My first job was at a small private company. They were frugal about spending money on tools. I recall being frustrated at having to spend time wandering around looking for tools. I had a notion to bring my own tools, but my colleagues told me it wasn’t a good idea because with tools in short supply they would be easily lost to well-meaning people who would borrow them and forget to return them. The company eventually bought me new tools, provoking some resentment from other employees who didn’t have new tools. I had no idea at the time that the on-the-job training I was getting in circuit design and debug was worth way more than the cost of some tools and books.
In retrospect, I can’t imagine why I didn’t use my own tools. Even at a company that is short on tools, if you keep them in a locked toolbox, they’re not likely to be taken. A very nice set of electronics tools can be had for under $1,000. That is a modest amount for an engineer. Even for people working at full-time jobs that claim to provide everything an engineer needs, engineers are still paid for getting things done. The employer may not notice time wasted searching for tools, but that time is money/experience lost to the engineer who could be using that time to design new technologies.
All engineers make their money by causing things to be worth more than the sum of their parts. Tools and books are a cost of being an engineer.
I’ve been a practicing engineer for 30 years now. Ever since my first job I started gather tools of my trade and taking them with me. It seems I am in the minority as I don’t see the other engineers I work with doing this.
To me having my own tools makes perfect sense. Most of the tools are common everyday items, something that should be available at any decent engineering lab. Yet by having my own tools I don’t have to spend time looking for what I want: I know what tools I carry and exactly where they are. Sure comes in handy when I work after hours and the technicians are not around to ask where they keep their wire strippers.
In addition I modified or made small hand tools for specialized purposes. It always feels good to bring out a particular tool I’ve built and use it to solve a problem.
In addition to hand tools I also include software tool in my bag of tricks. There are many specialized and often inexpensive software tools that can be found to make my life easier, be it a text editor, plotting program or just a simple Excel spreadsheet template set up to manipulate data in some particular manner.
Mark Walter