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
#2This is a symptom of an outdated curriculum and lack of a future in the industry in North America.
Electrical Engineering is a very hot and in demand degree in South / South East Asia precisely because that's where all the jobs are.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#3It seems like undergrads are entering ECE/EECS departments with far more programing experience as well, and there is far more awareness / advertisement / (over)hyping of "glamorous" FAANG-type environments and trajectories. As compared to EE companies where the perception is that jobs are far more "traditional".
Regarding the article's comments on the decline of tinkering, either it's causal or correlated, but it seems like students have far less physics (E&M) exposure than programming experience, and many don't want to grind through the math required (differential equations is often taught poorly, contributing to this phenomenon). So it's seen as far simpler to just do as little EE as possible to finish the degree and get the sweet SWE job.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#4In a software engineer. My cousin is an electrical engineer working at a large power distribution firm.
For all intents and purposes his job is absolutely critical to society. I basically fumble around and do a few projects for my clients.
I get paid several times more than him.
I am happy for myself but it makes no sense to me how society is mispricing our work.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#5The article is basically saying that there is a focus on commoditising tech talent for what builds shareholder value, and a loss of the passion, imagination and richness that tech can add to the world.
My own relationship with tech reflects in that: I despise some of the things that tech is used for and has managed to amplify in our species. I still pursue my passion because somewhere deep down I know that it could also be different: That the power of technology can also be used to magnify and infuse the world with values that make our existence worthwhile and wondrous.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#6Tinkering with junk to develop an interest in real electrical engineering: Totally resonates. Personal recollection from 1983-84 or so follows.
We had a broken black-and-white TV that was mined out for parts (tubes, resistors, capacitors etc) but the front shell with the CRT, high voltage anode connector and deflection coils remained.
How do we make this light up again with teenager-accessible loose parts? What can generate the necessary voltage? Oh, how about this car ignition coil. How to tickle the coil into generating this voltage, i.e. pulse its primary input? How about this "vibrator" from an ancient tube car radio (a mechanical chopper for turning DC into AC).
But how do we rectify multiple kilovolts? No suitable stack-of-diodes rectifier stick on hand. Oh well, resort to the original HV rectifier tube from the TV. But need to power its (directly heated cathode) filament. Cop-out: Do it with a battery or two.
Voila, bright spot on the CRT.
Can we make it move? Well sure, just apply a suitable voltage (trial and error!) 60Hz AC waveform to the horizontal deflection coil. Voila, a line.
What about the Y axis? Well, we can amplify a microphone with a stereo amplifier and drive the vertical deflection coil with the speaker output. Amplitude? Trial and error (volume control). This was getting pretty cool! Except that it was like seeing the waveform wrapped around a cylinder, seen from the side, because of the full sinusoid horizontal pattern. Which looked really neat, but...
I can crank up the horizontal deflection by increasing the voltage (I did have a VARIC based adjustable power supply - homemade of course) until only the linear-ish part of the sinewave remained onscreen. From there it was a straightforward matter of an RC phase shift to drive one of the control grids (found by trial and error by applying small DC voltages to various pins until the beam was blanked) to blank out the right-to-left direction.
And we had a sort of homemade oscilloscope.
This was cool in so many ways but only because the technological underpinnings were still relevant at the time. Nowadays it would be as ancient as dabbling with atmospheric steam engines. Which I'm sure someone, somewhere is still doing. As an extreme niche hobby without a clear track into a profitable career.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#7I guess the world needs orders of magnitudes more codemonkeys bashing away at their proverbial typewriters than those gods-amongst-men who actually build the chips on which all that spaghetti code crawls along.
(I'm a software developer, because the other thing, while obviously way cooler and more hardcore, sounded difficult and... I could teach myself how to program way easier than teach myself how to microprocessor design...)
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#8The 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.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#9I loved tinkering with electronics when I was younger - still do to a smaller degree. I built my first computer by fixing some blown capacitors on a motherboard I found in the trash.
Back in the day, lots of products came with schematics, now you might get a lawsuit if you dare to take something apart.
It was way easier to take apart and tweak through hole components too - now everything is surface mount or on chip and it’s much harder to get into with just a soldering iron.
The first thing I ever did was rewire a stereo to broadcast instead of receive to make a little pirate radio station - really, none of those things exist anymore.
I think it’s just a harder thing to get into now.
Re: Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
#10I'm not surprised. I was a double EE/CS major as an undergrad, and earned an MSEE. My career has been mostly software, though, and the economics of what EE vs. SWE get paid makes it very unlikely that I'd ever move back since it would mean (at best) making < 50% of my current compensation.