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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

#391

Post by the_only_law »

Maursault wrote: post #154
imgabe wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> but now I'm a programmer anyway I had the exact opposite experience. The CS dept. actively recruited me, and I didn't even realize what CS was until I had completed 2 years of study. I like CS, but had I known better at 17yo, I would have gone EE or CE all the way, because that is my interest, and there is little chance I could uncover anything on my own about electronics without the structure of university. I neve…

> I would have gone EE or CE all the way, because that is my interest, and there is little chance I could uncover anything on my own about electronics without the structure of university

This so much. Programming is accessible, that's great. I learned as a stupid kid and it worked out fine economically.

But if I had to re-do everything, I'd go to school, and select anything but CS. I can always teach myself that. I find myself interested in many things nowadays, but almost never engage them, because I just can't, there's just not much an individual outside of reading.

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

#392

Post by ticviking »

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)…

The impact of not having local apprenticeships available cannot be overstated.

I see this within regions of the US in regards to software. If you grow up in a tech hub(even just your local state one) it can seem like it was "easy" to get into computers and mod games. But the farmers son's who are technical near me where I live now go and tinker with cars and diesel engines the way I did with my dad's old 286.

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

#393

Post by notch656a »

ben_w wrote: post #242
notch656a wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the mentality that people think they're entitled to be coddled. By all means, if you disapprove of the way a university does things, don't enroll. You can be an engineer without college. You're free to start your own university, if your teaching is truly better and more rewarding to your students the free market will make you a rich man. Personally I'm glad there are places where academic rigor doesn't be…

> By all means, if you disapprove of the way a university does things, don't enroll. By the time you find out, it is too late. See also "The Market for Lemons". > You can be an engineer without college. Electrical engineer is AFAICT a protected term in some places and not others, so you legally can't do that everywhere. > You're free to start your own university, University is a protected term in many places, so agai…

>Electrical engineer is AFAICT a protected term in some places and not others, so you legally can't do that everywhere.

I've repeatedly stated you can practice in the capacity of an engineer without a PE except in some exceptional circumstances. IDK why on earth you would equate "you can be an engineer" to "you can be in every single case." You don't even have to have the 'Electrical Engineer' 'term' title to do electrical engineer things in most cases, this is a total red herring.

>By the time you find out, it is too late. See also "The Market for Lemons".

Apparently not, because here and now we're discussing why EE programs are lemons . I've heard the same 'lemon' statement from plenty of people that washed away in the horrible attrition during my undergrad EE. The program wasn't a lemon -- those students were the lemons.

>University is a protected term in many places, so again, you can't "freely" do that. This is to protect against the information asymmetry that the potential students have, precisely because of the aforementioned lemon market issues if they don't, and even then it's not perfect.

"University" and "college" are not federally protected terms in US and many other places. But if you want to go one of those other places, fine, call it a "training institute." You're never going to find a completely free market, just because you are free to do something doesn't mean you are free to do it precisely how you like. You are free to work at McDonalds but that doesn't mean you won't be fired if you show up wasted half the time.

>Except the potential students don't have any way to determine that until at a minimum of 15 years after you start, even if they're unusually highly informed and highly motivated. And university tuition fees in many places are fixed, so you don't get more reward than any other teacher.

Great more entitlement. You're not entitled to have your business be instantly successful. You can start a private service teaching people if you want control of your own salary. If the market doesn't choose you, then you can make sad statements about how the "market is uninformed." Good luck.

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

#394

Post by [deleted] »

bradstewart wrote: post #368
christophilus wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

[deleted]

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

#395

Post by Apocryphon »

JamesBarney wrote: post #220
boppo1 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It makes no sense. Why is web software so easy to make money in? Why do we value hard engineering so little? Interest rate intervention (making them lower than equilibrium) changed the DCF valuation that is the fundamental way of evaluating business (i.e. people working together on large endeavors) to one where promising massive returns in the future(20+ years) made low returns in the near term (x now had to adjust…

This really seems like a stretch. I can maybe see how low interest rates could maybe increase software salaries. But I can't see anyway that would depress EE salaries.

Not enough hardware startups compared to purely software startups. EE as an industry is not benefiting from low interest rates to the same stratospheric extent as SW has, thus the individual engineers aren’t either.

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

#396

Post by lanstin »

bennysomething wrote: post #388
throwaway4345 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a software engineer, I feel like the market is flooded with workers, and that it is an easy job I think you overestimate the quality of median software engineer. Even at a company like Amazon, I think something like 20% engineers can barely code. Add to that industry expectation to work independently with little guidance and not that many people who will fit the bill. There are lots of junior engineers, who with…

Genuine question as I'm surprised by the Amazon comment given their well known interview process, are there really programmers there who can't program very well?

Anytime I interview I get that impression, but when I work with teams of varying talent levels, there are a lot of people that can write good code it just takes a long time. In the long term these people are more useful than people who write ok code quickly, because they, slowly, reduce the amount of tech debt.

One problem is that it is extremely hard for management to tell good devs apart from bad devs. So that puts a huge randomness in as far as who is given authority and interesting projects and so on. Some of the best devs I have worked with, the best bosses I have worked for would not rehire. It is quite odd.

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

#397

Post by Apocryphon »

t-3 wrote: post #268
antoniuschan99 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess it’s all about supply and demand since Germany is the Mecca for Process Controls and Automation. There’s like no ecosystem for Hardware in North America. Definitely primarily software

> There’s like no ecosystem for Hardware in North America. Definitely primarily software Not "in North America". On the coasts, in attractive big cities, sure. The midwest is still full of manufacturing though, and they still hire engineers (but they're going to make $100,000+, not $300,000+ like software devs in CA).

Perhaps those manufacturing jobs could pay closer to software if the employers were willing to give more equity.

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

#398

Post by JasserInicide »

Animats wrote: post #249

This 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

I'd kill for a cubicle over a loud chaotic open office

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

#399

Post by cdaringe »

Animats wrote: post #249

This 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

Ex intel employee. That video is p much how I genuinely feel about the place

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

#400

Post by Ancalagon »

vitno wrote: post #346
stackbutterflow wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This frequently isn't true, although I'll admit it's industry dependent. This is the rhetoric used to depress the wages. Sure, they have extra costs but when you do the math, frequently the wages are still just a drop in the bucket of the operational expenditures.

Agreed, its the same tactic used in healthcare.
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