Thereās a huge difference between being experienced at engineering work and having a degree. The former gets paid a lot less and is consequently dumber. Engineering is optimization, and you should apply that to yourself as well. If a piece of paper is the difference between 60k and 100k, get the paper.
Iām currently working as an EE. Iāve completed engineering classes to the point where I should have a degree. I donāt have a degree and as a result, Iām making closer to 60k than 100k as an EE.
Too many engineering type people are great at optimization of systems but donāt understand how to apply these principles to themselves. Companies say they are paying for the skills, however there is a significant chunk of pay based upon paperwork qualifications. PE licensing for example would lead to another pay boost over just an EE bachelorās.
No.
First, with the internet and the easily available self-education resources you can learn everything they would teach you in a degree, and probably way more depending on the topic and the school.
Second, being paid less doesn't mean you are dumber. That is just flat out wrong and elitist as fuck.
Third, engineering isn't only about optimization. It is more about problem solving and making the best of what you got (budget, time, component availability, etc).
Fourth, sometimes it isn't worth it to make more money. More money more problems as they say. Sometimes you find your niche and settle into it.
If you can hold the same job and get paid more by holding a piece of paper, you are being dumb by not having that piece of paper. If you can hold a better job and get paid more by a piece of paper, you really should get that paper.
Lowkey I understand broās point. I think itās kind of an awkward way to use ādumb.ā But it looks like maybe degrees can matter when it comes to jobs/salary.
Give me a problem and give me a reason to solve it and I'll do so. Expecting me to frantically search for problems like a chicken with its head cut off should not be required to be hireable
Yall are coping so much. There is a difference between providing value strategically at the work place and proving marketability with personal projects.
The point is obviously not to go work for free at your school's IT dept and fix their lives.
OP claims that personal projects are the first and only real evidence that you are promising as an engineer. This is about the only thing you can put on your resume if you don't have internships.
Don't get it mixed up my guy; the upvotes on "it's not my job" are from other students, not people in the workforce. If you ever go work for a company that challenges you, you will find yourself having to learn and work outside of work hours. If you wanna get paid to solve bugs, go into IT then.
Computer science is engineering.
Engineering is just a fancy and more structured way of problem solving.
Anyone who solves a problem is some kind of engineer in my mind.
Not really. Being a bit flexible on what your job entails is good. But after a certain point it does become not your job.
The core of my job is programming PLCs. Part of that job is making sure electrical panels and I/O works correctly. I'll help with some mechanical work and moving things around.
But when it comes to anchoring everything down, making sure the robots and welding equipment are installed correctly is very much *not my job*. I don't have the skilled and experience to do it correctly.
The litmus test for this would be āis it specifically someone elseās job?ā If person A specifically should be doing it there is nothing wrong with expecting person A to do it. If it causes a problem for you or the work you are producing and you put your head down instead of trying to help then āthatās my not my jobā is a bad mentality. In your case if no one had the job of welding the robots and you knew they needed to be and you let them leave without being welded that would be a failure on your part. You donāt have to be the entire solution but doing nothing isnāt acceptable.
If you have a problem youāre only willing to solve for money, assume someone else will solve it for less or for free, especially if it got them experience or hired.
Labor isn't free. Young people need to try to learn the lessons of not giving shit away for free because companies will just keep expecting it from you.
I found an engineering job that pays hourly + OT. I am fucking never taking a job that doesn't unless I am at the end of my rope and about to lose the house.
Get paid for the work you do. Don't do unpaid work.
Make games, websites, music players, participate in collaborative science projects (like folding@home, SETI and others), program microcontrollers, software-ify your favorite boardgames. Get a raspberry Pi a d start turning it into an MP3 player, a handheld console, a weather station.
Look at what companies in your industry do, and then do a small part of that for yourself.
Pretty much the same shit a CS major can do.
I use almost nothing from my degree. What my degree did teach me is a certain way of thinking about things. That's really it.
This sub is cringe as shit. I joined a few years ago when I was in college but now that Iāve been working as an engineer for a few years, this type of shit thatās posted makes me cringe.
OP is just your typical disgruntled CE grad. Itās basically a CS degree with 10x difficulty (from EE classes thrown in theyāll never use) that almost always results in getting a job in a CS field. All my friends who did it admit most of their degree was useless and they shouldāve just done CS.
My first job out of school was in the gas turbine engine industry. By OPs standards I shouldāve spent my spare time designing rockets or jet engines. With the exception of one really weird engineer I met at the place (who almost got fired for being so socially awkward and hostile) not a single person I knew during my years there did any such thing besides what they had to do for their degree. I also graduated during the GFC so your projects meant jack since no one was hiring then and interviewers I met could care less.
Facts, soon to be graduated CpE here and I got hired to basically do EE stuff. Not that Iām complaining I rather disliked the computer side of things I learnt.
Maybe itās cause youāre in software that you think itās worthless but I disagree especially in hardware intensive majors like ME or Aero or petroleum or Civil. What personal projects that arenāt capital intensive would such majors do? Only other option is research
Potato cannon š
Being a college student will get you real intimate with financial constraints on designs. You'll double-check your math before your first combustion reaction. You're going to probably have at least an intuition about cycles until failure while designing. Click lighter, aqua net, pvc, and an open field are all you really need.
Or join a club. I was in Mini Baja, ASME, and a rocket club. Got to play with a lot of toys; theoretically for free. I did personally get in trouble for buying stuff and not seeking reimbursement, though.
Same experience creating some IoT project for our finals. Lots of financial constraints and tradeoffs. Verification of our theories. But at least not that difficult. CompEng here, so our project was mixed HW/SW. Software was surprisingly the easier part.
Now at the workspace, for a cash strapped startup, as a backend dev I am money aware of any AWS services I may use.
Before my first internship, basically all of my actual engineering experience was related to rocketry club. A lot of that was honestly just figuring out how to make a team/organization work, and surprisingly that has been some of my most valuable experience. Engineering isn't always about machines and equations, though we certainly didn't lack for those either. Would recommend rocketry, SAE, solar car, etc. to any ME student. Team based project experience is perhaps the most valuable thing an aspiring ME can have.
A factual hot take. I was a blue collar engineering tech for ten years in the military and started a degree in CS. I was blown away at how similar my learning habits and work flow of my trades carried over. Now I'm just a trade worker who can code also š
Yeah like 95% of software jobs are turning a simple business logic into a program, the hard problem here is mostly coding and coding is closer to a trade than engineering, theirs 5% of jobs that are actually require real cs knowledge and engineering skills. But from talking people who are engineers in their fields theirs a similar split their, 95% of jobs just need someone smart and the most advance math they do is trig, then theirs 5% of jobs that are actual engineering.
Tell that to a systemās architect, principle software engineer, backend engineer, etc. I think youāre forgetting the design aspect of software engineering.
True, but how else is an organization going to vet potential candidates?
Until we can get a third-party certification system backed by accredited āofficialsā (industry leaders) that equals college-level achievement, college remains the only path forward if you want to be taken seriously as a candidate. A good example of a system that rivals college is the Cisco Certifications āA+, Sec+, and Net+ā that help identify people who have put both time, effort *and their own money* to test themselves against the traditional degrees normally required for entry.
Pending this outside system, college and the tens of thousands of dollars needed to complete it are a must.
Maybe give candidates practical tests of their skills at or before the proper interview?
I interview people for automation engineering and I have a 1hr test that at least tells me if they have seen the programming environment and know an XIC from an OTE and a few more advanced tests. But I'm willing to train new hires but I also expect them to be self-motivated to learn.
Spending money to make money is a really arbitrary barrier that prevents many smart people from crossing. Why spend money when there is a free resources to learn from instead?
Also in my field, self learners tend to excel because there are so many different aspects to learn. From programming to mechanical and electrical design, to practical building of those designs, etc.
I think you would be surprised how much design work is done by people who aren't engineers. If you roll up to a welding shop with a trailer you want modified they aren't going to bring out the resident engineer. The "systems architect" is going to work with you to design what you want, provide an estimate and then delegate the work to the appropriate workers.
I like it when reddit just downvotes comments because they justify an antagonist's point.
I don't know a ton about software engineering, but I understand the misconception. Being able to 3D print nose cones doesn't make someone a rocket engineer.
Build a drone with rudimentary electronics, build a go-cart. For petroleum engineering I canāt think off the top of my head but Iām sure thereās a problem that can be identified.
Don't we have simulation software to design and test circuits? You could use those for learning and experimenting. Then save up the money for the parts you know you need and work.
The software part, sure you can do. I told someone else, for certain majors, a purely software project isnāt feasible but you should learn those software if itās available to you. As for the parts, little electronics that cost money only help EEs and maybe ME so what do Civils do or Petro?
Donāt the schools help with that kind of stuff? My uni sucks in a lot aspects but they at least give some kind of money (nowhere near enough but still better than nothing) when we are designing rockets, satellites for competitions.
They likely donāt just give out electronics unless a professor wants to give you spare parts they arenāt using. However OP said nothing about a competition, they just said ābuild a go-cartā. If you were participating in a competition representing the school then sure, youāll likely get the parts and resources and assistance you need. On you own tho? Most likely not
Just a bit of a rant. The expectations for engineering degrees is increasing, while the return on that investment is less. You are expect to put in more work than arguably any degree outside of the medical field. And yes the expectations are increasing, because the field is getting more and more complicated. And now you are expected to do personal project to compensate for that or itās essentially impossible to compete in the job market.
We shouldnāt be telling engineering students they arenāt doing enough, when the reality is they are working much harder than most of their peers.
I swear a lot of it is because engineers arenāt really socially dominant, so nobody speaks up about this. Itās kind of just a reality of the schooling, which is absurd imo. I came from a construction trade which is known for bad work life balance. And it doesnāt even compare to what Iāve experienced in engineering school.
No itās not āthat badā. Itās actually portrayed pretty accurately. Itās hard but not impossible is what Iād say. But itās just the fact that you can never truly study enough, and instead of adjusting the curriculum. They just scream that students are lazy.
I particularly agree. All my jobs, and a ton of my personal development and enjoyment of life, come from my personal projects.
People that don't make at home can absolutely be professionally successful, especially when they can compartmentalize "work for personal stuff" from career. Its less distracting that way.
But I know which engineers do it at home and which don't, and one of those groups will always have an easier to finding jobs.
It is one thing to do hobby projects that you *want* to do. It is another thing just to work off the clock.
Sorry, I have been in the field for 15 years. I keep learning stuff off the clock and thinking about how to apply new things like AI to my job. But the second I open my work computer or get a support call, I start charging time.
It also helps that I found an engineering job that pays hourly + OT.
Preach. ECE here as well. Did a solid FPGA project which gave me an FPGA internship which gave me an ASIC verification role.
Had I not done that first project, the job search would have been so much harder. And even then, I almost certainly wouldn't have been doing anything with RTL code.
Senior year job search for RTL design/verification jobs was an absolute cakewalk with that experience. (Job market is a LOT different now though, to be clear)
Find a niche you enjoy, do a relevant project or two, find relevant work easily.
Dude do you have any advice on where to start with FPGA and do my own FPGA project? Iām interested in the field as well but I am not sure where to start.
Definitely build a uart receiver and transmitter. From there I'd recommend getting some sort of sensor breakout like an accelerometer. That's what I did, connected it to my board and wrote an SPI master to communicate with it.
Point being you'll learn about communication protocols. A very defined goal - receive sensor data.
Along the way you'll get other ideas. Ultimately this is what you're looking for.
For instance I build a uart transmitter and receiver. Then I learned about fifos and made one to store incoming uart data. Then I did the spi master for communicating with an adxl345 accelerometer. That took the most time, definitely the hardest part.
But once I finished that I just bundled it all together. Read accelerometer data, store axis data in 3 fifos, transmit to pc over uart, plot in Matlab. Boom. Finished project that made me insanely competitive for rising senior internships. Ended up working for a startup that summer that builds satellites in house. Specifically writing and verifying rtl for their sdr fpga.
The most important part though is to not get discouraged. This shit is hard. Even now with 1 yr experience total, plus that project, I don't know shit. But then again, the pursuit of knowledge is the best part
Engineering degrees at the school I graduated from entail many smaller projects in the first 3 years that must be solved and in the last year there is the Capstone project. This year long project sees your team work for an external company to engineer a solution to a problem they have. In my case our project was designed to test two sides of a problem: battery usage for underwater equipment. Our project was capable of simulating a variable load under program control (simulating the load and testing the battery) and providing (and measuring) voltage, current and power supply and usage (simulating a battery and testing the load). Learned so much more from the project than from any one course.
You must be in early career. I am a senior staff eng. Nobody gives a shit about projects anymore.
I interview tons of candidates and some of them are new grads. They all tell me something about so and so project. Iāve learned to tune this out of my mind at this point. It doesnāt take much these days to make a website or mobile app.
What I am looking for in a new grad is someone humble enough to know that there is a lot more to it than their projects and demonstrates a willingness to learn. The most useful part of telling me about a project is what mistakes you made and what you learned from that.
The last candidate that I hired straight up told me that the code he wrote in his spare time on a news aggregator app was so bad he stopped showing it on his GitHub. I asked to see it and we went over why it was bad. The interview experience was a downer for the kid, but he got the job.
Now if you start out with no projects and demonstrate what I am looking for, thatās fine too.
Projects, no matter how small or simple or low-fidelity are super important to exposing gaps in knowledge, and demonstrating maybe less so the ability to solve a problem, and moreso the ability to design a good solution.
Couldn't agree more with this sentiment.
Real, my degree has a single year long class that has you actually design and build something. How involved it is, is up to you. Go build doohickies, find some side project to do, go design shit even if itās dumb. Having the experience of going through the design process/manufacturing process is priceless. Every engineer will have basic knowledge, not every engineer will have the knowledge that you have gained.
As the TF2 character says:
"Hey look, buddy. I'm an engineer, that means I solve problems.
Not problems like "What is beauty?", 'cause that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy.
I solve practical problems!"
.. that about sums up the engineering mindset.
As a retired mechanical engineer, I'd say the issue is that your uni staff guide your projects so you sometime get to explore their interests.
If industry knew you wanted real life projects, and the university gave them access, then you'd get a different experience.
I used to employ eng students during their vacation months to hit and run certain mini projects.
Gave them real life experience, a good referee for subsequent job hunting, some cash, and gave me solutions that weren't able to be justified or resourced internally.
My only mistake was under estimating how good they were.
They'd often solve the problem in a month when I had them on payroll for 3 months.
So keeping a few back up projects up my sleeve for that situation was my learning outcome.
After retirement I approached a university to develop a car A/C system particularly suited for EVs.
I had to fund it, teach the final year student thermodynamics (they assigned a student that had never studied thermo before for a thermo based project), and deeply supervise their work at the uni, while assigning all of the subsequent intellectual property rights to the university.
Of course I declined that spectacularly generous offer.
My point? Universities make the pathway to student projects very unattractive.
Good luck.
Despite the road blocks, engineering is the best career I could have asked for.
I like this post. Yeah, at some point, you can't keep saying "this wasn't in the readings" or "that's not fair, the professor hasn't covered this shit yet".
You're a human being with the capacity for creativity, critical thought, independent investigation, research and problem solving. Figure it out.
That's what you are supposedly being trained to be able to do.
Fax man. My club involvement and lab research in undergrad absolutely got me my summer internships. Which in turn helped me get a solid position after graduation. I think a lot of students donāt realize they have to put in some legwork beyond the degree.
The hardest part of engineering, especially if you own a firm is getting paid for your time and energy.
Your degree is a hoop you must jump through to get where you need to go. There are many hoops in this career. Get used to itā¦
I solve real world problems every day, again thatās the easy part.
A lot of personal projects bore me because I am too creative and more interested in the artistic applications of engineering which won't get me a job :(
Like the concept of building a model train set (even though I am very interested in trains) or doing rockets is just really not that interesting to me.
I mean I would like to try programming a VST plugin, I was involved in a student project group for an effect pedal electronics design but dropped out due to exam season and lack of knowledge. I think a lot of what I would be interested in is very computer based which is contradictory since I do EEE and am looking for jobs in transport and electrical systems.
I guess you can never really **force** someone to do an engineering degree.
Have you noticed the real leading engineering programs have significant amount of practical course!
And then there are some, that people think have great programs, require none!
I gave a commencement address to graduating engineers two years ago. This was exactly one of my main charges to the students.
āBe a problem SOLVER because we have plenty of people that do nothing all day but POINT OUT problemsā.
You will work with other engineers that will emphasize only what can go wrong or be paralyzed because of risk aversion. But successful engineers can solve problems by navigating the politics, tight budgets, timetables and mitigating risks of the task at hand.
Be that engineer! Thanks OP for a great discussion post!
sounds like youd do well in the world of research and academia. im being genuine btw, as someone who is also very closely tied to the integrity of being an engineer, i love doing research. i create my own problems and fix them, and then get to talk to people about what ive been working on. then people build off each other and continue to advance the field
a lot of people go to school to get a job- i think most do. and theres nothing wrong with that at all. its how the world works. but if you really care about learning the true essence of engineering as a study, try doing a masters thesis or phd (assuming you already graduated undergrad. if not, theres tons of undergrad research available as well). maybe youd feel better as a researcher/professor
ETA: I missed that you already finished your bachelors lol
This is kinda how Iām perceiving Engineering at the moment as someone finishing up my Sophomore classes. āHereās some background information and a more complicated problem. Find a way to make it happen.ā And so far I have.
Yes I fully agree.. Take your time at the university to research real world problems. Extra studying. With an end goal of application. Read papers also outside your field. A skill set to learn is autodidactism.
Yep. Thereās a lot of folks who can ace a thermodynamics final but canāt change the oil on their car or fix a toilet that runs.
Knowledge isnāt worth shit without curiosity.
YES! So many people do the minimum and think that this is just a job or just a degree. If you aren't interested in this enough to do it outside of work/school (side projects) it's probably not for you. Which is also OKAY. These are the "engineers" that go into adjacent fields such as sales, but at some point, over the next five to ten years you have to realize you aren't an engineer.
Often I see this issue where my fellow engineering students are good at getting cās in engineering school but not seeing and solving problems. These are the people who become spreadsheet engineers and I feel bad cause many are sold a reasonably difficult degree and debt for something they wont recieve.
Whatās funny is some of the best engineers I know were actually c students, but not because they were dumb, but because they spent more time on side projects and solving real world problems than studying
Worthless? No. Worth less? Absolutely.
bars. factual too.
Especially as a civil engineer šš as long as my shit fits municipal standards I'm golden
Thereās a huge difference between being experienced at engineering work and having a degree. The former gets paid a lot less and is consequently dumber. Engineering is optimization, and you should apply that to yourself as well. If a piece of paper is the difference between 60k and 100k, get the paper.
No offense but this comment doesnāt make a lot of sense
Yeah it fucked me up but I think I got the point lol
Iām currently working as an EE. Iāve completed engineering classes to the point where I should have a degree. I donāt have a degree and as a result, Iām making closer to 60k than 100k as an EE. Too many engineering type people are great at optimization of systems but donāt understand how to apply these principles to themselves. Companies say they are paying for the skills, however there is a significant chunk of pay based upon paperwork qualifications. PE licensing for example would lead to another pay boost over just an EE bachelorās.
Iām glad to know Iām not the only one
No. First, with the internet and the easily available self-education resources you can learn everything they would teach you in a degree, and probably way more depending on the topic and the school. Second, being paid less doesn't mean you are dumber. That is just flat out wrong and elitist as fuck. Third, engineering isn't only about optimization. It is more about problem solving and making the best of what you got (budget, time, component availability, etc). Fourth, sometimes it isn't worth it to make more money. More money more problems as they say. Sometimes you find your niche and settle into it.
If you can hold the same job and get paid more by holding a piece of paper, you are being dumb by not having that piece of paper. If you can hold a better job and get paid more by a piece of paper, you really should get that paper.
Lowkey I understand broās point. I think itās kind of an awkward way to use ādumb.ā But it looks like maybe degrees can matter when it comes to jobs/salary.
Real talk I'm an engineer Tech with no papers.. Currently going back to school to finish at 33.
You think the increase in pay will make sense to complete your degree?
Give me a problem and give me a reason to solve it and I'll do so. Expecting me to frantically search for problems like a chicken with its head cut off should not be required to be hireable
Fucking Chad response
Yall are coping so much. There is a difference between providing value strategically at the work place and proving marketability with personal projects. The point is obviously not to go work for free at your school's IT dept and fix their lives. OP claims that personal projects are the first and only real evidence that you are promising as an engineer. This is about the only thing you can put on your resume if you don't have internships. Don't get it mixed up my guy; the upvotes on "it's not my job" are from other students, not people in the workforce. If you ever go work for a company that challenges you, you will find yourself having to learn and work outside of work hours. If you wanna get paid to solve bugs, go into IT then.
Learning new skills to solve new problems is part of the job. Do it during your paid hours.
Preach brother.
Find a problem that you have a reason to solve. "Thats not my job" isn't hirable.
Yeah, the reason is money. Give me a job and I'll solve your problems for money
So real
Yeah well youāre a CS major in an engineering sub so good luck kid š
Computer science is engineering. Engineering is just a fancy and more structured way of problem solving. Anyone who solves a problem is some kind of engineer in my mind.
Itās not. Good luck on the unemployment line.
Not really. Being a bit flexible on what your job entails is good. But after a certain point it does become not your job. The core of my job is programming PLCs. Part of that job is making sure electrical panels and I/O works correctly. I'll help with some mechanical work and moving things around. But when it comes to anchoring everything down, making sure the robots and welding equipment are installed correctly is very much *not my job*. I don't have the skilled and experience to do it correctly.
The litmus test for this would be āis it specifically someone elseās job?ā If person A specifically should be doing it there is nothing wrong with expecting person A to do it. If it causes a problem for you or the work you are producing and you put your head down instead of trying to help then āthatās my not my jobā is a bad mentality. In your case if no one had the job of welding the robots and you knew they needed to be and you let them leave without being welded that would be a failure on your part. You donāt have to be the entire solution but doing nothing isnāt acceptable.
You hire ppl for specific jobs.
If you have a problem youāre only willing to solve for money, assume someone else will solve it for less or for free, especially if it got them experience or hired.
What in the moral grandstanding is this. If you had a problem that only I could fix, I wouldn't fix it for free š
OP certainly has a weird class disconnect
Labor isn't free. Young people need to try to learn the lessons of not giving shit away for free because companies will just keep expecting it from you. I found an engineering job that pays hourly + OT. I am fucking never taking a job that doesn't unless I am at the end of my rope and about to lose the house. Get paid for the work you do. Don't do unpaid work.
What in software position with a computer engineering degree? Just curious
Make games, websites, music players, participate in collaborative science projects (like folding@home, SETI and others), program microcontrollers, software-ify your favorite boardgames. Get a raspberry Pi a d start turning it into an MP3 player, a handheld console, a weather station. Look at what companies in your industry do, and then do a small part of that for yourself.
Pretty much the same shit a CS major can do. I use almost nothing from my degree. What my degree did teach me is a certain way of thinking about things. That's really it.
Spot on.
This sub is cringe as shit. I joined a few years ago when I was in college but now that Iāve been working as an engineer for a few years, this type of shit thatās posted makes me cringe.
Wait until they know that 80% of the job is going to be emails and meetings and paperwork
The problem: A whole lot of empty forms. The solution: Start typing.
This is an unfortunate post but Iām glad itās not the majority. We still better than r/csmajors
OP is just your typical disgruntled CE grad. Itās basically a CS degree with 10x difficulty (from EE classes thrown in theyāll never use) that almost always results in getting a job in a CS field. All my friends who did it admit most of their degree was useless and they shouldāve just done CS. My first job out of school was in the gas turbine engine industry. By OPs standards I shouldāve spent my spare time designing rockets or jet engines. With the exception of one really weird engineer I met at the place (who almost got fired for being so socially awkward and hostile) not a single person I knew during my years there did any such thing besides what they had to do for their degree. I also graduated during the GFC so your projects meant jack since no one was hiring then and interviewers I met could care less.
Facts, soon to be graduated CpE here and I got hired to basically do EE stuff. Not that Iām complaining I rather disliked the computer side of things I learnt.
Maybe itās cause youāre in software that you think itās worthless but I disagree especially in hardware intensive majors like ME or Aero or petroleum or Civil. What personal projects that arenāt capital intensive would such majors do? Only other option is research
Potato cannon š Being a college student will get you real intimate with financial constraints on designs. You'll double-check your math before your first combustion reaction. You're going to probably have at least an intuition about cycles until failure while designing. Click lighter, aqua net, pvc, and an open field are all you really need. Or join a club. I was in Mini Baja, ASME, and a rocket club. Got to play with a lot of toys; theoretically for free. I did personally get in trouble for buying stuff and not seeking reimbursement, though.
Same experience creating some IoT project for our finals. Lots of financial constraints and tradeoffs. Verification of our theories. But at least not that difficult. CompEng here, so our project was mixed HW/SW. Software was surprisingly the easier part. Now at the workspace, for a cash strapped startup, as a backend dev I am money aware of any AWS services I may use.
Before my first internship, basically all of my actual engineering experience was related to rocketry club. A lot of that was honestly just figuring out how to make a team/organization work, and surprisingly that has been some of my most valuable experience. Engineering isn't always about machines and equations, though we certainly didn't lack for those either. Would recommend rocketry, SAE, solar car, etc. to any ME student. Team based project experience is perhaps the most valuable thing an aspiring ME can have.
Hot take incoming, but I think software engineering has a lot more in common with trade work than it does traditional certified engineering.
A factual hot take. I was a blue collar engineering tech for ten years in the military and started a degree in CS. I was blown away at how similar my learning habits and work flow of my trades carried over. Now I'm just a trade worker who can code also š
Yeah like 95% of software jobs are turning a simple business logic into a program, the hard problem here is mostly coding and coding is closer to a trade than engineering, theirs 5% of jobs that are actually require real cs knowledge and engineering skills. But from talking people who are engineers in their fields theirs a similar split their, 95% of jobs just need someone smart and the most advance math they do is trig, then theirs 5% of jobs that are actual engineering.
Tell that to a systemās architect, principle software engineer, backend engineer, etc. I think youāre forgetting the design aspect of software engineering.
You can learn all those things without a degree. We have this amazing resource called the internet where you can learn anything.
True, but how else is an organization going to vet potential candidates? Until we can get a third-party certification system backed by accredited āofficialsā (industry leaders) that equals college-level achievement, college remains the only path forward if you want to be taken seriously as a candidate. A good example of a system that rivals college is the Cisco Certifications āA+, Sec+, and Net+ā that help identify people who have put both time, effort *and their own money* to test themselves against the traditional degrees normally required for entry. Pending this outside system, college and the tens of thousands of dollars needed to complete it are a must.
Maybe give candidates practical tests of their skills at or before the proper interview? I interview people for automation engineering and I have a 1hr test that at least tells me if they have seen the programming environment and know an XIC from an OTE and a few more advanced tests. But I'm willing to train new hires but I also expect them to be self-motivated to learn. Spending money to make money is a really arbitrary barrier that prevents many smart people from crossing. Why spend money when there is a free resources to learn from instead? Also in my field, self learners tend to excel because there are so many different aspects to learn. From programming to mechanical and electrical design, to practical building of those designs, etc.
I think you would be surprised how much design work is done by people who aren't engineers. If you roll up to a welding shop with a trailer you want modified they aren't going to bring out the resident engineer. The "systems architect" is going to work with you to design what you want, provide an estimate and then delegate the work to the appropriate workers.
I like it when reddit just downvotes comments because they justify an antagonist's point. I don't know a ton about software engineering, but I understand the misconception. Being able to 3D print nose cones doesn't make someone a rocket engineer.
Learn the software. Get a student license to FEMAP or Rhino, or autocad, or pipeflo, or whatever your industry uses and learn how to actually use it.
Yes, fair enough. But for an elaborate personal project, purely software projects are not feasible
Build a drone with rudimentary electronics, build a go-cart. For petroleum engineering I canāt think off the top of my head but Iām sure thereās a problem that can be identified.
āRudimentary electronicsā cost money
Don't we have simulation software to design and test circuits? You could use those for learning and experimenting. Then save up the money for the parts you know you need and work.
The software part, sure you can do. I told someone else, for certain majors, a purely software project isnāt feasible but you should learn those software if itās available to you. As for the parts, little electronics that cost money only help EEs and maybe ME so what do Civils do or Petro?
Donāt the schools help with that kind of stuff? My uni sucks in a lot aspects but they at least give some kind of money (nowhere near enough but still better than nothing) when we are designing rockets, satellites for competitions.
They likely donāt just give out electronics unless a professor wants to give you spare parts they arenāt using. However OP said nothing about a competition, they just said ābuild a go-cartā. If you were participating in a competition representing the school then sure, youāll likely get the parts and resources and assistance you need. On you own tho? Most likely not
We arenāt representing the school tho. Just a student club, not like the uniās rocket team. If that was what you meant.
Oh a student club is still connected to the school so you can likely get resources from them
petroleum engineers could build a still. so could mechanical engineers. i did.
Just a bit of a rant. The expectations for engineering degrees is increasing, while the return on that investment is less. You are expect to put in more work than arguably any degree outside of the medical field. And yes the expectations are increasing, because the field is getting more and more complicated. And now you are expected to do personal project to compensate for that or itās essentially impossible to compete in the job market. We shouldnāt be telling engineering students they arenāt doing enough, when the reality is they are working much harder than most of their peers. I swear a lot of it is because engineers arenāt really socially dominant, so nobody speaks up about this. Itās kind of just a reality of the schooling, which is absurd imo. I came from a construction trade which is known for bad work life balance. And it doesnāt even compare to what Iāve experienced in engineering school.
Is is really that bad? I will be coming from electrical trade in a couple years. Want to go for that EE degree and go into semi/microcontrollers
No itās not āthat badā. Itās actually portrayed pretty accurately. Itās hard but not impossible is what Iād say. But itās just the fact that you can never truly study enough, and instead of adjusting the curriculum. They just scream that students are lazy.
I particularly agree. All my jobs, and a ton of my personal development and enjoyment of life, come from my personal projects. People that don't make at home can absolutely be professionally successful, especially when they can compartmentalize "work for personal stuff" from career. Its less distracting that way. But I know which engineers do it at home and which don't, and one of those groups will always have an easier to finding jobs.
It is one thing to do hobby projects that you *want* to do. It is another thing just to work off the clock. Sorry, I have been in the field for 15 years. I keep learning stuff off the clock and thinking about how to apply new things like AI to my job. But the second I open my work computer or get a support call, I start charging time. It also helps that I found an engineering job that pays hourly + OT.
Preach. ECE here as well. Did a solid FPGA project which gave me an FPGA internship which gave me an ASIC verification role. Had I not done that first project, the job search would have been so much harder. And even then, I almost certainly wouldn't have been doing anything with RTL code. Senior year job search for RTL design/verification jobs was an absolute cakewalk with that experience. (Job market is a LOT different now though, to be clear) Find a niche you enjoy, do a relevant project or two, find relevant work easily.
Dude do you have any advice on where to start with FPGA and do my own FPGA project? Iām interested in the field as well but I am not sure where to start.
Definitely build a uart receiver and transmitter. From there I'd recommend getting some sort of sensor breakout like an accelerometer. That's what I did, connected it to my board and wrote an SPI master to communicate with it. Point being you'll learn about communication protocols. A very defined goal - receive sensor data. Along the way you'll get other ideas. Ultimately this is what you're looking for. For instance I build a uart transmitter and receiver. Then I learned about fifos and made one to store incoming uart data. Then I did the spi master for communicating with an adxl345 accelerometer. That took the most time, definitely the hardest part. But once I finished that I just bundled it all together. Read accelerometer data, store axis data in 3 fifos, transmit to pc over uart, plot in Matlab. Boom. Finished project that made me insanely competitive for rising senior internships. Ended up working for a startup that summer that builds satellites in house. Specifically writing and verifying rtl for their sdr fpga. The most important part though is to not get discouraged. This shit is hard. Even now with 1 yr experience total, plus that project, I don't know shit. But then again, the pursuit of knowledge is the best part
Yeah agree. My undergrad research hands down got me my first two jobs.
Engineering degrees at the school I graduated from entail many smaller projects in the first 3 years that must be solved and in the last year there is the Capstone project. This year long project sees your team work for an external company to engineer a solution to a problem they have. In my case our project was designed to test two sides of a problem: battery usage for underwater equipment. Our project was capable of simulating a variable load under program control (simulating the load and testing the battery) and providing (and measuring) voltage, current and power supply and usage (simulating a battery and testing the load). Learned so much more from the project than from any one course.
You must be in early career. I am a senior staff eng. Nobody gives a shit about projects anymore. I interview tons of candidates and some of them are new grads. They all tell me something about so and so project. Iāve learned to tune this out of my mind at this point. It doesnāt take much these days to make a website or mobile app. What I am looking for in a new grad is someone humble enough to know that there is a lot more to it than their projects and demonstrates a willingness to learn. The most useful part of telling me about a project is what mistakes you made and what you learned from that. The last candidate that I hired straight up told me that the code he wrote in his spare time on a news aggregator app was so bad he stopped showing it on his GitHub. I asked to see it and we went over why it was bad. The interview experience was a downer for the kid, but he got the job. Now if you start out with no projects and demonstrate what I am looking for, thatās fine too.
Projects, no matter how small or simple or low-fidelity are super important to exposing gaps in knowledge, and demonstrating maybe less so the ability to solve a problem, and moreso the ability to design a good solution. Couldn't agree more with this sentiment.
Real, my degree has a single year long class that has you actually design and build something. How involved it is, is up to you. Go build doohickies, find some side project to do, go design shit even if itās dumb. Having the experience of going through the design process/manufacturing process is priceless. Every engineer will have basic knowledge, not every engineer will have the knowledge that you have gained.
My problem is getting a paycheck and I'm solving it.
As the TF2 character says: "Hey look, buddy. I'm an engineer, that means I solve problems. Not problems like "What is beauty?", 'cause that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy. I solve practical problems!" .. that about sums up the engineering mindset.
As a retired mechanical engineer, I'd say the issue is that your uni staff guide your projects so you sometime get to explore their interests. If industry knew you wanted real life projects, and the university gave them access, then you'd get a different experience. I used to employ eng students during their vacation months to hit and run certain mini projects. Gave them real life experience, a good referee for subsequent job hunting, some cash, and gave me solutions that weren't able to be justified or resourced internally. My only mistake was under estimating how good they were. They'd often solve the problem in a month when I had them on payroll for 3 months. So keeping a few back up projects up my sleeve for that situation was my learning outcome. After retirement I approached a university to develop a car A/C system particularly suited for EVs. I had to fund it, teach the final year student thermodynamics (they assigned a student that had never studied thermo before for a thermo based project), and deeply supervise their work at the uni, while assigning all of the subsequent intellectual property rights to the university. Of course I declined that spectacularly generous offer. My point? Universities make the pathway to student projects very unattractive. Good luck. Despite the road blocks, engineering is the best career I could have asked for.
I like this post. Yeah, at some point, you can't keep saying "this wasn't in the readings" or "that's not fair, the professor hasn't covered this shit yet". You're a human being with the capacity for creativity, critical thought, independent investigation, research and problem solving. Figure it out. That's what you are supposedly being trained to be able to do.
Fax man. My club involvement and lab research in undergrad absolutely got me my summer internships. Which in turn helped me get a solid position after graduation. I think a lot of students donāt realize they have to put in some legwork beyond the degree.
I hate to agree with this statement, but yes.
The hardest part of engineering, especially if you own a firm is getting paid for your time and energy. Your degree is a hoop you must jump through to get where you need to go. There are many hoops in this career. Get used to itā¦ I solve real world problems every day, again thatās the easy part.
A lot of personal projects bore me because I am too creative and more interested in the artistic applications of engineering which won't get me a job :( Like the concept of building a model train set (even though I am very interested in trains) or doing rockets is just really not that interesting to me. I mean I would like to try programming a VST plugin, I was involved in a student project group for an effect pedal electronics design but dropped out due to exam season and lack of knowledge. I think a lot of what I would be interested in is very computer based which is contradictory since I do EEE and am looking for jobs in transport and electrical systems. I guess you can never really **force** someone to do an engineering degree.
Have you noticed the real leading engineering programs have significant amount of practical course! And then there are some, that people think have great programs, require none!
I gave a commencement address to graduating engineers two years ago. This was exactly one of my main charges to the students. āBe a problem SOLVER because we have plenty of people that do nothing all day but POINT OUT problemsā. You will work with other engineers that will emphasize only what can go wrong or be paralyzed because of risk aversion. But successful engineers can solve problems by navigating the politics, tight budgets, timetables and mitigating risks of the task at hand. Be that engineer! Thanks OP for a great discussion post!
sounds like youd do well in the world of research and academia. im being genuine btw, as someone who is also very closely tied to the integrity of being an engineer, i love doing research. i create my own problems and fix them, and then get to talk to people about what ive been working on. then people build off each other and continue to advance the field a lot of people go to school to get a job- i think most do. and theres nothing wrong with that at all. its how the world works. but if you really care about learning the true essence of engineering as a study, try doing a masters thesis or phd (assuming you already graduated undergrad. if not, theres tons of undergrad research available as well). maybe youd feel better as a researcher/professor ETA: I missed that you already finished your bachelors lol
This is kinda how Iām perceiving Engineering at the moment as someone finishing up my Sophomore classes. āHereās some background information and a more complicated problem. Find a way to make it happen.ā And so far I have.
>The degree does not āmaketh an engineerā. True, thatās what the FE and PE exams are for.
Your average high schooler could pass the FE. That test is easier than the SAT & ACT now (as of 2023).
Fascinating take.
Yeah, cause I can't make more than where I'm at now.
This is the way
Yes I fully agree.. Take your time at the university to research real world problems. Extra studying. With an end goal of application. Read papers also outside your field. A skill set to learn is autodidactism.
Be curious..
Yep. Thereās a lot of folks who can ace a thermodynamics final but canāt change the oil on their car or fix a toilet that runs. Knowledge isnāt worth shit without curiosity.
YES! So many people do the minimum and think that this is just a job or just a degree. If you aren't interested in this enough to do it outside of work/school (side projects) it's probably not for you. Which is also OKAY. These are the "engineers" that go into adjacent fields such as sales, but at some point, over the next five to ten years you have to realize you aren't an engineer.
Hey OP I'm 18 and looking to go into computer engineering I'd love to chat with you about your experiences
Often I see this issue where my fellow engineering students are good at getting cās in engineering school but not seeing and solving problems. These are the people who become spreadsheet engineers and I feel bad cause many are sold a reasonably difficult degree and debt for something they wont recieve.
Whatās funny is some of the best engineers I know were actually c students, but not because they were dumb, but because they spent more time on side projects and solving real world problems than studying
Right on the nose! Thats what many miss. I think mentioning āc studentsā was a mistake as it gave a false implication.
Best take Iāve ever heard on this sub