Looking for job/career advice, possibly graduate school

[rheb1026]

Long story short: I have a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, but didn't have enough classes (and time) to complete an EE minor before graduating. I did four out of the six or seven courses required by the school. Anyhow, my job is about 85% EE type responsibility - circuit design, board layout, firmware, etc. with the rest being ME related - 3D modeling, engineering drawings, and pretty basic mechanical design. I work at a small company so have to wear many hats, which I really enjoy. Being out of school for a few years and working, I can definitely say that my passion is for electronics and that's where I'd like my career to go.

I am wanting to start looking for another job in the near future and my preference would be for something involving electronics. I feel that my degree is really the thing that is holding me back. I see plenty of job listings for electrical engineers that I feel I'm probably quite capable of, but never end up sending my resume because I feel an employer wouldn't want a semi-formally trained EE. Maybe I'm wrong about that? Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Either as employee or employer?

The other option I'm considering is to apply for graduate school for electrical engineering. This really terrifies me since I've been away from the heavy-duty math for so long, but I think I stand a good chance of being accepted to my alma mater with maybe a refresher class or two on the upper level undergrad classes I never took. I really have no desire to pursue a graduate degree besides the fact that I would now have an EE degree to put on paper.

I guess another option would be to go back and complete the rest of the undergrad EE classes, but it seems that there are only two ABET accredited schools offering online programs, and most local schools don't offer evening undergrad classes for working folk

[coppice]

You have found a wonderfully reliable way to not get a job - don't apply.

[rheb1026]

You're absolutely right, and there's no harm in applying. Thank you

[Mr. Scram]

You're absolutely right, and there's no harm in applying. Thank you

Test the waters and hopefully you'll be 'right. If not, you have material to broaden your search. If that still doesn't pan out, then you may start considering additional training.

Many people might hold you back, but you shouldn't be one of them.

[rhb]

Go for it.  You'll have a big advantage over other MSEEs with your ME background.

Short story.  I got a BA in English lit for which I had to take precalculus which is just basic algebra and trig.  I taught myself algebra in grades 5 & 6 and trig in the 8th.  I was *very* bored by precalculus and got a C because I didn't do any homework and was slow at exam time.

A couple of years after graduation I was back in school for an MS in geology which had a requirement for Calculus I.  I showed up for class  and took a 100 point quiz on algebra and  trig which I had not done for over 5 years.  The next day the teacher handed back the papers and said, "Students, if you made a 17 or below on this quiz you need to drop this course and take precalculus because statistically it can be shown you won't pass."  I was looking at a 17!  No well in hell I was taking algebra and trig again!  So I did calculus problems 4-5 hours a day, 5-6 days a week.  I gradually went from 2 out of 20 on the weekly quiz to 18-19 and beating out the class hotshot.  I had so much fun taking Cal I I took II & III and Diff Eq.  I bailed on Advanced Applied after a few weeks because it took a huge amount of time and I had no idea what to do with it.  I was looking at rock slices through a microscope.

Later I went back to grad school a 2nd time in geophysics at UT Austin where most of my course work was mathematics.  I recently did a year long binge teaching myself compressive sensing which is hands down the hairiest math I've ever dealt with.

A big advantage of grad school is that you usually only have to take 12 hours.  That gives you a lot more time for doing homework.

My advice is this:

Apply to grad school in EE at several places.  If they offer to pay you to go to school, take the job.

In any case, you should spend 4 hours a week reading technical material you *think* might be useful for your job.  If you're not prepared to invest in yourself, why should anyone else?  I made a lot of money off of things I taught myself in the evening.

[cdev]

Get a degree, get what you need to work but also don't get into debt because big shifts could occur in the world of work in the next few years with wages. Wages could get a lot lower.

[CatalinaWOW]

You haven't said why you are looking forward to changing jobs. 

If you are looking to move to a large company and working almost purely on electronics you should definitely get a degree appropriate to the job you want to do.  The HR departments of large organizations are very good at verifying that degree and work history match the specification.

If you want to focus on electronics with little or no mechanical work you may be able to find jobs without the degree.  This is best facilitated by networking.  At small to mid size companies more emphasis is placed on what you can do than on the paper behind you.  The paper is only an aide in searching for the people they want.

If you are comfortable with the current mix of assignments and merely are looking for a geographic change of employment you are actually a very valuable commodity and should have little trouble finding a job.  Once you get on you can work to shift the balance between ME and EE to your liking. 

[rheb1026]

Thanks for all the replies and encouraging words. The main reason for changing jobs is due to management at the current company. The manager (non-engineer) overseeing us likes to play engineer and micromanage everything.

Otherwise I'm quite happy with the current mix of assignments and really like being involved in both disciplines.

Get a degree, get what you need to work but also don't get into debt because big shifts could occur in the world of work in the next few years with wages. Wages could get a lot lower.

This brings up an interesting point. I've seen graduate certificate programs, which are only 4 or 5 graduate courses. Are these of any value to employers? This may be a good way for me to get the 'formal' education without all the extra time and money. And maybe will allow me to choose some of the more practical courses rather than the more theoretical.

[tggzzz]

The manager (non-engineer) overseeing us likes to play engineer and micromanage everything.

Can you wait for the manager to move on or be reassigned?

If you decide to move on, then your CV and covering letter should make it clear what you have been achieving (not merely doing), and why you prefer doing that to mechanical engineering. Dedication and interest are significant.

You may be able to find a company which values your cross-disciplinary skills.

There is a tendency for HR-droids in traditional large companies to try to pigeon-hole candidates. I've had "now are you really a hardware engineer or a software engineer?"; I made my excuses and left (I was too polite to say "have you been listening to what I said?"!).

[rhb]

There are bad managers everywhere :-( Sometimes you can't avoid them and have to endure it for a while.

University education has become a scam run for the benefit of faculty and staff.  I was asked to sit on an external advisory board at my alma mater.  All they actually were interested in was my money.  I stopped giving them any.

If you feel you would benefit from a formal course, do that.  The fact that you are working and taking a formal course demonstrates your drive.  That has value with employers even if the content is not relevant to their needs.  The piece of paper may or may not matter.  It's just a recommended structure.  But don't go into debt for a graduate degree.  Buying and reading books is cheaper and the schedule much more flexible.

Getting a BS you learn how to learn.  In an MS you learn something.  With a PhD you acquire the ability to teach yourself. 

The most important thing I learned in grad school was that you do it the first time to learn what you're doing, the second time to learn how and the third time to get it done.  If it's critical to your dissertaiton, you do it once more to make sure you got the same result.

If you observe that there is an area at work where you think your skills are deficient, buy a book or two on the subject and read it.  If you find the subject matter difficult, read it once or twice.  If the writing is bad, buy a different book and read that before you reread the first book.  If you always have such a book that you are reading and you read 4-6 of these a year, when you go for an interview you have a great subject of conversation that demonstrates why they should hire you.  It also means that if someone doing that work leaves the company, you  are likely  to get the job.

I'll close by noting that most of my jobs found me rather than me looking for them.  And they sought me, by name, because I have 80 ft of computer books in my library.  No formal education other than a 1 hr WATFIV  introduction to FORTRAN programming course.  The books cover everything from CPU design (Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach) to algorithms (Knuth & Sedgwick among others) to software engineering (Code Complete and numerous others).  Excpet for a BA in literature, all my formal training is in the sciences.

Read essays by and about Jim Williams, Bob Pease  and Bob Widlar.  Keep a sense of play.  If it gets tedious, read something else.  Most of all,

Have Fun!
Reg

[rheb1026]

Thank you both for the words of wisdom, I do appreciate it!

No matter what, I will keep learning and reading on my own time. I have amassed quite the collection of used textbooks from ebay, book swaps, etc. I definitely have lots more things I'd like to learn than I have time to learn them

[tggzzz]

I definitely have lots more things I'd like to learn than I have time to learn them

That is a serious problem that has become worse in recent years. Optimists will regard that as A Good Thing.

[rhb]

Thank you both for the words of wisdom, I do appreciate it!

No matter what, I will keep learning and reading on my own time. I have amassed quite the collection of used textbooks from ebay, book swaps, etc. I definitely have lots more things I'd like to learn than I have time to learn them

Danger, Will Robinson! 

Be careful, or this could be *your* 2 car "garage".

It's about 5000 volumes.  It really took off when I was pursuing a PhD at UT Austin.  The bookstore set up some large tables and filled them with remaindered textbooks for $1 each.  That was cheap enough that I bought books just to have a reference on the subject.  After another 30 years it has become the 800 lb gorilla in my life. The LHS computer section is 80 ft of shelving  The 3 tiers on the RHS are the general section.  The back side of the CS section is geoscience and mathematics.  I can generally find references for any subject  that comes up which is a huge pleasure.  When I lived in Dallas I  visited 3 used bookstores every weekend for about 10 years.  It took 2 people about 3 weeks full time to pack the thing as you have to sort by size to avoid boxes collapsing.  It was around 120-140 cartons weighing about 75 lbs each.

The shelving is used library shelving.  It was pricey at over $3000, but vastly better than the either the metal shelves or the wall hung shelves I used before.  Metal shelves are cheap and will work very well if you screw short pieces of PVC to the supports to serve as bookends.  However, the cheap ones  are right at load capacity and the shelves can easily be buckled.  But they work OK if you wire them together with soft iron tie wire such as is used for  concrete reinforcement.

I had the great good fortune that my mother taught me to read at a very early age.  In the 3rd grade I completed the SRI reading program up through grade 8.  As an undergraduate I could read fiction at 600-800 wpm. Technical literature at slower rates with math at a few pages per hour or day.  My personal belief is that my real edge professionally is that I can plow through a 1000 page manual in a couple of days.  So if I'm working with a group of people and something comes up that none of us know, I'm the expert a week later.  There is a lot of context you must already  have to do such things. 

I generally view it as making little side bets on what it might be useful to learn.  I pursue it while it is fun and switch to something else when it is not.  I was laid off in 1991.  Just before I got the axe I bought a Sun 3/60 and taught myself Unix system administration for 4 months 10-12 hrs per day.  I then spent 5-6 weeks teaching myself lex and yacc, the Unix compiler tools because I thought it might prove useful  After over 5 months without work I landed my first contract job.  My initial assignment was a perfect fit for lex & yacc.  The team lead had allotted 2 months for the task.  I was done in 2 weeks and had done a great many other important  tasks on the side.  The most significant being replacing all the VAX run time library calls in a 500,000 line code base with calls to bespoke routines that used the standard C library.  It took a couple of days to write and test that script, but it was vastly faster than doing it manually which had been the plan until I came along.

Have Fun!

[Syntax_Error]

I admire your personal library and your story. My library is much much smaller, but is still precious to me and grows slowly over time. I like how organized and clean yours is. Have you ever considered fire suppression and/or insurance against loss?

[IanB]

Long story short: I have a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, but didn't have enough classes (and time) to complete an EE minor before graduating. I did four out of the six or seven courses required by the school. Anyhow, my job is about 85% EE type responsibility - circuit design, board layout, firmware, etc. with the rest being ME related - 3D modeling, engineering drawings, and pretty basic mechanical design. I work at a small company so have to wear many hats, which I really enjoy. Being out of school for a few years and working, I can definitely say that my passion is for electronics and that's where I'd like my career to go.

I am wanting to start looking for another job in the near future and my preference would be for something involving electronics. I feel that my degree is really the thing that is holding me back. I see plenty of job listings for electrical engineers that I feel I'm probably quite capable of, but never end up sending my resume because I feel an employer wouldn't want a semi-formally trained EE. Maybe I'm wrong about that? Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Either as employee or employer?

Short answer: You have an engineering degree. You have relevant experience in electronics plus useful wider experience in the mechanical side. Nothing is holding you back except your lack of confidence. If you see a job that interests you that you can do, then apply for it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Here's a little secret. It doesn't matter what branch of engineering you graduated in since your practical working experience is far more important to employers.

[rhb]

I admire your personal library and your story. My library is much much smaller, but is still precious to me and grows slowly over time. I like how organized and clean yours is. Have you ever considered fire suppression and/or insurance against loss?

ROFL ;-)  Yes on both. I have  insurance for it and I bought 300 ft of 1.5" rack & reel fire hose.  I live at the top of a wooded  ravine.   When we had a bad drought a few years ago, I put sprinklers on my roof.  Fortunately it is rainy now, but an important project is to build a cart for my hose so I can run to the nearest hydrant, hookup and run off in the direction of the fire with the hose feeding out the back.

The library was worse. I spent a day or two cleaning it up a couple of months  ago.  But entropy sets in quickly around me.

@rheb1026  Pay close attention to what IanB wrote.  It's spot on.  However, it doesn't have to be work experience.  Handsome is as handsome does.  If you can do it, the people you want to work for will notice.  I should not recommend graduate school in your case unless someone is prepared to pay for it.  Much more effective to just try to anticipate where things are headed at work and be the first one to acquire the skills.  However, if you can get by on a grad student stipend for a few years you definitely should do it.  It opens up a whole new world.  I did not get my PhD.  After 4 years at Austin as student slave to a MicroVAX II, I proved my supervisor wrong on a major point of signal processing and lost my stipend.  He was going blind from retinal detachments and thus under a great deal of stress.  It was not fair to me, but I forgave him long ago and told him so on an airplane trip back form a convention when i happened to sit next to him.  As it happens I have had retinal detachments in both eyes myself.  Except that I can still see.  His surgeries were not successful.

I got the PhD in substance in those 4 years and I have been paid commensurately throughout my career.  I got my last job because a former boss contacted a mutual friend (Stanford PhD) and left a message, "My programmer just quit and I'm looking for a Reg Beardsley type."  Great news for me as I was unemployed and ironically writing software related to my argument with my supervisor.  Another friend had subsequently published a paper explaining the issue I had had the dispute over but did not fully understand.

The fact that you have asked the question you have suggests that you will do very well.  Nothing will guarantee it, but it's a very good sign.

BTW My undergraduate degree was English lit.  Strangely I have gotten very particular about shall and will of late.  Go go figure.