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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

#361

Post by rowanG077 »

negative_zero wrote: post #250

I 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…

Waving hi as a a SE that is moving partially into EE. It's definitely more challenging. Mostly because the tools are really utter shit.

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

#362

Post by znpy »

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…

> Why is web software so easy to make money in? Why do we value hard engineering so little?

low barrier to entry, high potential impact.

also web development is trendy and developers in general will make a lot of fuss about pretty much anything (tabs vs spaces? emacs vs vi? xorg vs wayland, "btw i use arch" is literally a meme) and about money in particular... a lot of company finally give up and accept paying more and then a lot more companies have to follow the trends and pay more.

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

#363

Post by frognumber »

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.…

I don't think that's at all right.

EE is hard. Bad EEs are unemployable. There's no demand. EE is also beautiful and absolutely fascinating. You get to:

- Do beautiful math

- Build things and get your hands dirty

- Do super-creative design

... and so on. It's just fun!

I have a Ph.D in electronic engineering from a top school, and I don't regret one minute of the program. I graduated during a downturn, and finding a job was neigh-impossible, despite being one of the best graduates from probably the best EE Ph.D program in the nation. Industry wanted experience. SE jobs were easy to find and paid better. I eventually found an EE job but many didn't.

I noped it out of the field after that. The core problem is EE companies are no fun. Employees just aren't treated well. IC design jobs mostly have all the accoutrements of Office Space and Dilbert: cubicle farms, rigid bureaucracies, limited vacation policies, button-down shirts, and so on. None of these things make people more productive or contribute to the bottom line.

I do EE only as a hobby now.

I don't think the trick is to water down schools, so much as to make the industry less oppressive.

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

#364

Post by Consultant32452 »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #64
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…

> compared to people who change colors on a webpage every once in a while. I’m sure it’s more complicated than that, but that being said... Finally someone said it! Ok, I understand that we’re in some anal-retentive age as humans, where we’re discovering our new digital medium and whatnot, but enough with the fixation on small shiny digital bullshit - it’s robbing us of real depth and wonder. And if it’s reached to t…

Software development is completely abstract and is one of the most difficult things humans do. An average codebase can easily hold millions of lines of code with millions more hidden in libraries that all have to work together. The complexity is incredible really.

This post in no way diminishes the complexity of the hard sciences.

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

#365

Post by gorjusborg »

I graduated as an EE, worked as a digital designer (writing verilog) but the job felt perilous and pay didn’t compensate for that.

As a software dev, I can find a job seemingly anywhere. As an digital designer, there seemed to be 10 or so companies I could work at globally.

Given the boom/bust cycles the chip industry experiences, and the few employers, the pay should be way higher.

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

#366

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

There is a dimension that is missing on tue conversation on pay:

The farther you are from the end customer, the lower your pay is going to be.

There are too many levels of abstraction and distance between EE work product and the end consumer.

Reduce that distance, and watch EE pay skyrocket.

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

#367

Post by eastbound »

seabird wrote: post #134
chrisco255 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice, haven't seen "engineering" elitism since university. Software is the nervous system of a business. Everything from accounting, to payroll, to inventory tracking, to sales, to marketing, to communications, is achieved in today's world by interfacing with dozens if not hundreds of software programs and systems. Impossible to achieve with hardware alone obviously, you need operating systems, you need data centers,…

As a software engineer, software "engineering" is a joke, at least in the sense we apply that term to other disciplines of engineering. It's not like all that complexity you mentioned is understood. It's worked around, and then the workaround is taken for granted and exists in perpetuity because nobody can discern why it was done in the first place. Watching a mechanical or electrical engineer be able to predict the…

You comment a lot about calculating performance, but this is not engineering.

Engineering is about suiting the needs to the means. In the realm of widely-used webapps, the need is 1. speed to market, 2. features and 3. maybe stability against errors 4. if successful, scalability.

And our engineering is perfectly successful for that. We are able to output features after features, we’ve factorized the boilerplate, and we publish our apps before they’re even ready.

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

#368

Post by bradstewart »

christophilus wrote: post #296
negative_zero wrote: post #250

I 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 ca…

I think a large part of it is that software engineering is barely _engineering_, in the traditional sense. And I do not mean that in a derogatory way, I have an EE degree, but write software all day long.

There are extremely few EE jobs available to be people with only undergrad degrees, and literally zero available to those without college degrees. This is a huge limit on the number of potential job applicants.

So you'd _think_ this would drive salaries up, but...

There's also just fewer companies doing EE work, where basically every company on earth does something with software at this point.

So there is a supply/demand component, but there just aren't that many places people who want to do EE can actually work. If you're top-of-the-field in EE/low-level CE, you will be paid handsomely.

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

#369

Post by slategruen »

barkingcat wrote: post #2

This is a symptom of an outdated curriculum and lack of a future in the industry in North America. Electrical Engineering is a very hot and in demand degree in South / South East Asia precisely because that's where all the jobs are.

Nope. EEs still earn relatively less here despite electrical and infrastructure projects in general not slowing down yet. You might think that since we're still in a developing economy, careers in formal engineering should pay more but in reality, compared to the tech sector, the pay is still abysmal.

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

#370

Post by naasking »

fxtentacle wrote: post #246
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.…

In my opinion, the issue is that all of the EE work went to China. It's very difficult to find a company in the west where you could go to do an engineering apprenticeship and learn how to build cool stuff, because all of them outsourced their "building cool stuff" operations years ago. And designing things when you cannot try out your design (or when you need to wait 2 weeks for a parcel from China for each attempt)…

> In my opinion, the issue is that all of the EE work went to China.

This is what I was thinking. There are few fabs in North America anymore, so SMD work requires a lot of shipping and patience. You can also outsource EE work to China very easily and they have a long history doing this stuff, but outsourcing software is not so easy for some reason (yet).

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