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Beer4TheBeerGod posted:This also applies to managers who used to be engineers. It sucks when a PM tries to do engineering after they've been out of it for several years. Yeah. Its even worse than unemployment, from what I've seen, because they generally are absolutely sure that they know the right way to do things.
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Nov 3, 2010 03:33
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Speaking of forgetting engineering knowledge, I'm thinking about taking the FE next year as a review and something to show that I've maintained my knowledge since graduating. Is there a certificate or something with the FE exam that shows that you passed? I'm hoping I can do something better than write it on my resume that I passed the FE, because I don't know if HR people care about that or not.
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Nov 3, 2010 04:04
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I have found the correct way to list having passed the FE is to declare yourself as an Engineer-In-Training (EIT), or in some states an Engineer Intern (EI). Most HR representatives in fields that would find this relevant should know what that designation means.
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Nov 3, 2010 04:09
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Baloogan posted:Yeah. Its even worse than unemployment, from what I've seen, because they generally are absolutely sure that they know the right way to do things. Yup. And of course there's no way that young engineer could possibly have a better idea of how to solve the problem.
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Nov 3, 2010 13:18
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Mechanical Engineering graduate here, ~9 months out. I guess the first thing I'd like to say about engineering is that it's like getting into the CIA or something trying to get a job after college (interviews after interviews, personality tests, etc.) but once you're in it's quite cushy. Anybody who hates math in college probably shouldn't be an engineer. Having said that however I have never ever been expected to derive complex equations or perform really difficult intergration/differentiation, it's all been done before. But I work in a field where the technical service we're providing isn't breaking new ground, and the equations have all been derived and are there for you to use. You do need a head for math, certainly, but university sometimes takes it a little far. If, however, you were working in R&D or for NASA or something you may very well be expected to do complex poo poo. And even in the building services industry it can help (but a lot of engineers get by without much technical knowledge). I've improved not in math since graduating but in my ability to organise, document my work, define what needs to be defined in order to progress problems, and general problem solving. Oh, and I've developed a concentration span for tedious poo poo. The technical side which I specialise in is basically dealing with piping networks. I've also done some HVAC which was a lot more boring. I'd recommend trying a few things. The reason I go to work each day though is not the technical work I do but the people in the office, and actually trying to put something together which will help someone someday. edit : but mainly the money
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Nov 5, 2010 19:34
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ASME's Mechanical Engineering magazine is running a 3-part series of articles on "The Unwritten Rules of Engineering" (Applies to everyone, not just MEs). I've found them to be pretty worthwhile so far.
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Nov 6, 2010 19:07
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Is anyone as miserable as I am right now? I
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Nov 12, 2010 06:29
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Yeah I got an exam tomorrow morning and one next tuesday. I'm at that point where you lose both ambition and stress and just want to finish. At least once this is over I can spend the next 3 months drinking hard!
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Nov 12, 2010 12:07
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Panzer Pirate posted:Yeah I got an exam tomorrow morning and one next tuesday. I'm at that point where you lose both ambition and stress and just want to finish. At least once this is over I can spend the next 3 months drinking hard! That implies you haven't spent the last 3 months drinking hard. There's your problem right there.
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Nov 12, 2010 15:26
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Zo posted:I'm making far more than either MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Nov 12, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 18:43
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OctaviusBeaver posted:That implies you haven't spent the last 3 months drinking hard. There's your problem right there. I can't drink too much because of medical reasons. There's my problem. On the other side, I just found out about an scholarship that would allow me to go get my masters degree in Germany, so I have renewed ambition. I'm still dog tired tho.
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Nov 12, 2010 19:04
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MadScientistWorking posted:If you go to the university I think you do (There is only three that actually use that term) it helps that they have an entire staff dedicated to help students find jobs. Before the economy crashed Northeastern University had a ridiculously high placement rate for CO-OP jobs. It was in the high nineties and even then I don't think it dropped drastically in that time period. Use what term, co-op? Every engineering school uses that term these days.
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Nov 12, 2010 19:38
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2010 20:11
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Edited out personal info.
Dr. Mantis Toboggan fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Jul 20, 2013 |
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Nov 12, 2010 21:49
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You won't get an engineering job without an engineering degree, so the learn-at-home method isn't really going to fly. A good friend of mine got his masters in archaeology, realized that there were no decent jobs in the field, and is now back finishing up his BS in mechanical engineering. My understanding is that he pretty much started from scratch, but he's happy about it. I think he's 30 at this point. If you don't want to be an EE or a CE (ie you only like software) then don't get a degree in EE or CE. Engineering classes are generally hard and thankless, and unless you're really interested in the field you'll probably quit and waste money. Getting a degree in engineering as a workaround towards a CS degree seems like a poor decision. Why won't your university let you get multiple degrees from the same college? I've never heard of an academic institution deliberately doing something that wouldn't make them more money, and Econ and CS are far enough apart that the overlap would be minimal. I think the first thing you should do is figure out what you see yourself doing 5, 10, and 20 years from now. Then figure out what field is best suited to meet that goal. The impression I get from your post is that technical stuff interests you, your friends are engineers and seem happy, and you hate your job. If I were you I would talk to your friends and see what it is about their jobs they like, and whether or not the kind of work they do would interest you. Then I would see what kind of opportunities are available for someone with no technical education (perhaps the start-ups need a financial guy?). If at that point you're set on getting a technical degree then figure out what degree you should get and pursue it hardcore. Don't worry about the cost or the time, because neither are important compared to actually being satisfied with your work. My understanding is that the job market is fairly tough right now, but people are predicting an upswing. If you're flexible you should be able to find an engineering job no matter what your major ends up being.
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Nov 12, 2010 22:08
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Dr. Mantis Toboggan posted:Does anyone have any advice for or have experience as a liberal arts major looking to return to school to study engineering? Something else you could look into is getting a EET degree. They are usually 4 semesters and offered at more local schools. For example Psu offers EET at branch campus. http://www.et.psu.edu/studentguide/associate/2eet.htm I actually work with quite a few guys who got their EETs at a big defense contractor. I don't think that they make the same out of school as BS EEs, but they can still take advantage of the free grad school which you could use to get your masters while you're making money. Not sure if anyone else has more experience with EET degrees though.
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Nov 12, 2010 22:47
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Dr. Mantis Toboggan posted:but I would not really know advanced theories of algorithms and data structures and such, and I'm not sure how difficult that stuff would be to learn on my own. Congratulations, you would be in the same position as 90% of the CS graduates out there. Most of them cannot even write clean code let alone properly use any of the theoretical or abstract crap they learned in their programs. I have worked with dudes that have a masters in CS that still don't get that poo poo. They are lucky their degree causes people to give them the benefit of the doubt, because otherwise they wouldn't be working. It isn't difficult to learn on your own, it just seems either you get it or you don't for a lot of people. Going somewhere other than your alma mater should be a consideration though, because a CS degree and a coop will seriously help you in the job placement department. Not having a degree in cs will cast a lot of doubt on your abilities, mostly by people who often are no better than you but who have degrees, so it can really help. Also a lot of the non enterprise/ cool more academic stuff will expect it. Did you know they hire a whole lot of programmers in finance? Juriko fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Nov 12, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 22:58
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Why are there so many people in this thread who are either alumni or are currently attending Colorado School of Mines? That said, I am currently a Metallurgical and Materials Engineering student at Mines, and wish I could get an internship.
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Nov 13, 2010 01:00
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luvs2Bgraded posted:Why are there so many people in this thread who are either alumni or are currently attending Colorado School of Mines? That said, I am currently a Metallurgical and Materials Engineering student at Mines, and wish I could get an internship. I'm an alum, who knows why SA seems to have quite a few grads from the school. In fairness the engineering program there is quite large when compared to other engineering programs around the country.
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Nov 13, 2010 01:05
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luvs2Bgraded posted:Why are there so many people in this thread who are either alumni or are currently attending Colorado School of Mines? That said, I am currently a Metallurgical and Materials Engineering student at Mines, and wish I could get an internship. I kinda wish I had chosen Materials Engineering, I have a couple classes related and it is awesome.
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Nov 13, 2010 10:50
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luvs2Bgraded posted:Why are there so many people in this thread who are either alumni or are currently attending Colorado School of Mines? I bet we have plenty of Harvey Mudd and Rose-Hulman grads on this board too. I think that rounds out the top 10 engineering schools that nobody has ever heard of list...
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Nov 13, 2010 14:31
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Juriko posted:Congratulations, you would be in the same position as 90% of the CS graduates out there. Most of them cannot even write clean code let alone properly use any of the theoretical or abstract crap they learned in their programs. I have worked with dudes that have a masters in CS that still don't get that poo poo. They are lucky their degree causes people to give them the benefit of the doubt, because otherwise they wouldn't be working. This always fascinated me. It's like CS is the 'econ degree' of the tech industry; you learn the basics of how to later learn advanced poo poo, but if you don't get it on your own you're basically someone with a piece of paper that says "train me on the job". Is Software Engineering any better at making people who understand how to code and program well and truly understand what is going on?
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Nov 13, 2010 15:52
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flux_core posted:This always fascinated me. It's like CS is the 'econ degree' of the tech industry; you learn the basics of how to later learn advanced poo poo, but if you don't get it on your own you're basically someone with a piece of paper that says "train me on the job". But like I said it differs heavily on the school. My boss at my internship did a CS degree at a liberal arts school and his entire major was 8 classes (versus the ~16 CS classes plus the six or seven supporting classes required in math, physics, etc. at mine).
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Nov 13, 2010 18:39
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All right engineers, maybe you can tell me if my qualifications are horrible and have no hope of landing a job in my field or maybe I just need to work on my interviewing skills. I graduated from electrical engineering at UIUC in May with an overall gpa of 2.86. At that point, I was a little burnt out, so I took a temporary programming job at my university for the summer working as an "academic professional". I relaxed over the summer and started searching in August and I apply to at least a few jobs per day. I have had several interviews since then that were fruitless. I am studying to take the FE in the spring as a way to hopefully keep myself sharp. As far as experience goes, I have two web development jobs from early on in my college career, a summer internship at my university's engineering services department where I did some work involving power distribution and construction type stuff (but it was mostly busy work), and the job I already mentioned. I know my gpa and experience are somewhat unimpressive, but I had a hard time getting through school and I feel like I did the best I could. I just thought I'd at least have a lovely job offer by now.
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Nov 13, 2010 21:33
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Cicero posted:How well CS degrees prepare you for the 'real world' depends heavily on the school. At mine there's a pretty good balance between theoretical and practical (to the extent that Software Engineering might be a more accurate title, but I digress). You learn all the basic algorithm, data structure, comp theory stuff, but then you have to actually code up what you learn in a project in every class but one (In comp theory it depends on the prof). Since there's a core of 10 CS classes (including a class purely on software design and testing) + 5 or 6 CS electives, just about everyone here who makes it seems to be a relatively competent coder. Computer science is weird. It's like nobody really knows what it is, so everyone thinks it's a field about programming. It probably doesn't help that the field is broad. Anyway, I feel like hiring computer science majors to develop software sounds like hiring physics majors to do whatever it is you people do in engineering jobs. And then you have the schools (like mine) where CS pretty much is a SE engineering degree. In fact, they're changing it to SE in a couple years and dropping CS entirely here.
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Nov 13, 2010 22:22
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Just leave your GPA off if it isn't impressive. If asked about it use your "major" GPA and pretty much just cherry pick what grades you want on there. Worst case scenario they'll ask for your transcript but hey, that's a better outcome than being tossed immediately.
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Nov 13, 2010 22:35
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Yeah, I don't have my gpa on my resume, but they always ask. I'll try doing that next time.
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Nov 13, 2010 22:50
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Windfucker posted:All right engineers, maybe you can tell me if my qualifications are horrible and have no hope of landing a job in my field or maybe I just need to work on my interviewing skills. My only advice is keep chugging along and maybe broaden the scope of companies you're applying to. Consider smaller local companies in addition to the big corporate websites. I went from applying to only defense contractors to applying to anything vaguely related to my ME degree in the span of about 6 months of being unemployed. Ended up finding a little medical company through craigslist that didn't mind a sub-3.0 resume and I'm better off for it.
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Nov 13, 2010 22:51
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Windfucker posted:Yeah, I don't have my gpa on my resume, but they always ask. I'll try doing that next time.
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Nov 13, 2010 22:56
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My GPA is a 2.66 which is crap by my standards. I landed an EE internship with a sensor and data acquisition company last summer with decent pay. My best advice for those trying to get a job with a poor GPA is to try to get to know people in the field or acquire a specialized skill that is in demand. In my case I learned tons of PIC programming and real time operating systems in my spare time. A friend of mine who goes to WPI got a job as an embedded systems engineer with a $72k starting bonus. His GPA was right around what mine is. In his senior year he took a bunch of grad level courses and talked about them during the interview. Even If your GPA isn't that great you'll be fine if you show them you can produce.
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Nov 14, 2010 00:36
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Or, you could pick the subset of subjects you did well in, and say something subtle that sounds like a major, like "3.25 in Electrical Engineering Coursework" or "3.50 average in Remedial Arithmatic."
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Nov 14, 2010 02:35
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grover posted:Or, you could pick the subset of subjects you did well in, and say something subtle that sounds like a major, like "3.25 in Electrical Engineering Coursework" or "3.50 average in Remedial Arithmatic." lol. Would putting down "Teaches remedial maths up to college algebra level and works well with teachers" be good? Refluffed, obviously.
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Nov 14, 2010 04:23
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Safe and Secure! posted:Computer science is weird. It's like nobody really knows what it is, so everyone thinks it's a field about programming.
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Nov 14, 2010 05:25
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hobbesmaster posted:I bet we have plenty of Harvey Mudd and Rose-Hulman grads on this board too. I think that rounds out the top 10 engineering schools that nobody has ever heard of list... What about Cooper Union? Nobody's heard of Cooper Union...
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Nov 14, 2010 05:34
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Lemming posted:What about Cooper Union? Nobody's heard of Cooper Union... Who hasn't heard of Cooper Union? It's a pretty well-known school among at least us academics. Olin is one that's somewhat more obscure.
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Nov 14, 2010 05:52
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Thoguh fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2010 06:02
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For someone who's in graduate school is there as much emphasis placed on seeing your undergrad GPA alongside your current graduate GPA? I did pretty poorly in undergrad but have been maintaining a 3.9 for my MS, so I've just been listing that along with having completed my BS.
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Nov 14, 2010 06:24
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Cicero posted:This isn't really that inaccurate, I mean nearly everything you learn relates in some way to programming, often quite directly, and most CS majors become programmers (or at least have some programming in their job). I can't really argue that, I just feel like it's only a subset of the wider field, which I see as including stuff like automata theory, languages, etc. which seem like things that can be studied without doing any programming, though they can be applied through programming. Isn't any particular programming language just a tool? It just seems to me that to consider CS as being all (or mainly) about programming is like considering carpentry as something that is all (or mainly) about hammers.
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Nov 14, 2010 06:38
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I've always heard it was always best to leave your gpa off your resume if it was below a 3.0. So it would be better to put my 2.8 on my resume?
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Nov 14, 2010 07:09
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Pfirti86 posted:Who hasn't heard of Cooper Union? It's a pretty well-known school among at least us academics. Olin gets a bunch of press every once in a while in the trade magazines about how its the future of engineering schools with its project based curriculum, yadda, yadda. Doesn't give free tuition with its massive endowment like Cooper does. Free tuition in a very highly ranked school in NYC? Sounds good to me. (and everyone else that knows about it, so they're insanely selective)
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Nov 14, 2010 07:17
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