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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

#71

Post by [deleted] »

Spooky23 wrote: post #54
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…

Because real engineers become hyper-specialists and get trapped. My one my high school classmates was a mechanical engineer who was one of the top guys for some semiconductor process that failed to scale and got abandoned. Got laid off and was unemployable. He sold herballife to go back to school and is a physical therapist now. It happens in software too. Plenty of sad tales of geezers let go from banks and governme…

[deleted]

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

#72

Post by dmikalova »

My friend is an EE that I went to school with. He's very bright and definitely sharper and harder working than me. I went to school for Chemistry and switched to DevOps - which are the not the highest paid of SEs. I make 1.5x what he does. I help run a package tracking dashboard. He ensures power systems for millions of people work flawlessly in all conditions. He's looking to quit the industry because its so hopeless.

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

#75

Post by CamperBob2 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #63
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone in software with an EE background, I think it's simple. There's far more demand for software people compared to the available supply, so pay rates are high. Which job is "harder" has absolutely nothing to do with it. I noticed the trend about 20 years ago when I decided that I'd never again have a job that was mostly hardware design. The money's in software.

The demand is there. After all, somebody has to be doing the design work for the electronic products out there. In a globalized economy with outsourced production most of the EE work goes to SEA with cheaper labor.

Hardware design work is hard, but you usually only have to do it once for any given component or any given product. Most of the parts I use were already well-established in their markets over 10 years ago. (Although whether they'll still be around 10 years from now -- or 1 year for that matter -- is a very different question.)

Conversely, a web developer's work is never done. There is always another web site to build. Failing that, someone always wants to do another gratuitous reskin of an existing site, just to keep their users from growing complacent.

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

#76

Post by lotsofpulp »

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…

> Also, I'm not sure about the supply and demand argument. The typical ask for a data scientist is much simpler than specialized ChemE knowledge; supply should have ramped up so quickly that comp would have fallen to typical engineering salaries long ago if that were the case.

I would question my assumptions before disputing the function of supply and demand curves.

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

#77

Post by est31 »

georgeburdell wrote: post #27
ramesh31 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit margin. It's all profit margin. Software is reliably >25%, where physical manufacturing is in the single digits.

But the question is why? Shouldn’t there be the same race to single digit margins in software as well?

There will be, but right now software is eating the world (and establishing entire new markets) faster than developer talent enters the market. So prices for developers go up. Eventually this will end, either by the demand curve slowing down, or developer supply meeting demand. Whether it happens within the next 5 or 10, or even 20 years, who knows.

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

#78

Post by david38 »

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…

You are not paid by the difficulty of your work. You are paid according to how much the hiring manager thinks he can replace you for.

Sometimes this creates falsely inflated salaries- like when a company insists on hiring Harvard MBAs. Often it creates lower than expected salaries. People forget just how many Asian EEs there are.

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

#79

Post by bumby »

Spooky23 wrote: post #54
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…

Because real engineers become hyper-specialists and get trapped. My one my high school classmates was a mechanical engineer who was one of the top guys for some semiconductor process that failed to scale and got abandoned. Got laid off and was unemployable. He sold herballife to go back to school and is a physical therapist now. It happens in software too. Plenty of sad tales of geezers let go from banks and governme…

This doesn’t ring true to me, especially for an ME which is one of the broadest disciplines. I know one who had a BS and has worked in construction on building automation and energy systems, automotive robotics, healthcare as a process engineer, aerospace software, and finally as a data scientist.

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

#80

Post by PragmaticPulp »

I started as an EE and gradually moved over to software out of a mix of interests and career options.

Strangely, the EE degree seemed to trigger certain hiring managers into downplaying my software experience and lowballing my offers. A lot of "He's an electrical engineer but he can write some code too" introductions. I heard a lot of "Wow, you're really good at software for an EE!" from various people. The stereotypes out there are baffling, given how multi-talented all of my EE colleagues are.

There are companies out there that value EE experience and pay appropriately, but you have to look around. If you get stuck at a place where management believes CS = high pay and EE = necessary evil, it's time to get out.

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