491–500 of 536 posts
"Classical electrical engineers are trained in design. A small number of designers will be critical. These designers will be highly sought, and handsomely paid. Educators will pride themselves on the demand for the shrinking number of graduates that they produce, while other disciplines will produce growing numbers of informed users who will work at the application levels. Electrical engineering will be in danger of…
I wonder if the "employers of X occupation pay too little for required skill set" articles will ever cease. What do carpenters, electrical engineers, and grade school teachers have in common? They've all had this exact same article hit the HN front page about them in the past year. It's not interesting and any solution other than "pay more or accept the shortage" is worthless.
There are thousand plus companies that are specialized on finding talent for other companies just because of how difficult it is. I wouldn't be surprised if there already exists companies that hire these talent-seeking companies for your company.
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It's because software engineers don't need capital to do their job, giving them a ton of leverage compared to other engineers. Imagine if you make airplane engines for GE as an ME, and you want a higher salary, who else are you going to go to? There's barely any companies in the country that have the capacity to make airplane engines, so there's less competition for your labor. Your work is probably fairly specialize…
>Imagine if you make airplane engines for GE as an ME, and you want a higher salary, who else are you going to go to? There's barely any companies in the country that have the capacity to make airplane engines, so there's less competition for your labor. Sure, but what happens when you decide you're sick of a poor salary, and you learn Python and CS in your spare time and interview for Google and then quit your airpl…
EEs are pretty far away from the money. That really impacts earning potential. Most EEs who went the traditional route and want to keep doing electronics in some form but make money become Field Application Engineers (FAEs) to get closer to the sale and show their value to the company. The crustiest old engineers are buried deep within a corporation and it's hard to show value on the bottom line. Similarly, the FAANG…
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Not working for the highest bidder (money, status, time etc) can be seen as a form of charity. Which company deserves the donation of your life energy?
This confuses the point with “doing work you may not want to do”. I’m saying there are multiple dimensions of finding fulfillment, with money only being a single dimension. The idea that anything outside that single dimension would be considered nothing but charity is telling.
This reminds me of the author of "Man's Search for Meaning" who wrote a international master piece while on a concentration camp. Yes, growth is there to be had, but that is an experience I would rather avoid, thank you.
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Do individual logic gates even have part numbers anymore? In my EE labs in college we had FPGA’s.
"Kids these days" ;) Yes, I think now it's mostly the 74AHC, 74ALVC, some 74ALS/74HC families (maybe others) Depends on the application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7400-series_integrated_circuit... (using the fpga is fine, but I'd probably want to focus on the circuit itself ant not something like VHDL at first)
The professor was simultaneously the founder of a company that made FPGA boards for EE students. They also made a little microcontroller board that was basically Arduino before Arduino; we used that in another class where we made robots and programmed them in AVR assembly.
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.
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It doesn't really seem like a "hustle" thing. You have the choice in working one of two quite similar jobs, in quite similar fields, but one of the jobs pays far more. You also may have a friend who's already made the move telling you to join.
> You have the choice in working one of two quite similar jobs My issue with this take is that it’s also quite likely that the jobs are completely dissimilar. How long do you think it would take a front-end SWE to develop a 480kV electrical grid or vice versa? Both domains require specific skills and should be respected as such
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> 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?