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I'm an electrical engineer and my PE did a hell of a lot to accelerate my career. Granted, I'm a lot closer to a civil engineer than most EEs - effectively supporting an in-house AE/MEP design team these days. We have no civil engineers, though.
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Feb 2, 2023 18:16
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... I'm 15 years or something into my professional career as a mechanical engineer, in several different industries, and every place I've enquired about trying to find PEs to sign off so I can get my PE. The only PE I've ever met is my dad. 
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Feb 3, 2023 01:45
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I have 2 coworkers who got their PEs without other PEs signing off. From what I understand, they made the argument that we're in the medical device industry and regulated by the FDA and it is a higher authority than CA state.
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Feb 3, 2023 03:49
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bred posted:I have 2 coworkers who got their PEs without other PEs signing off. From what I understand, they made the argument that we're in the medical device industry and regulated by the FDA and it is a higher authority than CA state. Not sure how it works over there, but it's a bit of a larf to hear that given that CA's PE (at least for civvies) has a seismic portion IIRC that isn't required anywhere else
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Feb 3, 2023 04:04
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I cant think of any situation where having your PE would be seen negatively. Even for work that doesn’t require a stamp, many employers are well aware that a new law or policy could require them to get drawings stamped.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:30
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It wouldn't hurt but depending on your discipline it may not net you really any benefit for a good amount of effort and some money. I work in embedded software engineering and I can't think of anyone in my field who has a PE.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:54
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My cynical assumption is that any employer would see a PE as no different from an overqualified applicant. The employer can't compete on salary, and even if the PE does sign on then they're seen as a flight risk because they can presumably get a better salary somewhere that actually requires/utilizes the PE. There's also the problem that PEs generally need continuing education to maintain their license, so if the employer isn't helping out with that then the PE will either have to burn time/money to get it on their own, which again makes them a flight risk. But I guess that last part is me assuming that employers that require a PE will generally help out with continuing education and other license costs. I don't have a PE and have only worked with a handful (only 1 of whom actually worked in my discipline, the rest being mechanical) so
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Feb 15, 2023 18:06
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DaveSauce posted:My cynical assumption is that any employer would see a PE as no different from an overqualified applicant. The employer can't compete on salary, and even if the PE does sign on then they're seen as a flight risk because they can presumably get a better salary somewhere that actually requires/utilizes the PE. You can spend a few hundred bucks on training to get your CE credits these days
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Feb 15, 2023 18:22
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I figured the time commitment would be a bigger deal, though I just did some looking and I might be off base on that. My confusion was because my state requires 15 units per year to maintain your license, and all the classes I've taken are generally worth 2-3 credits for a 4-5 day course, so on the surface this looks like several weeks of continuing education per year to maintain a license. But the state board's units are measured differently from what classes are measured in. So it looks like my state converts 1 "continuing education credit" in to 10 units. The more I look at it, it's more or less 1 hour per unit, so 2 days a year is what it functionally works out to, so that's really not bad at all.
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Feb 15, 2023 18:34
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Some local PE societies even offer free continuing ed opportunities. PDHs are pretty easy to come by, its keeping track of them that’s tough, lol
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Feb 15, 2023 18:43
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I pay for a subscription service where I pay some flat fee per year and I can take as many PDHs as I want, they're all in the form of articles or videos with multiple-choice quizzes attached so it's simple to bang out 24 PDHs plus whatever state ethics courses are up for renewal that year in a slow afternoon
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Feb 15, 2023 20:03
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DaveSauce posted:I figured the time commitment would be a bigger deal, though I just did some looking and I might be off base on that. My home state (WA) doesn't require any CEUs/PDHs/etc. Of course I'm also licensed in another state that DOES so welp. It's not that bad, webinars have made it a lot more convenient to keep up with PDHs.
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Feb 15, 2023 20:31
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wemgo posted:Some local PE societies even offer free continuing ed opportunities. PDHs are pretty easy to come by, its keeping track of them that’s tough, lol track it all on myncees for free. super fast and easy.
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Feb 22, 2023 02:04
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Hi thread. Kind of a weird topic. I looked all over A/T to see if this topic was already covered but didn’t find anything. Generally this is in reference to licensing IP or developing IP for/from the federal government. Right before covid hit, I was in a hardware startup that won some air force attention. At their request, I attended six weeks training at an air force base on government contracting. There are three main activities, or types of activity that one as an engineer, or better yet a group of can participate in. Some of the well will automatically be poisoned via pre-picked winners, but this is technically not legal but still done. The STTR programs-open or specific topic related challenges that has to do with commercializing IP that exists in research institutions SBIR - open or topic focused calls for development of things that some fed agency needs Technology transfer - Hilariously low cost licensing of patents developed by federal researchers for commercialization. The neat thing about the first two (STTR requires involvement from a research party like a Uni or government lab) and specifically the SBIR program is that they are only accessible by “small business” which is defined as less than 500 employees and majority US owned. This is funded by congress every year since like 82. The DoD has the bulk of the budget with EPA, HHS, DOT and other large agencies also putting up calls a few times a year. There are some hoops to jump through to do enough paperwork to be allowed to bid, but when I look at the topics, i always see a few and think “hmm…if I had a mechanical guy or maybe a chem e, this might very well be doable. I have independently authored several proposals. A successful phase one and a direct to phase II out the 8 or so submitted. Has anyone done any work in this space? I feel like an engineer thread goon project moved to a discord could stand a pretty great chance of doing a few of these a year and standing up a company around it. Anyways, thoughts on STTR/SBIR inventors / manufacturing engineer work on bid as a hustle?
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Feb 22, 2023 21:13
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Basic Poster posted:Anyways, thoughts on STTR/SBIR inventors / manufacturing engineer work on bid as a hustle? I might be interested. Is there a specific project that you have in mind? Can you PM some examples of successful bids you've made? I'm a Mech E undergrad, Sys Eng masters who was a machinist->manufacturing engineer->big defense systems engineer->now do stuff with technology and law. I generally know a fair amount about SBA regulations and programs, though SBIR is not one I know much about. (More HUBZone, 8(a), other set asides.) I use GovTribe, SAM.gov, USASpending.gov and others pretty often so I can navigate getting docs, researching potential competitors, etc. EDIT: Neat: https://navysbir.com/n23_1/N231-005.htm Solution: An LED in the back of the round encapsulated in a plastic that acts as a collimating lens and or is coated to narrow the visible width. A small shield protects the lens from impingement of the propellant until it leaves the barrel. The lens shield also prevents the LED from turning on. 
CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Feb 22, 2023 |
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Feb 22, 2023 21:25
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mekilljoydammit posted:... I'm 15 years or something into my professional career as a mechanical engineer, in several different industries, and every place I've enquired about trying to find PEs to sign off so I can get my PE. This is the problem with every company I've worked in. One PE runs the shop, and other PEs are far away.
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Feb 22, 2023 21:43
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CarForumPoster posted:I might be interested. Is there a specific project Yeah. I can definitely send you a PM from my home computer and we can discuss some of the other projects Ive done in there. None of them were my own though…IE belong to people I was employed by. But I was the PI on the projects. Don’t want to forum post about it for obvious reasons. But yes, the Navy probably has the most money and topics. But as you’ve noticed by now, not the only game. And they officers who write these topics regardless of branch are highly responsive and willing to talk about the topic within rules they are bound by. Its also not uncommon for multiple companies to “partner” on a topic. For the DoD branches, the put out topics 2-4 times per year and often have an “open” topic where its like “anything that serves our mission under area x” where x is like some congressional nephew telling uncle on a defense committee “the future is the metaverse” or equally lol stuff. Standing up a company about it might seem dodgy, but people do it all the time. Often they even have these sbir clearing houses with a couple of guys who just contract out the engineering and take a margin. But you do have to be a registered company, get you NAICS code, register with sam and dnb and declare your stuff under EAR/ITAR. But all that stuff is a week of work tops including back and forth correspondence.
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Feb 22, 2023 22:39
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Looking for some advice on career advancement. So I've been out of college for 10 years now, been working at my current company for ~8.5 and I'm liking it. It's a small engineering team working primarily in the aerospace field, we develop custom hardware/software for larger aircraft companies and I work as a software engineer in the embedded systems world. A few years ago my boss (head of software engineering) retired and he asked if I had any interest in taking over his position. At the time I declined because I definitely wasn't ready to take over all his responsibilities especially in regards to documentation and knowing certain FAA standards so another guy took over but he is probably not too far off from retiring himself. Today I talked with our company president and I told him that when my current boss retired (ballpark 5-8 years from now) I would be interested in taking over as head of software engineering and he was very supportive of the idea saying they'd love for me to take over and said that if I wanted to take any classes or attend conferences they would help pay for it. The current software team consists of 6 engineers, I am the 2nd youngest and all the others are 50+ and nearing retirement so the structure of the engineering team in the next decade could look completely different. My background is an undergrad in Computer Engineering I had pretty meh grades (I think like a 2.8 GPA) from a good state school, I have never seriously considered going back to school but now it's a real possibility. I don't know what for exactly but I see my old university has an "Engineering Management MS" program. Anyone currently in project management (particularly software) that could weigh in? Given my not so stellar undergrad grades could I even get into a MS program? Are there other options besides a graduate degree that people might recommend? Popete fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Mar 1, 2023 |
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Mar 1, 2023 00:32
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You’d need leadership training. Not PM stuff. Will they get you an MBA?
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Mar 1, 2023 02:59
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I love leadership training. Jack made a mistake at that cost the company a lucrative contract. Jill yells at him in a meeting afterwards. Was that the correct way to handle the situation? Hmmmmmmmm
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Mar 1, 2023 06:26
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Popete posted:Looking for some advice on career advancement. IMO this could be a bit more than just “take some classes” but I’d have to know more. I’m a Program Manager for Software, having come up through Aerospace and now in Tech and have an MBA. I just haven’t been a people-manager but worked closely with a lot. What does the head of SW actually do, are they more like a manager (no coding) a tech lead (coding and system design and expert), or a bit of both? Based on what you know of the above, would you like that? How do you feel about recruiting? In my experience, looking at an entire team of 50+ near retired SWEs in aerospace is like looking down the barrel of a gun. Recent layoffs aside, many young and mid-career SWEs are more than happy to go to a tech or tech-adjacent company for less red tape and more money. Back in my Aerospace days we couldn’t hold on to engineers to save our life. You have time on your side here but honestly getting good people to do the work is probably going to be your #1 challenge. A lot of small business is just executing, and a lot of Management education is trying to figure out what the right thing is, assuming you can execute. Having the resources and keeping them motivated always has to come first.
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Mar 1, 2023 17:18
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Crazyweasel posted:IMO this could be a bit more than just “take some classes” but I’d have to know more. I’m a Program Manager for Software, having come up through Aerospace and now in Tech and have an MBA. I just haven’t been a people-manager but worked closely with a lot. So this would be more akin to a tech lead, I would still be doing some engineering work but probably not more than 50% of the time. That's part of the appeal to me, I don't want to go full on PM/manager and give up the technical side of things. The software team I would be overseeing fluctuates between 4-8 people as we make use of contractors fairly regularly (usually the same ones so there is a relationship there) with I would say 4 core software engineers permanently here. As I mentioned right now most everyone else is older it's been an issue at my company for awhile now that we need to be getting younger and that could be a part of my job is finding younger engineers, I've already been involved in interviewing and hiring decisions so that's not totally new to me. Motivation/people managing at my work is kind of unique in that everyone here gets along really well and have been working on and off with each other since the 90s for the most part, my job leading the software team is mostly because the other software guys don't want to do that they just want to do engineering work and would be more than happy for me to take over the customer relations schedule/documentation management stuff. I like to think (at least for an engineer) I have good people skills, that was actually one of the things my company president said when I brought up the idea and he thought I would be a good fit. Software design and proposals would be a big part of my job, we are a contract engineering company meaning we don't really have our own products we win projects from larger companies based on our designs. I would be getting a lot of help from the other software engineers in coming up with designs but documentation would become a bigger part of my job. I would be working closely with our EE side to help recommend parts based on software requirements from our customers. Popete fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Mar 1, 2023 |
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Mar 1, 2023 18:00
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I will echo that management beings an entire new set of challenges that, if you’re a success individual contributor, may shock and confuse you. People’s problems run the gamut. The good news is that managing engineers can be an easier transition than managing uneducated production staff and a team of 4 is a good opportunity and a small business environment will likely mean better dialogue with upper mgmt. Take whatever courses may benefit you, but an MBA is probably best if your technical chops are up to snuff. Being able to special the language of finance people and bridge the gap between engineering and finance is a powerful (and valuable) tool.
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Mar 1, 2023 18:45
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Since you have time I would start with your current boss giving you some of his duties. It will help you develop the skills with him/her as a back up. Then you can target the classes to what you need to work on. I am not a fan of getting an MBA and not being in the role/knowing you will use it. I find most people get it and do gently caress all with it.
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Mar 1, 2023 19:00
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Thanks for all the context! If truly 4+ years is your timeframe you’ll be fine.spwrozek posted:Since you have time I would start with your current boss giving you some of his duties. It will help you develop the skills with him/her as a back up. Then you can target the classes to what you need to work on. I am not a fan of getting an MBA and not being in the role/knowing you will use it. I find most people get it and do gently caress all with it. I agree with this, start slow in getting involved in some of those responsibilities. Start building your “team-4 years-from-now”, well, now! With such a small team, I’m sure you can go a bit above to improve the day to day in a way you would as the head, except with having lower expectations. After doing that for a bit, then figure out what supplemental education you need. A lot of MBAs get it to either reset and jump ship or have expectations from their leadership to get it. More focused Engineering Management certificates or even individual courses/seminars might be higher value if you can target them to things you actually want to learn.
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Mar 1, 2023 21:45
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This may or may not be the right place to post this question (and if not, please feel free to tell me to gently caress off) but I’m an elder student making a career change at 39  . I’m enrolled in a transfer program for BSEE which I’ve really just started—reviewing some math, taking and getting back into the swing of academics.I’m taking an intro to engineering programming course this summer and I’m going to do a codecademy course in my downtime to learn some concepts. I’m trying to decide what language to delve into just to start learning and, while im leaning toward python, I figured I’d get some input from you guys as to what might be most useful to get started. I’m trying to be as targeted as possible because, let’s face it, at this age I’ve really got to get it right.
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Apr 4, 2023 01:12
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What are you wanting to learn programming for? What area of EE do you think you're interested in? I would say if you're going to be an EE and want to work in something like embedded systems it would be handy to know Python/Bash to be able to write your own basic test scripts. For example writing a script that reads and dumps a bunch of registers from a device across an I2C bus.
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Apr 4, 2023 01:36
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Popete posted:What are you wanting to learn programming for? What area of EE do you think you're interested in? I would say if you're going to be an EE and want to work in something like embedded systems it would be handy to know Python/Bash to be able to write your own basic test scripts. For example writing a script that reads and dumps a bunch of registers from a device across an I2C bus. Frankly I’m still learning how much it is that I don’t know but my interest is probably in the green energy power generation/distribution direction. A lot of the job opportunities around here are embedded systems and manufacturing, so obviously that is subject to change. I know this is all very general but I figured y’all would have insight.
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Apr 4, 2023 01:49
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LeeMajors posted:I’m taking an intro to engineering programming course this summer and I’m going to do a codecademy course in my downtime to learn some concepts. If your school is like mine, you should be able to figure out which language you'll be learning for class based on the course number you plan to register for. All things else considered equal, I'd learn that one. otherwise, i'd say the primary difficulty in programming is thinking about how to approach the problem in a way the computer is good at, and the rest is googling the correct syntax for the language you want to use. for beginners, javascript is nice because it runs in the browser and do fun stuff like manipulate web pages. python is a very nice language for learning imo. i did the 'automate the boring stuff with python' course which focuses on applications rather than esoteric 'now we build a for loop'
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Apr 4, 2023 07:39
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Honestly AI-generates scripts are probably going to make "learning to code" from scratch in a classical sense obsolete. Learn enough to understand what's happening in a language, know if somethings working as intended, how to debug if it's not, but I wouldn't lose sleep about knowing a language cold in this day and age as you start a bachelor degree. Fwiw I took a C+ course as part of my undergrad 20+ years ago and that was the last time I coded beyond some basic Matlab poo poo. Mathcad and electrical modeling software took priority in my sliver of the "EE working in power and generation" world.
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Apr 4, 2023 09:35
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Pander posted:Honestly AI-generates scripts are probably going to make "learning to code" from scratch in a classical sense obsolete. Learn enough to understand what's happening in a language, know if somethings working as intended, how to debug if it's not, but I wouldn't lose sleep about knowing a language cold in this day and age as you start a bachelor degree. Maybe because I'm at the research-end of R&D and I don't want to believe it's the future since it's so much of my job, but I think having a solid understanding of at least one language is still going to be very important. How else are you going to be able to debug well or know how the generative AI could approach a problem if you don't know how to code from scratch? And what if there's a problem/request that the model hasn't seen before and comes out with a nonsense solution. You're probably right to a large extent since most tasks are just recycling others in a slightly new combination. I'm pretty sure it's going to remain a good advantage in the jobs market alone to be able to code still though. Regarding good languages for embedded systems, python and/or C/Arduino are both good for getting started on your own.
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Apr 4, 2023 10:56
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Python's a good place to get started, there's plenty of tutorials and learning material introducing Python via Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects, and as a first language it's not going to make you want to tear your hair out like C will If you know your school's using Matlab, then that's another good thing to get familiar with
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Apr 4, 2023 16:17
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Another vote for python as it covers a lot of bases between embedded, data, and business intelligence.
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Apr 4, 2023 17:04
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LeeMajors posted:Frankly I’m still learning how much it is that I don’t know but my interest is probably in the green energy power generation/distribution direction. A lot of the job opportunities around here are embedded systems and manufacturing, so obviously that is subject to change. For that career, you’re going to want to get into electrical power engineering and electronics (specifically power electronics) engineering. EE specific programming languages are typically very low level or very direct logic-based. These are industry specific, you’re going to use VHDL and/or verilog at some point as well as some variety of machine code and C and/or C++. If you get into your interest, the programming is going to be a vendor proprietary ladder logic or text logic. SCADA comm protocols are typically IEEE61850, GE/Harris D20, SEL protocol, or occasionally modbus. But python is awesome and super helpful. It is now the scripting language of choice for several power modeling programs databases.
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Apr 4, 2023 17:51
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MATLAB carried me through grad school so +1 to that. I work more on the distribution side of big-wire, but I think these are the software/applications that will be very useful for you to learn if you can get ahold of an educational license: etap OR SKM Powertools (they do basically the same thing, letting you model systems and simulate faults) EasyPower (Insanely good generation/transmission visualization, also very good for fault analysis) Revit (if you're doing building-level design) And some free tools that you should familiarize yourself with: PVWatts (this is a free government website that will let you anticipate solar radiation for a given area for the year. An embarrassing number of professional outfits use it and charge $$$$ for the pleasure.) WINDexchange is the wind version of above https://map.4coffshore.com/offshorewind/ (map of offshore wind projects)
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Apr 4, 2023 18:00
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What languages you actually use depends heavily on classes you're taking and where you end up going with your career. Maybe check out some future courses you want to take and go from there? I used a bunch of MATLAB in college, some VHDL/Verilog and haven't touched it since. Now I mainly do PLC programming (mostly ladder logic or structured text) with some C#/VB for HMIs I've never touched Python so I can't comment on that. Some sort of flavor of C is likely going to be helpful as most languages are based on it. Really just try some stuff out and see what you like. Maybe you end up hating programming and will end up more on the hardware side of things.
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Apr 4, 2023 19:38
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The only reason I hesitate to suggest C is that it involves learning a lot more than just the language, like you have to figure out how to compile programs and cross compilation if you're not developing stuff for your host. It's definitely a great language to learn but if you're not expecting to do programming as a main part of your job/classes then I would stick to something that's going to be easier to work with as a beginner.
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Apr 4, 2023 20:18
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Holy moly thanks for all the effort posts. After reading through all this I think I’ll probably tuck into python just to get my legs under me. I’ve got a raspberry pi I’ve been planning on messing around with as well. I haven’t done any coding since my senior year of high school, compiling simple programs in Pascal lol. Mostly I just want to get the basics back and learn some structure so I’m not walking into a programming course with no frame of reference, but I also wanted to make sure I didn’t sink time into something that may not apply later. Thanks again everyone.
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Apr 4, 2023 20:24
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Popete posted:The only reason I hesitate to suggest C is that it involves learning a lot more than just the language, like you have to figure out how to compile programs and cross compilation if you're not developing stuff for your host. It's definitely a great language to learn but if you're not expecting to do programming as a main part of your job/classes then I would stick to something that's going to be easier to work with as a beginner. yeah, it's definitely something good to know, but as a first language it's got so many hurdles that it can turn you off the entire idea my first programming class in college was C and outside of times I was required to use Matlab, I didn't try programming again until I was a few years out of grad school
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Apr 4, 2023 20:35
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Not a Children posted:MATLAB carried me through grad school so +1 to that. dxt posted:
The Chairman posted:If you know your school's using Matlab, then that's another good thing to get familiar with MATLAB owns bones imo, but unless you're at a university or big company then you're missing lots of functionality from the $$ toolboxes. There's always  of course
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Apr 4, 2023 20:40
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