pump out the news that’s just broken that we’ve just put online, which will go in the print issue eventually. So you have all of these things and you just work them as best you can for that particular medium or that reader.

 

Neale 22:44

One of the articles that you published this month was the huge job losses that we’ve had in the industry. The UK is like ninth globally in terms of job losses. Tech job losses, I think your quote is, makes up 43% of job losses across the board.  It’s been a tough year.  We’ve felt it. Luckily, we’ve not had to make job losses ourselves.  Some other companies have. What have been the main causes, do you think, of the sort of downturn in the industry?

 

Caroline 23:15

Oh, it’s it’s tricky. And as you say, it’s right across the board. So you can’t say it’s one thing as the chain. It affects other areas as well, but of course.  Yeah.  I think geopolitically, there’s been a lot going on. So people are very reluctant to invest and without investment.  It follows. There have been I think from the supply chain, people are still adjusting to covid and the inventory surpluses. And they’re still working out, which has a knock on effect. There have been scarily numbers in the US where people are dismissing, well, letting go thousands of people. So I don’t know quite well, there isn’t a single thing.  There is there is a global slowdown. There are global changes and people also shifting gear. Yeah, lots being put into accelerated computing and into AI. Which if there’s only so much money in the pot, that will mean that some other things will have to go.

 

Caroline 24:24

So it’s an evolving industry. So some things are going to have the highs and lows.  So that must play into it as well. So so that’s my summation.

 

Neale 24:36

No, no, I think you’re right. I mean, there was a lot of hesitation around the snap election as well, wasn’t there? So I thought that was, I think, when you’re looking for investment, especially like government investment, is that okay?  Was the wind going to blow and people sort of hang for a little bit? A lot of companies as well, I don’t know, it affected you in particular, but with COVID and homework, and there was a lot of employment, I think, as well, you know, like, especially in the tech sector, it’s like, oh, people can work from home, things are going to get better. So they hired, hired, hired, and obviously, with, it’s not bounced back, you know, obviously, Brexit has been a part of that, the economy suffered, and I think they’ve bolstered themselves, but then had to trim around the corners.

 

Neale 25:14

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it’s so multi-threaded. Yeah.  But yeah, it has been tough. Do you think, are you optimistic though, for the next six, 12 months, do you think it’s going to bounce back? You’re the frontline of the news of our industry, Caroline, give our viewers hope. What do you think is going to happen?

 

Caroline 25:30

I am generally optimistic. I think there will be some casualties and some setbacks.  There’s bound to be. But people always want semiconductors. People will always want chips. People will always want phones and things that these go into. You’re not going to put that toothpaste back in the tube. There’ll always be an electronics industry. There will always be a thirst for new, groundbreaking ways of doing it. How that’s going to come about and from which sectors, regionally, geographically, it’s hard to say.  But no, I’m confident.

 

Neale 26:10

Thank you for your time.

 

Neale 26:11

…and thank you for hosting us in lovely Croydon.

 

Caroline 26:13

Yes, sorry about the Croydon bit.   It’s been very enjoyable, it’s been lovely, thank you very much.

 

Neale 26:22

Thank you.