EE is more like a bag of tricks kind of profession, where every problem you encounter is quite localized.
IT is the opposite. Writing code is quite simple, but once you get to bigger systems, things can get really complicated.
Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
371–380 of 536 posts
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#372I 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…
Yeah at some point the market has to correct itself. There's no way guys like Intel/AMD can keep this up. "Can't afford" simply isn't true given our insane need for chips.
I think that microelectronics engineering is treated as a separate subfield from electrical engineering. I went to RIT which AFAIK is reasonably well-respected for MicroE, and while it wasn't my major, I have some friends who were in it, and they're all getting paid pretty well at Samsung and AMD and Intel. Even 15 years ago, anyone who graduated would be insta-hired somewhere for a reasonable salary. There were a lot of specialty courses for MicroE that weren't in EE, in addition to projects in the teaching fab and such.
I recorded video for classes with distance-learning students as a student job, some of which were MicroE, so I basically got paid to audit Semiconductor Metrology taught by Dr. Lynn Fuller (who founded the MicroE program and apparently retired last year).
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#373This is kind of depressing. I'm in computer engineering but I have a few friends in electrical engineering. I could really see that their workload is so much heavier and much more relevant to society than ours but the pay gap is just ridiculous.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#374Earlier 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.
> It's totally possible that you are paying appropriately
Doubtful. If anyone is having a hell of a time finding electrical engineers or embedded developers, then by definition that means the field isn't lucrative enough for people to stay in it. That's exactly the case I've seen repeated in every post in this thread.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#375I come from an engg school in India where after 12th, the cream of the crowd joined EE. 80% of these kids were hired by software firms right after college. Other went on to do masters in CS or MBA. Out of a few thousand EE that I know of, I don't know 1 who works as an engineer. I'm not sure why nobody considered continuing ?
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#376I 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…
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Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#377I 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.
Would be interested to hear a bit more about your experience. Is your software experience with low level firmware/ kernel stuff? Are you finding the math for EE hard to pick up?
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 les…
I think the real issue is that software is way overpriced.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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
Previously the embedded/bare metal software lead for a high availability robotics system for almost a decade. Left that space for backend development because my pay literally tripled.
It's easy to think that you're just competing against the other EE job offers of $120k total comp, but you're actually also competing against the software positions those EEs could get with $300k total comp.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If costs get too high Asian companies win Wouldn't this apply to software companies as well? Yet we see higher pay, rather than imports/outsourcing.
The key difference, I think, is that software is user-facing, whereas hardware no longer is. The bigwigs and bean counters who make the hire-versus-outsource decisions can tell that lowest-bidder outsourced software sucks and so don't go for it, whereas the outsourced hardware "works" well enough to ship, so they keep outsourcing it.
Interesting. I wonder if this distinction applies within software as well. For example, systems programmers getting paid less than application programmers because the latter makes software "closer" to the user, and backend programmers getting paid less than frontend programmers for the same reason.