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Does anybody have advice for someone who wants to take the EIT exam outside of school? I graduated about a year and a half ago, and recently switched jobs to one that will put me on the path to a PE. Obviously, that'll come a lot faster if I pass the EIT, but being out of school for a while, my math/physics aptitude has dropped off a little. I graduated with a BSEE, so I'd be taking the Electrical and Computer CBT exam (second lowest first-time pass rate, whoo!). What are some good resources for playing catch up? As a kind of corollary to that, is there any way I should prepare over the next few years for taking the PE that will make it easier? I've been slowly plodding my way through the NEC, but I feel like there's more to it than that.
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Jan 15, 2014 15:01
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So, after being in the workforce a couple of years, I'm looking to get back into academia by going for that Masters. I'm hoping I can hack the night-class route. I was originally planning on going into a hard science program, probably EE like my undergrad, but I've been thinking more and more about going for a masters in engineering management, specifically in systems engineering. Would something like that be worthwhile? I'm a little fearful that it might just be another tick mark next to my qualifications, as the local school that offers this program appears to accept pretty much anyone with an engineering/math degree with an undergrad GPA above 3.0.
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May 15, 2014 14:30
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I'm an EE looking to eventually parlay my experience into an environmental/energy research role. As I work in the environmental division of a civil consulting firm, I think I'm already in the right direction; would it be worthwhile for me to pursue a Masters in Environmental Planning and Management, or am I better off career-wise going for something less managerial in nature (straight EE or Power Engineering)?
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Aug 12, 2014 14:17
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Do it. I was in it in undergrad and it was a great experience. You get exposed to real and complicated logistics and do some real good. I never went on any trips, but it was definitely worthwhile just to be a part of it. Doesn't hurt that it looks killer on a resume. I'm electrical too, don't expect to necessarily be doing electrical work. You're delivering aid -- a lot of these projects are specifically designed so that they don't require power at all. If the people there could afford power they probably wouldn't have the sort of problems that require international intervention.
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Nov 21, 2014 21:09
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It's excellent because it teaches nerds that some problems are more complicated than "input A, output B" and demonstrates the societal need for exporting technology rather than just the circlejerk of "we're so smart, the true ubermensches, everything would be so much better if everyone was just logical like us" that so many engineers find themselves in
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Nov 22, 2014 18:20
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Hate to bring back drafting chat, but what I read from you guys has me a little scared. I've got a B.S. in EE, I've been working at my firm for a bit over a year, and just about 90% of what I do is drafting. Not design -- just taking other peoples' designs and drawing them in. I had no idea this is what I'd end up doing for this company, and I honestly think I could've done this out of high school. I feel like my skills are rusting. On the plus side, I'm getting solid experience in AutoCAD and MicroStation, and it's good, easy money. I'm starting a part-time (fully paid) masters in EE this month, so that'll help keep my skill base up, and I'll finish it just in time to qualify for the PE in Summer 2017. I half feel like I'm better off gritting my teeth, paying my dues, and reevaluating my position after I get all my certifications. Is the masters worth staying the course, or should I risk shaking things up a bit at my otherwise easy gig?
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Jan 6, 2015 16:11
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Pander posted:You sound exactly like someone who just got hired at my company. He actually just put in his two weeks after getting annoyed he wasn't utilizing his EE much. All the managers of the other teams would try to vulture his time with cad and microstation work on non-electrical mods. Glad to know I'm not unique in this regard. I've already paid for this semester of school, so I figure I'll wait until I at least get reimbursed at the end. I think the deciding factor is what my annual raise looks like in April.
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Jan 6, 2015 17:58
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dxt posted:I would advise any recent or soon to be EE graduates to try and get into Controls Engineering (PLC programming), it's a really nice niche to be into right now. I make way too much money for how easy my job is. I kinda wanted to do this, but I decided to ~*follow my dreams*~ and work in power systems. I'd imagine that there's lots of crossover between the two, though, I'm hoping to make that leap at some point in my career after passing the PE exam.
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Feb 6, 2015 16:16
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Seconding that notion, $65k is not enough for an engineer in LA. I personally would not settle for less than $75k, and that's if I absolutely loved the place. Housing/rental market down there is nuts.
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Mar 6, 2015 17:50
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Gorman Thomas posted:You're right that $65k isn't enough, but that's about right for entry level engineering jobs in South Bay/Torrance. Source: I started at $63k for software/systems 18 months ago, up to $71k now. That's me, but I'm making an EE's wage for a CE's bitchwork. 
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Mar 10, 2015 18:11
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You're right, gently caress 'em for not intuitively knowing what to wear for a work environment they've never been in
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Mar 26, 2015 15:36
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No deductible with 100% of your costs covered? What kind of premiums are you looking at? Does "all time off paid" mean no overtime pay? Like Thoguh said, "Unlimited vacation" usually means "don't take vacation and also you should probably put in some weekend work." It sounds like you get pretty good bennies, but be wary of the catches. Mid-60s is probably low for LA, but in a good enough work environment I'd say it's adequate. Don't count on performance bonuses until you have them in hand though, some companies will promise you the moon and stars and leave you with pocket change.
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Apr 9, 2015 19:57
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Party Alarm posted:Well this is pretty hosed. This is a pretty huge red flag that you wouldn't want to work for this company anyway. If this is some sort of magical dream job (or if you're currently under/unemployed), you might want to continue, but after being jerked around for half a year I personally would give their HR or whoever you've been in contact with an ultimatum. There are tons of other companies that won't do this to you.
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Apr 24, 2015 14:23
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Party Alarm posted:The company eats all of health care costs - no deductible, no premium, medical dental vision. Those are substantial benefits, and the only thing keeping me from advising you to tell them to go screw -- 65k is peanuts in LA, and frankly you'd probably make out better taking 5-10k less in another locale. Do you forsee the profit sharing adding substantially to your takehome? Is the 401K matching limited? Do you have any other offers on the table? The medical is nothing to sneeze at, for sure, but it's not so very worthwhile if you have to live like a pauper to get it. You said you had an interview with NSWC, correct? Do you think you'll hear from them soon? I actually used to work at their MD location, and I can say that if you're on the government side (as opposed to contractor) it's a pretty sweet gig.
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May 20, 2015 02:24
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It really does sound like they're jerking you around. Stall as long as you can for the sake of keeping a bird in the hand, but you're absolutely right in thinking that you've got better prospects available.
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May 20, 2015 04:49
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mitztronic posted:I don't even make that with a master's and four years of experience in the bay area. Why did I get into aerospace again??? That is super unfortunate and you are super underpaid, esp. if you could qualify for a Secret clearance.
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May 20, 2015 20:24
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mitztronic posted:Our work week here is "work until its done" and some people really do spend 60+ hours a week or more. The only people that get OT are exempt employees (generally people making <65K), and that is because my company got sued. I refuse to give the company more than 40 hours a week anymore (i have in the past), though, they have to earn that from me and god knows they haven't. The more I hear about your company the more I want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you while yelling "YOU NEED A NEW JOB" movax posted:Those guys are (I think) more tied to the overall economic cycle though as folks tend to stop doing / delay large civil engineering projects when there's no money to go around. I can definitely see the long-term benefit though if you have a business-inclined mind to branch out to your own firm -- with sufficient networking, I bet that's insanely lucrative. This is absolutely true, though good firms will have the connections to keep projects coming in during the dry years. Looks like we're in the middle of a boom right now, as my firm and many others I know are doing great business. CEs are indeed on the lower end of the salary spectrum for engineers, but mid-60s in LA sounds just plain insulting to me.
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May 20, 2015 22:43
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That's a bit out of my wheelhouse, but I can safely say that an entry-level ME will only be looking at $70k+ in a major metro area unless you've got some specialty going for you. $55-60k is more typical starting, and the particulars depend on the field and the locale. "Consulting" has such widely defined implications as to be nearly meaningless when talking about salary.
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May 21, 2015 03:36
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Can anyone speak to how reliable/scammy online courses to train up for the EIT/FE are? I've got a pretty free summer between semesters, so I'm looking to enroll in one to bolster my chances on a Septemberish test date, to the company-funded tune of ~$1k-1.5k. Are they generally worth a drat, or am I better off just grabbing the manual and studying through it on my own?
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May 28, 2015 12:18
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I'm about 3 years out of school and my employer will indeed pay for it. I've had pretty good success with studying for exams on my own, but I figure if I can get it for free, why not? I think I'll buy a test book and some flash-cards and just do some studying every day. I'm trying to knock it out in early September -- I don't know if 3 months is really enough time to prepare, but I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the advice!
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May 28, 2015 17:20
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Sounds like a great opportunity if you can follow through on it. It really comes down to how motivated you are. I'd say go for it, but if you're close to burning out or something you might want to pass.
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Jun 4, 2015 00:00
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I have an ex-coworker who emigrated from the Washington DC area to The Netherlands for his PhD in EE. He seems to really like it there, for what it's worth.
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Jun 12, 2015 14:57
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Only do it if A) academia is your calling or B) someone else is paying for it. The former doesn't seem to be the case, and the latter is up to what the admissions committee says. Will your current employer supplement your education? Honestly, the best compromise is to take night classes, especially if your employer is willing to shoulder some of the cost. More education is definitely a good thing, but the opportunity cost in terms of monetary compensation and professional experience isn't worth ditching a job in the hopes of getting a pay bump later. That aside, the salary bump from an MSc is in the neighborhood of ~$10k in most engineering, unless you go into a very specialized field of some sort. Might be higher for computer-related stuff. Not overwhelming unless you're fairly early in your career.
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Jun 24, 2015 19:32
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Condense your personal info into two lines. You can separate them using bullet dividers or something, but right now it's an incredible waste of space. Agree with SWSP that your experience does not merit multiple pages. Do everything you can to get it down to one. Some of your text could stand to be a little smaller, but don't go overboard. List your 3 latest employers from most to least recent, 3 or 4 bullet points of the most important things you did at each, and the rest can go to skills/extracurriculars. If you have any particular academic skills (programming, specialized design, etc) that you want to emphasize, list them somewhere, perhaps under a header like "coursework" or "academic experience." You should be tweaking your resume to the specific jobs that you're applying for; it's a pain, but it'll definitely help with your return rate.
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Jul 31, 2015 19:40
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I've got nothing that hasn't been covered by other posts, but you've gotten some extremely good advice. 3.5 GPA is great for an EE grad, the only people I know who had 3.8+ were the whiz kids who ended up working in high tech (the googles, microsofts, etc), and even most grads in the 2.5 range ended up with jobs without too much trouble. Taking a few months to yourself after graduating is hardly unusual, so that shouldn't count too hard against you. The most important things are to have an organized resume and to be able to come off as a couple steps above "mongoloid" when interviewing; do that, and you've already beat out the majority of your competition. Expect to use approximately 5% of the knowledge you learned in school on your first job, and expect that 5% to barely be enough to get you started. New graduates are basically training projects to management no matter what you did in undergrad, unless you're literally doing what you did at your internship. When interviewing, if there's a technical portion, be ready to talk through your thought process when tackling the problems they give you; it's far, FAR more important that you come off as being able to work your way through an issue logically than to be able to spit off a formula or properties and produce a solution by rote memory.
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Nov 6, 2015 16:23
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When it came to GPA, I was in the position where I did way better my last 2 years of school than in my first 2. So, I listed my GPA like this: GPA: 3.22 (GPA since 2010: 3.85) So basically, do whatever you have to in order to make yourself look good without making too much of a stretch.
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Nov 6, 2015 17:09
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Blackmjolnir posted:So I'm a new grad that started working at an aerospace company a little over three months ago. In those three months I've had maybe two days worth of actual work to do, the rest has mostly just been loving around on the Internet because they can't seem to find anything to give me. I've talked to my manager multiple times and he just keeps telling me "Oh there's new stuff right around the corner" but that's been the going line basically since I got here. Is this kind of thing a somewhat common occurrence? I realize there are much worse problems to have but I'm also bored out of my mind here. Keep asking for work, but if you're truly unsatisfied with being paid to do nothing start sending out resumes. I've been in your position, and it absolutely sucks. Nothing wrong with having a slow week or even month, but when your skills start to stagnate it's time to make a change. Does your company pay for education? If you can get on board with that, you can probably get easy As just sorting out your homework during your downtime. Barring that, maybe take up independent study -- if you can motivate yourself to learn a programming language or two you can open up a lot of avenues for yourself.
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Nov 10, 2015 03:22
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I work in consulting (USA, though) and I can pretty much second everything spwrozek is saying with regard to that. I work for a primarily civil firm as one of a very few electrical guys (I think I may actually be one of only two degreed EEs at my location) and my position is even more office-oriented (I've been in the field maybe 4 times in 2 years). Started at $64k, and after 2 years I'm up to $75k plus full tuition/PE prep with a path paved to mid-management within 10 years. I don't get a bonus, but plenty of nice perks. I'd say my work-life balance is phenomenal, but obviously that will vary by firm. Most of what I look at is load distribution, and not exactly hugely complicated stuff. I do a lot of reviewing bid submittals to make sure they're in line with our clients' needs and standards. There's a pretty even divide between cookie-cutter projects (i.e. boring but vital fact-checking) and interesting new designs (fact-checking with intrigue). I'm expected to do a fair bit of CADD work on top of that, but that's pretty easy to pick up on the job if you're handy with computers. Obviously your mileage may vary, but my experience has been that as long as you've got a decent GPA and can come off as a non-mongoloid in an interview, finding a job in the industry shouldn't be tough at all. Electricity ain't going away, and from what I understand, the rate of new power engineers is just about keeping pace with the rate that they're leaving the workforce, so you shouldn't have to worry about a glut of talent devaluing your job. This is, again, an American perspective, so I'd do some reading up on the jobs numbers in Canada to get a clearer picture if I were you. Not a Children fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 06:52
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Yeah, completely neglected to mention that once you get an EE degree, as long as you can talk intelligently about a given kind of tech you can be hired for a ridiculous variety of applications in that field. I know a guy who made a jump from working ~6 years on magnetic field studies to getting an engineering position at SpaceX. I did the same for about 2 years before switching to the power industry, where I use literally nothing from my old job.
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Dec 22, 2015 16:39
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Dangerous Mind posted:How would employers feel about seeing an EE resume for entry level positions with a CSWA in addition to passing the FE? I'm seeing lots of internships and other EE jobs asking for AutoCAD/Solidworks experience that I feel it may be worth it to study for and pass the CSWA exam and just put that on my resume (which I can use as a talking point since I'm actually learning/using Solidworks right now to design/build a mobile robot for my robotics team). As an EE who functions as an overpaid draftsman a lot of the time, you probably don't need to do this. If you even have cursory CADD experience, it's incredibly easy to become an efficient drafter/modeler as you go, especially if you have coworkers who are experienced with the projects you'll be working on. Employers know this, and as long as you can talk knowledgeably about CADD work you've done in the past, it won't be a stumbling block in any interviews. The cert would most definitely be good to have, but I don't see it being a make-or-break thing, even at my CADD-happy civil firm. Definitely do it if it won't inconvenience you, but don't delay applying for jobs/internships to make it happen.
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Jan 5, 2016 15:32
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Big G might counter your counter-offer with a spiel about the monetary value of their benefits. They did this to my friend. He did not try to go for more after that, so I can't speak to how they would react to further negotiation. Don't be surprised if they give you the runaround; Google has had 20 or so years of tech hiring to refine their acquisition technique.
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Feb 20, 2016 09:49
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Try to avoid mentioning that it's online, but don't hide it if it comes to the forefront. If it's during an interview, you'll want to be able to talk about times that you took efforts to compensate for the impersonal nature of the classes. For scoring the interview, it doesn't matter one bit -- they'll see the B.S., EE and that's all that matters. Don't mention it was an online program in your resume, if that's not obvious.
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Mar 8, 2016 21:27
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Good thing you don't need any statics in EE.
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Jun 6, 2016 13:29
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That's what we pay the aero people for. 
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Jun 14, 2016 14:01
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Stepping up my FE prep. Just took the official NCEES practice for the EE exam and got a raw score of 80 (40/50 questions right). Got a couple right by luck, but also missed some very easy ones, so I figure it was more or less accurate. It was much, much easier than the practice material given in the Lindeburg book and associated test banks. I'm feeling good about it with a month to go to refine my knowledge.
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Aug 6, 2016 23:40
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Thanks for the encouragement. I'm actually about 4 years out of undergrad, so a ton of that info is super rusty, and to be frank I paid a lot more attention in the higher level classes than the lower, so I'm in this weird situation of being able to breeze through, say, E&M equations and device physics, but pretty lousy at physics problems more complicated than a single spring or mass/energy problem. Glad to hear that it's pretty easy in practice. I imagine a lot of the failure rate is from professionals who 100% wing it trying to take a shortcut to the PE.
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Aug 7, 2016 14:59
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Took the EE FE today. I don't know if this is the universal experience, but the first half was insanely easy, and the second half was pretty difficult. Gave me a bit of confidence whiplash.
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Sep 8, 2016 20:23
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I'm 26, and am just over a semester away from completing my MSEE part-time during full-time work, mostly on my company's dime. I am glad I took a couple years between my BS and starting this program, but it wasn't enough to stave off burnout. It's not HARD, per se, but it is time consuming, and there are weeks when you will have no energy for anything else. Absolutely do not do it unless you get it subsidized. Don't even think about it if you're in a family way. Re: overtime, I get paid straight time for any time over 40 hours, but I do work among the lower rungs at a mostly civil firm. I think anyone above a certain level is salaried though.
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Nov 28, 2016 16:07
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I'm scheduled to take the PE in Power this October. Anyone have experience with a study schedule/useful references to acquaint myself with? My company is paying for a School of PE course, but I'm concerned that it may not be enough. I've only just started studying, but I passed the FE last fall and finished my MS in power systems this Spring, so I'm not too concerned about being rusty. My boss gave me a bunch of reference material, but it's all 20+ years old, and the format of the exam has changed since then.
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Jul 20, 2017 21:18
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 20:43 |
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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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