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.
I am studying Electronic Engineering in the Universidad Simón Bolívar of Venezuela. I am currently starting the fourth year. With a degree on this, you can work on the communications field (the field i’m going for), which is the one that has more opportunities IMHO, but there are other job opportunities in the Control area as well as others.
About what you have study (basics):
- Mathematics: A lot! Everything from Calculus, Lineal Algebra, Vectorial Calculus, and last but not least, Generalized Functions, which includes Laplace Transforms and Fourier Transforms (the most important part).
- Physics: A lot! From the basic stuff to Optics, Electromagnetic Waves, and others.
- Chemistry: none! (hehe, I just can’t handle this area)
That’s the basic stuff. If you can read spanish and want to know more about the Pensum or anything else, here’s the link to the coordination of my career: http://www3.labc.usb.ve/coord_electronica/index.html
Anything else, don’t hesitate to ask.
I’m in my last year of a EE at Uof Colorado. You will do around 3 years of straight math, 2 years of physics, then a combination of physics built around the high level math you learn. There is, of course, alot of electronic theory, but suprisingly there is very little large scale design work to be done. The first 3 years most ciruits that I dealt with were rarely more than one resistor, one cap, and one inductor, or a couple of each. Nothing really extravagent.
Bottom line, IMHO, if you wanna fix other peoples broken equipment or troubleshoot stuff that used to work, then go for a bachelors in Electronic Engineering. If you actually want to create new stuff, improve on current designs, and generalyl make more money, get your bachelors in Electrical Engineering.
No offense intended, but in my experiences, EET’s tend to work for EE’s.
Stinkpalm has a good point. The EE degree tends to be more versatile and more marketable all the way around.
Hmm… it’s generally regarded (around my neck of the woods, that is) that EET isn’t an engineering degree. It’s an engineering technology degree.
That EET doesn’t mean you can’t have a job as an engineer, though. It just means you don’t have a degree in engineering, you have a degree in the “technology behind engineering.”
I’m an EE in Eastern Mass which has (well, had, lately) a lot of activity in developing Telecommunications/Networking products. I agree with the comments about EE/EET. There’s a lot to be said for the Comp Sci side of things, given that nowadays many projects require far more programmers than hardware developers. I also agree with a claim in another thread that getting a Comp Sci degree isn’t the only way to get into programming.
Whatever path you follow, your long term success can depend more on your overall character than on your initial skill set. Are you a ‘leader’? Can you deal with System Wide issues rather than just narrow focused tasks? Can you work with others or are you a ‘lone wolf’? etc.
Not to pontificate, but my view is “The longer you’re in Electrical Engineering, the less it has to do with Electricity.”
I’m an EE in Eastern Mass which has (well, had, lately) a lot of activity in developing Telecommunications/Networking products. I agree with the comments about EE/EET. There’s a lot to be said for the Comp Sci side of things, given that nowadays many projects require far more programmers than hardware developers. I also agree with a claim in another thread that getting a Comp Sci degree isn’t the only way to get into programming.
Whatever path you follow, your long term success can depend more on your overall character than on your initial skill set. Are you a ‘leader’? Can you deal with System Wide issues rather than just narrow focused tasks? Can you work with others or are you a ‘lone wolf’? etc.
Not to pontificate, but my view is “The longer you’re in Electrical Engineering, the less it has to do with Electricity.”
I’m an EE in Eastern Mass which has (well, had, lately) a lot of activity in developing Telecommunications/Networking products. I agree with the comments about EE/EET. There’s a lot to be said for the Comp Sci side of things, given that nowadays many projects require far more programmers than hardware developers. I also agree with a claim in another thread that getting a Comp Sci degree isn’t the only way to get into programming.
Whatever path you follow, your long term success can depend more on your overall character than on your initial skill set. Are you a ‘leader’? Can you deal with System Wide issues rather than just narrow focused tasks? Can you work with others or are you a ‘lone wolf’? etc.
Not to pontificate, but my view is “The longer you’re in Electrical Engineering, the less it has to do with Electricity.”
Same here. Most people say that the EE’s design the product, and the EET’s build them to spec and test them.
I apologize for the triple post. There’s something wrong with either the posting mechanism or my connection to it. I hit “submit” and I get a message “can’t find server” I go “back” and try again (and maybe again) and then it gets accepted. Meanwhile, it really is posting all those times and just not acknowledging it. I promise to hit “submit” only once this time.
Threads soliciting opinions are better suited to our forum In My Humble Opinion. I’ll move the thread there for you.
I’m an Electrical Engineer by training, but a Combat Engineer by trade.
Everyone else is correct in that you will do a lot of math in any EE program. However, I personally think this makes you an ‘intuitive’ engineer versus a ‘book’ engineer.
What’s the difference? You can get a gut feeling of what works as an ‘intuitive’ type rather than someone that has to crunch the numbers to figure it out. This is extremely important to me, especially on the job.
It’s much easier to estimate on the fly how many gallons of black water 3,000 troops will produce earlier on, and have less problems than to have to move 150 tents to build a new sewage lagoon.
Tripler
Not that I know from experience or anything. . . 
I came into engineering through computer science and computer architecture. There are lots of different types of EEs. In design, if you’re writing RTL (high level design descriptions) you need to understand the logical structure and interactions of a chip. If you’re doing circuit design then you need lots of circuit theory, and know transistors on an intimate basis. There are a lot of analog design jobs that need lots and lots of math. I find that people are not good in everything. I’m miserable at circuit theory, but I know people who design cell libraries, and very well, who can’t read a simple gate level schematic.
Go to your school library and take a look at some IEEE magazines (not Transactions) but things like Design and Test, Computer, Micro. It should give you some ideas about the kinds of things that people write about. Also, look at some trade rags like Electronic Design and EE Times. They are good indicators of what people are really thinking about now.
Sorry if this is a hijack, but I just entered computer engineering at the University of Waterloo and I still don’t really know what the difference between electrical and computer engineering is. Can someone please clear these up? Or is the dinstinction between the two quite unclear by nature?
Well, I’ve got a mechanical engineering degree, about one year out of college. I might as well put in my two cents.
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One important thing about being an engineer is to be interested in your subject. Don’t just get into the field for the money. I studied mechanical engineering because I’m an obsessive tinkerer. Many chemistry majors tend to be interested in pyromania or blowing things up. Computer science guys, well, you can guess what type that tends to attract. A good motivation for being an electrical engineer would be a love of electronics.
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Any sort of engineering is going to take a lot of math, much of it calculus related. The college curiculum will probably spell out exactly what you’ve got to take.
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Engineering jobs can be vulnerable to business cycles, particularly when you’re starting out. Having the misfortune to graduate about the time of a lot of hiring freezes and layoffs, I applied to over 80 companies before I found one job offer. However, the pay is pretty good once you’re in.
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One common trap when you’re starting out is that it seems like it takes experience to get experience sometimes. Taking an internship for a semester while you are in college can be very helpful when it comes to getting hired once you graduate.
Tell me about it!! I’ve lost count of the number of companies I applied to before landing this job!!
Internships definetly make a HUGE difference - the more the better. Take a break from your course if you must, but get in as much work expereince as you can before graduating, because companies look for people who already are used to working in an office environment. And it helps even more at times like this when companies are laying off big time.
Also note that, except for some “grandfathering” circumstances, an EET will never be a “real” engineer (a PE) without going back to get their degree.
This doesn’t seem to stop them from advertising themselves as “engineers”, however.