Education level required for employment as EE

[void_error]

The danger with too much specialisation is you learn more and more about less and less, until eventually you will know everything about nothing. 

Over here, from my experience, a lot of EEs know nothing about EE even after they graduate. They either find a way to cheat through exams or learn everything mechanically (and get good grades for that), without understanding it and are unable to apply what they studied. The whole education system is ass-backwards if you ask me, outdated by at least 25-30 years. I've given up trying to get my degree in Applied Electronics for a few years but I'll be back to university this autumn and hopefully I'll get that bloody piece of paper. I've learned too much by myself during those years not to officially be an engineer, even had (still have, until this month passes) a job in this field as they couldn't find anyone with a degree capable enough.

[rstofer]

Math:  Well, EE has a bunch of math classes and I have come to the conclusion that the better you are at math, the more money you make.  Regrettably, Statistics is included in that observation.  I hate Statistics!

Math is needed to be able to make money, and Statistics is necessary to prevent liars from taking your money away.

Indeed!  It actually helps if you are born cynical.  Not believing much of anything is probably the best way to keep your money.

Here is a dandy little book "How To Lie With Statistics" some 60+ years old.

http://www.horace.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/How-to-Lie-With-Statistics-1954-Huff.pdf

[tggzzz]

Math:  Well, EE has a bunch of math classes and I have come to the conclusion that the better you are at math, the more money you make.  Regrettably, Statistics is included in that observation.  I hate Statistics!

Math is needed to be able to make money, and Statistics is necessary to prevent liars from taking your money away.

Indeed!  It actually helps if you are born cynical.  Not believing much of anything is probably the best way to keep your money.

Here is a dandy little book "How To Lie With Statistics" some 60+ years old.

http://www.horace.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/How-to-Lie-With-Statistics-1954-Huff.pdf

Yes to all of that. Huff's book is just as accurate and relevant today.

[EmmanuelFaure]

I second that, Huff's book is a masterpiece that everybody should have read long before graduating.

[setq]

Another perspective.

From the age of about 8 I was interested in electronics and had been designing and building things from scratch since about the age of 12. I taught myself algebra and calculus from books from the library before I picked it up at school. I got in trouble for skipping some language lessons and religious education to hide and play with transistors instead.

So I thought, hey I'll do an EE degree. Which I did, 18 years ago at a good university here in the UK. I quit after a year, with good grades I will add. I have precisely zero prospects of getting an EE job. That's the way I like it and I have no regrets at all.

Why?

It was hell. SPICE, VHDL, PASCAL were the soup of the day served cold with a side helping of politics.  This thoroughly ruined my interest in the subject for a good few years. Also, only one subject, digital electronics, was well taught and enjoyable and the lecturer actually wrote decent material and a supporting book.

Turns out I was pretty good at writing software, which is all we really did in the EE degree anyway, not that I explicitly like doing it so I jumped on that bandwagon and went for cash instead. This paid off and I spent a good few years working at a hardware company with EE's running their operational and asset management software. Spoke to lots of EE's there and they agreed with my perspective. So over many a lunch time I filled in any gaps with real people in the industry and learned a lot more than I ever would have elsewhere.

On this basis I'm all for apprenticeships. University is an expensive way of obtaining some paper that proves nothing. I also have to recruit software engineers regularly and this is definitely apparent there too.

Also I'm a firm believer that if you are interested in something, don't make it into work. Do something you hate that pays well and keep your spare time for the things you really care about.

[tggzzz]

Setq wrote about his experiences.

Regardless of the student, bad teaching and uninteresting (to the student) subjects will put anybody off. There are analogies with apprenticeships, where there was a tradition of shatting on the apprentice to "toughen them up" and "make them pay their dues".

I have long thought that apprenticeships are underrated and underused, and for some people are much more appropriate and better that a degree. It narked me when Polytechnics rebranded themselves as Unis, because Polys offered a different type of course to a trad Uni course. Horses/students for courses.

Having said that, in electronics the theory (inc maths) cannot be ignored, since it underpins every reliable reproducable design. It is pretty difficult (although not impossible) to get a good grounding in the theory without formal course.

In software there is far more latitude for, well, hacking in the pejorative sense. Many would argue that's a main contributor to the dismal state of most of today's software systems.

As for the quality of graduate software writer... there are many that shouldn't be let anywhere near a keyboard. But the same is true of non-graduate software writers.

[setq]

Which incidentally suggests that the deciding factor is aptitude, not education and the latter does not necessarily correlate to the former.

[dmills]

Which incidentally suggests that the deciding factor is aptitude, not education and the latter does not necessarily correlate to the former.

More so for software I think, because the elephant in the room there is not learning a language and typing code into a computer, it is acquiring the sense of taste to know how to structure reasonably large real world systems so that they are maintainable, and you can sort of do things on a small but somewhat useful scale without that.

Something similar happens with hardware design, but the barriers to entry are rather higher so it is a little less obvious, and somewhat easier to test in an interview.

The closer you get to the physics the more the math matters.

Agree that the loss of the polytechnics was a disaster.

Regards, Dan.

[setq]

That's a fair point. I ascended to architect status eventually and there's a lot of rigorous engineering going on these days but there is a mire at the entry point and in older products that is quite scary. I've walked into a couple of companies in the last decade or so and quit immediately. If they were hardware we'd all be dead or on fire.

The mathematics is the interesting bit for me. Physics and electronics comes from being able to apply it to something that does something rather than just ponder the existence of abstract constructs.

[rstofer]

I second that, Huff's book is a masterpiece that everybody should have read long before graduating.

One more masterpiece:  "The Ropes To Skip And The Ropes To Know" The book is/was used at Santa Clara University (Silicon Gulch) and was given to me back in the late '70s.  I can't find a free version but if you want to know how the game is played, this is the book to read.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0470169672/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

Literally everything you need to know in order to understand and thrive in a corporate culture.

[setq]

It's not possible to thrive in corporate culture without treading on people I have found, books be damned. Being ridiculously accountable is the biggest weapon in your toolbox.

[tggzzz]

The only book on management theory that I ever thought was worth a damn was "Up the Organisation" by Robert Townshend, who built Avis into the number 2 car hire company.

It is short, with most topic taking only one or two pages. A sample, in its entirety is "Personnel Department. Fire the lot".

[tggzzz]

It's not possible to thrive in corporate culture without treading on people I have found, books be damned. Being ridiculously accountable is the biggest weapon in your toolbox.

Depends on the corporation.

For example, in HP I saw one person depart quickly because she stated that <my HP entity> was lucky to be better than <other HP entities>. Nobody thought we were better, just different, with differing objectives advantages and disadvantages.

Other organisations are much less pleasant, of course.

[EmmanuelFaure]

One more masterpiece:  "The Ropes To Skip And The Ropes To Know" The book is/was used at Santa Clara University (Silicon Gulch) and was given to me back in the late '70s.  I can't find a free version but if you want to know how the game is played, this is the book to read.

Oh... Thanks you very much, I've never heard of it before. I had a look on the reviews on Amazon. Is it like a "Dilbert Principle", minus the sarcasm?

The only book on management theory that I ever thought was worth a damn was "Up the Organisation" by Robert Townshend, who built Avis into the number 2 car hire company.

It is short, with most topic taking only one or two pages. A sample, in its entirety is "Personnel Department. Fire the lot".

I've put this one on my read list too, thanks you! And I love the quote

I observed that >95% of books about management are utter crap (Lean, Team building, 6 sigma, HR... Append something to the list as you wish). The best book I've read on management up to date is Drucker's Management Tasks Responsibilities Practices. It's not really about what we're chatting about = "field operations", but top management. Nevertheless, very interresting read, would read again. One of my favorite quotes :

When managers speak of marketing, they usually mean the organized performance of all selling functions. This is still selling. It still starts out with “our products.” It still looks for “our market.” True marketing starts out the way Sears starts out—with the customer, his demographics, his realities, his needs, his values. It does not ask, “What do we want to sell?” It asks, “What does the customer want to buy?” It does not say, “This is what our product or service does.” It says, “These are the satisfactions the customer looks for, values, and needs.”
Indeed, selling and marketing are antithetical rather than synonymous or even complementary. There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available, i.e., logistics rather than salesmanship, and statistical distribution rather than promotion.

The book distills the monumental author's wisdoms like this on every page.

[tggzzz]

When managers speak of marketing, they usually mean the organized performance of all selling functions. This is still selling. It still starts out with “our products.” It still looks for “our market.” True marketing starts out the way Sears starts out—with the customer, his demographics, his realities, his needs, his values. It does not ask, “What do we want to sell?” It asks, “What does the customer want to buy?” It does not say, “This is what our product or service does.” It says, “These are the satisfactions the customer looks for, values, and needs.”
Indeed, selling and marketing are antithetical rather than synonymous or even complementary. There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available, i.e., logistics rather than salesmanship, and statistical distribution rather than promotion.

The book distills the monumental author's wisdoms like this on every page.

Interesting. I asked an HP manager what he thought was the distinction between marketing and selling. He said "Selling represents the factory to the customer. Marketing represents the customer to the factory". That's the only answer I've ever been able to understand.

[setq]

HP sounded clued. Congratulations!

I observed that >95% of books about management are utter crap (Lean, Team building, 6 sigma, HR...

Six sigma victim here. Couldn't agree more.

I got dragged into the mandatory process remodelling of a large defence company starting many years ago that was based around that. Nothing but complete unadulterated bollocks. The ethics section was comedic. It was taught with PowerPoint and an American guy who had clearly been doing copious amounts of speed or something. He was way too cheery and being British, we weren't having any of that shit. We all got a nice certificate with Dilbert on it at the end that we had to print ourselves to stick on our cube dividers over the pictures of missiles and bombs we made to kill people with and the surveillance products we made to enslave the ones we didn't manage to kill, whilst being careful not to exceed our free printing allowance or we'd have to fill in a form, on paper, to request more paper. It merely proved we could navigate ten multiple choice questions by expending the least amount of effort so we could crawl to the canteen and get some more subsidised shit coffee so we could self-flagellate some more whilst dreaming the weekend and escaping the compound where we were held prisoner with no natural light.

And that's corporate culture

[tggzzz]

HP sounded clued. Congratulations!

It was. I decided to leave when Carly was in full swing, "doubling down" and all that crap.

I've seen reports (probably on the internal usenet) that she had a meeting with Bill. Bill said nothing until the end, when he said "get me out of here". I wish I could find some confirmation of that.

I observed that >95% of books about management are utter crap (Lean, Team building, 6 sigma, HR...

... canteen and get some more subsidised shit coffee so we could self-flagellate some more whilst dreaming the weekend and escaping the compound where we were held prisoner with no natural light.

And that's corporate culture

Don't overreach; it casts doubts on your other statements. Most of the companies I've worked for have been very different. Of course, during the university milkround I visited 12 companies - and chose to avoid GEC/Marconi and similar.

HP used to have suckling pig, frogs legs, and many other very nice items on the menu. The Grenoble factory canteen was better than most restaurants, with fresh oysters and racks of wine.

At another place, I've known people that have booked 25 hours on a timesheet for one day ("I went in at 9 on Saturday and left at 10 on Sunday"), and have gone in to work on a project on Christmas Day.

An engineer should always have a mistress. That way they can tell the mistress they are with the wife, the wife they are with the mistress - and go and have some fun in the lab.

[setq]

My statements are pretty run of the mill in the UK. We like to complain

To be fair my last two appointments have been pretty good. I work from home now and we have a fairly open work schedule so there is plenty of opportunity for personal development, on topic of course. People have lots of places to ask questions about what to expect out of education and life these days. Back then we just had to work off poorly taught assumptions and assume the bad stuff was normal.

Definitely agree with your last statement

[CJay]

Now after reading all of that, I need to work out if it's worth my doing a degree at age (nearly) *cough* 48.

I don't know if it'd be worth the effort from a career point of view or just for my own satisfaction. 

It'd have to be the OU as well...

[tggzzz]

Now after reading all of that, I need to work out if it's worth my doing a degree at age (nearly) *cough* 48.

I don't know if it'd be worth the effort from a career point of view

Probably not. You are, as someone I know found on an agent's copy of their CV, "PSBD". That's "past sell by date". In some ways we were glad, because that meant he was able to be employed by my department

or just for my own satisfaction. 

Quite possibly. I know someone  your age that has just started an astrophysics course.

It'd have to be the OU as well...

There are many many distance learning courses available, of course. Most big unis do them now.

[setq]

OU are pretty good from what I understand.

[CJay]

Now after reading all of that, I need to work out if it's worth my doing a degree at age (nearly) *cough* 48.

I don't know if it'd be worth the effort from a career point of view

Probably not. You are, as someone I know found on an agent's copy of their CV, "PSBD". That's "past sell by date". In some ways we were glad, because that meant he was able to be employed by my department

or just for my own satisfaction. 

Quite possibly. I know someone  your age that has just started an astrophysics course.

It'd have to be the OU as well...

There are many many distance learning courses available, of course. Most big unis do them now.

While I'm well aware my career is pretty much set and I'll work out the rest of my days wandering around various government departments trying to find brick walls to batter my head against at the stupidity of the management, it's not a fun realisation that I'm, as they say, PSBD.

Hence the push to 'do something with my life' (I've had a pretty good one so far, lots of fun experiences but it's not gone the way I'd have wanted) so the OU (or other) distance learning course is going to happen.

Just have to decide what in now

[tggzzz]

Now after reading all of that, I need to work out if it's worth my doing a degree at age (nearly) *cough* 48.

I don't know if it'd be worth the effort from a career point of view

Probably not. You are, as someone I know found on an agent's copy of their CV, "PSBD". That's "past sell by date". In some ways we were glad, because that meant he was able to be employed by my department

or just for my own satisfaction. 

Quite possibly. I know someone  your age that has just started an astrophysics course.

It'd have to be the OU as well...

There are many many distance learning courses available, of course. Most big unis do them now.

While I'm well aware my career is pretty much set and I'll work out the rest of my days wandering around various government departments trying to find brick walls to batter my head against at the stupidity of the management, it's not a fun realisation that I'm, as they say, PSBD.

Hence the push to 'do something with my life' (I've had a pretty good one so far, lots of fun experiences but it's not gone the way I'd have wanted) so the OU (or other) distance learning course is going to happen.

Just have to decide what in now

Welcome to one of the clubs you never wanted to join

Even where management is good, and there are such places, you will run into client stupidity (and if you let them get in the loop, salesman stupidity).

We are lucky; most people don't have much choice in what they do.

[Omega Glory]

It's been a while since I made the original post here, but since then I made the decision to go to college, and I've now just graduated a few days ago, so I thought I would put down some of what I learned about the experience.

For some context, I'm American and I attended Lehigh University in the state of Pennsylvania which is primarily an engineering and business school. I majored in what they called "Computer Engineering" which is a blend between their Electrical Engineering and Computer Science programs.

In my experience, I did not get better at a lot of the practical aspects of engineering by taking classes there. For example, many of the skills required to make the projects I was interested in weren't taught there. These skills include such things as soldering, PCB design, sourcing parts, and knowing how to set up a basic board with a microcontroller, voltage regulator, and support circuitry. These sorts of skills I had from past personal projects, and continued to improve upon them in my limited spare time, however they were not a part of the curriculum. The one exception to this might be programming. I believe that I definitely became a better programmer while in school, but I believe most of this came from simply being forced to do it so often rather than because of how the classes were taught (a significant exception to this was an operating systems class which was absolutely incredible).

However, besides the obvious difference in employment eligibility by holding a degree, I believe the experience was worth it for some other reasons that I did not expect when I first started:

First, going to college drastically increased my mathematical literacy. I found this to be incredibly important because it allowed me to be able to read textbooks and papers in all sorts of engineering and scientific topics that previously were completely inaccessible to me. I believe this was one of the most valuable things I learned because it enables me to continue to learn on my own in new ways after school.

Having the improved mathematical literacy opened me up to whole areas I didn't know existed, or thought were simplistic and boring. For example, I used to believe that the physics of electricity and magnetism was not particularly interesting, but after taking calc 3, I was able to appreciate its beauty, and it became one of my favorite subjects to learn about. I also used to not know a thing about signal processing, and I thought analog design was boring until I took a signals class where the world of frequency analysis was opened up to me, and it not only became one of my favorite subjects, but also completely changed how I saw a lot of the world. None of this would have been possible (at least to the same degree) had I not had classes in differential equations, linear algebra, and complex variables. Knowing that math enabled me to read and learn new things I could have never accessed before.

Second, the curriculum at college opened me up to fantastic textbooks from which I could teach myself things outside of class, whether in the subjects of mathematics, circuit design, physics, signal processing, computer architecture, or operating system design. While it certainly isn't necessary to go to school to know what good texts are available, I found that to be a very helpful part of the experience. At some point I would like to compile a list of good resources so that high schoolers interested in those subjects know where to look if they want to learn things on their own (When I was in high school, I found that quite difficult, but I was also homeschooled, so that might have had something to do with it).

Third, once I got to some of the more advanced classes, professors started to teach material that I could not easily find online or in textbooks. I found this to be the case in my mixed signals class, my linear systems class, and in a class on special relativity. While there are resources on these subjects available, the best professors were able to offer insight from industry or from new research which would have been much harder to discover on my own even with a library, the internet, and forums.

Fourth, some of the better professors at the school were very helpful with offering me guidance on what classes to take to learn more about specific areas, and learning more about research opportunities during school and after graduation. My academic advisor, Dr. Shalinee Kishore, in particular was very caring and helpful, and she encouraged me to apply to PhD programs in ECE. This fall I'll be starting a PhD at UPenn, focusing on FPGA development which particularly excites me. I know that this sort of thing would not have been an option had I not attended college.

There are many other benefits and downsides to the college experience (in my opinion), but I don't think those are as relevant to this thread, which was originally about employment requirements for EEs. Over all, however, I believe the experience was a very good one, and I learned a ton. Even though this particular school did not directly help me improve on many of the practical aspects of engineering, I was still able to develop those sorts of skills on my own, and combined with the new theory I learned, I was able to create projects that previously would have been out of my reach. Here is a link to my senior design project, which I think demonstrates a lot of both the practical and theoretical: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/pet-on-a-chip/.

Thank you for all your advice and encouragement. It was very helpful when trying to figure this all out, 4 years ago.

[EEVblog]

It's been a while since I made the original post here, but since then I made the decision to go to college, and I've now just graduated a few days ago, so I thought I would put down some of what I learned about the experience.

For some context, I'm American and I attended Lehigh University in the state of Pennsylvania which is primarily an engineering and business school. I majored in what they called "Computer Engineering" which is a blend between their Electrical Engineering and Computer Science programs.

In my experience, I did not get better at a lot of the practical aspects of engineering by taking classes there. For example, many of the skills required to make the projects I was interested in weren't taught there. These skills include such things as soldering, PCB design, sourcing parts, and knowing how to set up a basic board with a microcontroller, voltage regulator, and support circuitry. These sorts of skills I had from past personal projects, and continued to improve upon them in my limited spare time, however they were not a part of the curriculum. The one exception to this might be programming. I believe that I definitely became a better programmer while in school, but I believe most of this came from simply being forced to do it so often rather than because of how the classes were taught (a significant exception to this was an operating systems class which was absolutely incredible).

However, besides the obvious difference in employment eligibility by holding a degree, I believe the experience was worth it for some other reasons that I did not expect when I first started:

First, going to college drastically increased my mathematical literacy. I found this to be incredibly important because it allowed me to be able to read text books and papers in all sorts of engineering and scientific topics that previously were completely inaccessible to me. I believe this was one of the most valuable things I learned because it enables me to continue to learn on my own in new ways after school.

Having the improved mathematical literacy opened me up to whole areas I didn't know existed, or thought were simplistic and boring. For example, I used to believe that the physics of electricity and magnetism was not particularly interesting, but after taking calc 3, I was able to appreciate its beauty, and it became one of my favorite subjects to learn about. I also used to not know a thing about signal processing, and I thought analog design was boring until I took a signals class where the world of frequency analysis was opened up to me, and it not only became one of my favorite subjects, but also completely changed how I saw a lot of the world. None of this would have been possible (at least to the same degree) had I not had classes in differential equations, linear algebra, and complex variables. Knowing that math enabled me to read and learn new things I could have never accessed before.

Second, the curriculum at college opened me up to fantastic textbooks from which I could teach myself things outside of class, whether in the subjects of mathematics, circuit design, physics, signal processing, computer architecture, or operating system design. While it certainly isn't necessary to go to school to know what good texts are available, I found that to be a very helpful part of the experience. At some point I would like to compile a list of good resources so that high schoolers interested in those subjects know where to look if they want to learn things on their own (When I was in high school, I found that quite difficult, but I was also homeschooled, so that might have had something to do with it).

Third, once I got to some of the more advanced classes, professors started to teach material that I could not easily find online or in textbooks. I found this to be the case in my mixed signals class, my linear systems class, and in a class on special relativity. While there are resources on these subjects available, the best professors were able to offer insight from industry or from new research which would have been much harder to discover on my own even with a library, the internet, and forums.

Fourth, some of the better professors at the school were very helpful with offering me guidance on what classes to take to learn more about specific areas, and learning more about research opportunities during school and after graduation. My academic advisor in particular was very caring and helpful, and she encouraged me to apply to PhD programs in ECE. This fall I'll be starting a PhD at UPenn, focusing on FPGA development which particularly excites me. I know that this sort of thing would not have been an option had I not attended college.

There are many other benefits and downsides to the college experience (in my opinion), but I don't think those are as relevant to this thread, which was originally about employment requirements for EEs. Over all, however, I believe the experience was a very good one, and I learned a ton. Even though this particular school did not directly help me improve on many of the practical aspects of engineering, I was still able to develop those sorts of skills on my own, and combined with the new theory I learned, I was able to create projects that previously would have been out of my reach. Here is a link to my senior design project, which I think demonstrates a lot of both the practical and theoretical: [url]https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/pet-on-a-chip/[/url].

Thank you for all your advice and encouragement. It was very helpful when trying to figure this all out, 4 years ago.

Great summary, thanks for sharing. Congrats on graduating!