I am considering a career in engineering (probably electrical/electronic). Are there any engineers who have any advice for me? What sort of person makes a good engineer? Which areas of mathematics are most important?
What are the job opportunities like for engineering?
Any further information would be appreciated.
Are there any engineers who have any advice for me?
Sure
What sort of person makes a good engineer?
Read Dilbert 
Which areas of mathematics are most important?
Too many to list. You’ll learn what you need.
What are the job opportunities like for engineering?
Not bad. Most engineers get their jobs where it requires a problem solving skill. Banking and Consulting for example.
I don’t want this to sound like a brush-off, but this is a very frequently asked question in this Forum. And many engineers like myself have posted lengthy testimonials and examples of our jobs, school experiences, etc. If you can get the Search to behave, you could search on “engineering”, “professional”, “school”, and other appropriate words, and likely find the threads.
I know I’ve written so much I don’t want to re-type it all.
My background is mechanical engineering, so my advice might differ somewhat from what an electrical engineer might give. Nonetheless:
**What sort of person makes a good engineer? **
Strong problem solving skills are essential; engineering essentially boils down to solving problems: how does one design a product to do function X, for under a certain cost, or complexity, or weight, or whatever. Creativity is important and usually under-rated. The best engineers offer creative solutions to problems. Good teamwork and communication skills are important, too.
**Which areas of mathematics are most important? **
Algebra and geometry, I think. The area of statistics that helps you understand the effects of testing error and part tolerances.
**What are the job opportunities like for engineering? **
Jobs are a little tight right now, I think. However, need for engineers is historically pretty big (note high starting salaries compared to most other professions) and I suspect that in four years time, when you graduate, the demand will be there.
Any further information would be appreciated.
Further unsolicited advice:
- Consider getting a graduate degree. Really. This helps distinguish you from everyone else.
- Think about what kind of engineer you want to be. Design engineer? Sales engineer? Test engineer? There was a thread a few months ago asking what the definition of “design engineer” was; the meaning of a lot of these titles are discussed.
-zut, BSME, MSME, PhD(ME), PE
Dilbert is definately closer to the reality of an engineer than most people realize. The only difference is my boss doesn’t have pointy hair.
Good math skills are a must. You’ll be required to learn calc and statistics and all kinds of fun stuff. It’s not so important what you learn, but much more important that you learn how to apply what you know and that you learn how to learn what you don’t know.
Unfortunately, the job market has always been fairly bad for beginning engineers and really good once you get over a few major hurdles. A bunch of jobs will open up for you after you have 2 years experience, even more after 5. I have 14 years of experience and a couple of times a year I get a job offer when I haven’t even had a resume out anywhere for over 5 years and I’m not even looking.
I don’t know what Protel costs, but experience with that or some similar design package will come in very handy and will look good on your resume.
A graduate degree (as zut mentioned) will help you, as will internships and anything else that helps convince the pointy haired boss that you can actually do the job he wants done.
Software skills (C and assembly, especially x86 assembly) will come in handy. There are very few pieces of hardware designed these days that don’t hide a bunch of fancy stuff inside a cheap programmable chip of some sort. Do a lot of research into FPGAs. You don’t need to be a software weenie but a little software knowledge goes a long way when troubleshooting a board that has a lot of its function buried in software. Some knowledge of PICs and other microcontrollers is good too.
Try to get an early understanding of feedback control. It will help you understand a wide variety of things later.