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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

#511

Post by boppo1 »

imtringued wrote: post #270
lamontcg wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing could be said in 2007. All of the goldbug quantity-theory-of-money folks were screaming about Greenspan holding rates artifically low for so long -- both before the tech bubble in 2001 and up until they started to delicately raise rates after 2003. Once the real crash starts to unfold it may get bad for awhile, but once the Billionaires start getting worried about it they'll hit the monetary gas pedal agai…

>significant pain because everything has been built up around the interest rate environment that we've had post-2009 Permanent money is always in disequilibrium. It doesn't build up anything. It is always broken which forces constant interventions to reach equilibrium.

What do you mean by 'permanent money'?

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

#512

Post by BlackSwanManZ »

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #507
BlackSwanManZ wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 kno…

Uhh, what? Altium teaches you how to design a battery? Teaches you optics? Teaches you RF? Teaches you motors? Teaches robotics? Knowing the software doesn't even mean you understand all of the components you can place on a board

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

#513

Post by bumby »

nitwit005 wrote: post #499
bumby wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

You're maximizing the gap though. People go from doing EE work on some embedded device, to writing software for the same class of device.

Sure, because there is large variance in engineering. Not just EE, either. If your an ME you might design HVAC but it doesn’t mean you can take an ME’s role designing CFD models in aerospace applications. Pretending jobs are interchangeable is a disservice to the skillsets

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

#514

Post by notch656a »

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #505
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.

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…

Are you seriously citing a fucking MIT degree in support of your case that microwave engineering is not complicated? You went to the most prestigious engineering school in the US, if not the world. I think you've lost sight of reality. You started off 2 miles above ground level and with the hindsight of 50 years of experience beyond that, sure it might seem like nothing to you.

> EEs just learn altium, read some data sheets, and poof, out pop the circuits.

Initially I just thought you were a troll, but with this kind of experience and education now I just know you're vicious liar. I'm sure every time you made a microstrip filter, feed ramp, or antenna you just poof from Altium after looking at a datasheet and it just worked. Not to mention a great deal of microwave engineering now happens in other tools like microwave office and ADS, I'm not sure Altium is even that great or useful for relatively common microwave stuff like designing say a microwave horn antenna.

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

#516

Post by hwillis »

MF-DOOM wrote: post #515

I don’t get it. If there’s a shortage of EEs, which are required for tech to operate, wouldn’t salaries rise up because of the demand? I mean, tech isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.. is it?

1. Yes- as salaries are still low, you should be skeptical that companies are really trying to get talent.

2. On the other hand, the US(and/or EU) is not the only market. If engineers are being corned by the established large firms here, then instead of raising salaries to compete, smaller firms are simply killed off and replaced by foreign suppliers. China and India have very competent engineers, and make tons of US consumer products.

3. "Companies should just raise salaries and train up talent!" is obviously true, but there's still a large time lag between raising salaries and new graduates. EE salaries have been horrible and hard to find for 20+ years and freshman still get told repeatedly that EE is well paid and highly demanded. In the meantime, people retire later and the eventual crash just gets worse.

All of the above coming from an EE/ECE graduate who immediately went into CS because the TC is easily 3x higher

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

#517

Post by Yhippa »

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…

Well put. I absolutely loved my CE work in university. I loved doing digital logic design, living in state machines, and programming in VHDL. I loved how highly deterministic it all felt. I loved the Mentor Graphics software and seeing a visual representation of my code.

For me, on the East Coast of the US, there didn't seem to be many jobs at the time and I wasn't feeling moving to the West Coast where I assumed the jobs would be. In the end I went down the software track for my career and feel like it would be impossible to get back into this. I can probably get my kicks by playing with a Raspberry Pi but I always wonder what that alternate universe would have felt like going down the CE career path.

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

#518

Post by infinite8s »

bumby wrote: post #453
JeremyNT wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SE is not overpaid. I actually think it's underpaid. Above all, the profession pushes for an early retirement. I don't buy this. I think developers are highly paid because so many jobs are subsidized by VC speculation. It's easy to get a software job working on a BS product that solves no real problems and eventually disappears. But the money you get paid is real enough in your bank account. As long as VCs are will…

This is an interesting take. I wonder how much the last 20 years of relatively cheap capital contributed to this. A lot of VC money seems to already have dried up as interest rates start to rise.

If you look at the explosion in salaries it's mostly been the last decade, which is coincidentally the decade of near 0 interest rates and capital chasing even more tenuous returns (ie the influx of money into VC funds which went into startups)

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

#519

Post by asfarley »

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…

This echoes my experience. SW pays, EE screws you around. It’s still nice to be able to dive down to the electrical level if necessary but it’s generally not a profitable level to spend time at.

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

#520

Post by notch656a »

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #506
spoiler wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Sure, if you arbitrarily slice the pie to make it that way. The great thing is you can just semantically decide what you want to call EE and CS until your assertion is true, so you've made an assertion that is completely impossible to disprove. Bravo.
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