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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

#501

Post by theskypirate »

Xcelerate wrote: post #48
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…

I went from chemical engineering into data science, and I wonder this constantly. Everything about chemical engineering was much more difficult (at least what you would be expected to do in a typical job; exceptions apply). I really miss the hard sciences, but I also really do not want to take a 4x pay cut. Also, I'm not sure about the supply and demand argument. The typical ask for a data scientist is much simpler t…

There is a severe oversupply of engineering graduates in the US, that's all there is to it. All hardware engineering jobs have been colocated with the actual manufacturing facilities they are designing for – i.e., Asia-Pacific. Even the reduced number of graduates is too many, because the demand is virtually zero. People are not dying and retiring as fast as the industry itself is.

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

#502

Post by theskypirate »

This couldn't possibly be more wrong – we need fewer engineers, not more. We face two inescapable realities:

1. Hardware engineers should be located near manufacturing facilities, and should speak the same language as factory workers.

2. The economy in its infinite wisdom is signaling that Software engineers are more valuable than hardware engineers. Assembling and optimizing the logic of human society is an extremely productive task, and results in huge profits for companies. For unit of time it is more productive to write backend software which controls the behavior of physical objects, than to re-design physical objects to be marginally more efficient.

There are lots of engineering grads getting jobs – in East Asia, earning a fraction of the salaries here, and working 12 hour days 6 days per week. US engineering graduates are retraining en-masse to be software engineers. The average newly minted hardware engineer graduate has a very low chance of finding a job, and will likely end up earning less than a skilled laborer. The lives of talented Americans are valuable, and should not be wasted learning unneeded skills.

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

#503

Post by smilekzs »

Unklejoe wrote: post #488
philwelch wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do individual logic gates even have part numbers anymore? In my EE labs in college we had FPGA’s.

They're still used sometimes for low level ancillary board functionality. Like, controlling reset lines going to SoC's, etc. It's actually something that an EE may end up using in their career quite often if they're doing board design. Though, we normally use CPLDs for that kind of stuff now, but if you can get away with a few logic chips, maybe it can simplify the design.

BTW these hardware glue logic is often done with e.g. TI LittleLogic series (i.e. 74LVC1/2Gxx) where you can use a tiny package for a tiny function otherwise not integrated into big chips.

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

#504

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

mNovak wrote: post #212
GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also went to school for EE, but after a summer job doing SW, I switched to CS when I got back in the fall. I think CS (a good program) teaches you fundamentally how Systems work, independent of the substrate. EE is actually rather trivial compared to the complexity of big systems. EEs just learn altium, read some data sheets, and poof, out pop the circuits. Throw it in LT spice if you think it'll impress the boss.…

That's a bit like saying SWEs just bang out fizzbuzz every day and poof, out pops the software.

My point is that EE is inherently simpler than CS.

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

#505

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

notch656a wrote: post #205
spoiler wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stuff about needing to know a lot more physics or arcane domain specific stuff isn't so true. If you talk to someone who's got pink sunglasses about SWE, they'll say a bunch of stuff in our industry is "arcane domain specific knowledge" to them. You're probably romanticising it too because it's a hoby of yours, which just leads to skwes in your perception. Source: studied EE, after realising I wouldn't like my ca…

>The stuff about needing to know a lot more physics or arcane domain specific stuff isn't so true ha ha wait until you find out about microwave engineering.

You know, I'm a microwave engineer who is currently doing CS.

I find most of these comments against my original points as me not explaining myself so well. And, I can say one thing for sure, EE's are good at downvoting! ;-)

I'm trying to say that EE, like MechE is not especially complicated. You have your theories you need to know but that's it. Yes, you can be inspired, you can figure out some trick. But: how often does an ME invent a fundamentally new mechanism? Pretty much never. How often does an EE invent a fundamentally new circuit? Pretty much never.

Now, how often does a CS person have to solve some nasty problem that has never been solved before --- every day!

I have done microwave engineering for over 20 years. I know what it takes. It's NOT Rocket Science, I assure you.

My degree (6-3) is in EECS from a small technical school on the banks of the Charles River.

So I'm not full of it when I make my statements; they come from over 50 years' experience.

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

#506

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

spoiler wrote: post #238
notch656a wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The stuff about needing to know a lot more physics or arcane domain specific stuff isn't so true ha ha wait until you find out about microwave engineering.

Pardon, but I don't understand the point you tried to make... Does a software engineer have perfect grasp and understanding about every subfield in SWE? Ranging from DX to writing compilers or designing languages, SWE is an extremely broad field. EE is no different.

The EE domain is substantially smaller than the CS domain. It take less time and effort to be an EE "domain expert" than it does to become a "CS domain expert".

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

#507

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

BlackSwanManZ wrote: post #433
GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also went to school for EE, but after a summer job doing SW, I switched to CS when I got back in the fall. I think CS (a good program) teaches you fundamentally how Systems work, independent of the substrate. EE is actually rather trivial compared to the complexity of big systems. EEs just learn altium, read some data sheets, and poof, out pop the circuits. Throw it in LT spice if you think it'll impress the boss.…

"Just learn some Altium?" Really? It's like saying, just learn some python and visual code and off you to to a 400k FAANG job

My argument is somewhat more sophisticated than your strawman. If you fully learn Altium, I can guarantee you (since I fully know Altium) that you know pretty much all you need to know about EE, especially since every situation an EE is likely to encounter in Real Life is part of what Altium provides.

So sure, if you do NOT know your tool inside and out, then that's a hacker's knowledge. To be a professional, you know your tool(s) inside, outside, and backward.

So yes, if one knew Altium inside, outside, and backward (incl SPICE sim & FPGAs), then such a person knows EE very well.

It's a small, limited domain. THAT is my point.

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

#508

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

atune wrote: post #175
GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also went to school for EE, but after a summer job doing SW, I switched to CS when I got back in the fall. I think CS (a good program) teaches you fundamentally how Systems work, independent of the substrate. EE is actually rather trivial compared to the complexity of big systems. EEs just learn altium, read some data sheets, and poof, out pop the circuits. Throw it in LT spice if you think it'll impress the boss.…

You learn at least Altium, PADS, Eagle and some open alternatives. You learn the specific quirks of all those software. You hate every hour you have to fight with PADS' decades-old bugs and "features". In addition to LT Spice you probably learn a more specialized simulation software. Who knows, maybe you have to design power elecronics. Maybe antennas. Maybe both. Maybe in the same system. Maybe you are specialized i…

Yes, this seems to be such a tiny domain. If you know Maxwell's equations, you know all you need to know about EMI, pcb layout, RF, and more. If you know how to do something other than 'Datasheet Engineering' -- you know how to plan for part substitutions.

I'm trying to make the point that EE is a Fixed Domain, where one only needs to know a very small number of things to be an 'expert' in said domain. This is not the case for CS, which is, basically, all of mathematics that can possibly be applied to computers.

EEs will be one of the first technical professions to be replaced by robots & AI when AI moves up to white collar professions. Mark. My. Words. ;-)

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

#509

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

na85 wrote: post #189
GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also went to school for EE, but after a summer job doing SW, I switched to CS when I got back in the fall. I think CS (a good program) teaches you fundamentally how Systems work, independent of the substrate. EE is actually rather trivial compared to the complexity of big systems. EEs just learn altium, read some data sheets, and poof, out pop the circuits. Throw it in LT spice if you think it'll impress the boss.…

Electrical Engineers also work in semiconductor design, nuclear power, RF, and a whole host of other domains, none of which are child's play. >For a SW person, heck, there is always something that must be mastered, and pronto. Unless a SW person can kick back and write COBOL all day, there is much more to learn and apply to problem solutions. SW is fundamentally more demanding. Surely you jest. From what I can see th…

I don't think you've ever been an EE who worked in any of those areas; I worked in Microwave & RF. Yes, it is child's play -- because you keep doing the same things over and over.

As for javascript kiddies ---- I suppose you're right, I don't know. And I share your frustration with a new framework solving the same problems we fixed 20 years ago. I get that.

However, CS that drives the world forward -- that stuff --- is not 'turning the crank'. To the extent that any profession is 'turning the crank' --- that is the extent to which some automated systems will be doing that soon enough.

I've done EE, RF, Analog, Digital and much more. That stuff is trivial (and I mean trivial) compared with, say some of the stuff that this guy does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard

I can tell you where the 'hard stuff' is in EE: it's in getting to electronic devices & circuits that perform near the limits of what physics allows. Extremely low noise, extremely fast switching, extreme power, those areas. And, yes, those folks have to be clever. Generally, most of those people are building chips, not doing what normal EEs do -- which is connect chips together --- and gluing chips together is trivial, this is my point.

Maybe it's just easy for me, that's possible. But I'm not that smart, so I dunno.

There is a reason Marc of a16z says Software Eat World, and not EE Eat World.

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

#510

Post by jbay808 »

bumby wrote: post #444
jbay808 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The housing market has a lot to do with it. In Canada, average home prices (all types) are up ~6x since 2000, and in specific cities like Vancouver and Toronto, even more so. Compensation has not kept pace. Back when I was a high school student, I didn't think pay was very important. Now I realize it's much easier to pursue one's curiosity if one can afford, say, a garage.

That leads to a follow up. Is the goal to have a home in one of those cities or is the goal to have a home? The first may require working in software while the latter could foreseeably mean you could be an EE elsewhere.

Everyone chooses their own goals and priorities of course. Where in Canada would you recommend for a young EE?
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