|
boeman posted:Here is a free tip: if you like the intellectual challenge of your engineering cirriculum, go to graduate school. You will be bored out of your mind if you go into industry with a B.S. I speak from experience I'm planning on getting Graduate Degree part time with a job. Is this a pretty good route? (BSEE graduating December, job prospects look good but I'm gonna be hitting up the career fair like mad this week).
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2009 03:00
|
|
, but at least I'm changing that now.
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 18:51 |
|
|
clredwolf posted:I'm planning on getting Graduate Degree part time with a job. Is this a pretty good route? (BSEE graduating December, job prospects look good but I'm gonna be hitting up the career fair like mad this week). if you plan on getting a masters, that should work fine. PhD programs require a full-time (think 50-60+) hours a week commitment for research, classes, etc...
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2009 03:14
|
|
|
I've more or less decided PhD probably isn't for me. I'm willing to reconsider that later, but I would like to work for industry for a while at least. I do have some desire to teach later...
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2009 03:30
|
|
|
How are things for engineering technicians? I'm debating going back to school for an Associates in EE, and figure that if I like it I'll get a BS since all credits will transfer for this particular program.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2009 09:48
|
|
|
El Kabong posted:How are things for engineering technicians? I'm debating going back to school for an Associates in EE, and figure that if I like it I'll get a BS since all credits will transfer for this particular program.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2009 10:40
|
|
|
boeman posted:Here is a free tip: if you like the intellectual challenge of your engineering cirriculum, go to graduate school. You will be bored out of your mind if you go into industry with a B.S. I speak from experience This is painfully untrue. Yeah, if you get an entry level job at a giant company you might spend two years being a calculation monkey sizing anchor bolts or something. If you get a job like that, quit and find something else. However, the amount of intellectual stimulation involved in engineering jobs is pretty much proportional to the level of interest of the engineer. There are always better ways to solve problems and more you can know about how to solve them. In every project I've ever worked on, even very straightforward ones, there's always some little detail or issue that catches my interest and leads to some reasonably in depth research. It's not research that I would necessarily need to do to complete the project, but it's research that leads to a better understanding of why what I'm doing works which usually results in a better design and better engineering in the future. Once you get interested in something, you can spend months learning about even the seemingly simple things. I have bookshelves full of printouts, notes and information that have come from me deciding that there has to be a better way to do something completely mundane. Half the time there isn't, but there are volumes of information available about all the stuff that gets taken for granted and that most people never bother to understand. You can spend a lifetime in almost any job learning interesting new things about engineering if you're motivated. T.C. fucked around with this message at 11:14 on Oct 5, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2009 11:10
|
|
|
Senior (in the "Super" Senior Program) Mining and Minerals Engineering student at Virginia Tech. I have experience in coal mining and aggregates (crushed stone). Its great if you want to move around the country/world, don't mind getting dirty, and want to see huge machinery. My internships have taken me to West Virginia, Ohio, and Virginia. Friends have gone as far west as Montana and Nevada for a few jobs. Starting pay is pretty drat good. VT Mining averages about $68,000 fresh out. As an intern, I've gotten paid $21.88/hour with housing stipends. I've got friends who have gotten paid upwards of $27/hour with free housing. Job placement has been 100% for over a decade. Hell yeah.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2009 11:20
|
|
|
As an Engineering/Commerce student (I'm an Aus goon, so this would be a double major in Engineering/Business), what majors can I choose out of the Business stream that would compliment my engineering degree? I currently have it narrowed down to finance, accounting, management and international business. Or should I have just gone down the B Eng and then MBA route?  EDIT: Sorry about that. I'm majoring in Mechatronics Engineering and yeah finance was something I just tacked on because I am curious if it would be useful at all. I mean in terms of career advancement. vvvvvvv Godders fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Oct 6, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2009 17:15
|
|
|
Godders posted:As an Engineering/Commerce student (I'm an Aus goon, so this would be a double major in Engineering/Business), what majors can I choose out of the Business stream that would compliment my engineering degree? I currently have it narrowed down to finance, accounting, management and international business. Complement to what purpose? If you want to enter a biomedical field finance is not going to help you. As an engineering student, you should know that you need to be specific in your questions.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2009 17:17
|
|
|
Godders posted:As an Engineering/Commerce student (I'm an Aus goon, so this would be a double major in Engineering/Business), what majors can I choose out of the Business stream that would compliment my engineering degree? I currently have it narrowed down to finance, accounting, management and international business. grover fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Oct 6, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2009 21:55
|
|
|
Slumpy posted:Has anyone here been horrible at math and decided to become an engineer? How did that work out? If you're thinking of going into engineering but bad at math, don't be surprised if you fail out. I've seen some people pull it off, but it's rare.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2009 22:28
|
|
|
Can any materials engineer give some input? I'm currently on a 5yr co-op program, but am somewhat leaning toward changing into mechanical. I feel as the co-op will be a great transition into actual work and help me once I've graduated, but mechanical seems to be something I'd be more interested in simply based on career descriptions. I would ultimately like to get into the business-end of things. I know any engineering degree is a great start to heading in whichever direction you choose, but mechanical being a broader discipline, seems as a better option. Will a materials engineering degree close any doors a mechanical would have left open? WeK fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Oct 7, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 06:29
|
|
|
I just graduated with an EE in June and am still looking for work. Part of the problem is that I'm not really interested in doing coding or QA, which is what a lot of engineers in my area (Vancouver) are doing these days. Most of my interest is in renewable energy, power systems, and EVs, although I'm open to any hardware work at this point. At some point I may have to settle for a QA or a technician position, but for now I'm still holding out for what I really want. I'm currently a bit afraid of IT because it seems like something you could get stuck in.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 07:35
|
|
|
Slumpy posted:Has anyone here been horrible at math and decided to become an engineer? How did that work out? I guess it depends on what you mean by math. Also it depends on your field - an ME, CE, or a nuclear engineer would give you a totally different answer. Lots of EEs would give you a different answer too. But for me: If you're talking about algebra, trigonometry, logic, etc then it's pretty important stuff (for an EE working in hardware design and DSP, at least). If you're talking about solving differential equations, I forgot how to do that poo poo pretty much the moment I got my diploma. I don't use linear algebra very often, and I almost never do calculus. Most if not all of the math I do actually winds up being discrete mathematics - that means solving or designing numerically. With that said, it's really important in my line of work to _understand_ the ideas persented in all of that math pretty well. Although I would pretty much never solve a derivative these days, it's important for me to understand what one represents in a system, and what effect its behaviors have. I couldn't average a signal without an understanding the concept of an integral. However, it's important to note that if you're bad at stuff like trig, calculus, etc. then you engineering might not be right for you. Not because you _need_ that stuff per se, but because if your brain isn't the right type to be good at this stuff then it might have trouble with the logical abstractions we deal with every day. As a side note, The ideas of signal processing mathematics are very important though. Being able to think about a system in terms of its frequency response is a really crucial skill in many types of engineering, not just signal processing. Because when you get down to it, any machine or process in the world is a system with inputs, outputs, and a frequency response. Poopernickel fucked around with this message at 08:13 on Oct 7, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 07:52
|
|
|
Godders posted:As an Engineering/Commerce student (I'm an Aus goon, so this would be a double major in Engineering/Business), what majors can I choose out of the Business stream that would compliment my engineering degree? I currently have it narrowed down to finance, accounting, management and international business. I'm not sure how things work in Australia, but if you're interested and looking into business as a career more than engineering you could leverage your engineering degree to work in the technology group at an investment bank/management consulting firm which would be a track to corporate finance/strategy at tech companies or something like venture capital. Of course this is a ridiculously hard path with regards to both the probability of obtaining these jobs and the hours you have to put in. There's also IT consulting, though from what I've heard the work isn't that rewarding and there isn't a lot of room for advancement. But in terms of a career as an engineer I doubt a double major would help a lot. I assume you would most likely need to go back for an MBA anyway if you wanted to move into a management roll. (Not an engineer. I wimped out on the math but was always curious about what it would have been like to be one.) flyingfoggy fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Oct 7, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 08:45
|
|
|
My experience as a recent australian engineering graduate is that people tended to use business courses to pad their GPA and take a break. Given how hard it is to get a graduate job right now anything that helps separate you from the pack could be a good idea, and doing business will lengthen your degree and give the economy more time to recover.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 11:52
|
|
|
Ewan posted:I got an MEng in Aerospace Engineering (graduated July 08). I now work for the Government in what is technically an Engineering job, but is a lot more project management as the industry counterparts tend to do the actual Engineering. I have to say I am enjoying my job and have no regrets. Hey! Are you with DESG? I'm on the DESG Student scheme. I spent the summer working at Abbey Wood. It was deathly boring!I'm going to try and get a placement at DSTL next summer. (Second year Aerospace Engineering student)
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 12:58
|
|
|
Necc0 posted:If you're thinking of going into engineering but bad at math, don't be surprised if you fail out. I've seen some people pull it off, but it's rare. The point is to learn math, not be good at it already. You can start off an engineering curriculum with Calc 1 if you want to.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 12:59
|
|
|
Magnificent Quiver posted:The point is to learn math, not be good at it already. You can start off an engineering curriculum with Calc 1 if you want to. I did this and was absolutely fine.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 14:16
|
|
|
Magnificent Quiver posted:The point is to learn math, not be good at it already. You can start off an engineering curriculum with Calc 1 if you want to. Most of the people I know that say they are "bad at math" can barely pass precalculus or trigonometry. I think when you move up that far you are squarely in the "hate math" category.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 14:21
|
|
|
My father has been in aerospace engineering for over 30 years now. One of the first things he told me going into college was to NOT study engineering. His story is kind of hosed up because he was essentially a mechanical engineer and then as we got all that fly-by-wire stuff and flying became more digital he's now doing electrical engineering work despite having years of experience in mechanical stuff. Needless to say if he lost his job he'll probably never find a new one because of his age among other things. But yeah, it simply isn't worth it to be an engineer nowadays, they're a dime a dozen and if you live in Canada there's no jobs for engineers. Especially since we got tons of Chinese immigrants who all go to study Engineering. If you ever been to Waterloo or UofT engineering its pure asian. You'll end up working in a furniture factory, or some other factory where you test some piece of metal to see how long it'll bend back and forth before it breaks or something. The pay won't be more than 50 grand a year. There just isn't much reward for working your rear end off and breaking your head on thermodynamics and fluid mechanics just so a bunch of morons in these so called engineering firms mop the floor with you and disrespect you despite the level of distinction and study it takes to be an engineer. Remember for every 1 of you who call yourselves engineers here in North America, there's 4-5 more Indians who can be paid off all together with your salary and each one of them will do twice as much work as you. My father's firm is already exporting a lot of their engineering work to India. Do yourself a favor, if you like numbers, be an accountant and get a CA or study finance and get a CFA. The money is better and despite what they tell you about the economy, you're guaranteed a job if you have these designations. EDIT: That being said this is purely written from an aerospace engineering perspective in Canada where we don't really have a demand for that sort of thing. In the United States it could be totally different. I do want to know if there's much demand for Nuclear Engineers and the engineers involved in natural resource extraction. Anyway know anything about that? I'd imagine with the recent energy problems and just the fact that many Nuclear engineers are approach retirement that it's entirely possible there will be a serious demand for them soon. DerDestroyer fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Oct 7, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 19:08
|
|
|
DerDestroyer posted:EDIT: That being said this is purely written from an aerospace engineering perspective in Canada where we don't really have a demand for that sort of thing. In the United States it could be totally different. In the US, Engineering is one of the most sought after majors. I don't know why Canada would be much different. All the engineers currently in industry are retiring and young engineers are being rapidly promoted. The guy who interviewed me for an internship last spring was no more than three years out of college at most and already in charge of programs. Also, at the recent job fair on campus, the Westinghouse booth told me they were looking for nuclear engineers (as well as mechanical, electrical, etc) like mad due to the retiring of all the older engineers and the upcoming boom in nuclear plant construction.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 19:38
|
|
|
Frinkahedron posted:In the US, Engineering is one of the most sought after majors. I don't know why Canada would be much different. All the engineers currently in industry are retiring and young engineers are being rapidly promoted. The guy who interviewed me for an internship last spring was no more than three years out of college at most and already in charge of programs. Likewise, in the UK it seems as though engineers can almost dictate their salary since they're so scarce. I've seen statistics showing how job numbers are increasing at a significantly faster rate than graduates being produced. My company would like more engineers (many types, including nuclear), but we can barely keep up with replacing those who retire with new graduates.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 19:56
|
|
|
DerDestroyer posted:Remember for every 1 of you who call yourselves engineers here in North America, there's 4-5 more Indians who can be paid off all together with your salary and each one of them will do twice as much work as you. My father's firm is already exporting a lot of their engineering work to India. Thats why you get your PE and get a fancy little stamp.
|
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 20:25
|
|
|
DerDestroyer posted:My father has been in aerospace engineering for over 30 years now. It sucks whenever it's your job that was outsourced, but engineering is still one of the best career fields in North America. grover fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Oct 8, 2009 |
|
#
?
Oct 7, 2009 21:54
|
|
|
freestyl posted:Can anyone tell me anything about Environmental Engineering? I'd like to know more about Environmental Engineering as well.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 00:02
|
|
|
DerDestroyer posted:Remember for every 1 of you who call yourselves engineers here in North America, there's 4-5 more Indians who can be paid off all together with your salary and each one of them will do twice as much work as you. My father's firm is already exporting a lot of their engineering work to India. Apparently you haven't ever worked directly with an Indian engineer. They are great at doing exactly what they are told. Other than that, they can barely think for themselves and really won't do anything other than your EXACT directions. That can be good and bad depending on what you need. Comrade Placebo posted:I'd like to know more about Environmental Engineering as well. From what I've seen, not one myself. Permits, permits... permits! And waste water treatment at our plant. Basically remove all the organic and other stuff, leave just pure water. Release it to nearby waterway or reuse if needed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 00:28
|
|
|
First, don't listen to current students. It's like listening to middle school kids talk about high school. Engineering isn't like architecture or medicine. There isn't really a professional standard. Well the PE, but that is more for public works rather than say processing semiconductors. Engineering duties, pay and type of work will vary wildly. Its more accurate to characterize the "engineering work experience" by industry rather than by major.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 00:34
|
|
|
Frinkahedron posted:Also, at the recent job fair on campus, the Westinghouse booth told me they were looking for nuclear engineers (as well as mechanical, electrical, etc) like mad due to the retiring of all the older engineers and the upcoming boom in nuclear plant construction. This is true, but don't think that you can get a job just because they're hiring. Most companies are still looking to hire competent/hardworking employees. I was a cocky bastard when I was looking for jobs, assuming they'd be handed to me (the job market was super hot when I was applying)... lucky for me I got into med school. Also, it's all about skills. My gf just kinda squeeked by (well maybe a bit better than that) during undergrad, and is absolutely terrible at math. But she has amazing organizational, planning, and people skills and is tremendously succesful at her job.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 01:22
|
|
|
El Kabong posted:How are things for engineering technicians? I'm debating going back to school for an Associates in EE, and figure that if I like it I'll get a BS since all credits will transfer for this particular program. I did this, I got a job as a drafting bitch in high school, and did night school for 4 years while working full time. 5 years later I hit a salary cap and went back for my BS. The thing is, techs are techs for one of 2 reasons. a) they're not quite creative enough to be a full engineer, or b) they haven't been promoted or gone back to school, but they will. Basically if you're smart enough, not much will hold you back in the long term. To be fair though, a lot of the career techs I've worked with were the most professional guys around, they just had much more of a "tell me what to do and I'll make it happen" kind of attitude, rather than a "I'll figure this out" attitude. I did work with a couple that thought they were the poo poo, but kept loving up when given chances to prove themselves. Like one guy shipped an extremely heavy machine with 4 lifting eyes out of a catalog, without actually calculating how much the machine weighed. The customer snapped one taking it out of the box. Fortunately it only fell a few inches but had it held out a little longer the dude could have killed someone. Another guy designed a threaded joint to take all the torque of a cutting machine, so that the machine was actually tightening the joint while it operated, and once it was done they couldn't unscrew it. As a counter to both of those, a close friend of mine is working as a full EE making around 80k a year, yet all he has is his AAS. The 25 years experience helps though. Unlike my examples above, he simply did all the work and proved himself, (it doesn't hurt that he's pretty sharp and talented) and his lack of a BS has hardly held him back. That said, at my last job I tried to get him on and they wouldn't even interview him because he didn't have a BS. Fortunately that was for the best as they were shitheads there. Anyway, uprooting my life to go back and be a student was rough, but once I was in the groove it was awesome. I felt like I was vastly more interested in the subject matter than the other students, because I had a 9 year frame of reference to apply. I have to admit though, that I was that rear end in a top hat in class who constantly referred to all his life experience trying to impress everyone. My only warning is be absolutely sure you're taking classes that transfer universally. I found out too late that mine didn't, and I was very restricted on which schools I could go to. The one I really wanted to go to would only recognize about 1/3 of my AAS so I would have had to enter as a freshman and take over 3 years worth of classes.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 03:29
|
|
|
LloydDobler posted:I have to admit though, that I was that rear end in a top hat in class who constantly referred to all his life experience trying to impress everyone. We weren't impressed. Especially because most of the guys who pull that poo poo are completely uninterested in any theoretical background and whine and moan when forced to learn any theory or anything involving mathematics. "We didn't use any of this poo poo when I worked at <company name>."
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 03:46
|
|
|
DNova posted:We weren't impressed. I got that in one of my classes once. The professor came back with something like "I guess thats why I made twice your salary as a consultant for <company>"
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 04:11
|
|
|
Magnificent Quiver posted:The point is to learn math, not be good at it already. You can start off an engineering curriculum with Calc 1 if you want to. When I said 'bad at math' I meant not really getting mathematical concepts in general. Some people just can't understand that stuff just like I can't paint or write poetically for poo poo. But yeah you could probably start even as early as Trig if you knew that you were determined.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 04:19
|
|
|
I graduated this past semester with an EE degree and now I work at a microwave engineering company. EE jobs will definitely vary with the industry and size of the company. Larger companies tend to put their engineers into specific roles while engineers at smaller companies do a wider range of jobs. Personally I spend about half my time at a desk looking over schematics and datasheets, programming microcontrollers/fpgas, whatever, and the other half of my time in a lab testing and debugging stuff that I or someone else has made. I would totally recommend majoring in Engineering in college, especially if you live in the Northeast or West coast where most of the jobs seem to be. After I graduated, almost all of the people in my EE class found jobs while practically NONE of my non-engineer friends found work. They all went to grad school instead.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 04:20
|
|
|
CatchrNdRy posted:Its more accurate to characterize the "engineering work experience" by industry rather than by major. This is true. If anyone has any questions about computer science/engineering feel free to ask.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 04:23
|
|
|
I'm considering going back to school someday for Nuclear Engineering so if I can get some info on that, it would help me out. Specifically I want to know which places are best to learn that sort of thing. I'm primarily interested in reactor safety, design and controls.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 05:23
|
|
|
I have a BE with a concentration in controls and an MSME concentration in mechatronics. I worked in automotive automation (Caterpillar), worked on some automotive sensing for a small silicon valley company, and worked for a medical device company that worked on projects mostly contracted out by big companies like Ethicon, etc. I got bored and hated working for the medical device company (mostly because they had me on straight mechanical testing for a device that was a giant piece of crap and they wanted me to fudge the results....but I digress), so I left that job and decided to go back to school and take a bit of a new slant to things. Time shall tell if I made the correct move, I guess. Salary was always pretty good for me, in a large part because of the schools I went to. It does make a difference if you are just coming out of school to have those schools be reputable. Go to the best school you can get into. If I could do it over again, I wouldn't have taken that medical devices job so my bit of advice is to wait for a job that actually seems fun and will be something you look forward to doing, not one that offers you an obscene amount of money to be bored to tears and to fib on documents for the FDA.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 06:24
|
|
|
Necc0 posted:This is true. If anyone has any questions about computer science/engineering feel free to ask. When I write it out like that, it seems like I should have a good chance, I'm just worried because it seems like in every CS class I take, every other guy already knows all the concepts the class covers and has a part-time real job coding for an actual company, e.g. "Oh yeah CGI? Yeah I've did some Perl scripting on the side for [some company] a couple of years ago, neat stuff, these days my job involves databases though."
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 06:45
|
|
|
Cicero posted:When I write it out like that, it seems like I should have a good chance, I'm just worried because it seems like in every CS class I take, every other guy already knows all the concepts the class covers and has a part-time real job coding for an actual company, e.g. "Oh yeah CGI? Yeah I've did some Perl scripting on the side for [some company] a couple of years ago, neat stuff, these days my job involves databases though." That's because the nerds in your CS classes are insecure jerks who brag about stuff without actually knowing what they're talking about. Chill out, you're in really good shape. Just go to career fairs and such and chat up some recruiters. You'll find an internship in no time as long as you're friendly and confident.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 07:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 18:51 |
|
|
BeefofAges posted:That's because the nerds in your CS classes are insecure jerks who brag about stuff without actually knowing what they're talking about. Chill out, you're in really good shape. Just go to career fairs and such and chat up some recruiters. You'll find an internship in no time as long as you're friendly and confident.
|
|
#
?
Oct 8, 2009 07:08
|
|