What Majors do you guys have?

[geratheg]

I'm still young and in community college wanting to transfer and major in electrical engineering. I do some learning at home sometimes, and so far I'm still learning the basics in circuit analysis. I like creating some basic circuits using basic components, but have been wondering... those circuits are pretty big compared to the same circuits found in devices.
Will I learn how to make the circuits smaller and with more functions in the electrical engineering classes? Also should I focus the study on digital or analog?
There's an electrical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, or computer engineering option. They all seem very similar to me, and I don't know which one to go for. I want know a little bit of everything!

In addition, it feels like getting a Masters degree is advisable since more and more people are graduating with the same degree so there's some competition.

Which of those majors is best for the job market?
Which major do you guys have and what do you do on your job?

Finally, my understanding is it is difficult to get a job sometimes for recent graduates. How did you get your first real full time job?

[nctnico]

If you want to become an electronics expert and land a job in no time: start building circuits in your spare time and understand how they work. An education gives you a big useful toolbox (you also need that) but no experience. In my experience the self thaught people never reach their full potential because they never learned the theory and math skills.

[NiHaoMike]

If you want to become an electronics expert and land a job in no time: start building circuits in your spare time and understand how they work. An education gives you a big useful toolbox (you also need that) but no experience. In my experience the self thaught people never reach their full potential because they never learned the theory and math skills.

All the really good engineers I know do some of that stuff on their own. I actually started working on electronics around first-second grade, building up a pretty good understanding in third grade and then building my first switching power supply (a buck converter) in fourth grade. I did it on my own since even the instructors were largely clueless. To make it harder, there wasn't much "online" back then - the best resource that I had access to was an old fashioned library.

My main complaint about school is not just too much theory but rather too much of a disconnect between theory and practice. DSP class taught me how DSP algorithms work but not how to actually apply them. For that, I had to learn it on my own.

[zapta]

If you want to become an electronics expert and land a job in no time: start building circuits in your spare time and understand how they work. An education gives you a big useful toolbox (you also need that) but no experience. In my experience the self thaught people never reach their full potential because they never learned the theory and math skills.

That's the winning formula. Learn practicable stuff at home by building and theoretical stuff at school.

You need both to succeed.

[NiHaoMike]

You can learn the theory at home as well. School is only for the degree.

[zapta]

You can learn the theory at home as well. School is only for the degree.

Chance of learning it by yourself at home at the same depth is zero.

[NiHaoMike]

Check out resources like MIT OCW. It's exactly the same as what they use in actual classes.

[Kostas]

You can learn the theory at home as well. School is only for the degree.

Chance of learning it by yourself at home at the same depth is zero.

Given proper books - resources in general, you can learn everything you would have leaned at school, if you are so inclined. Chances are that you'll skip the boring parts that can be quite significant. As has already been said, university courses can get a tad too theoretical and it's definitely off-putting. And while having a good teacher is very helpful, a bad one can be a uh, ehm brain damaging experience at times,   worse than what you would have done on your own .

[c4757p]

You can learn the theory at home as well. School is only for the degree.

Chance of learning it by yourself at home at the same depth is zero.

Hopefully this doesn't turn into the same flamewar we've had a million times before, but I concur. Some people are able to teach themselves all of this, and if you're one of them, go for it! But let's not ignore the rest - most people need some human guidance. And if you get into the right school at the right time (unfortunately, I can't help you there...) and get involved in the right places, the environment can be really conducive to expanding your knowledge to other fields, meeting people with similar interests, and making a bit of a name for yourself in something. Better, you can turn around and help teach other students, which is good for both them and you.

[zapta]

...Chances are that you'll skip the boring parts that can be quite significant.

You hit the nail on the head. That's why it virtually never happens. Just think of all the college classes that you *had* to take.

[zapta]

Check out resources like MIT OCW. It's exactly the same as what they use in actual classes.

That's not a proof. What percentage of the consumers of these courses actually through the breadth and depth of the requirements for a college degree? Virtually zero.

A college degree is very important IMO, not just for the degree itself. Before going to college I had a good paying job in electronics (designing one-off telemetry systems at Motorola) and thought I knew everything. In the first class of the first semester (Set Theory) I realized that I don't .

OP, electronic engineering is more about electronics, computer sciences and computer engineering are more about software. It's easier to switch career from electronics to software than the other way around (software is more 'intuitive'). If your interest is electronics EE may be a better fit.  As for analog/digital, it depends what are your interests. Again, its probably easier to switch from analog to digital then the other way around (digital is more 'intuitive').

[IanB]

To have the best preparation for a sound career and future job opportunities I would aim for a program that contains lots of science, physics and complex systems engineering. That would steer you towards electrical/electronic engineering and away from computer science weighted programs. Computer science is a narrow field that doesn't contain much in the way of science and contains very little mathematics. It's hard to grow out from there. EE's can cross over into software much more easily than pure software guys can cross over into hardware.

Short answer: go with Electrical Engineering and learn as much of it as you can. I would think you can specialize into analog or digital after you graduate, but as an undergraduate you want a broad education and a good foundation. If you like software (who doesn't?) try to do projects with embedded micros or FPGAs, but treat the software or firmware as an integrated component of your complete system and make sure it all works together.

(By the way, in answer to your question I am a chemical engineer and I just hang around here because of a latent interest in electronics and all things technical.)

[Simon]

If you want to become an electronics expert and land a job in no time: start building circuits in your spare time and understand how they work. An education gives you a big useful toolbox (you also need that) but no experience. In my experience the self thaught people never reach their full potential because they never learned the theory and math skills.

Very true. I am self taught, I did a pathetic electronics college course when I lived in italy but what little of the books we touched I had already ploughed through them before we go to them in class. I continued to learn on my own and got a job for a mechanical company where they are suddenly finding my albeit limited skill very useful as it saves them a lot of money and makes things happen quicker to have an inhouse person on the job and when there is no electronics to be done i do mechanical design. They are now looking to get me on a HNC course but I will certainly have to do the maths first as this is usually where I have stumbled in the past and is a requirement of the course.

[Kostas]

... Computer science is a narrow field that doesn't contain much in the way of science and contains very little mathematics...

I'd have to disagree with this. Computer Science is a rather narrow field, that contains a lot of science and a lot of mathematics, more mathematics than many people would have wished. Other than that, I agree that Electrical Engineering is a broader field and a hardware guy would probably be better served by such a course.

[Simon]

You can learn the theory at home as well. School is only for the degree.

Chance of learning it by yourself at home at the same depth is zero.

My work place uses a subcontractor as well as me doing in house work. Now my qualifications amount to "jack shit" and the subcontractor claims that all of their engineers are postgraduates. Guess who has had to fix whose work and save hours of fault finding. They make stupid mistakes like:

Lack of bypass capacitors
Running very long traces to a mosfet driving a load with PWM with no bypassing anywhere on the board
lack of capacitors on sensor inputs that have spiky noise and cause false readings.
Insisting on using 3.3V just to be clever and and then it coming back to bite.
Having used 3.3V trying to trigger a regular MOSFET from a microcontroller directly, causing me to drive home and bring back my stock of logic level mosfets, the guy then stupefied asks for the part number I used for future reference as he clearly has no concept of regular mosfet versus logic level mosfet........
They are horrendous at dealing with the mecanical side of things, knowing that we are putting their pcb into a die cast case they put ground planes over the entire board including the mount points which not even being solder mask covered (because they won't use my recommendation of a supplier they are already aware of that does cheap prototype boards with soldermask and silk screen) causing an electrical connection from the board to the box.......so I've had to use nylon washers to space the thing off.

[SeanB]

Postgraduate in what? Civil engineering? My brother in law is a Civil engineer, and while he builds good buildings that do not fall down ( like in Nigeria), which are usable and on budget and mostly to schedule, he will ask me to do anything electrical more complex than a 3 pin plug.

We did use a theodolite though to install a gate, and got it level to within 1mm across the 5m track. Just because he had it around, and it was easier than a spirit level and a lot faster.

[Simon]

no idea what they have degrees in,

[IanB]

Computer Science contains ... a lot of mathematics, more mathematics than many people would have wished.

Granted, but I think it tends to be somewhat abstract and theoretical mathematics, not so much of the kind useful to engineers?

As to science, I don't see it. Science is physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, etc. Do computer science degrees have core foundations in these subjects?

[zapta]

My work place uses a subcontractor as well as me doing in house work. Now my qualifications amount to "jack shit" and the subcontractor claims that all of their engineers are postgraduates. Guess who has had to fix whose work and save hours of fault finding. They make stupid mistakes like:

Lack of bypass capacitors
Running very long traces to a mosfet driving a load with PWM with no bypassing anywhere on the board
lack of capacitors on sensor inputs that have spiky noise and cause false readings.
Insisting on using 3.3V just to be clever and and then it coming back to bite.
Having used 3.3V trying to trigger a regular MOSFET from a microcontroller directly, causing me to drive home and bring back my stock of logic level mosfets, the guy then stupefied asks for the part number I used for future reference as he clearly has no concept of regular mosfet versus logic level mosfet........
They are horrendous at dealing with the mecanical side of things, knowing that we are putting their pcb into a die cast case they put ground planes over the entire board including the mount points which not even being solder mask covered (because they won't use my recommendation of a supplier they are already aware of that does cheap prototype boards with soldermask and silk screen) causing an electrical connection from the board to the box.......so I've had to use nylon washers to space the thing off.

These are practical things that one learn at home or on the job. College give your the theoretical and analytical part, building at home or learning on the job gives you the practical part. Both are important, especially when doing non obvious stuff.

[Kostas]

Computer Science contains ... a lot of mathematics, more mathematics than many people would have wished.

Granted, but I think it tends to be somewhat abstract and theoretical mathematics, not so much of the kind useful to engineers?

Not really, you'll find the more abstract kind of mathematics like graph theory, but also stuff like general calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, probability theory etc.

As to science, I don't see it. Science is physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, etc. Do computer science degrees have core foundations in these subjects?

Now that you made clearer what you mean I understand what you wanted to say, but I honestly don't think that Electrical Engineering/CS has much to do with any of the aforementioned scientific fields, except perhaps Physics. Keep in mind though that both EE and CS/Computer Engineering can be applied to any of these fields. For instance, let's pick Astronomy. A lot of RF theory would be needed in a radio telescope, but also Signal Processing, so both fields could be applied in Astronomy. Or, think about the great images the Hubble telescope has given us, but without image processing...

[Simon]

My work place uses a subcontractor as well as me doing in house work. Now my qualifications amount to "jack shit" and the subcontractor claims that all of their engineers are postgraduates. Guess who has had to fix whose work and save hours of fault finding. They make stupid mistakes like:

Lack of bypass capacitors
Running very long traces to a mosfet driving a load with PWM with no bypassing anywhere on the board
lack of capacitors on sensor inputs that have spiky noise and cause false readings.
Insisting on using 3.3V just to be clever and and then it coming back to bite.
Having used 3.3V trying to trigger a regular MOSFET from a microcontroller directly, causing me to drive home and bring back my stock of logic level mosfets, the guy then stupefied asks for the part number I used for future reference as he clearly has no concept of regular mosfet versus logic level mosfet........
They are horrendous at dealing with the mecanical side of things, knowing that we are putting their pcb into a die cast case they put ground planes over the entire board including the mount points which not even being solder mask covered (because they won't use my recommendation of a supplier they are already aware of that does cheap prototype boards with soldermask and silk screen) causing an electrical connection from the board to the box.......so I've had to use nylon washers to space the thing off.

These are practical things that one learn at home or on the job. College give your the theoretical and analytical part, building at home or learning on the job gives you the practical part. Both are important, especially when doing non obvious stuff.

Well when you've paid a couple of thousand pounds in development you hope that at least the guy knows that taking a 100x100mm board and running a "power trace" 5/8 of the way around the perimeter from a non bypassed input point dropping off power to devices as you go to end with the most powerful device your board powers being driven off a mosfet at the end of the trace, again with no bypassing is downright stupid. In the end I had to cut the trace just short of the final point so that it could no upset the rest of the sensitive devices powered along the way and run a wire directly to the mosfet and add bypass caps, then I've got him ringing me up to check the exact values i used..... This thing was supposed to be tested for EMI...........

[c4757p]

Oh, please don't start... this is already heading off topic. I'm pretty sure we've heard you complain about the people you work with plenty before. What does that have to do with any of the questions which started the thread?

Will I learn how to make the circuits smaller and with more functions in the electrical engineering classes? Also should I focus the study on digital or analog?
Which of those majors is best for the job market?
Which major do you guys have and what do you do on your job?
How did you get your first real full time job?

[tautech]

I'm still young and in community college wanting to transfer and major in electrical engineering. 
There's an electrical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, or computer engineering option.
They all seem very similar to me, and I don't know which one to go for.
I want know a little bit of everything!

Which of those majors is best for the job market?

You are lucky to have years on your side and the time to "set" yourself up.
By all means keep a busy electronics hobby going on, but for now keep it aside.
Set the goal you wish to accomplish, be it Technician, EE Designer, Master or Dr. EE or whatever.
Pursue the appropriate courses/degrees.

But the MOST important thing is MATHS, MATHS and more MATHS

Pursue it to the highest level and then become whatever you wish.

I am in awe of my mentor a Dr. EE, a visit and a coffee when I am stuck on a project(repair OR design), he belts out the equations, changes them around to suit my needs, jots down his workings and sends me home with the paperwork for reference.
Never needs to look at a book, its all in his head, a passionate understanding of the theory, the formulae and the interrelationship/s between them.

The appropriate changes are made, circuit works as expected and measurements are as calculated.
It's all MATHS

[IanB]

The appropriate changes are made, circuit works as expected and measurements are as calculated.
It's all MATHS

Yes it is 

But it is also a good sympathetic understanding of what equations to use and how to apply them to the problem at hand. Which is where the science and engineering come in... 

[Simon]

Oh, please don't start... this is already heading off topic. I'm pretty sure we've heard you complain about the people you work with plenty before. What does that have to do with any of the questions which started the thread?

Will I learn how to make the circuits smaller and with more functions in the electrical engineering classes? Also should I focus the study on digital or analog?
Which of those majors is best for the job market?
Which major do you guys have and what do you do on your job?
How did you get your first real full time job?

yea of course the whole topic is already "off topic, let me see:

Will I learn how to make the circuits smaller and with more functions in the electrical engineering classes? Also should I focus the study on digital or analog?

No idea, what is your current idea of small and more functions, give us an example, usually unless we are talking large digital systems that you can cram more functionality into software "x" functionality requires "x" amount of circuitry. The question is so broad that well........

Which of those majors is best for the job market?

Depends on where you are and what job you want, I got an 11% pay rise last april and i have no qualifications whatsoever!

Which major do you guys have and what do you do on your job?

None! anything I'm asked, it's ranged from repairing the toilet system to designing safety critical circuitry.

How did you get your first real full time job?

I went to an employment agency and in desperation insisted that they must have something. As it happened they'd just had a guy chucked out of his part time job after 1 day because he was an idiot so I got his job, it required me to pressure test returned radiators that already knew were faulty. I was soon also doing the quality inspectors job for him and filling out all of the paperwork. Then the customer got fed up of leaking radiators so cancelled the contract and i lost my job as there was no more crap to test. 2 months later they called me back as they needed another quality inspector and had kind of noticed that I worked my back side off and was very resourceful. After 3 years and me making a nuisance of myself because i did stuff right and didn't do what the works manager wanted but what the procedure dictated i was moved to the design department. where after spending 2 years not being able to make up their minds if they wanted me to do electrics or not and finding that subcontractors are not what they are cracked up to be they decided to ask me to do some electronics development and offered to pay for me to get qualified.

I am now developing my own products to sell through my employer despite some people telling me i was nuts and that no one would want my devices customers were very exited with one saying that if we had shown it to him 2 months ago he would not have lost a contract......

[zapta]

I am in awe of my mentor a Dr. EE, a visit and a coffee when I am stuck on a project(repair OR design), he belts out the equations, changes them around to suit my needs, jots down his workings and sends me home with the paperwork for reference.
Never needs to look at a book, its all in his head, a passionate understanding of the theory, the formulae and the interrelationship/s between them.

The appropriate changes are made, circuit works as expected and measurements are as calculated.
It's all MATHS

I worked one with a guy like this. Ph.D. in physics, great match skills. One of the best EE engineers I ever met and my guess is that he never soldered in his life. He really understood how stuff works and equations were his main work tools.

[miguelvp]

Computer Science pays more than EE, if you are a good programmer it will be north of double the salary.
But you should do what you enjoy most, that's how you get good at it because it more play than work.

As for math, it's really important but you don't need a high level of math on either, just good understanding of vectors, matrices, quaternions and the like. You might need to know about wavelets and frequency domain math as well but depends on what your particular aim within the field is at. Statistics are important too, even if you specialize in a particular expertise within a given field, the more tools at your disposal will open more ways to solve a given problem or task.

Another important thing is that college not only teaches you things, what is the most important part is that it teaches you how to learn, because you are going to need to learn plenty after you are done with school, and the better you are at learning, the better you'll succeed in your career.

[tautech]

You can learn the theory at home as well. School is only for the degree.

Chance of learning it by yourself at home at the same depth is zero.

My work place uses a subcontractor as well as me doing in house work. Now my qualifications amount to "jack shit" and the subcontractor claims that all of their engineers are postgraduates. Guess who has had to fix whose work and save hours of fault finding. They make stupid mistakes like:

Lack of bypass capacitors
Running very long traces to a mosfet driving a load with PWM with no bypassing anywhere on the board
lack of capacitors on sensor inputs that have spiky noise and cause false readings.
Insisting on using 3.3V just to be clever and and then it coming back to bite.
Having used 3.3V trying to trigger a regular MOSFET from a microcontroller directly, causing me to drive home and bring back my stock of logic level mosfets, the guy then stupefied asks for the part number I used for future reference as he clearly has no concept of regular mosfet versus logic level mosfet........
They are horrendous at dealing with the mecanical side of things, knowing that we are putting their pcb into a die cast case they put ground planes over the entire board including the mount points which not even being solder mask covered (because they won't use my recommendation of a supplier they are already aware of that does cheap prototype boards with soldermask and silk screen) causing an electrical connection from the board to the box.......so I've had to use nylon washers to space the thing off.

One would have to ask, just where did they get their MICKEY MOUSE degrees?

All basic stuff any good hobbyist or 3rd year student should know let alone somebody with a degree. 

[Simon]

Well you never know what the degree is in or what area they specialized in. Try the arduino forums to find out what it's like when programmers think they know how to do electronics just because they can write a program.

Electronics is vast, you can become specialized in analogue, digital or now with the complexity of systems one person on a team that is developing a project would be dedicated to writing the software. The problem occurs and probably with managers mis understanding when you try to get one person to do a job that requires software, digital circuitry, analogue circuitry, power circuitry and needs to work mechanically in the system. Alternatively if your project is too small to warrant more than one person developing it you need someone who may not be a super expert in any field but knows enough of each field to get a balanced design

I switched from kicad to diptrace simply because it can output 3D CAD models that enable to to either pass them to my colleagues to package in the system or so package myself.

It all depends on what your looking to work on. No doubt there are companies that undertake large complex designs where you need an extreme amount of expertise in a number of fields so you have at least one person for each field.

[tautech]

It all depends on what your looking to work on. No doubt there are companies that undertake large complex designs where you need an extreme amount of expertise in a number of fields so you have at least one person for each field.

Here, those with EE degrees have all those skills as part of their degrees, it's only a matter of how well they are developed.
Granted on big projects, there is only so much one person can do but the rest comes with experience and is good reason not to let them loose on too much until they are capable.
That's where the managers come in. 

[timb]

It all depends on what your looking to work on. No doubt there are companies that undertake large complex designs where you need an extreme amount of expertise in a number of fields so you have at least one person for each field.

Here, those with EE degrees have all those skills as part of their degrees, it's only a matter of how well they are developed.
Granted on big projects, there is only so much one person can do but the rest comes with experience and is good reason not to let them loose on too much until they are capable. That's where the managers come in. 

I think you're overstating there. As has been mentioned, I've met EE's who are brilliant at math and theoretical stuff but have likely never held a soldering iron. Likewise I've met older, very experienced engineers who can diagnose a circuit just by smelling it, but are clueless with advanced maths. Then there's people in the middle. They are the rarer ones.

Jack-of-all-Trades, Master-of-None, but certainly better than a Master-of-One!


Sent from my Smartphone

[tautech]

It all depends on what your looking to work on. No doubt there are companies that undertake large complex designs where you need an extreme amount of expertise in a number of fields so you have at least one person for each field.

Here, those with EE degrees have all those skills as part of their degrees, it's only a matter of how well they are developed.
Granted on big projects, there is only so much one person can do but the rest comes with experience and is good reason not to let them loose on too much until they are capable. That's where the managers come in. 

I think you're overstating there. As has been mentioned, I've met EE's who are brilliant at math and theoretical stuff but have likely never held a soldering iron. Likewise I've met older, very experienced engineers who can diagnose a circuit just by smelling it, but are clueless with advanced maths. Then there's people in the middle. They are the rarer ones.

Jack-of-all-Trades, Master-of-None, but certainly better than a Master-of-One!

Overstating???
Not in my part of the world.
I've rubbed shoulders with Honours graduates, lecturers, design EE"s all top of their game and IMO their skills are UNDERSTATED.

[T3sl4co1l]

Physics and EE.  Which shouldn't be surprising to anyone familiar with my opinions

Tim

[Simon]

Take a motherboard design, I bet each person involved does not usually work in the same area of specialty, or at the very least they have different interests and your much better at what your interested in. Even our subcontractor came up with the idea of having people collaborate with each other to share non common skills to get a better all round design and that is just for projects that usually one person did, although I suspect it all fell by the wayside.

[penfold]

From my experience, electronic engineering is all about abstracts.  In my undergrad degree (Electronic Engineering MEng) there was very little 'practical' teaching and everything was taught from a more fundamental viewpoint, a lot of abstract models etc.  Whilst some people would see this as a downside, it really isn't.  Except from the perspective of the future boss of a student who just wanted to coast through and pick up all the skills they would ever need for the rest of their life, it's horrific!  But for the right student who's capable of recognising where they need to improve and works continuously to build a familiarity with real circuits and can apply the abstracted models to real circuits, its a very powerful way to develop an electronic engineer who can think freely and isn't constrained by previously engrained instructions for debugging and design. 

I think, regardless of a person's primary educational experience, if the person is aware of all the initial abstracts it just takes a bit of thinking time to get the rest. Or at least that's what I gathered during my PhD.

I know I've taken a very academic perspective on this, its interesting to hear other perspectives, see what somebody from a less academic background makes of it,

[westfw]

I have a BSEE from 81 (back when they barely admitted that computers were of any use at all, except to solve math problems) (but I took CS classes), and I graduated and took a programming job, and have been doing mostly software ever since (though the EE background has occasionally been useful.)

Recently, I've been taking some online classes to flesh out my computer science knowledge, and I've been finding the mathematical aspects substantially beyond anything I ever learned (discreet math, recurrence relationships, generator functions, OMG PROOFS, Set theory, statistics and magic numbers thrown around like they're second nature to everyone ("This is obviously the same as N choose M"))  I mean, IIRC I took two+ years of various calculus and analytic geometry, plus the specific EE and Physics classes that used it and added things like phasors, but this CS-style math has me stumped!

Some schools are honest enough to separate "Computer Science" from "Computer Engineering."   Yeah for them!

I think any of CS, CE, or EE, will earn you a comfortable living, but your major "success track" is to go into management, or play "startup roulette."  :-(

[Simon]

From my experience, electronic engineering is all about abstracts.  In my undergrad degree (Electronic Engineering MEng) there was very little 'practical' teaching and everything was taught from a more fundamental viewpoint, a lot of abstract models etc.  Whilst some people would see this as a downside, it really isn't.  Except from the perspective of the future boss of a student who just wanted to coast through and pick up all the skills they would ever need for the rest of their life, it's horrific!  But for the right student who's capable of recognising where they need to improve and works continuously to build a familiarity with real circuits and can apply the abstracted models to real circuits, its a very powerful way to develop an electronic engineer who can think freely and isn't constrained by previously engrained instructions for debugging and design. 

I think, regardless of a person's primary educational experience, if the person is aware of all the initial abstracts it just takes a bit of thinking time to get the rest. Or at least that's what I gathered during my PhD.

I know I've taken a very academic perspective on this, its interesting to hear other perspectives, see what somebody from a less academic background makes of it,

You need a good balance, you will need to initially learn things abstractly and then understand the real life challenges you also have to deal with when implementing the abstract. I think this is where a lot of people have problems and are scared to try something that they were not taught to do.

[tszaboo]

No, school will not tell you how to design stuff. It was never the intention. Components and technologies come and go, and your knowledge about current components will be obsolete, that is why at EE you will learn programming on a 8051 or some other obsolete platform.
I've seen self-taught people with good skills, graduates and EEs dumb as a rock, and good EEs. The worst is the one who thinks they know everything.
In the end it all comes down to your intelligence and money. Who can be a good self-taught, if he graduates, in the same timeframe he could end up as a project manager. A below average graduated EE, would be the solder boy if he doesn't graduate. It also matters, what are your plans for life. It is shown, that getting a master degree might only worth on a ~20 year timeframe. I think an intelligent bachelor degree EE, with the 2 years extra work experience, could easily end up being the boss of the one with the masters degree, in fact I've seen this multiple times. And if you want to go higher, you need a different education anyway.
So it depends on your intelligence, where you live and how high you shoot.

[Simon]

I think academic achievement is over rated, the sooner you get out there and start doing the better. Obviously you need some formal learning to help launch you but spending years learning is no guarantee. Every project i have done has taught me something new. i was promted to learn to program C on AVR's because i needed to program a project for work and the arduino would not do and I could not constrain myself like that, so I bit the bullet and went for it and my first working C program on an AVR was for a customers product.

[penfold]

I would very much like to champion self teaching and real experience, but if I was was the lead designer within a small company and presented with two candidates, one self taught and one with a masters degree, I would have a hard time convincing myself that the self taught person would have a reasonable bank of knowledge to get going and be self sufficient

[Simon]

you would need to look at what the self taught person has for experience.

[penfold]

Indeed, but I would be looking for equal experience in the masters student.

[tszaboo]

you would need to look at what the self taught person has for experience.

If the self taught person even makes it through the screening of HR. Which is not always the case.
Telling people not to go to school is like telling them not to take medicine, because doctors are evil. Very ill advise. Even Bill Gates advices to go to uni. and there are few more successful dropouts than him.

[VK5RC]

As an outsider (non EE but 2 bachelor degrees and Masters equivalent) I would advise the OP to follow your real interests.
If 'hands on' practical stuff lights your fire, the Masters looks to me a lot like overkill.
If the newest direction of miniaturisation and theoretical matters interests you then follow that, a higher degree then sounds more essential.
One of my lecturers was originally a 'support officer' in the department, but had such an interest in frogs which he followed with much enthusiasm. I am delighted to say the Uni had the sense to award him a academic degree on the work he had done already and appoint him to the academic staff. He was held in very high regard throughout the University.

[c4757p]

Some schools are honest enough to separate "Computer Science" from "Computer Engineering."   Yeah for them!

Side note: Computer Engineering is often (at least in the US) more of a digital-focused EE. The CE students at my school do things like HDL coding. We'll call what you're thinking of something like Software Engineering.

[Simon]

you would need to look at what the self taught person has for experience.

If the self taught person even makes it through the screening of HR. Which is not always the case.
Telling people not to go to school is like telling them not to take medicine, because doctors are evil. Very ill advise. Even Bill Gates advices to go to uni. and there are few more successful dropouts than him.

As i mentioned above I'd recomend doing some formal education but degree collecting is just a hobby some people do and does not always mean they are very clever hands on. I got in through the back door and that obviously is not the best and fastest way. We do need to change our attitude to employment, qualifications don't guarantee a well rounded person in the field of work your after. There are many very clever people who drop out of formal education because of things like dyslexia (which i have). 40% of entrepreneurs are dyslexic i'm told but in any case before we start arguing about figures, it is well understood that many self made people have a learning disability, like myself they started their own business to escape the system and make it in their own way. sometimes they have been very outstanding in their fields as they see things differently. Many people with dyslexia and associated disabilities end up in engineering because they are good at it and see things differently and more broadly beating conventional thinking people to the end result as they have a more system wide approach.

As mentioned earlier, my employer refused to let me develop electronics in house for them (until recently), so I went away and designed a device on my own, 2 engineers knew the plan, one agreed that my idea had merit and supported with me by helping define specifications he would want to see, the other claimed we were wasting our time and that because he could buy something that was totally universal rather than targeted at one system and cost 5 times the price he could not see the point of our limited but cheaper device. He even tried to compare my controller to the price of a simple thermoswitch which was utterly stupid but he was so wrapped up in it there was no telling him. But i continued to develop and then one of our suppliers came in and the "pro" guy called me in to explain it, the UK rep for for the european company that is a large manufacturer was overjoyed with my unit saying that 2 months previously he had lost a contract because he could not offer something like this and all they had available was over ten times more expensive and did far more than required.......

Now they are offering to pay for me to get qualifications...... in a field they claimed up until a year ago they would never need an inhouse person working on

[nctnico]

you would need to look at what the self taught person has for experience.

If the self taught person even makes it through the screening of HR. Which is not always the case.
Telling people not to go to school is like telling them not to take medicine, because doctors are evil. Very ill advise. Even Bill Gates advices to go to uni. and there are few more successful dropouts than him.

As i mentioned above I'd recomend doing some formal education but degree collecting is just a hobby some people do and does not always mean they are very clever hands on. I got in through the back door and that obviously is not the best and fastest way. We do need to change our attitude to employment, qualifications don't guarantee a well rounded person in the field of work your after. There are many very clever people who drop out of formal education because of things like dyslexia (which i have). 40% of entrepreneurs are dyslexic i'm told but in any case before we start arguing about figures, it is well understood that many self made people have a learning disability,

Now turn that argument around: how many dyslectic people are entrepeneurs? Same for people with learning disabilities. The majority of the people will benefit from a formal education. The few who manage without education are only a small percentage. The rest is flipping burgers at McD.

[Simon]

As i mentioned above I'd recomend doing some formal education but degree collecting is just a hobby some people do and does not always mean they are very clever hands on. I got in through the back door and that obviously is not the best and fastest way. We do need to change our attitude to employment, qualifications don't guarantee a well rounded person in the field of work your after. There are many very clever people who drop out of formal education because of things like dyslexia (which i have). 40% of entrepreneurs are dyslexic i'm told but in any case before we start arguing about figures, it is well understood that many self made people have a learning disability,

Now turn that argument around: how many dyslectic people are entrepeneurs? Same for people with learning disabilities. The majority of the people will benefit from a formal education. The few who manage without education are only a small percentage. The rest is flipping burgers at McD.
[/quote]

5% of the population is dyslexic 40% of entrepreneurs are supposed to be dyslexic...... so more in percentage terms of self made people have a so called learning disability, when compared to the population as a whole,

[janengelbrecht]

Im an qualified ELectronics Engineer from University of Aarhus (Denmark).
I must say I´ve learned the most by myself. Only math , physics, DSP and circuit analysis i picked up at the university.
The rest i studied at home - and learned not only by reading but also by doing....
Since i graduated it has become a lot easier to learn the basic electronics because of computer tools like: Mathcad, Proteus Labcenter ISIS and other simulation software. A lot of stuff you can pick up by watching videos from universities and so on and follow up on the subjects on youtube.

But my experience has taught me that it aint so much what you actually lean at a university - its more about the degree itself.....thats the one you need when you go job hunting

[Simon]

But my experience has taught me that it aint so much what you actually lean at a university - its more about the degree itself.....thats the one you need when you go job hunting

sadly yes, which is why it took me so long to get to where I wanted to be.

[westfw]

Only math , physics, DSP and circuit analysis i picked up at the university.

Oh, is that all?  Didn't they make you take some chemistry, too?

You know, most universities publish their degree requirements, course descriptions, and sample class selections online, so you can look at exactly what's involved.   Here's one from my U:
http://www.ese.upenn.edu/current-students/undergraduates/ee-sample-2014.php

[miguelvp]

Universities are about learning how to learn.

Without that you are just an amateur at whatever you do (most of the time because there are exceptions)

[Simon]

yes just giving you information is not enough because the industry will change over your lifetime so you need to be equipped to find more information to either broaden your own knowledge or enable you to keep up to date.

[penfold]

That's where bodies like the IET are good.  They encourage continued professional development and have a reasonable number of courses and refreshers to keep engineers ahead of their game.  But, just like university and education, its all down to the particular person how much they get out of it.

[nctnico]

you would need to look at what the self taught person has for experience.

Still someone who has a degree has learned about taking on projects in an organised manner and more theory (*). That person is more likely to grow into being able to take on big projects quick. Experience is history. What can someone do in the future?

(*) That is if they actually earned their degree. I once dealt with a guy who had a Bachelors degree but he knew nothing he should know. It was more like he had a BS degree but he fooled HR.

[Simon]

Experience is history. What can someone do in the future?

Experience is a harder learnt lesson than that read off the black board. Surely a degree is History too ? you study for it, learn more abstract fact than practicality, learn to recite the theory on demand and do it that once. Then your in the real world, with real problems and your degree passing is history. My previous example of mistakes made by postgraduates is a classic. Lately I had the guy tell me he needed a different sensor because the one we chose didn't have enough resolution. What he meant was that he was not making the most of what he had available to him and wanted things handed to him on a silver plate. There are degree holders and there are engineers!

[Smokey]

I'm surprised more people don't have a computer engineering degree. 
I've always been interested in both CS and EE so computer engineering was an easy decision for me.  The required course work ended up being a pretty even split between computer science and electrical engineering.  I split my electives about down the middle as well.  We got to choose between a CS or an EE senior project and while I did an EE project, it was a really embedded system and ended up needing a fair bit of both code and hardware design.

Sure I didn't get the full depth of either program by itself, but since I wanted to do embedded systems anyway it was everything I needed.

At the small company I work we have some software guys and some hardware guys, but I'm the only guy that can really interface and be productive in both worlds, which makes me really useful.

I'm not sure how much programming a pure EE gets these days, but it's going to be harder and harder to do EE design without having at least a decent understanding of software.  Without doing a dual CS / EE degree, CE is a good compromise as far as I'm concerned. 

[miguelvp]

you would need to look at what the self taught person has for experience.

Still someone who has a degree has learned about taking on projects in an organised manner and more theory (*). That person is more likely to grow into being able to take on big projects quick. Experience is history. What can someone do in the future?

^  this plus you know they probably did some group projects because working on a team is important, no one wants to hire a hero type.

[westfw]

Interesting case in point about how much EE takes math knowledge for granted:
   https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/help-with-kirchoffs-circuit-law/
Ie: the lesson on Kirchoff's law assumes that once you have your set of simultaneous equations,  you're DONE.  Which is not so if you have forgotten (or never been taught) how to solve simultaneous equations.
It may not be a good example (simultaneous linear equations are what?  Middle school algebra?  And the only excuse for not knowing how to do them is that you didn't think it was important to remember...)   But it's exactly the problem I'm having in more advanced CS MOOCs I'm trying to take: the prof will be "then we're obviously reach HERE, and we're done!", and I'm "WTF?" and then "oh, you might need to review your mumble and frotz, if it's been a while..."

[photon]

... Computer science is a narrow field that doesn't contain much in the way of science and contains very little mathematics...

I'd have to disagree with this. Computer Science is a rather narrow field, that contains a lot of science and a lot of mathematics, more mathematics than many people would have wished. Other than that, I agree that Electrical Engineering is a broader field and a hardware guy would probably be better served by such a course.

Programming is mathematics (for machines) and Computer Science is programming.

[Simon]

Sure I didn't get the full depth of either program by itself, but since I wanted to do embedded systems anyway it was everything I needed.

Ditto, I've learnt what i need of both and don't take either for granted and am prepared to explore both to find my solution. most of my problems dealing with subcontractors have been "interfacing" many people in the electronics industry are actually just programmers. As soon as they are out of the chip they are buggered. Like the guy that wants a magical sensor rather than do basic signal processing in analogue. Granted I've never done it myself as I've never had the need but I'd explore it if I had to and turn my theory into practice.

[westfw]

Programming is mathematics (for machines) and Computer Science is programming.

I think I disagree with both statements.  Especially the second one - you can program for decades without ever doing any computer science, instead being mired in the practicalities of actually making things work, and using the tools/theory provided by the computer scientists.  I did.  I mean, if I hire someone to work on the user interface of an iPhone, they're not going to be developing new sorting algorithms, or even doing analysis of existing sorting algorithms on the specific dataset that needs to be sorted.  Probably, they won't be doing any sorting at all.  But they might be finding buffer overflow bugs in someone else's regular expression compiler, undesirable behavior of the specific memory allocator/garbage collector that is being used, and adding internal visibility so that they can figure out what is happening...

[Lawsen]

I have an electronics theory certificate from a community college, BSci. in earth science geology, and science degree, and maybe trying for a MA in volcano-logy geophysics. 

Electronics is very large field from a store clerk at Best Buy trying to sell a piece of electronics hardware or part to an BSEE level engineer working at a company trying to perfect a product to an I Pod girl in main land China assembling an I Phone at Foxcon Company for Apple and living in the company dormitory to a Bangladeshi dismantling electronics waste and burning them for the precious metals.  The common theme is electronics. 

BSEE is usually required for work.
Electronics certificate is usuall minimum for work, but often the job market is too competitive, so a BSEE is often needed. 
MS EE is for research experience.
Ph.D EE is for teaching at an university.

The I Pod girl and electronics dismantle people have a lot of hands on experience and often knows more than the rest of us, because they see what is actually put together. 
 

[calexanian]

Same here. I have my Electronic Technician Certificate from a local community college. I already had my job at that time. I just did it to keep people from asking what qualified me to work on our systems. Believe it or not it actually works. It hangs on my office wall and i point to it and believe it or not, With all of the other awards and crap up there for various things, that little certificate gets the most attention! Incredibly valuable program here at Fresno City College. It was actually better than the one at the university, and since i already had not only a job, but my own business, not to mention a budget to stick to, the choice was clear. I also left qualified to get my electrical contractors lic (All I needed was to work for a contractor for the required in field experience) and that was to be my backup plan if our business failed. Additionally I also got cisco certified at some low level and some PLC and industrial electronics certification. Not sure what exactly, but it all helped along the way. DC/AC foundations of Electronics was our core textbook, and i must say it really is a great book. Everything you need to learn, or at least know where to go to find the equation for most of what pops up out there.

[Smokey]

...
The I Pod girl and electronics dismantle people have a lot of hands on experience and often knows more than the rest of us, because they see what is actually put together.

Careful here.  Give the design engineers a little more credit than that.  Pointing out ways in which something was poorly designed after doing a mechanical assembly (dis-assembly) is very different than doing a design from scratch.  Someone may be able to point out a hand full of things that could be done better, but that's ignoring the hundreds and hundreds of design decisions which worked fine. 

[zapta]

I'm surprised more people don't have a computer engineering degree. 

I do, among others.

[jhalar]

I'm surprised more people don't have a computer engineering degree. 

I have a computer engineering degree. Liked the computer science part more that I went and did a Masters of Computer Science.
First few jobs was as an EE but now for many years I have been a Network and Communications Engineer (I say to people I work in IT).

[nanofrog]

I'm surprised more people don't have a computer engineering degree.

CE here.

[Simon]

I just did it to keep people from asking what qualified me to work on our systems. Believe it or not it actually works. It hangs on my office wall and i point to it and believe it or not, With all of the other awards and crap up there for various things, that little certificate gets the most attention! Incredibly valuable program here at Fresno City College.

Reminds me of some of the scenes out of "micro men" when they go to the bank to borrow money the bank manager asks what university the guy went to so his friend/business partner points to the prestigious one that can be seen from the bank managers office window where he studied oxidation (not related to electronics that the loan was for) and the bank manager is happy.........

[calexanian]

I just did it to keep people from asking what qualified me to work on our systems. Believe it or not it actually works. It hangs on my office wall and i point to it and believe it or not, With all of the other awards and crap up there for various things, that little certificate gets the most attention! Incredibly valuable program here at Fresno City College.

Reminds me of some of the scenes out of "micro men" when they go to the bank to borrow money the bank manager asks what university the guy went to so his friend/business partner points to the prestigious one that can be seen from the bank managers office window where he studied oxidation (not related to electronics that the loan was for) and the bank manager is happy.........

Never underestimate the power bullshit has on the empowered, yet uninformed.  O0

[zapta]

BSEE is usually required for work.
Electronics certificate is usuall minimum for work, but often the job market is too competitive, so a BSEE is often needed. 
MS EE is for research experience.
Ph.D EE is for teaching at an university.

PhD is more common in the industry these days. It's the new Masters, just as the age of 80 is the new 60.

A few years ago we needed a Flash programmer for a UI job and we found one in the company. Since I majored in Math I offered to help with the mathematical aspects (triangulation and spherical projection) but he kindly refused and said that he try to do it himself. As we worked together I learned that he has a PhD in Math from Yale.

[Simon]

I just did it to keep people from asking what qualified me to work on our systems. Believe it or not it actually works. It hangs on my office wall and i point to it and believe it or not, With all of the other awards and crap up there for various things, that little certificate gets the most attention! Incredibly valuable program here at Fresno City College.

Reminds me of some of the scenes out of "micro men" when they go to the bank to borrow money the bank manager asks what university the guy went to so his friend/business partner points to the prestigious one that can be seen from the bank managers office window where he studied oxidation (not related to electronics that the loan was for) and the bank manager is happy.........

Never underestimate the power bullshit has on the empowered, yet uninformed.  O0

Yep, source of the banking crisis, people with the power to invest but too uninformed to realize they were being sold ten-hand investments.

[Kjelt]

My advice, just do what is required for a job that makes you happy and earns enough to make your family happy. Which unfortunately is not always the same job.
What I mean with that is that almost everyone here on the forum would dream of a day job just inventing stuff, soldering and programming and whatever but that those jobs are getting scarce and tend to be underpaid.
So better have a job that you can live with in the daytime paying the bills and do the inventing and soldering in your own time as a hobby (or own business/ or second job if you're real good) then being squeezed by a company that will fire your ass when your >50 anyway. A bit sceptic but when I look around in my circle I see less and less engineers >50 being (re-)hired by companies and only those engineers that have hopped through many companies and never sat around for more then 5 to 8 years per company make it, but then those are probably the very good all round engineers versus the excellent but only one skill-specialized / one company engineers.

Just saying go as high as your brain takes you (if that is PhD do the PhD, if that is BSc do the Bsc) and after the degree look where you have to go or apply to do what you like, contact everyone in your social network that has a job you might like and talk to him/her and ask to spent a couple of hours in her company to see what he/she does and if that is a job that you like to do for more then a couple of years. In practice however a lot of people end up in jobs that are available and not exactly in the job they wanted to be in, but that is ok if it pays the bills and you can always keep looking for that dream-job.

[Simon]

Totally agree.

I don't earn much but then I'm unqualified although my employer is offering to pay to get me qualified which is good. I run my own business too but that has not really taken off yet but then it started as a joke and is run as a bit of a hobby (gives me and excuse to buy stuff). I'm starting to work at it more seriously now.

At my day job I'm the resident expert in electronics (yes feel free to shudder) so if that is what I'm doing I'm not being hassled by people above to design a certain way and I don't have to oversee anyone I just get on with it on my own which is nice. I also have to do mechanical design work which is ok unless i have a customer that I have to deal with through my MD (who won't fight our corner) and has silly ideas and we have to keep them happy because i think we take "the customer is always right" bit a bit too far as you can't reinvent physics and the foundations of engineering.

Providing I'm not being hassled for time I'm happy. I've been asked I've i can go higher and really I don't think so and I don't think I want to. Yes i can take on more complicated projects single handedly but not anything more than that.

[con-f-use]

I don't know if anybody said that, but if you want to do semi-conductor stuff and work with the bare Silicon, you'd probably be better of with physics. You can specialize in semi-conductor physics.

[Simon]

I don't know if anybody said that, but if you want to do semi-conductor stuff and work with the bare Silicon, you'd probably be better of with physics. You can specialize in semi-conductor physics.

Well that is hardly electronics and is physics. I bet many designers of semiconductors can't design a circuit if you asked.

[miguelvp]

I don't know if anybody said that, but if you want to do semi-conductor stuff and work with the bare Silicon, you'd probably be better of with physics. You can specialize in semi-conductor physics.

Well that is hardly electronics and is physics. I bet many designers of semiconductors can't design a circuit if you asked.

I would think more the other way around with the predominance of SoC chips that just need some decoupling caps and you are done.

[Zero999]

People forget that Bill Gates is an entrepreneur. He has never been an excellent programmer, engineer or computer scientist, just look at how bad the software he wrote was. It was the fact he managed to market his crap software and build a successful business which has made him successful. Nowadays Microsoft have improved the quality of their software and I doubt any of Bill's code remains part of any modern software.

I have higher national diploma in electrical and electronic engineering and have no intention of topping it up to a degree. I don't care about earning lots of money and just want a stress free life. I'm happy to keep electronics as a hobby.