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I'd like to say just about every engineer-to-be will experience this in one way or another. You are not as smart as you think you are, so study, you dipshit. (nearly failed calculus) ((Didn't go to any calculus lecture because I thought I knew calculus))
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Jan 19, 2013 15:21
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totalnewbie posted:Not directed at you, Nam Taf, but in general:  I'm in grad school now, working towards an MS in Engineering Management; just started, but I'm aiming for a 4.0. Even did a bunch of useless ungraded homework in an area I really didn't need any practice in- sign of maturity, I guess. grover fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Jan 19, 2013 |
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Jan 19, 2013 15:28
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Any thoughts on USAJobs? I feel pretty overwhelmed by their site. This is my fault but I found a job that required 5 years experience and a bachelor's degree. I thought my experience of already having about two years of engineering internship experience and several months with Engineers Without Borders would be enough. I go through and answer about 140 multiple choice questions, another 20 about previous job experience questions, and then 8 essay questions. The first two multiple choice questions were Do you have a bachelor's degree and do you have 5 years experience? Ended up getting filtered on the 5 years experience question which was multiple choice. That left a bad taste in my mouth and I'm wondering if I should continue applying to jobs even if they're entry level?
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Jan 22, 2013 16:31
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USAJobs is where resumes go to die.
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Jan 22, 2013 18:45
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How much does GPA factor into getting a job after undergrad? I'm never going to go into graduate school, which I know it requires a certain GPA. I'm sitting at 2.8 or so and am in Canada. I'm worried about it mostly because there was a downward trend in the last two years thanks to being hit hard with depression, and my GPA (and my brain) is only starting to recover in my... last semester.
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Jan 22, 2013 22:45
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Jyrraeth posted:How much does GPA factor into getting a job after undergrad? I'm never going to go into graduate school, which I know it requires a certain GPA. I'm sitting at 2.8 or so and am in Canada. I'm worried about it mostly because there was a downward trend in the last two years thanks to being hit hard with depression, and my GPA (and my brain) is only starting to recover in my... last semester. How much job experience do you have? (Internship/co-op/etc)
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Jan 22, 2013 22:55
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movax posted:How much job experience do you have? (Internship/co-op/etc) Two month's worth of relevant job experience, with a good recommendation letter. I'm not sure what I'd call it, it kind of fell into my lap and I had a lot of different tasks over the course of two months. Rest of my job experience is with retail/service stuff.
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Jan 22, 2013 23:00
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huhu posted:Any thoughts on USAJobs? I feel pretty overwhelmed by their site. This is my fault but I found a job that required 5 years experience and a bachelor's degree. I thought my experience of already having about two years of engineering internship experience and several months with Engineers Without Borders would be enough. I go through and answer about 140 multiple choice questions, another 20 about previous job experience questions, and then 8 essay questions. The first two multiple choice questions were Do you have a bachelor's degree and do you have 5 years experience? Ended up getting filtered on the 5 years experience question which was multiple choice. That left a bad taste in my mouth and I'm wondering if I should continue applying to jobs even if they're entry level? Unless you're working it from the inside and that person knows what they're doing, the situation is drat near hopeless if you don't have the required experience.
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Jan 23, 2013 03:33
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Can anybody recommend a good text on RF engineering? I'm planning on teaching myself so accessibility is a huge plus.
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Jan 23, 2013 03:33
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Can anybody recommend a good text on RF engineering? I'm planning on teaching myself so accessibility is a huge plus. http://www.wbdg.org/ccb/FEDMIL/std188_125_1.pdf
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Jan 23, 2013 03:53
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Thanks for the USAJobs suggestions. Got another question. Does anyone know of the correct method to modify an extension spring I order from a vendor? I've tried sending out quotes to four companies and none of them have contacted me back. I figure I'm not ordering enough springs to make it worth their time so I'm going to try and move it in house. The spring I modified was cut to the desired length and then bent to form a hook. I'm wondering if there is a better method than this? I've looked through catalogs for two companies and they don't make the spring I need. And one more question. Besides approaching engineering companies' websites where else is a good place to look? huhu fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jan 24, 2013 |
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Jan 23, 2013 23:24
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totalnewbie posted:Not directed at you, Nam Taf, but in general: Of course that's me and it's very valid to direct that to me because it's exactly what happened to me. I always was bored at school cause it was too easy. My point is that I realised that and am now trying to warn others  No offence or anything taken whatsoever.Specifically what happens is you go from the coddling and constant poking and prodding that school teachers give you to make you do the work, to having none of that, so if you're not driven to do the work by your own need to do it, you won't. As soon as it came time to cover new material in 2nd year, it hosed me.
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Jan 24, 2013 10:02
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Today's bad: Failed my first calc2 exam along with a lot of other people. Not a single person had turned in part1 (non-calculator) of the test before the end of class. We get our lowest test grade dropped so that was my only freebie. Today's good: Applied to my first internships today. :3 Doubt I'll get accepted since I'm mostly a freshman (transfer student) but I figured it couldn't hurt since I have a pretty strong technician-level background and a high GPA so far. Edit: I forgot to edit the cover letter I used on the last internship I applied to. Pfft who wants to work for some tiny company called Boeing anyway.. 
KetTarma fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Jan 26, 2013 |
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Jan 25, 2013 23:40
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What's the typical internship pay range for a sophomore EE major with no prior experience? I just got an offer of $17/hour from a steel company for position this summer. Seems reasonable, but my gut tells me that I should go for a dollar or two more.
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Jan 31, 2013 23:34
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ChipNDip posted:What's the typical internship pay range for a sophomore EE major with no prior experience? I just got an offer of $17/hour from a steel company for position this summer. Seems reasonable, but my gut tells me that I should go for a dollar or two more. Eh, I don't know. That's a pretty good rate for an intern. In my experience as a mining engineer intern, I got paid $17/hr working my rear end off for a coal mine. Other opportunities were around $14/hr at the time (2007). Personally, I wouldn't really push it. The internship is more about the experience than the money anyways, and I'd hate to be jobless over the summer because I thought I could weasel out a few hundred more bucks. Especially on the FIRST experience. Its not like they would struggle to find another inexperienced student. No offense.
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Feb 1, 2013 00:47
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$17/hr is almost as much as I made at my first engineering job after graduation.  Unless you're in some super high COL city (say, NYC or SF) then $17/hr is pretty generous for an intern.
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Feb 1, 2013 01:25
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$17 is fairly average in my experience. I think my first one was $17 and then $20/hr. People working in a lab at the university made ~$8, the lowest I saw anyone make at a private company was $14/hr. People who worked for oil companies or somewhere with a high cost of living made up to $30/hr but I don't think the average Joe can expect that. These are from the midwest.
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Feb 1, 2013 01:34
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I work as a test engineer for an r&d company, currently the test manager alternate and will eventually be manager. There isn't really a such thing as management tools here, just a lot of "make sure your team gets these tests done by this impossible deadline". This makes my engineers and techs resentful and unfocused. We just established an Access database, so I'm trying to use that for metrics and eventually throw in some good management practices. I basically only know of Scrum through Wikipedia and was wondering if anyone had any experience with that or other effective management techniques. My main goal is to inject some life into the companies strategic planning, or atleast if/when I leave I can say I implemented techniques and improved efficiency
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Feb 1, 2013 03:35
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Crazyweasel posted:I work as a test engineer for an r&d company, currently the test manager alternate and will eventually be manager. There isn't really a such thing as management tools here, just a lot of "make sure your team gets these tests done by this impossible deadline". This makes my engineers and techs resentful and unfocused. Don't roll your own tools. Use an existing test management tool, like TestLink. Are you testing software? You might find Jenkins-CI to be a useful tool for automating stuff. I used Jenkins and a bunch of simple Python scripts to completely automate my test lab. I have a rack of test devices and test servers that run tests on new builds with zero human intervention.
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Feb 1, 2013 03:52
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Engineering is the art of knowing when to say “that’s good enough.”
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Feb 1, 2013 16:15
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grover posted:Engineering is the art of knowing when to say “that’s good enough.” Yeah, it really is. Unless you want to go insane. Then go nuts.
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Feb 1, 2013 16:36
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CCKeane posted:Yeah, it really is. Unless you want to go insane. Then go nuts.
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Feb 1, 2013 20:47
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grover posted:People often have misconceptions about stuff like this, but the truth is- it's usually quite easy to design something if you overdesign it; there are always conservative assumptions you can make that end up with a design that will work and never fail. There's a famous quote that I'm probably mangling, "It has been said that any idiot can design a bridge that is strong enough. The real skill is in designing one that is just strong enough." I was actually thinking of it from a diminishing returns angle and smart use of resources; a higher quality product might not always be worth twice the lead time and cost.
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Feb 1, 2013 20:57
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It's also important to not reinvent the wheel. I've seen so many home-grown software tools that should have been off-the-shelf or open source tools instead. It ends up wasting everyone's time.
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Feb 1, 2013 23:51
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grover posted:People often have misconceptions about stuff like this, but the truth is- it's usually quite easy to design something if you overdesign it; there are always conservative assumptions you can make that end up with a design that will work and never fail. There's a famous quote that I'm probably mangling, "It has been said that any idiot can design a bridge that is strong enough. The real skill is in designing one that is just strong enough." You don't happen to mean: 'An engineer can do for one dollar what any fool can do for two' Do you?
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Feb 2, 2013 06:13
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BlackShadow posted:You don't happen to mean: 10 cents for 2 dollars is the paradigm, at least in my industry.
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Feb 2, 2013 07:17
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BeefofAges posted:It's also important to not reinvent the wheel. I've seen so many home-grown software tools that should have been off-the-shelf or open source tools instead. It ends up wasting everyone's time. As a man working on some home-grown software tools, I just want to say that while I agree with you, sometimes you don't have a choice.
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Feb 2, 2013 07:20
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BlackShadow posted:You don't happen to mean:  Start talking millions of units, though...
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Feb 2, 2013 16:15
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CCKeane posted:As a man working on some home-grown software tools, I just want to say that while I agree with you, sometimes you don't have a choice. Oh, for sure. I've had to do it a few times too. Still, it should be avoided whenever possible. At my department at work, instead of using aa commercial inventory tracking database, we have a homegrown web app with an awful user interface, and it doesn't support barcodes or QR codes or RFIDs or anything. You have to manually enter any inventory changes.
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Feb 2, 2013 21:48
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Wondering if anybody who has looked for jobs in the last few years can tell me how many jobs they applied to before settling on one? I'm up to 30 job applications with 3 responses of no. My first internship at a huge company has a hiring freeze at the two locations I know people. My second internship doesn't really have a job after I finish up. Wondering what I could be doing better to get my foot in the door somewhere.
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Feb 4, 2013 23:11
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Is there any way to get engineering experience on my own that I would be able to put on a resume as engineering experience since I currently don't have any experience? I graduated in May 2012 with a BS in mechanical engineering, but haven't been able to find an engineering job yet. I've been applying to hundreds of online job postings all over the Chicago area, but rarely get a bite. Most of my applications were for an internship, so I thought I would have a good chance of at least getting a call since I've already graduated, but apparently that was a bad prediction. Are companies only hiring current students for internships or are they hiring people with years of experience for internships? Either way, it seems really hard to find an entry level mechanical engineering job with a degree, but with no experience.
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Feb 5, 2013 12:07
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RoosterBrewster posted:Is there any way to get engineering experience on my own that I would be able to put on a resume as engineering experience since I currently don't have any experience? I graduated in May 2012 with a BS in mechanical engineering, but haven't been able to find an engineering job yet. I've been applying to hundreds of online job postings all over the Chicago area, but rarely get a bite. Most of my applications were for an internship, so I thought I would have a good chance of at least getting a call since I've already graduated, but apparently that was a bad prediction. Are companies only hiring current students for internships or are they hiring people with years of experience for internships? Either way, it seems really hard to find an entry level mechanical engineering job with a degree, but with no experience. At my (and I believe several other) Universities, we had a Formula SAE team. Maybe somewhere has a similar program that you could do some 'volunteer' work for?
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Feb 5, 2013 12:57
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RoosterBrewster posted:Is there any way to get engineering experience on my own that I would be able to put on a resume as engineering experience since I currently don't have any experience? I graduated in May 2012 with a BS in mechanical engineering, but haven't been able to find an engineering job yet. I've been applying to hundreds of online job postings all over the Chicago area, but rarely get a bite. Most of my applications were for an internship, so I thought I would have a good chance of at least getting a call since I've already graduated, but apparently that was a bad prediction. Are companies only hiring current students for internships or are they hiring people with years of experience for internships? Either way, it seems really hard to find an entry level mechanical engineering job with a degree, but with no experience. Internships/Co-Ops are for students enrolled in a degree program. The expectation seems to be that you do an internship while a student to gain experience to compliment your classes. E: Have you joined a professional society? Networked with anyone? Does your resume suck? KetTarma fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Feb 5, 2013 |
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Feb 5, 2013 13:24
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After having spent I good amount of time on the job hunt, I have become a bit curious about the sales engineer/applications engineer position. I seem to be getting the best feedback from these kinds of openings, but I am worried that it will make it difficult to move into a greater design focus engineering position in the future. For anyone here that has done hiring for engineering positions, do these kinds of jobs have a negative impact on a persons chances to obtain a more typical engineer job?
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Feb 6, 2013 21:25
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Ingenium posted:After having spent I good amount of time on the job hunt, I have become a bit curious about the sales engineer/applications engineer position. I seem to be getting the best feedback from these kinds of openings, but I am worried that it will make it difficult to move into a greater design focus engineering position in the future. For anyone here that has done hiring for engineering positions, do these kinds of jobs have a negative impact on a persons chances to obtain a more typical engineer job? From what I've seen the career move is usually the other way around. Most sales guys who are Engineers started out doing design or in other Engineering related positions in the industry, realized they could make (more) bank selling the stuff they specify and started/joined a sales outfit.
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Feb 6, 2013 21:33
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gently caress job hunting, ugh. I just finished a Masters in ME and am applying all over right now. One large aerospace company had two interesting positions listed online, so I filled out their lovely webform. It's lame enough that I had to submit a resume in a plaintext box (no option to upload a pdf). But more aggravating was that on the next page there was a "job questionnaire" which included a mandatory field for desired salary. I can understand asking that early for people with professional experience (or a current job they are looking to leave), but these are listed as entry-level positions. Submitting a hard number for salary at this early stage of the game flies in the face of every piece of advice I've ever been given on the subject. So wtf do I do? I have a ballpark idea of what I'd expect them to pay based on a few friends in similar companies in related industries, but this feels like a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. Aim too low, and I just undercut myself for future earning potential. Aim too high, and they may dismiss me as a candidate entirely. bawfuls fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Feb 7, 2013 |
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Feb 7, 2013 02:07
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I'm sure you've tried this, but in the past I have been able to get away by entering a derivative of $0, such as $0,000. Also, writing OPEN has sufficed as well, but, like I said, I'm sure you've tried that.
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Feb 7, 2013 04:34
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Dead Pressed posted:I'm sure you've tried this, but in the past I have been able to get away by entering a derivative of $0, such as $0,000. Also, writing OPEN has sufficed as well, but, like I said, I'm sure you've tried that. I've gotten away with "dependent on responsibilities of position" once, but I probably shouldn't have. Do you have any professional experience?
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Feb 7, 2013 04:54
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Dead Pressed posted:I'm sure you've tried this, but in the past I have been able to get away by entering a derivative of $0, such as $0,000. Also, writing OPEN has sufficed as well, but, like I said, I'm sure you've tried that. Yep, try some form of 0 or 1. The web form will accept it, but any idiot will know you're not actually willing to work for $0 or even $1
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Feb 7, 2013 05:16
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I worry that they are going to automatically filter the resumes to a reasonable range, but maybe HR is better than that.
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