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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

#231

Post by resonious »

vostok wrote: post #133
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'm an engineer at heart, but I do have bills to pay and I can become interested in basically any complex system. If EE paid better, I would be an EE. EE is interesting. Neither SWE nor my chosen career are sufficiently less interesting than EE though so it's not like I picked an uninteresting career for financial reasons. At the end of the day it's all just problem solving. If the puzzles are all fun and don't go ag…

I agree with this. It's easy to get caught up in a very binary "in it for the money" vs "doing what you love" mindset, but I think the reality is a balance of both. Money is actually quite great and I am willing to compromise a little bit in my day job in order to receive more money. At the same time, there are some jobs I simply do not want to do, even if they may be higher paid than what I'm doing now.

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

#232

Post by airocker »

mbrodersen wrote: post #67
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…

It’s all about demand and supply. It has nothing to do with how hard/easy anything is. So it actually makes perfect sense. Everybody needs web software. Very few needs hard engineering skills.

There is some correlation if price keeps high for a long duration

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

#233

Post by DoingIsLearning »

ankurdhama wrote: post #177

Based on the comments here, it looks like people have this notion of "Work in XYZ domain is hard/important/impactful and should get paid more".... but that isn't how pay works in real world.

Pay is mostly a compensation that is "good enough for you to not walk away". HR will not choose to pay more because you bring more money to the table. But bringing more money to the table gives you leverage on a negotiation table.

In this case a very large fraction of EE's are walking away from the career into Software related jobs because that is where they are getting money that is "good enough for you to not walk out". So while previously companies working on semi-conductor, power electronics, RF design, where competing within the field, now they are bleeding grads into another 'transferable' skills field i.e. anything that touches software.

These companies either accept a full migration of HW design to Asia, which will last them a few more years until the COL is raised in China, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc. Or they indeed have to accept that the cost of goods just got marginally more expensive and labour costs on design will have to increase.

To quote the late Ray Liotta "Fuck you, pay me!".

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

#235

Post by sacrosancty »

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…

The trouble with doing a low-pay career for the passion is that it's usually low pay because there are a million other people willing to do the same thing, so it actually does become a hustle.

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

#236

Post by seattle_spring »

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.…

Yep. I was so stoked on EE in high school. Took the first EE course in college and got as far away from it as possible after that. Subject matter was interesting, but the professor took every ounce of fun out.

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

#237

Post by janandonly »

At our company, we have a hard time hiring new recruits for the maintenance engineering positions.

But I get why:

- the pay is relatively low

- you have to be on standby at night (in shifts, but still).

- you have to travel all across the country and you’re suppose to do this in your own time (only the time on site with the customer are payed working hours).

I wouldn’t pick a job like that either.

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

#238

Post by spoiler »

notch656a wrote: post #205
spoiler wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stuff about needing to know a lot more physics or arcane domain specific stuff isn't so true. If you talk to someone who's got pink sunglasses about SWE, they'll say a bunch of stuff in our industry is "arcane domain specific knowledge" to them. You're probably romanticising it too because it's a hoby of yours, which just leads to skwes in your perception. Source: studied EE, after realising I wouldn't like my ca…

>The stuff about needing to know a lot more physics or arcane domain specific stuff isn't so true ha ha wait until you find out about microwave engineering.

Pardon, but I don't understand the point you tried to make...

Does a software engineer have perfect grasp and understanding about every subfield in SWE? Ranging from DX to writing compilers or designing languages, SWE is an extremely broad field.

EE is no different.

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

#239

Post by Pmop »

dmikalova wrote: post #72

My friend is an EE that I went to school with. He's very bright and definitely sharper and harder working than me. I went to school for Chemistry and switched to DevOps - which are the not the highest paid of SEs. I make 1.5x what he does. I help run a package tracking dashboard. He ensures power systems for millions of people work flawlessly in all conditions. He's looking to quit the industry because its so hopeles…

I think it has to do with how much money some job will produce over the investment, and also OFC due to to supply/demand. How hard a job is, is kind of irrelevant for the compensation.

Due to the nature of SW, you can reach thousands of customers with little investment, so you may as well slap a fat margin on it. There are SW products associated with pretty much any economic activity these days, from textile machines to farm management (got job offers to work on products in these areas recently), so SWEs are in high demand. And if the market is not doing well, you can always strike on your own and try building something people will want to use and to pay for, for little investment (again).

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

#240

Post by nebula8804 »

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.…

Don't forget low level embedded programmers, Kernel developers, and many who live in the world of coding in C/ASM.

I recall numerous instances in my undergraduate career where professors and the students passionate in these fields would actively persuade people who didn't get exposes to the stuff from even trying.

I remember one professor teaching an elective class on the Linux kernel and how he would try his best to scare people into dropping the class early on. We lost 25% of the class after the first lecture (and the only girl). To be fair the class was hardcore for the typical level of CS students you'd see in my school. It was painful but fun. I just wonder about the people who got scared away, maybe some of them could have really embraced the Kernel and become contributors.

To this day I see hostility among the low level crowd in my dealing with people in the industry. They think that because what they do is more complicated that writing a bog standard web app that they are special and should be left in their caves not to be disturbed.

On a different note: I feel this is playing at least a small part in hindering Linux adoption. I have dealt with the community on and off for over 10 years and just the level of negativity that comes out of that community has got to be putting off at least some people wanting to tip their toes in the water. We need to MLLGA: Make Low Level Great Again! At that starts with really welcoming normies with open arms and patience while they get over the initial hurdles.

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