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Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

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Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

#141

Post by larryliu »

Rather than "computer" science, CS is actually "the science of problem solving"

Traditional engineering: you work on one field for X years to become a specialized expert of that field. The industry employs thousands of these "specialists" solving similar problems over and over.

CS/IT: you worked on one field for X years, codified your know how know why in a piece of software/algorithm/library, the field became so mature that minimum wage high schoolers can use your creations. You move on into the next highly demanded blue sea.

Needless to say which industry has higher productivity that could translate to higher income.

Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

#142

Post by oreally »

bumby wrote: post #122

Food for thought: At the time of this comment almost all the top comments are about pay. No doubt pay is an important consideration, but it worries me when it’s the primary consideration. The best engineers I know like engineering because they have a natural curiosity to learn how things work, not because it’s the easiest route to riches. Any engineering position can lead to a comfortable life, but when everything is…

Indeed. The internet helps bring up shades of these egos under the cover of anonymity, and SWEs are not immune to it - just check the anonymous forums to see what I mean. Leetcode overemphasis, holding someone in awe because he has a fancy title or once presented at some convention are traps most humans fall into.

Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

#143

Post by nickelpro »

bumby wrote: post #122

Food for thought: At the time of this comment almost all the top comments are about pay. No doubt pay is an important consideration, but it worries me when it’s the primary consideration. The best engineers I know like engineering because they have a natural curiosity to learn how things work, not because it’s the easiest route to riches. Any engineering position can lead to a comfortable life, but when everything is…

> At the time of this comment almost all the top comments are about pay. No doubt pay is an important consideration, but it worries me when it’s the primary consideration. The best engineers I know like engineering because they have a natural curiosity to learn how things work, not because it’s the easiest route to riches.

This is not incompatible with what the comments are saying. I'm an ECE, I love hardware and working in VLSI, and I eagerly engage with the open hardware movement. I also love working with software, it scratches the same itch, hacking on multiplier layouts and hacking on SIMD accelerated code both involve the same type of analytical mindset.

And yet I work in software because it pays more. As always, these "this highly skilled occupation is collapsing" posts are linked entirely to pay. A talented EE or CE can easily transition to software, and they do.

Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

#144

Post by jrumbut »

imgabe wrote: post #123
killjoywashere wrote: post #119

EE spent so many years making sure everyone knew it's impossibly hard, the professors eat their young, etc. I've seen this in other professions where the incumbents desperately want to impose, in actuality, the uphill-both-ways life story they believe they endured. And then they are shocked when the young peace out. The military, and their insanely rigorous special warfare training. The medical profession in general.…

This is true. I went to school for EE, but was interested in Computer Science. There was a stigma to switching from EE to CS as taking an easier course because you couldn't hack it in EE. It was seen as a failure or a defeat. I toughed it out and graduated with an electrical engineering degree, but now I'm a programmer anyway. Wish I had just switched once I realized I liked CS more and saved a bunch of time.

I was in roughly the same spot but I had to switch when I transferred schools because I would have practically had to start from scratch in CE but I was halfway done with a CS degree. Not sure it's possible to design an ECE curriculum that's easier to transfer into, take part time, or is more forgiving of early failures, but if it is I bet it would help.

Also at the time I went to school (2006-2008) there wasn't any soldering and very little hands-on anything in the courses I took at CMU and UMass Amherst. It was formulae and Verilog (more coding than a lot of CS classes).

In the Intro to CivE class I had to take for scheduling reasons we made a cardboard bridge and watched it fail to support the professor who was suspended over a pit. I can't remember a single ECE lab from the two years of classes I took. I learned a lot more from playing around with Arduino and such in the years after.

Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

#145

Post by dcolkitt »

tekla wrote: post #18

I moved into IT from "formal" engineering and its always frustrated me that a job that involves working on extremely expensive engines using upper level college math gets paid almost nothing compared to people who change colors on a webpage every once in a while. I've been on floors where multi-million dollar pieces of equipment are used to produce parts with obscene levels of precision being used by expert machinist…

If you think that’s bad, just wait until you see what salaries look like for postdocs in theoretical physics.

The economy does not reward people for how smart they are, how impressive their credentials are, or how hard their skills were to learn. It rewards people who solve problems. Preferably problems that other rich people have. Many, many, many more rich people have website problems than PCB circuit board problems. Ergo those that can solve website problems make more money.

Doing something difficult can be a way to make a lot of money, because it restricts supply and is a competitive moat. But low supply is a winning recipe when coupled with high demand. The supply of string theorists is low, but so is the demand.

If you’re going to do something difficult make sure that it’s something that lots of rich people need. For example being a hedge fund quant is a really well paying job because it’s both difficult, and highly in demand because every rich person on the planet wants higher returns on their portfolio.

Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

#146

Post by nickelpro »

bumby wrote: post #131
earle_wa wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to be an EE and couldn't afford a house in a major metropolitan area. Went into FW/SW and now I can. Not saying that's the case for everyone, but that's what worked for me.

I’m not discounting anyone’s personal experience, but that saying something when the average EE salary is about the 85th percentile of salary. Maybe it’s indicative of how broken the housing situation is in cities (and I suppose it’s very location dependent - anyone outside of SW, law, medicine, or finance may struggle to buy a home in SV or Manhattan) https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/17-2071.00

What does it matter if it's in the 85th percentile if they can get more money in another industry?

The question isn't, "can you survive as an EE?" sure, you can survive as fry cook at a fast food chain. The question is, "will headhunters poach this occupation and have a high success rate due to the salary delta?" And the answer for the EE -> SWE transition is obviously yes.

Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

#147

Post by SoftTalker »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #124
_vdpp wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been wondering if SWE pay rates have been artificially high for a while due to easy lending - it will be interesting to see if your prediction comes true. Probably a lot of SW companies out there right now are dependent on discretionary income which puts them at risk in a tough market.

SWE salaries are also very high because right now it's cheap as hell to run a software company leading to huge returns. Overheads are miniscule. The salaries can take a larger slice of the pie. A lot of people in the comments are talking about how EE work is comparatively much harder. But that's irrelevant. SWEs simply make businesses more money.

But a large number of software businesses are not making any money at all.

Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

#148

Post by nickelpro »

I wonder if the "employers of X occupation pay too little for required skill set" articles will ever cease.

What do carpenters, electrical engineers, and grade school teachers have in common? They've all had this exact same article hit the HN front page about them in the past year. It's not interesting and any solution other than "pay more or accept the shortage" is worthless.

Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

#149

Post by mianos »

bumby wrote: post #122

Food for thought: At the time of this comment almost all the top comments are about pay. No doubt pay is an important consideration, but it worries me when it’s the primary consideration. The best engineers I know like engineering because they have a natural curiosity to learn how things work, not because it’s the easiest route to riches. Any engineering position can lead to a comfortable life, but when everything is…

I am trained in electronics. I love it. I have never stopped messing with electronics and microcontrollers over my whole life.

(And how good is it these days with things like, the RISC-V ESP32 with wifi and cheap as chips, unreal little modules, for example measuring temperature to +/- 0.01C, air-born particles, radiation etc etc).

This said, I doubt I could afford a comfortable life with a house and family in a major city like Sydney on half the pay. I know as I have thought about switching from SE back to EE many times.

Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

#150

Post by Apocryphon »

SoftTalker wrote: post #147
beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SWE salaries are also very high because right now it's cheap as hell to run a software company leading to huge returns. Overheads are miniscule. The salaries can take a larger slice of the pie. A lot of people in the comments are talking about how EE work is comparatively much harder. But that's irrelevant. SWEs simply make businesses more money.

But a large number of software businesses are not making any money at all.

Which goes back to this subthread’s root post about investors focusing on companies “promising massive returns in the future.”
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