Tell me about being an Engineer!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Tell me about being an Engineer!

slorb: May 14, 2002

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

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 00:25

slorb: May 14, 2002

Thread Killer posted:

Me and my girlfriend are both juniors in EE and currently are trying to find internships/co-ops for the summer. I think I have a decent shot at getting one because of an internship last summer, but she's really worried about not finding an internship which she equates with being able to find a job upon graduation.

Did anyone here find themselves in a similar situation and have some advice about finding a internship besides apply to anything in sight? Alternatively, how hard is it to find a job upon graduation without any previous internships? For the record, she has a GPA of 3.3

This is all anecdotal and may be limited to the area I'm in (QLD, Australia) but EE internships here are being impacted the same way graduate jobs are by the economic situation. Being female used to pretty much assure you of internships and a job at graduation but I'd say that is probably no longer the case. Its still definitely a plus.

Internships are hugely important for graduate jobs. Having just gone through the hiring process I'd put them up there with interviewing well and GPA as the most significant factors in getting hired.

Unfortunately its really a buyers market for students and graduates right now and I don't really have any advice beyond the usual apply early and apply often and network your friends, professors, acquaintances, family etc.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2009 06:23

slorb: May 14, 2002

falcon2424 posted:

Also, if they ask, you might be able to say something like, "2.9. I had some problems at the start. I got them sorted out and had a 4.0 senior year."

It would still be bad, but way better than getting your resume tossed due to some arbitrary line.

Another reason networking can be so important even when you're starting out is that a lot of medium to large companies have fairly fixed minimum GPA requirements that will eliminate you very early in the process. Sometimes before an actual human reads your resume.

But if you can get someone who works there, even if they're only an acquaintance you barely know, to forward your resume directly to someone in HR you can often get a phone/actual interview. Falcon's script is really good especially if you can talk specifically about how you fixed your study habits / how you are no longer the same person who failed a bunch of worthless intro courses.

If you practice talking about it in interviews you can turn it from a significant problem into a wash or even a minor positive assuming that you have superb grades for the rest of your degree.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2009 02:22

slorb: May 14, 2002

Having just got out of studying engineering I've realised there are some things I really wish I'd known going into it.

If you're going into a decent engineering program you're probably smart enough to have gotten good grades in highschool / other degrees with zero/minimal work. This approach to studying engineering won't work unless you're one of a handful of people at your university that you will probably end up despising.

On the other hand, engineering material isn't actually difficult and almost anyone can get really good results if they take the time to develop an effective study method. While the best study method for you is probably going to be the one you develop yourself here's some generic tips I wish I'd known.

Week 1 of the semester make a chart or list of every single piece of assessment due in every subject for the entire course. Keep this chart or list somewhere you check it regularly. Realise that sometimes you're going to have to start working on stuff long before its due because an assload of other assessment is due the same friday.
Don't skip lectures until you know you can safely skip it and you won't miss stuff because the lecturer leaves things out of their course notes. Make friends with someone in the same course and give each other a heads up about anything significant like that.
Never skip the exam review lecture usually given in the last week of classes. This is by far the most valuable lecture in the course because you will probably get to narrow your idea of what will be on the exam significantly.
If you're getting bored in a lecture and not learning anything don't be afraid to start studying another topic during the lecture or just walk out and go to the library if the lecture is distracting you from that.
When you are taking notes be concise. Try to boil down the lecture to its essentials and leave the extraneous stuff in the lecture slides. There will be a lot of stuff in lecture slides that never shows up on an exam.
Organise your course notes into a system that makes sense to you before you start revising for a midterm or final exam. This doesn't have to be a professionally bound dossier with every topic broken down into colour coded sub headings, it just has to be something that makes sense to you and is going to save you time and minimise distraction during the revision process.
Do problem sets. Do them until you get fast enough. You can know exactly how to solve something in an exam and fail because it takes too long when you haven't drilled it. Do the problems on past exams. Ask the lecturer/professor which past exams they set themselves and their philosophy of setting exams. Ask friends who've taken the same course. Ask the tutors.
If you're smart about copying solutions to assignments you won't get caught, but you are robbing yourself of a chance to work through it yourself. Only do it if you are under extreme time pressure due to something like a senior project. Do the work yourself then check the answers with your friends to avoid losing marks due to dumb mistakes.
Join the right study group. You want to be in the study group with the people who get good grades and are taking it seriously, not guys who are just going to bug you for answers. Study group time is valuable but not a substitute for time spent studying alone.
Figure out how much actual study you can do a day. This is probably less than you would think. After a certain point you're not really going to absorb new concepts beyond rote memorisation. For me I can only do 5-7 hours of genuine study a day before my brain is fried. Studying after this point is going to be diminishing returns.
Exercise and eating well helps not just with how well you do in exams but how well you study during the long weeks of revision crunch before hand.

Group work is a whole other topic I don't want to think about.

Edit: After exams, drinking the pain away is traditional.

slorb fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Oct 31, 2009

# ¿ Oct 31, 2009 12:48

slorb: May 14, 2002

grover posted:

If you are able to do this in college, and slack by with 0 work, you're not going to be able to get straight As, that requires going to class, but you'll likely end up with a good enough GPA and will be able enjoy your 4 years of school as much as the liberal arts kids do.

You're ultimately going to eventually apply to NASA's astronaut program or some other poo poo hot awesome job... and get flatly rejected because Bs aren't good enough; they don't just want brilliant people, they want brilliant people who work their asses off.

You're right that usually flakes get average grades, but I've met a couple people smart enough to skip all the classes in coursework subjects, do a very minimal amount of study before the exams and have a perfect GPA.

The guys I know who are like that are going to end up in elite research farms or as professors.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2009 13:49

slorb: May 14, 2002

Phlegmbot posted:

Personally, I always worked solo. Groups only seem to work at their slowest member's level. Plus my classmates smelled bad.

I would never tell anyone that they *must* do group work to succeed - but it's worth a shot to see if it helps you. Maybe you could be the slow guy!

Group study certainly isn't necessary to get good grades and it does move pretty slow. One reason it helped me was I found sometimes I'd run into a problem I was just struggling with either because the notes/textbook were inadequate or there was a printing error or I was just slow. If you're in a good group someone will always know if there's a better resource to look up or the corrected question or will spend some time explaining it to you.

The other thing about it I found valuable was that the process of helping someone else with difficult material was a really thorough review of my own understanding. I found that trying to teach someone else both consolidated my own understanding of the material better and frequently showed me problems in my understanding of concepts I thought I had already understood.

But yeah, I always spent well over 90% of my study time alone and I did join a couple groups exactly like you describe that were useless time sinks.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2009 02:46

slorb: May 14, 2002

oddspelling posted:

I'm joining the Air Force, and I want to work on getting engineering degree (probably ME) in one of the on-base collages while I'm on active duty. Is this doable? (or even a good idea?)

All the people I know who studied full time while holding down a full time job pretty much had zero free time and a very flexible and understanding job.

I'd recommend taking a heavily reduced course load and avoiding group project based courses entirely for the first couple semesters just so you get the chance to figure out how much of a time commitment your job and your studies are going to be and don't screw yourself.

Group project are especially tricky because you're managing the expectations of other students and trying to contribute while also managing work and your own studies. If the group procrastinates and has a couple weak links (this happens all the loving time) you can easily do 80-100 hours on the project alone in the last week desperately trying to get it finished on time.

This pain will hopefully teach you project management skills and how desperately important it is to be in a group with stand up people.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2009 15:01

slorb: May 14, 2002

Any australians in here who have experience with the process of getting chartered?

# ¿ Dec 2, 2009 07:05

slorb: May 14, 2002

namsdrawkcaBehT posted:

Basically you'll find all the operators are neutral about it and all the consultants push it - Mostly because it means they can charge you out at a higher rate. This is speaking for the chemical/process/oil&gas/mining industry by the way.

All it does is give you the right to pracitce as an independant consultant, so maybe it's worth it down the line? It doesn't mean you can't practice overseas if you're not chartered (except in countries like Canada, where you do the work and they just get some Canadian guy to sign off things)

If you're still keen and if you're a chem eng, then don't even bother with Engineers Aust. Go through IChemE instead.

Its part of the graduate program I'm in so I'm going to end up chartered. I'm really just confused about the process.

Thanks for the perspective, I didn't realise there were other bodies worth signing up for beyond engineers australia.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2009 11:00

slorb: May 14, 2002

Is there a reason you need to be tested on material totally unrelated to your specialty to be licensed in america? It seems strange to me.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2009 00:34

slorb: May 14, 2002

h4x posted:

Now comes the big question: Can a 24 year old with average intelligence go through with an engineering degree? I have managed to save up enough money to fully submerse myself in university, but I don't want to throw a tonne of time and money at something that is impossible.

I dropped out of university myself and only just graduated at 26. The age thing isn't really an issue at all, you won't be the oldest person in any of your courses.

Intelligence isn't really required to complete an engineering degree at all. If you want to get good grades, get an internship and then hopefully a job what you really need is a work ethic and good social skills (for an engineer).

Nguyen Leet posted:

I feel a little insecure about the program and it potentially being a gimped degree because it's relatively new (five years old). Right now I'm interested in zero energy buildings and the design philosophy behind them in addition to the analysis behind it. I understand this might be more architectural than engineering. I'm also currently trying to learn a few programming languages on my own.

At this point, I can still bail out of the degree and go straight up for a pure mechanical engineering degree, but after next quarter I pretty much run out of options if I want to graduate in four years.

I'd recommend getting a generic ME degree and trying to get a relevant internship in the field you're interested in.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2009 10:57

slorb: May 14, 2002

Anyone think its worth putting together a real OP for this thread? I'm not sure enough people would use it.

http://www.slate.com/id/2240157/ posted:

Build-a-Bomber
Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees?
By Benjamin Popper

Engineering is not a profession most people associate with religion. The concrete trade of buildings and bridges seems grounded in the secular principles of science. But the failed attack this Christmas by mechanical engineer Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a reminder that the combination has a long history of producing violent radicals.

The anecdotal evidence has always been strong. The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, was an architectural engineer. Khalid Sheikh Mohamed got his degree in mechanical engineering. Two of the three founders of Lashkar-e-Taibi, the group believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks, were professors at the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore.

A paper (PDF) released this summer by two sociologists, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, adds empirical evidence to this observation. The pair looked at more than 400 radical Islamic terrorists from more than 30 nations in the Middle East and Africa born mostly between the 1950s and 1970s. Earlier studies had shown that terrorists tend to be wealthier and better-educated than their countrymen, but Gambetta and Hertog found that engineers, in particular, were three to four times more likely to become violent terrorists than their peers in finance, medicine or the sciences. The next most radicalizing graduate degree, in a distant second, was Islamic Studies.

So what's with all the terrorist-engineers? The simple explanation is that engineering happens to be an especially popular field of study in the countries that produce violent radicals. But Gambetta and Hertog corrected for national enrollment numbers in engineering programs and got similar results. Even among Islamic terrorists born or raised in the West, nearly 60 percent had engineering backgrounds.

Another possible explanation would be that engineers possess technical skills and architectural know-how that makes them attractive recruits for terrorist organizations. But the recent study found that engineers are just as likely to hold leadership roles within these organizations as they are to be working hands-on with explosives. In any case, their technical expertise may not be that useful, since most of the methods employed in terrorist attacks are rudimentary. It's true that eight of the 25 hijackers on 9/11 were engineers, but it was their experience with box cutters and flight school, not fancy degrees, that counted in the end.

Gambetta and Hertog propose that a lack of appropriate jobs in their home countries may have radicalized some engineers in Arab countries. The graduates they studied came of age at a time when a degree from a competitive technical program was supposed to provide a guarantee of high-status employment. But the promises of modernization and development were often stymied by repression and corruption, and many young engineers in the 1980s were left jobless and frustrated. One exception was Saudi Arabia, where engineers had little trouble finding work in an ever-expanding economy. As it happens, Saudi Arabia is also the only Arab state where the study found that engineers are not disproportionately represented in the radical movement.

What else might account for the radical, violent politics of so many former engineering students? Is there some set of traits that makes engineers more likely to participate in acts of terrorism? To answer this question, Gambetta and Hertog updated a study that was first published in 1972, when a pair of researchers named Seymour Lipset and Carl Ladd surveyed the ideological bent of their fellow American academics. According to the original paper, engineers described themselves as "strongly conservative" and "deeply religious" more often than professors in any other field. Gambetta and Hertog repeated this analysis for data gathered in 1984, so it might better match up with their terrorist sample. They found similar results, with 46 percent of the (male American) engineers describing themselves as both conservative and religious, compared with 22 percent of scientists.

Gambetta and Hertog write about a particular mind-set among engineers that disdains ambiguity and compromise. They might be more passionate about bringing order to their society and see the rigid, religious law put forward in radical Islam as the best way of achieving those goals. In online postings, Abdulmutallab expressed concern over the conflict between his secular lifestyle and more extreme religious views. "How should one put the balance right?" he wrote.

Terrorist organizations seem to have recognized this proclivity�in Abdulmutallab, obviously, but also among engineers in general. A 2005 report from British intelligence noted that Islamic extremists were frequenting college campuses, looking for "inquisitive" students who might be susceptible to their message. In particular, the report noted, they targeted engineers.

I'd like to know if this article seemed accurate to anyone else, because I've definitely met a few engineers with "interesting" political views to put it mildly.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2009 08:42

slorb: May 14, 2002

To echo a lot of other people:

I don't know of any medical device employers that are going to knock back a good EE or ME student for an internship because they didn't study biomedical. Take a couple medical courses as electives to show you're interested and do well in them.

Again, with energy engineering, I don't know of any power companies or large equipment providers that are going to bin the resume of a good EE/ME student.

Getting a generic degree costs you almost nothing, keeps your options open, and significantly raises your chances of getting a job somewhere.

# ¿ May 27, 2010 12:22

slorb: May 14, 2002

I thought I'd write a reflective post, approximately 6 months into my first engineering job, working in the power industry.

Things I learned about the transition to a full time permanent engineering job. A lot of this stuff is undoubtedly specific to my situation, workplace, and industry but its stuff I would have appreciated knowing before I started.

1) It really isn't that much work

Assuming you were a good student in university who took it seriously and maybe had a part time job on the side, you may find your first engineering job to be actually less work than being a student was. Usually* your work is confined to work hours and you have the weekends off.

You also don't have the same exams to worry about. As long as you produce good work and generally understand the concepts being discussed well enough to make reasonable suggestions and know when to shut up, nobody is going to grill you on the subtleties of FDTD waveform modelling or heat flow calculations.

2) You really just started learning

A university education is nice, but in most cases it left out a shitload of information about the engineering field you're now in. There's a lot of stuff you need to learn before you will be competent at your job, and the best resource is going to be the people you work with.

Your company may provide formal training but its still up to you to learn a lot more by asking people intelligent questions and putting work into both your projects and your own studies.

Early in your career learning is as much a part of your responsibilities as writing reports or investigations or analysis or design. Getting paid decent money to learn isn't a bad thing at all.

3) Whatever industry you're working in, its probably smaller than you think

You will run into former university classmates, former professors, people you met on internships and just people you know. Developing a bad reputation is something you absolutely don't want. Even if you don't want to "network" just making friends with people you like and being professional and nice to ones you don't is good sense.

Don't commit anything to email that you wouldn't want read by everyone.

4) Management isn't always a refuge for the less technically skilled

Some remarkably clever people get bored with engineering or just want more money. If you have genuine engineering and management skills you can be paid a lot of money.

*obviously highly job dependent

# ¿ Aug 14, 2010 13:38

slorb: May 14, 2002

grover posted:

They don't really teach much, if any, power engineering in college. A lot of it is just OJT and work experience.

They usually don't in undergrad but if you're a grad student or working in the power industry they offer a lot of short courses to fill in the gaps as well as the traditional research projects.

I think I know the program you're on Beasticly and its a good one. Try and figure out which part of the industry you want to work in so you can get vac work there before you graduate.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2010 12:01

slorb: May 14, 2002

Zo posted:

Grades are also absolutely a non-factor after you have even half a year of experience, and I say that as someone who had good grades. Wish I slacked more and barely scraped by, efficiency!

This was probably good advice in 2006 but its terrible today.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2010 06:15

slorb: May 14, 2002

Zo posted:

Are you bitter or something? Why shouldn't engineering students who can pass without trying hard have some fun? And why spend more time in college? What a bizarre post.

Also people are still way too caught up on GPA in a world where connections matter more than anything. I know as engineers we'd like to think we live in a meritocracy and that hard work pays off but it really doesn't most of the time, sorry.

Obviously you were "that guy" in group projects.

Connections are at least as good as grades, but most people don't have real connections until after they've done a couple internships.

Getting internships with no grades and no connections is really hard right now.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2010 08:38

slorb: May 14, 2002

UZR IS BULLSHIT posted:

Every homicide bomber (like the F-22) that is built, every drone strike that is carried out should be seen as a failure of engineers to better the fate of Homo Sapiens. Anyone who works to further weapons or military technology is just a lace in the boot stomping on the face of humanity.

While I agree that making weapons is extremely morally questionable, I don't think its the worst thing engineers are currently doing. Weapons are really just objects and some of the responsibility for their misuse accrues to the user.

Engineers are actively planning, overseeing, and implementing mining and resource projects that are messing up mostly the poorer regions of the world right now.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2010 09:26

slorb: May 14, 2002

Martin Random posted:

You can do three things as a lawyer. Seriously, the profession boils down to three things. You can fight with people.

Project Management

Martin Random posted:

You can become an expert in something complicated and arbitrary (yet essential) that very few people care about.

Engineers that don't quit for management

Martin Random posted:

You can be a professional pessimist, researching and obsessing over pitfalls and traps.

This pretty much describes design if you add in doing stuff as cheaply as possible

Martin Random posted:

Those three basic tasks circumscribe the ENTIRE legal profession, for the most part, with very few exceptions.

Most engineers don't have cool jobs. They fight for the cool jobs that do exist like the guests at a jerry springer taping. If you want a cool job making plasma guns just realise you're going to have to earn it.

Having said that even a boring fairly routine engineering job offers some opportunity to use your creativity.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2011 13:56

slorb: May 14, 2002

Martin Random posted:

Take Slorb's advice with a grain of salt. Seriously. Take as an example his equivocation of project management with trial work. I've done project management and I've done trial work, and let me tell you, they're not comparable. As a project manager, I've never hired private investigators to steal the household garbage of my team mates, follow them around at restaurants to overhear their conversation, or try to destroy their ability to fight back by freezing the assets they need to live for invented bullshit reasons. Trials are wars. Project management may involve conflict, but at the end of the day, you're on the same team, and not trying to destroy each other. The same holds true for his dim comparison of byzantine regulatory wizardry with actual problem solving on a project. His reply was pithy and discouraging, but seriously, even the little that I know about engineering, I can tell it was easy to write but way, way off.

I like engineering. It can be a respectable job where you get paid well for being creative and doing work that is deeply satisfying. It can also be soul crushing tedium that makes you want to drink.

If I started talking about really wanting to practice animal rights law and how I was going to work at the ACLU I think you might have a similar response to what I feel when I see people talking about ray guns and inventing new energy devices.

Its such a ridiculously broad field that its pretty hard to sum up the experience of working in engineering, or even electrical engineering in any universal way beside generic office work stuff.

Until you do an internship or coop or three its really hard to know if you're going to like the reality of engineering.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2011 09:25

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 00:25

slorb: May 14, 2002

Writing good readable reports is probably the easiest way to distinguish yourself positively when you're straight out of school.

Some new people are stuck in the university "minimum pagecount" mode. Brevity is good thing. Using simple direct language is a good thing. Aim for short and easily digestible.

Made something really cool and you want to stick it in the report even if its not really necessary? Put it in an appendix.

Making a template and polishing it every time you reuse it for standard stuff will save you a shitload of work and make your work look better.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2011 03:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Tell me about being an Engineer!