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I just wanted to thank everyone that has posted information and advice in this thread, it has really helped me change the way I view the engineering college experience. I have started to get more focused on getting to know all of my professors and working hard on trying to get some internships. It also does help me worrying allot when I hear about the lower significance of what college you went to for your bachelors. One question though, would it still be okay to turn down going to the University of Washington to finish my degree at Washington State University? For those that don't know those colleges, UW is considered a great engineering school, but i don't know if its worth uprooting myself like that.
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Aug 12, 2010 21:42
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Ingenium posted:One question though, would it still be okay to turn down going to the University of Washington to finish my degree at Washington State University? For those that don't know those colleges, UW is considered a great engineering school, but i don't know if its worth uprooting myself like that. I'd do it. In the current economic situation, having even a slightly better education is probably going to pay off. Having to move away from your current university isn't that much to pay.
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Aug 12, 2010 22:05
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Nermal. posted:God I love this thread, more information than I could have ever dreamed of. I'm a civil engineer, and it totally rules! Im working my first real job as a site engineer on a large (for NZ) motorway project, about $200M worth. First choice really is whether you want to work for as a contractor or a consultant. If you want ot get your hands dirty, go contracting, where you will no doubt start as a site engineer. Most of your day will be spent out on site, getting dirty, thrashing company 4wd's around, and getting poo poo from operators who have more experience than you have been alive. Its all good though, the amount you will learn in the first few years will be massive and will set you up for your future. Civil Engineers are the best! Its like playing in the sandpit as a kid and never really growing up.
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Aug 13, 2010 00:21
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Does anybody watching this thread hire engineers? I'm worried about my career prospects since I haven't had an 'engineering' job besides software QA. I don't like it because my programming knowledge is poor and messing around with CAD software and then writing a report to the developer that says something like 'this doesn't work when I did it this way' isn't really fulfilling to me. Summary of my situation: Graduated in 2007 (I'm 26 know) from UW-Madison. I didn't do my homework really when I applied there, so I have kind of an unusual major (Engineering Mechanics/Astronautics). I guess it's sort of like mechanical engineering except instead of taking more classes on thermo I had some classes working in a wind tunnel and using CFD, plus some cool astrodynamics classes (and maybe some more structural mechanics). I'm multi-lingual, which unusual for engineers, but since I'm a native English speaker anyways I'm not sure if it matters. I'd like to find a job using CAD, designing control systems, or something with aerodynamics or structural mechanics. I refuse to work for a defense contractor or any of their sub-contractors, unless they offer me a job doing work for civil aviation products. Here's another twist: I'm living in China right now learning Mandarin (it's a personal situation that will probably keep me here for another year at least). I'm applying for jobs here, and I'm not getting anything (not that I had high hopes to begin with). So if any of you are working in HR for some reason and see a resume from a guy in his late 20s applying for entry level jobs, are you gonna throw that thing right in the trash?
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Aug 13, 2010 01:03
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I graduated from Oakland University in Michigan and got my BA in English (yeah, I know) last May and a year later here I am jobless and unhappy with my prospects. I have been strongly considering going back to school and lately have been thinking about getting a degree in electrical engineering. What sort of course-load would I be looking at if I went back to school? Would it be feasible to get an Associates from a community college or should I be looking to get at least a Bachelors from a major university to be viable in the job market? I'm not sure if I can go full time to do this or not, considering my current financial situation I know I need to look into my options, either going back to the same college or transferring all my gen-eds and poo poo, but I'd like some general info about what I'm looking to get myself back into and how, well, hire-able I'd be afterwards.
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Aug 13, 2010 02:02
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2010 02:31
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:What sort of course-load would I be looking at if I went back to school? Would it be feasible to get an Associates from a community college or should I be looking to get at least a Bachelors from a major university to be viable in the job market? I'm not sure if I can go full time to do this or not, considering my current financial situation I'm not an EE, but you absolutely will need to get a BS if you want to have any sort of chance of getting hired. An AA could maybe get you some sort of tech work, but you won't have nearly the sort of demand that you'd get with a typical four-year engineering degree. Most schools require about 1-2 semesters of humanities/general eds (though this varies widely), so I guess you maybe could get it done within 3 years? You could look into getting into summer courses to shorten the time, but yeah, 3 years would be about the bare minimum at any respectable program.
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Aug 13, 2010 02:46
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2010 03:20
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Thoguh posted:There are a few schools out there that offer M.S. programs for non-engineering undergrads. The downside it is that it would take a few extra semesters of concentrated work on pre-reqs, so it might be tough to do while attending part time. Oh yeah, I forgot about those. I think it'd still be tough (you'd still have to cram in a lot of pre-reqs), but I guess faster(?) and you'd get a higher degree. Do you know any examples you could link to for the previous poster's use?
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Aug 13, 2010 03:39
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Pfirti86 posted:I'm not an EE, but you absolutely will need to get a BS if you want to have any sort of chance of getting hired. An AA could maybe get you some sort of tech work, but you won't have nearly the sort of demand that you'd get with a typical four-year engineering degree. That's probably true in most cases, but the company that I work (one of the big 3 defense firms) for hires(ed) EETs all the time for stuff like Field Engineering and stuff like that where you have to have enough technical knowledge to understand what's going on but don't do much design. So it's not too uncommon. But if you end up at a company like that you have tons of opportunity to move up and get into management or go deep down the systems/specialist/consultant tunnel and end up in a room with no windows working on poo poo you can't talk about. Just need to get your foot in the door. E: Also I've got a BS EE getting my MS Comp Sci from Hopkins and probably going to go back for a MS Systems after that.
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Aug 13, 2010 03:52
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Plinkey posted:But if you end up at a company like that you have tons of opportunity to move up and get into management or go deep down the systems/specialist/consultant tunnel and end up in a room with no windows working on poo poo you can't talk about. Just need to get your foot in the door. Yeah, plenty of people with AAs find work as techs and so on. I guess having a bachelors just gives you more options and higher pay; I suppose you could always get an AA and then get a job while working on a BS part-time or something. I guess I'm just glad I got my BS and MS straight from high school (Notre Dame and Princeton respectively, if we're going to name universities). I'm a chemical engineer by education (PhD grad student at Michigan though, so I'm really more of a scientist than an engineer at this point); there really isn't an equivalency to EET in my field that I know of. I should probably stop giving advice on EE stuff 
Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Aug 13, 2010 |
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Aug 13, 2010 04:10
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Jagershot posted:What's your degree and GPA? kind of a late reply but BSEE from St. Cloud State with a solid 2.8 GPA and a programming internship. I also have a BA in German but I don't think that will be very useful except for maybe making me stand out a little bit.
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Aug 13, 2010 04:24
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Thoguh posted:There are a few schools out there that offer M.S. programs for non-engineering undergrads. The downside it is that it would take a few extra semesters of concentrated work on pre-reqs, so it might be tough to do while attending part time. I've already got a load of student loan debt, and honestly I'll just go full time again rack up a shitload more if that's what it takes to get an education that can actually lead to a career I'll enjoy. I made some huge mistakes in choosing this liberal arts major and I really want to move past that. My mom would be happy I made a choice, my dad might be pissed I'm going back to school and not getting a full time job but he can go gently caress himself if he objects, there's no market for what I have right now and I doubt there will ever be. I'd love to work in a field involving energy generation (green or otherwise), that poo poo really interests me, and I absolutely love the potential and aesthetic of wind turbines. I'd be ecstatic if I learned enough to be able to design or build one. 100 HOGS AGREE fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Aug 13, 2010 |
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Aug 13, 2010 04:52
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Asked this many pages ago, didn't get a response so I thought I might give it another shot. Anyone working as a Control/Automation/SCADA Engineer? What's the job like? I'm interested in getting into the Water/Wastewater as a SCADA engineer, but I'm also interested in hearing what other sectors (ie, oil/gas, food/beverage, etc..) are like.
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Aug 13, 2010 05:10
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I recently discovered that the practice of big engineering firms constantly buying up and spinning off departments can make it pretty difficult to find available job openings in specialty fields. I've been looking for aerospace-related systems engineering jobs at a number of big AE companies like Boeing and Northrop Grumman, but was finding absolutely nothing at all. Just a few days ago I randomly discovered that Northrop had spun off their entire systems engineering department into TASC Inc in 2009, which was where all the jobs I had been looking for had gone. A lot of companies tend to hire out specific tasks and services to specialty firms that are often pretty obscure, or might go through convoluted name changes/mergers/spinoffs/etc. Unfortunately information on stuff like that is hard to come by for college students, although sometimes you can luck out through stuff like Monster.com and discover companies within your specialty.
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Aug 13, 2010 05:53
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Thoguh posted:Astronautics/EM isn't a weird major, pretty much every single decent sized engineering school offers it. In fact, your best bet for finding employment is to have your former classmates put your resume on their managers desks. What kinds of jobs are they working? Funny you should ask... only one of my friends from college is working in anything tangentially related to his degree, another found an awesome job selling nutritional supplements in some MLM scheme. The rest are in grad school. Thoguh posted:Your age isn't going to matter so much as the three year gap in between graduation and when you are starting engineering. What have you been doing while you're in China, anything you can put on an engineering resume and brag about? Unfortunately just the software QA work since I graduated (I'm awesome at CAD now because of it though) and I'm likely going to have to pick up some English teaching work here until something better pops up. Actually I've been looking at wind power companies here; there's a growing renewable energy industry here, and some of them are looking to start selling equipment abroad.
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Aug 13, 2010 10:41
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Some people need to redefine their ideas/definition of being an engineer. If you want more of the hands on, repairing faults kind of experience, then you should be looking into technician roles. In my experience, fully qualified engineers sit in offices managing day to day operations and creating design ideas and what not. I've never really seen anyone other than a project manager or higher management types on the actual work site who aren't technicians.
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Aug 13, 2010 12:06
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Diet Crack posted:Some people need to redefine their ideas/definition of being an engineer. If you want more of the hands on, repairing faults kind of experience, then you should be looking into technician roles. In my experience, fully qualified engineers sit in offices managing day to day operations and creating design ideas and what not. I've never really seen anyone other than a project manager or higher management types on the actual work site who aren't technicians. Perhaps that's just your work environment, I go on jobsites all the time (in fact, it's in the job description). I'm not entirely hands-on, usually it's directing techs/electricians to fix something (they generally know the wiring end of it better anyway), but I do spend a lot of time with a meter in hand and a trend running on my laptop. Our PMs and management sit in cubes all day, with the occasional journey to site if something's really FUBAR (or if the site is somewhere they want to visit, like the job we had in Jamaica). The last engineering job I worked (Test Engineer at a storage device manufacturer) was pretty hands-on too, we were always examining test escape systems and revising the tests/process.
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Aug 13, 2010 12:26
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Currently I'm studying Materials Science & Engineering and leaning towards graduate studies. However, should I decide the PhD is not for me, what career opportunities does the BS give me? Additionally, what is the payoff of capping it off with a MS in MSE;both financially and the fun factor of the job?
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Aug 13, 2010 13:23
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Wolfy posted:Currently I'm studying Materials Science & Engineering and leaning towards graduate studies. However, should I decide the PhD is not for me, what career opportunities does the BS give me? Additionally, what is the payoff of capping it off with a MS in MSE;both financially and the fun factor of the job? You can get allot work doing weld procedure qualifications, asset reliability and corrosion control. Also you can do failure analysis at a metallurgy lab. Steel mills and foundries also tend to hire materials engineers (maybe not so much in this economy but its worth bugging them). Cephalopod Attack fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Aug 13, 2010 |
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Aug 13, 2010 14:34
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:I graduated from Oakland University in Michigan and got my BA in English (yeah, I know) last May and a year later here I am jobless and unhappy with my prospects. I have been strongly considering going back to school and lately have been thinking about getting a degree in electrical engineering. Try to get your credits to apply for all the elective and gen-ed stuff. I graduated with a bs sociology degree and am compressing an additional 4-year computer engineering degree into 3 years because I don't have to do a single gen-ed requirement. that being said there ain't dick for scholarships or grants for second bachelor degrees so hopefully you have some spare change seo fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Aug 14, 2010 |
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Aug 14, 2010 00:08
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seo posted:Try to get your credits to apply for all the elective and gen-ed stuff. I graduated with a bs sociology degree and am compressing an additional 4-year computer engineering degree into 3 years because I don't have to do a single gen-ed requirement. that being said there ain't dick for scholarships or grants for second bachelor degrees so hopefully you have some spare change 
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Aug 14, 2010 00:16
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:I don't, but what's another several thousand dollars in student loans on top of what I owe already haha I know right. thats my route right now
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Aug 14, 2010 00:27
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I thought I'd write a reflective post, approximately 6 months into my first engineering job, working in the power industry. Things I learned about the transition to a full time permanent engineering job. A lot of this stuff is undoubtedly specific to my situation, workplace, and industry but its stuff I would have appreciated knowing before I started. 1) It really isn't that much work Assuming you were a good student in university who took it seriously and maybe had a part time job on the side, you may find your first engineering job to be actually less work than being a student was. Usually* your work is confined to work hours and you have the weekends off. You also don't have the same exams to worry about. As long as you produce good work and generally understand the concepts being discussed well enough to make reasonable suggestions and know when to shut up, nobody is going to grill you on the subtleties of FDTD waveform modelling or heat flow calculations. 2) You really just started learning A university education is nice, but in most cases it left out a shitload of information about the engineering field you're now in. There's a lot of stuff you need to learn before you will be competent at your job, and the best resource is going to be the people you work with. Your company may provide formal training but its still up to you to learn a lot more by asking people intelligent questions and putting work into both your projects and your own studies. Early in your career learning is as much a part of your responsibilities as writing reports or investigations or analysis or design. Getting paid decent money to learn isn't a bad thing at all. 3) Whatever industry you're working in, its probably smaller than you think You will run into former university classmates, former professors, people you met on internships and just people you know. Developing a bad reputation is something you absolutely don't want. Even if you don't want to "network" just making friends with people you like and being professional and nice to ones you don't is good sense. Don't commit anything to email that you wouldn't want read by everyone. 4) Management isn't always a refuge for the less technically skilled Some remarkably clever people get bored with engineering or just want more money. If you have genuine engineering and management skills you can be paid a lot of money. *obviously highly job dependent
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Aug 14, 2010 13:38
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CompE student here. Have done what is essentially my first 2 years of the degree without touching matlab and I'm not sure if we're ever going to get to it. Would it be worth my time to learn it for the job market?
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Aug 15, 2010 14:34
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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:Your shop in the garage won't count for much, but industry experience and references are always helpful. I wouldn't sell it too short though. I know people who have been hired over similarly qualified people because they worked on their own cars. Granted that was for an internship, but anything you can use to differentiate yourself and show some sort of mechanical aptitude is definitely a plus.
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Aug 15, 2010 17:19
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seo posted:CompE student here. Have done what is essentially my first 2 years of the degree without touching matlab and I'm not sure if we're ever going to get to it. Would it be worth my time to learn it for the job market? What do you want to do?
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Aug 15, 2010 18:06
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OctaviusBeaver posted:I wouldn't sell it too short though. I know people who have been hired over similarly qualified people because they worked on their own cars. Granted that was for an internship, but anything you can use to differentiate yourself and show some sort of mechanical aptitude is definitely a plus. I don't know too many engineers that don't at least do simple repairs.
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Aug 15, 2010 18:53
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grover posted:Believe it or not, I've seen this a lot- working on your own cars is a pretty common aptitude check for engineers. If you can't do something simple like change the spark plugs on your 4-cylinder Ford, how can you be expected to properly design ultra-complicated multi-million dollar systems that will require frequent maintenance and repair? I've also been asked what tools I own, which goes along similar lines. I'm halfway through changing my Saab's engine.  although my dad's helping me 
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Aug 15, 2010 20:02
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hobbesmaster posted:What do you want to do? be a billionaire... so freaking bad... but really. what I want to do is design but what I will be doing is probably programming until I do graduate school
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Aug 16, 2010 00:46
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seo posted:be a billionaire... so freaking bad... But designing what? In all likelihood, Verilog/VHDL would be far more useful. MATLAB is for math and is used in research. If you want to go into test, picking up some LabVIEW might not be a bad idea. Having exposure to everything aforementioned isn't a bad idea. hobbesmaster fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Aug 16, 2010 |
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Aug 16, 2010 00:49
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hobbesmaster posted:But designing what? In all likelihood, Verilog/VHDL would be far more useful. MATLAB is for math and is used in research. If you want to go into test, picking up some LabVIEW might not be a bad idea. Having exposure to everything aforementioned isn't a bad idea. You'd be surprised. MATLAB is heavily used for simulations and such in industry.
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Aug 16, 2010 01:05
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BeefofAges posted:You'd be surprised. MATLAB is heavily used for simulations and such in industry. Which would fall under (private sector) research, correct? Regardless, I would think a CompE's time would be better spent on learning more VHDL. MATLAB isn't really that hard to learn so long as you know math and C (or FORTRAN, for bonus points).
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Aug 16, 2010 01:11
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hobbesmaster posted:Which would fall under (private sector) research, correct? Regardless, I would think a CompE's time would be better spent on learning more VHDL. MATLAB isn't really that hard to learn so long as you know math and C (or FORTRAN, for bonus points). No, I mean that (for example) many ordinary embedded systems firmware engineers use MATLAB on a daily basis as part of the product development cycle. Whether to learn VHDL or MATLAB really depends on what you want to do as a career. Honestly, I'd recommend getting a little experience with both, so that if either comes up as a job requirement you have a foundation to start from.
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Aug 16, 2010 01:43
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Currently I am a structural engineer in Ontario The first 3 years of my undergrad were terrible, specifically the part where the final 2 years have full course loads (6) during the summer Also, my entire undergrad schooling was summarized into one course in my final semester where basics in industry software were taught No regrets, I've had some of the most interesting co-op jobs during my schooling, including some pretty heavy construction management and budgeting to professional bridge look-er at-er (inspector) and design If anyone has any questions feel free to ask
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Aug 16, 2010 02:04
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 16, 2010 03:55
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grover posted:I don't know too many engineers that don't at least do simple repairs. Don't you mean "mechanical engineers" here, not just "engineers"? It's a pretty huge field and I don't see what car repair has to do with semiconductor design.
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Aug 16, 2010 04:53
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Markov Chain Chomp posted:Don't you mean "mechanical engineers" here, not just "engineers"? It's a pretty huge field and I don't see what car repair has to do with semiconductor design. It doesn't have any direct relation, but engineers are generally people who like to tinker with stuff and do their own repairs. This is true of the majority of my coworkers, even though none of them are mechanical engineers.
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Aug 16, 2010 05:40
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Markov Chain Chomp posted:Don't you mean "mechanical engineers" here, not just "engineers"? It's a pretty huge field and I don't see what car repair has to do with semiconductor design.
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Aug 16, 2010 05:41
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Wolfy posted:I read this entire thread and realized that Grover tends to generalize about the engineering profession based on his experiences. He also posts a ton of useful information so I just accepted it and moved on. Ah. I'm a huge fan of pedantry so it irked me a bit.
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Aug 16, 2010 05:50
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