TL;DR: Browsing LinkedIn gives me some idea of what goes on in different places, but nothing beats asking a local. So... how is the job market where you live? How big, what niches, is it competitive, is the pay good? I would appreciate all insights, but specially Boston, Philadelphia, Birmingham AL, and Silicon Valley itself for reference.
Hi everyone,
I'm thinking about the next years in my career and wanted to get your opinions and perceptions on where are the EE jobs in the US.
For some background, I want to do electronics design engineering. I am looking for an entry level position in that specialty. I've had electronics as a hobby since I was 13. At some point I watched EEVblog for hours every day after school. I have 2 years of manufacturing and test engineering experience, and 3 years of unrelated network engineering experience before that. Right now I'm in grad school for a masters in EE.
I would consider myself competent technically, and a great troubleshooter. I think I convey this very well in interviews, but my resume/experience is very fragmented so recruiters don't know what to do with me (if I get to the interview, I get hired about 30% of the time). The social aspect of the manufacturing environment wears me down a LOT. No problems in network engineering though, office environment with occasional field work with colleagues and no customers. I also worked as a lab technician for some months and it was great. So I do best at a job where I see a few familiar faces, and can spend my energy on the engineering.
Last year I moved to New York City for family reasons. I was expecting a wider variety of electronics engineering jobs, but this doesn't seem to be the case for the city. Most job offerings seem to be either for manufacturing in New Jersey, manufacturing in Long Island, or related to defense contractors (judging by the secret clearance requirements).
Realistically, I could only work in Long Island but the salaries are not that good. In the city proper, there is a small amount of jobs in tech that pay well, but they are few and far in between, specially entry level. Colleagues in tech have been laid off and haven’t found work in months, except for a handful that got hired by a startup (those were senior positions and they are senior-level engineers). All in all, things seem slow in NYC tech.
So for my wife and I's next move, I want to get a feel for the jobs in other areas before moving cities. I think we need to consider job markets for the both of us for the next place we move to.
Thank you and all the best to you
PS, moderation team: I'm posting in General because it's is neither looking for work nor offering work, I hope this is an acceptable choice.