Not just electrical engineering - I was recently talking to my daughter who goes to a big tech university in the US. Very few students are enrolling in many engineering disciplines including civil engineering.
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
#292I don’t blame people because they choose IT instead of EE - you don’t have to commute and there is no direct danger to your health if you fuck something up.
But it is a big problem for the environment if we don’t have people who can repair stuff because it will force us to buy new every time something is broken. If there only was something that could incentivise people to work in EE… $$$
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are currently having a hell of a time trying to hire embedded developers We're looking for bare metal developers so basic SPI, I2C, UART knowledge is essential, but even in that realm it's surprising how many embedded devs can't work outside of an RTOS and lack basic hardware knowledge
Pay better. It's totally possible that you are paying appropriately, but I've been disappointed with my most recent job search and am likely winding up doing backend work again simply because those roles pay almost double.
They can't. Margins are thinner. Hardware companies have extra costs that software companies don't have.
I almost tripled my salary by moving from what the person your replied to is looking for to the web. AND it's easier. AND I can work remotely.
I don't blame them. But they'll be more and more desperate to attract people. The democratization of remote web jobs after COVID is another nail in the coffin. They pay less, 99% of the time you have to be in office. It's a losing battle.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#294This is some manager at Intel complaining. This is Intel office space, shown on Conan O'Brien.[1] It's been a while since I was inside an Intel building, but that's exactly what it looked like. Multi-story buildings built from the ground up with acre-sized grey cube farms. And they wonder that they have a hiring problem. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXReifFHXbY
According to the youtube description, that video was originally aired in 2007.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#295I 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…
This is basically the water/diamonds question in disguise. You'll find it in any introductory economics textbook: Why does water cost nothing when we all need it, but diamonds cost a fortune when nobody needs it?
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#296I will just add to the chorus here: * I graduated as a Computer Engineer. * Worked as EE/EEE entire career (currently almost 14 years). * Half of my class of EEs and CEs went into other careers immediately after graduation because money was better. * 10 years later my best conservative estimate (based on sampling from friends from my year) is that at least another quarter has left because money. * I have mainly worke…
I don’t understand how the market dynamics work here. As a software engineer, I feel like the market is flooded with workers, and that it is an easy job. I have no idea how we’ve managed to sustain these salaries for so long. At some point, I keep expecting a correction in salaries simply due to supply / demand.
I also keep thinking, surely other industries will start paying more and treating folks better, so they can attract top talent, but nope!
Why is this?
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#297Food 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…
Exactly this.
In uni I got offered internships as part of the course, to write my Master's thesis.
An engineering firm in Aerospace offered me a job doing something with airplanes. Pretty interesting, but paid £12K/yr, which really isn't much money, even for a student.
I kept my mouth shut (uni wanted us to take whatever came) and got offered a job at a major chip manufacturer, but in marketing. Also interesting, £15K/yr. I took it and learned a bunch about that business.
I went to visit a friend in London who'd gotten an internship working at an investment bank. £38K/yr.
What do you suppose I applied to when I graduated? It wasn't engineering or marketing.
As things happened, I'm still an engineer. I just make algorithms to move money around, and that's also got nerd value, since there's interesting problems in financial trading as well. I've literally has days where I made more money for myself than I would have gotten in a whole year at either of the other careers. I also ran into people who'd dumped those careers to work in finance, because the incentive is so strong (colleague directly told me he saw his boss's payslip, then decided to leave).
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#298I will just add to the chorus here: * I graduated as a Computer Engineer. * Worked as EE/EEE entire career (currently almost 14 years). * Half of my class of EEs and CEs went into other careers immediately after graduation because money was better. * 10 years later my best conservative estimate (based on sampling from friends from my year) is that at least another quarter has left because money. * I have mainly worke…
I think it's a bit tougher to move from SE to EE. I mean do they even hire experienced non-low level SE?
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#299EE 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.…
If there was lack of supply and excess demand, it would show in higher pay.
I generally agree and I'm one of those responding similarly in similar contexts. However, thinking about it, I think there may be a valve here that prevents this from happening: If costs get too high Asian companies win, setting an upper bound. So it may show up in more outsourcing and imports rather than higher pay.
I have not completely thought this through, so I'm posting it as a condensation nucleus for discussion rather than as some "truth", because I only formulated it in word form just now.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
And right you are! Now the latest trend are MS/PhD only openings. Especially at IC manufacturers But I have two questions for those: why not on-the-job training, and did the people that joined 20/40yrs ago have those qualifications? All of them? Well, good luck filling those positions then! /s
Nowadays we expect people to pay for their own education. No company wants to be the sucker that invested in fleeting human capital.
My company has the following deal: we pay for your education, but you must stay for x years.
If you decide to leave before, you must pay $PRICE * (x - $TIME_WORKING_HERE_AFTER_WE_INVESTED_IN_YOU)