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paternity suitor posted:Think of an engineering degree as learning how to learn, more than anything else. When you graduate, your employer will expect you to have some very cursory understanding of whatever it is you're doing, but you'll have to learn 95% on the job, and it will be nothing like school. Even if you were the best most autistic student of all time, and you actually learned everything in all of your classes, most of it doesn't apply to a real job anyway (thank god). If you like the labs, they're the closest thing to real engineering you're gonna get at school IMO. Here is a thing, it needs to do xyz, now sit down and make it or analyze it. Class is bullshit. No one is ever going to lecture at you about something for an hour at a real job. Came here to say this, and also to add: University classes are there to give you an overview of the tools you will (or maybe won't...) need in your job. Your future job may use Fourier transforms all the time or it might never come up. Or maybe it'll show up once in a while. But now that you've learned it in class, you should know that it's a thing that exists, have a fundamental understanding of what it is and what it does, and now you should be able to say, "Hey, maybe a Fourier transform will be useful here" or "Oh, you used a Fourier transform, I know what that means and understand the data that's presented to me." At the very least, you'll be able to quickly refresh yourself from a google search.
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Oct 27, 2017 15:39
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totalnewbie posted:Came here to say this, and also to add: Yeah that. Almost any concept you are tested on in college is something that you'll be able to google later and read up on and get familiarized to. No sensible employer goes "oh you studied X in college that means you can do X right now, hop to it". You just need to be able to go, read up on it, and then be able to work with it. Hell I work in electrical and sometimes I'll google up refreshers on insanely basic poo poo like kirchoffs/ohms laws. Even though I work with volts, amps, and 3-phase vs 1-phase power all the loving time I always feel a little better with handy references right there to go "Yes, that is correct." when I do some calcs.
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Oct 27, 2017 17:45
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Just want to chime in by saying that your professors want you to learn these concepts. If you go to office hours with the prof or TA, you're already putting in more effort than 90% of people, and that is not lost on them. Almost every TA I had would go to ridiculous lengths to help me understand concepts, simply because I expressed interest. That said, don't just go to office hours and say "this hard, tell me answer good now." That will usually just yield something along the lines of "try harder." Come in with a worked-out attempt at the concept, so they can see where you're at and why you might be struggling.
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Oct 27, 2017 20:08
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paternity suitor fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Mar 15, 2021 |
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Oct 28, 2017 00:24
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In the last month or so, I've learned that I can just ask suppliers technical questions and they are more than happy to give you free advice hoping to get a sale out of you! They also tend to publish tons of technical design documents that you can look up and plug your own parameters into to make life simple. My college education mostly helps in tying all the disparate threads together and knowing enough to see if I'm in the right ball park before getting into the nitty gritty. Example: we needed to source a large ball screw. I knew enough to see that sagging under the unsupported length would be an issue, but the technical documents I found contained already derived formulas to make sure nothing would go wrong. I then picked a bunch of components and had the ball screw engineers double check my math to make sure I didn't royally screw anything up. Had another supplier send out a technical advisor to sit with us for an hour and help pick out cable tracks. I didn't even ask for that, I just wanted a catalog sent in the mail!
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Oct 28, 2017 00:40
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I studied aero in college but became an embedded software engineer. So now I spend most my time on stack overflow while my books on structural analysis and airfoil design gather dust. there should be some sort of textbook exchange for idiots like me Gorman Thomas fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Oct 28, 2017 |
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Oct 28, 2017 00:46
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Gorman Thomas posted:I studied aero in college but became an embedded software engineer. So now I spend most my time on stack overflow while my books on structural analysis and airfoil design gather dust. https://www.chegg.com/sell-textbooks
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Oct 28, 2017 01:04
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Uh, I just want to chime in that I use Fourier and Laplace transforms all the time. Fourier to find a frequency and then Laplace is the foundation for transfer functions and conversions from continuous to discrete time so they often go hand in hand for control circuits and filters realized in an ASIC, FPGA or software. Yes, I use MATLAB for the actual calculations but if you don’t understand what you are looking at it’s all pretty meaningless. E: Fourier and Laplace are the foundation of anything DSP. Communications or video or computer graphics, just a ton to areas. It's a really important topic. When your game says it’s playing at 30 frames per second, as an electrical engineer you should recognize that as an application of the DTFT and Z-transformation. Murgos fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Oct 28, 2017 |
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Oct 28, 2017 13:19
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Murgos posted:Uh, I just want to chime in that I use Fourier and Laplace transforms all the time. The point wasn't that Laplace and Fourier transforms are useless, it's just that you will likely need to have coldly memorized a little of all you study during your undergrad. To some, like you, those transforms are necessary but to most they're things to study, test on, and then not touch again. And if they do pop up again in your career, you can brush up again on them, you dont need to have kept them fresh in mind the whole time.
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Oct 28, 2017 18:10
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The OP felt disconnected from what he/she was studying and didn’t see the point. Education, when done poorly seems like someone is talking at you just to talk and it’s some kind of weird punishment. Other posters seemed to be reinforcing the idea that, “yeah you don’t need that. It’s pointless.” I certainly felt that way at times. Knowing that something you are struggling with is actually cool and good can be helpful.
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Oct 28, 2017 20:00
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^^^^Oh, you're that guy.Pander posted:The point wasn't that Laplace and Fourier transforms are useless, it's just that you will likely need to have coldly memorized a little of all you study during your undergrad. To some, like you, those transforms are necessary but to most they're things to study, test on, and then not touch again. And if they do pop up again in your career, you can brush up again on them, you dont need to have kept them fresh in mind the whole time. The whole idea is to pop out 20/22 year old kids with very broad, general knowledge so that they can get a job in a wide variety of fields. That being the case, 70% of what you learn is going to end up being irrelevant to your work for most people, but it's anyone's guess as to what 70% of your schooling that's going to be. This is blatantly apparent for me since I had nearly ten years experience in my field before I started school. I had to learn a ton of things that I knew as I was learning I had never and would never use. I also know a lot of people who hadn't gone to school who could run circles around new graduates with their technical knowledge when it came to the specifics of our industry, just because of their experience. Those guys wouldn't even be able to tell you the basics of electrical engineering though, so they'd not have a prayer of getting a job in anything related to that. It is what it is. The piece of paper gets your foot in the door and gives you some opportunities you otherwise would not have, and only when you graduate and find your niche do you really start to develop the relevant skillset.
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Oct 28, 2017 20:39
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IMO, engineering education at top engineering schools is more oriented towards preparing students for Ph.D. graduate programs than preparing students for jobs out of school. The majority of engineering jobs are not nearly as theory-based or mathematical as school.
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Oct 29, 2017 00:38
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silence_kit posted:IMO, engineering education at top engineering schools is more oriented towards preparing students for Ph.D. graduate programs than preparing students for jobs out of school. The majority of engineering jobs are not nearly as theory-based or mathematical as school. Engineering education is designed so that a schools ABET accredidation will continue. Its partly why grade inflation is such a problem. Also "engineering" is a collection of specific facts and maths, but its more so designed to teach you a problem solving process that can be applied to a wide variety of problems. Also it should teach you to have a finely tuned bullshit detector about technical things.
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Oct 31, 2017 22:38
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so that settles it, I've taken a bunch of books out at the library and have been self teaching myself all this material because my lecturers aren't good. turned up for 4 hours of lectures today (2 hour blocks back to back) and it was just "read off the slides in a monotonous way" simulator. how are your students meant to be motivated and passionate when you clearly don't want to be here yourself, ya gently caress. and uploading lecture notes at 7:40am with the instructions for us lot to print them out for a 9am lecture. what a joke. reckon from now on my time will be better spent just signing in for the lectures and then pissing off to the library. Qubee fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Oct 31, 2017 |
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Oct 31, 2017 23:35
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Q8ee posted:so that settles it, I've taken a bunch of books out at the library and have been self teaching myself all this material because my lecturers aren't good. turned up for 4 hours of lectures today (2 hour blocks back to back) and it was just "read off the slides in a monotonous way" simulator. how are your students meant to be motivated and passionate when you clearly don't want to be here yourself, ya gently caress. and uploading lecture notes at 7:40am with the instructions for us lot to print them out for a 9am lecture. So bad profs exist, it happens, get over it. If your program is big enough to have multiple people teach the same class start using ratemyprofessor.com (or whatever kids are using these days) and figure out who to take. I found that the guys who have 8 am or 4 pm lectures were awesome typically. Get in a study group, go to TA hours, etc to get through this class and then figure out how to get with better profs. Engineering school actually does matter. I am a structural engineer but I learned a poo poo ton in school that was directly applied at work. Yes I had books to look things up and such but you do use the stuff or at the very least need to know if the software is giving you even a remotely logical answer.
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Nov 1, 2017 05:45
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Q8ee posted:so that settles it, I've taken a bunch of books out at the library and have been self teaching myself all this material because my lecturers aren't good. turned up for 4 hours of lectures today (2 hour blocks back to back) and it was just "read off the slides in a monotonous way" simulator. how are your students meant to be motivated and passionate when you clearly don't want to be here yourself, ya gently caress. and uploading lecture notes at 7:40am with the instructions for us lot to print them out for a 9am lecture. There's really two types of things you can learn, facts and concepts. When designing a lecture it's helpful to have a mix of concepts and facts that are relevant to each other in order keep people engaged. Sometimes you have lectures that are entirely comprised of stuff you have to know and one way to present this is just to vomit it out and provide the slides so that people can memorize on their own time. I encourage you to attend classes despite not feeling like you're getting anything out of them. 90% of the students I had when I was teaching that didn't regularly attend classes did poorly. They did terrible on assignments/tests. You'll learn very quickly that you likely overestimate your competence on certain things and are not adequately prepared. With that said, I did have a few students who just showed up with completed homework, aced the tests, and went along their way without coming to lectures. They were the outliers though. In my experience a two hour class is just way too long to keep people engaged anyways unless there's a hand on component.
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Nov 1, 2017 14:51
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If you find lectures where they just read slides boring, try asking some questions. You're right that slide readers are the worst, but it doesn't stop at lecturers and university. You are REALLY going to have to learn how to seal with it, unless your future boss is okay with you snoring in a meeting in the future.
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Nov 1, 2017 15:30
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Mr Newsman posted:There's really two types of things you can learn, facts and concepts. When designing a lecture it's helpful to hav And those people are called dicks. I mean good for them and everything, but theyre still dicks.
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Nov 1, 2017 16:35
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spwrozek posted:So bad profs exist, it happens, get over it. If your program is big enough to have multiple people teach the same class start using ratemyprofessor.com (or whatever kids are using these days) and figure out who to take. I found that the guys who have 8 am or 4 pm lectures were awesome typically. we don't have multiple lecturers to choose from. we have who we have and that's it. my 9am-1pm lectures are run by pretty awful guys. one is chinese and doesn't speak english well, the other is russian and also doesn't speak english well, on top of the fact he uploads lecture notes on the day for us to print out (which is a pain in the rear end) and also just reads off of the slides. currently doing study group stuff with coursemates, but it doesn't feel like studying, so I've stopped going to them. basically it just ends up being all of us turning up, and the one or two really smart dudes doing the work and everyone else copying. figured i'm better off just revising by myself since i'll actually teach myself it. Mr Newsman posted:I encourage you to attend classes despite not feeling like you're getting anything out of them. 90% of the students I had when I was teaching that didn't regularly attend classes did poorly. They did terrible on assignments/tests. You'll learn very quickly that you likely overestimate your competence on certain things and are not adequately prepared. this resonated with me. I will take this advice, cause it becomes apparent very quickly that I'm not as competent as I thought I was. at least being present during the lectures, I get a vague idea of what to expect, so I don't leave things til the last minute. I miss my old uni, the lecturers were actually passionate, and it made the few lectures that were just information vomits a little bearable, cause I knew once I got through it, the next lecture would be back to their original interesting style. totalnewbie posted:If you find lectures where they just read slides boring, try asking some questions. yeah i've learnt not to do that, you spend about 3 awkward minutes trying to get them to understand your question because they're not native english speakers.
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Nov 1, 2017 19:30
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Tnuctip posted:And those people are called dicks. I mean good for them and everything, but theyre still dicks. actually they sound cool
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Nov 2, 2017 02:02
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Q8ee posted:so that settles it, I've taken a bunch of books out at the library and have been self teaching myself all this material because my lecturers aren't good. turned up for 4 hours of lectures today (2 hour blocks back to back) and it was just "read off the slides in a monotonous way" simulator. how are your students meant to be motivated and passionate when you clearly don't want to be here yourself, ya gently caress. and uploading lecture notes at 7:40am with the instructions for us lot to print them out for a 9am lecture. Consider this preparation for the real world. Lots of people are bad at their jobs. When you enter the working world, you're going to have to deal with all sorts of people who are terrible presenters, can't run meetings smoothly, have difficult accents, don't answer emails, ignore you, and are overall just bad communicators. Some of them will even be your boss or your boss's boss. You don't always get to have leaders who make you motivated and passionate, but you still need to get the job done. Suck it up, and do what you have to do to get an A.
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Nov 2, 2017 02:04
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qsvui posted:actually they sound cool Im sure theyre handsome/gorgeous as well, likely family money too. My seething jealousy knows no bounds, and likely too theyre not actually dicks, at least not those people like that whom ive met. There are the types of engineers where nasa jobs fall in their laps, and then those like me who pund their head into a brick wall untill it crumbles. If you have a natural talent for it good for you, but to those who aspire to be engineers, know that even though people like that exist, there arent that many of them, and you can make up for a lot with grit.
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Nov 2, 2017 03:52
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Could anyone give me some advice in becoming employed as a CAD technician, with a focus on the design of electrical installations in buildings and structures. I have been a domestic/commercial Electrician for the past ten years and would like to transition into CAD design work. What sort of qualifications and experience would employers be looking for? Would my experience as an Electrician count for anything? I have a number of qualifications that I could list if that would help. I should say that I live in the UK, thus the qualifications and regulatory environment may differ significantly from those in the USA.
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Nov 2, 2017 13:38
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Lord_Adonis posted:Could anyone give me some advice in becoming employed as a CAD technician, with a focus on the design of electrical installations in buildings and structures. I have been a domestic/commercial Electrician for the past ten years and would like to transition into CAD design work. What sort of qualifications and experience would employers be looking for? Would my experience as an Electrician count for anything? I have a number of qualifications that I could list if that would help. I should say that I live in the UK, thus the qualifications and regulatory environment may differ significantly from those in the USA. I can't speak to your specific circumstances as I'm in the USA and have ended up in a CADD-centric role through an EE degree, but as far as I'm aware most employers that will want to put you in a CADD role will be looking for previous experience. I would strongly recommend you take a crash course in AutoCAD or one of the other big drafting softwares at a local college if one is available, that way you can go in and confidently say that you're familiar with the fundamentals. Your prior experience is a huge plus for any design firm, but most places will be wary about having to train you themselves -- you can have all the experience with sizing wire, fuses, breakers, and conduit in the world, but if it takes you a forever to get your lines properly drawn and plotted it's not going to be any good. I don't think you can get an educational licence as an independent learner, so self-teaching might get a little expensive -- that's why I think a course is your best bet.
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Nov 2, 2017 15:25
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Lord_Adonis posted:Could anyone give me some advice in becoming employed as a CAD technician, with a focus on the design of electrical installations in buildings and structures. I have been a domestic/commercial Electrician for the past ten years and would like to transition into CAD design work. What sort of qualifications and experience would employers be looking for? Would my experience as an Electrician count for anything? I have a number of qualifications that I could list if that would help. I should say that I live in the UK, thus the qualifications and regulatory environment may differ significantly from those in the USA. I would second Not a Children's advice but with one caveat. If you can take a cad course at a "community" college, in my opinion youll have a better experience. Smaller class size, instructor with more real world experience, and also cheaper (was in my case at least.) Not sure if community colleges are a thing in the UK, but they are also referred to as junior colleges, maybe also vocational schools (though a big difference in the US between community college taught vocational programs vs straight up vocational school that runs independantly. The cc likely to be the better of the two.) Basically a higher learning institution, but not a full fledged university.
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Nov 2, 2017 17:14
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Anyone have suggestions on resources for industrial communication protocols? Currently looking for something on ethernet/IP, specifically CIP messaging. Not high level stuff but down into the nitty gritty. It is an absolute black box to me at this point and I'm sick of guess and check failures. Outside of that I really need resources to figure out making comms/troubleshooting for modbus, profibus, devicenet, etc. I know a lot will be vendor/device specific but knowing the detail theory better can't hurt.
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Nov 2, 2017 23:58
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Lord_Adonis posted:Could anyone give me some advice in becoming employed as a CAD technician, with a focus on the design of electrical installations in buildings and structures. I have been a domestic/commercial Electrician for the past ten years and would like to transition into CAD design work. What sort of qualifications and experience would employers be looking for? Would my experience as an Electrician count for anything? I have a number of qualifications that I could list if that would help. I should say that I live in the UK, thus the qualifications and regulatory environment may differ significantly from those in the USA. I don't know about the UK but the advice above is good. It the UK is anything like the US though you are going to make a lot less money as a CAD tech than as an electrician.
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Nov 3, 2017 00:02
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VanguardFelix posted:Anyone have suggestions on resources for industrial communication protocols? Currently looking for something on ethernet/IP, specifically CIP messaging. Not high level stuff but down into the nitty gritty. If you're looking for information on industrial Ethernet systems (but not the applications that run on them) I found this website useful several years ago: http://www.industrialethernetu.com Despite the goofy name, the "Curriculum" link on the left is just web pages of good info.
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Nov 3, 2017 00:30
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For what it's worth to any that needs, IP Tools by Molex is a free portable windows executable that allows you to pull standard CIP data from devices and even do generic messaging to work out mapping of vendor data. Still painful, but it helps. Ethernet IP only CIP of course.
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Nov 3, 2017 20:08
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Q8ee posted:yeah i've learnt not to do that, you spend about 3 awkward minutes trying to get them to understand your question because they're not native english speakers. Effective communication with a language barrier is a skill and you WILL have to learn one day, so you might as well start now.
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Nov 3, 2017 22:08
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I've been contacted by a recruiter for a 5 month contract for Boeing. It pays 40-49.40 per hour as a "Level 2" position. It's basically in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. Should I be wary about this? Edit: Should I be wary about this given that I really only have about 1 year of experience in any sort of engineering work and only about 6 months as a titled engineer? Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Nov 3, 2017 |
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Nov 3, 2017 22:19
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If it's ME, you'll be a copy paste drone creating job plans from templates. If it's IE, I don't know what they could have you do that can be learned in 5 months other than time studies. You definitely will not be involved in any type of design work in either IE or as a nonsenior ME. Manufacturing engineers own the build plan of the airplane. Industrial engineers are responsible for personnel allotment, time studies, tooling allocation, and making metrics. If you need the work, sure. However, direct hiring of contractors is not common practice... especially in the middle of a massive layoff period.
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Nov 4, 2017 03:19
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KetTarma posted:If it's ME, you'll be a copy paste drone creating job plans from templates. If it's IE, I don't know what they could have you do that can be learned in 5 months other than time studies. You definitely will not be involved in any type of design work in either IE or as a nonsenior ME. Manufacturing engineers own the build plan of the airplane. Industrial engineers are responsible for personnel allotment, time studies, tooling allocation, and making metrics. It's kind of a hard choice since it pays pretty well for what I'm used to though I'm probably a little underqualified. Especially since it's titled as an IE position (but that doesn't mean much) and I've not done much IE stuff at all. They gave me a blurb as part of the contractor's email, but it seems to be the typical boilerplate that they'd give to any IE.  It's an "Industrial Engineer 2" position so I assume that means that they think I already know enough to do what IE1s do and can have me do more. What they'd expect from me over five months, I have no idea. They're also looking for a total of 4 and I can't determine what might spur it unless there's about to be a slew of layoffs or something and they need some fresh IEs to reconfigure the floor for the new numbers or something  Fwiw, if I can get an offer from another company as a direct hire for even half of what I'm being offered, I'll probably take it over the contract. (this is the better alternative, right?)
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Nov 4, 2017 07:25
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Xelkelvos posted:It's kind of a hard choice since it pays pretty well for what I'm used to though I'm probably a little underqualified. Especially since it's titled as an IE position (but that doesn't mean much) and I've not done much IE stuff at all. They gave me a blurb as part of the contractor's email, but it seems to be the typical boilerplate that they'd give to any IE. I don't mean this to come off as bitter as it sounds ... There have been mass-layoffs each quarter with more planned every quarter out as far as anyone can see. As some areas are over-laid-off, they're bringing in contract labor to help deal with the transition to reduce backlogged actions. However, it is not unheard of for all contractors to be mass-terminated on the same day as a cost-saving measure. Like, mass email saying "we thank all contractors for their assistance but all contract labor on-site will be ended effective x day." Since there are a lot of layoffs coming in the future, the people that can find new jobs are jumping ship which means organizations are self-selecting towards people that can't find anything better. This means a lot of your technical people are gone leaving people without a lot of technical ability. I know entire departments where every single engineer is actively interviewing including the manager. That's why you might see a quantity 4 on a req. I'm telling you this so that you can make a fully informed decision as to the nature of the position you're accepting. If you're already at a stable job, I would not change now. KetTarma fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Nov 4, 2017 |
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Nov 4, 2017 13:49
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.. paternity suitor fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Mar 15, 2021 |
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Nov 4, 2017 16:46
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Yeah Boeing screwed up and fired too many people along with paying people to retire early. Hiring contractors is their way to avoid having to hire back the union employees to their full-time union jobs. There are a bunch of level 1 and 2 IEs and MEs with years of experience working at Boeing. They were just laid off earlier this year so I wouldn't get your hopes up as you will likely be competing for those jobs against them.
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Nov 4, 2017 18:26
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Also a good point - not only do contract positions with Boeing type companies want *extremely* relevant experience, but often they want it with them specifically (ie former employees). The market with those kinds of companies is heavily skewed by recent "retirees" coming back and working part time for decent money.
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Nov 7, 2017 01:26
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So I had an interview today to be a project engineer for a construction company. I'm going to be a fresh graduate. I know it's not really engineering, but close enough. One, that's usually a good sign right? Two, how the hell do I figure out how much to ask for?
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Nov 7, 2017 23:12
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Wolfy posted:So I had an interview today to be a project engineer for a construction company. I'm going to be a fresh graduate. I know it's not really engineering, but close enough. One, that's usually a good sign right? Two, how the hell do I figure out how much to ask for? They’re asking you for a graduate post to specify a salary? What region/country are you in?
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Nov 7, 2017 23:18
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Oodles posted:They’re asking you for a graduate post to specify a salary? What region/country are you in?
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Nov 7, 2017 23:23
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