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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

#81

Post by PragmaticPulp »

SilverBirch wrote: post #15

I graduated in EE and this is no surprise- hardware is hard and Google will throw you $500k a year to tweak the font on their internal compiler. Optics, Power engineering, ASIC design, it’s all fascinating and * really hard * and * really underpaid *. It’s worrying in the long term, the industry’s been built on underpaid geniuses. We need them, but you can’t begrudge them moving to the money.

> I graduated in EE and this is no surprise- hardware is hard and Google will throw you $500k a year to tweak the font on their internal compiler

Google isn't really a great example because they are one of the few places to get highly paid EE / hardware jobs.

That said, there are many more software jobs than hardware jobs at Google.

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

#82

Post by PragmaticPulp »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #8

The tools for EEs are old, creaky, text-based stuff from the DOS days. Time to finally turn EE into a software discipline. Then some decent tools will be developed and normal folk will be willing to design stuff.

> The tools for EEs are old, creaky, text-based stuff from the DOS days.

EE here. That's not really true. Some of the proprietary vendor tools feel dated, but dropping into Altium to design a PCB definitely feels like a modern tool set.

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

#83

Post by brewdad »

georgeburdell wrote: post #29
supertrope wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel cancelled their sponsorship of Intel Science Talent Search. That was a relatively cheap way to build goodwill and cultivate the talent pipeline.

ISEF was a competition among parents and professors living vicariously through children

My kid was an ISEF finalist and even won a small bit of prize money. It's never been a big deal at our high school and he was one of the first, if not the first, from our school to advance beyond the state finals. His project was completely self-driven with off the shelf parts or tools he designed and 3D printed.

I was amazed/disgusted to see finalists partnered with the JPL and working with NASA partnerships and university labs when my kid tinkered mostly solo in our garage or his bedroom. It really made me proud of what he was able to accomplish.

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

#84

Post by Panzer04 »

When the money comes, so will the engineers. I did EE, work in embedded SW because it was way easier to find a job with decent pay. Everyone looking for EEs was pickier and paying less :/.

Maybe when this "shortage" materializes and companies have to start paying EE the same as SW I'll try my luck. No reason to for now, though.

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

#85

Post by livinginfear »

I'll never understand this. It's my opinion that you need to be much smarter to be an electrical engineer than a computer scientist, which again requires much more intellectual rigor than being a 'software engineer'. The kinds of wages companies are paying for just about anyone to write Node.js right now are ridiculous. My view is that this state of affairs can't possibly last forever, given how low the bar is. I imagine that eventually the standards will rise again as more intelligent people are attracted by the absurd pay, and the field becomes more competitive.

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

#87

Post by livinginfear »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #81
SilverBirch wrote: post #15

I graduated in EE and this is no surprise- hardware is hard and Google will throw you $500k a year to tweak the font on their internal compiler. Optics, Power engineering, ASIC design, it’s all fascinating and * really hard * and * really underpaid *. It’s worrying in the long term, the industry’s been built on underpaid geniuses. We need them, but you can’t begrudge them moving to the money.

> I graduated in EE and this is no surprise- hardware is hard and Google will throw you $500k a year to tweak the font on their internal compiler Google isn't really a great example because they are one of the few places to get highly paid EE / hardware jobs. That said, there are many more software jobs than hardware jobs at Google.

I think he's pointing out the relative difficulty of hardware positions compared with being a 'software engineer' in FAANG.

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

#88

Post by boppo1 »

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…

>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 (xnow had to adjust their income statements (try to grow revenue, or more likely cut expenses) as hard as possible to compete with businesses that aren't delivering on much now but seem like they will change everything in the future.

Google "DCF Valuation" and model out 100 years in excel. Add a row that divides the PV of each year by the NPV so you can see the % it contributes to the NPV. Then setup a bar chart so you can visually get a vibe for the integral of different time periods. Once that is all setup, try a real simple assumption: 0 growth for CF and .5% for your Risk Free Rate. Then try it at 5%.

If the Federal Reserve sticks to its guns and gets rates up, and keeps them there, it will be unsurprising to see "hard" engineering jobs be valuable again, while all the CSS people suddenly can't find two pennies to rub together.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#90

Post by jandrewrogers »

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?

The rate of innovation in software is not constrained by capital or physics (and to a lesser extent regulation) to the extent it is in other engineering disciplines, which overweights the importance of individual skill and execution in outcomes. Software isn't an intrinsically high-margin business, but the cost of creating and operating in new high-margin business frontiers is uniquely low, allowing individuals to leave the rapidly commoditizing part of the software business in the rear-view mirror.

The margins would be single-digits if the pace of change and innovation possible was like other engineering disciplines. The business of software engineering evolves at an incredible rate that would be unimaginable in the engineering discipline I went to school for.

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