Erm, I don't know what voltage actually is.

March 28, 2007 11:28 AM

I'm a straight-A electrical engineering student but I have almost no understanding of basic theory and principles. Will I get a job or into grad school? (long post inside)

I never pay attention in lectures, read my textbook, or study at all - at the most an hour or so before an exam. I know the definitions of most things, but have no real understanding of them or what the definitions actually mean. I treat everything as some kind of special puzzle or game without understanding the basic theory behind it.

For example, I don't really know what Laplace transforms are. I can do them(because that's just matching things up in a chart), and they pop up in my work all the time, but I have no clue what it really means.

Come to think of it, I don't have a very good understanding of what voltage actually is, although I understand perfectly how it relates to current and impedance. I got an A in the required statistics class, but I still have no idea what a standard derivation means (although I could calculate it if you gave me the formula).

I'm just going through the motions in all my classes: I know how to calculate all sorts of different values and make a bunch of nice plots, but don't ask me what they mean, let alone to actually use it to make something. I only learn the bare minimum to complete assignments and get A's on exams. I usually forget everything once I finish a course and relearn things when necessary.

This approach has been enough to get me straight A's in almost every course I've ever taken since high school, but as I near graduation, I begin to worry. I don't have anything more than a slight familiarity with the content of the courses I've already taken. About the same as if I had never taken them and instead just read a Wikipedia article on the topic. In other words, I feel like I haven't learned anything and have been spending the last three years doing meaningless calculations(which I have since forgotten).

I guess it doesn't help that I went into EE solely for job prospects (I'd be doing comparative linguistics if I lived in a perfect world).

So here are my questions:

1. Is this typical?

2. I understand most companies will retrain new recruits anyway and send them to work in something specific. If so, what's the point of getting an EE degree other than for the resume? Do you use the stuff you learned in school on a regular basis?

3. Related to number 2, sometimes I get the feeling that needing an EE(or any) degree for a job has less to do with learning things, and more to do with filtering out people who are unable to work through an EE degree, or selecting people who have the type of thinking/abilities to perform well in this type of job. Are my suspicions correct?

4. Does this stuff "all make sense" after a while, or are there any working EEs/grad students who still don't really understand what this stuff actually means?

5. Do you need to have this kind of understanding of theory to get into grad school or get a job in EE?

6. Do you really need a "passion" for EE to get through a grad degree? I find some fields in EE more interesting than others, but am pretty indifferent to it on the whole; as I mentioned earlier, I'm just in for the money.

Thanks for reading through this post!

posted by pravit to education (41 comments total)

Let me answer you by asking you a question one of my former profs would use with her advisees:

"Why the hell would you waste your life doing something that you didn't really want to do?"

Your answer to this question is quite likely your answer to this AskMe. Be honest with yourself, even if it means you've been wasting your own time.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:43 AM on March 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

At some point you are going to hit a big wall very hard.
posted by unSane at 11:44 AM on March 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

You might want to read Feynman's book. It's not all relevant, though his lectures in Brazil bear a relation to what you are talking about. It is not uncommon for some universities to teach the book but not teach skills and thinking. It is also unfortunate especially in engineering where what you do and design can often be life-critical systems.

So yeah, it happens. You can probably get a job with your skills. I can't say if you'll be good at your job.

Are you going to an American university?
posted by chairface at 11:48 AM on March 28, 2007

For what it's worth, I used to feel the same way about all things electrical. I never had the impression to really get it. I went on to study physics, realized at some point that the answer to what a voltage really is can be arbitrarily complex, forgot everything about it, and now treat electricity as something that kinda flows out of the wall and gets eaten by my devices. Jobwise, I'm doing fine.
posted by dhoe at 11:48 AM on March 28, 2007

I think your suspicions in number 3 are pretty much correct for real-world engineering work, but probably not for grad school. I've been an EE for 16 years and I don't think I've ever needed to do calculus.
The big difference is that I have a passion for EE, and couldn't imagine spending my life doing something I had no interest in.
posted by rocket88 at 11:49 AM on March 28, 2007

My brother is a successful EE and is brilliant in an extremely narrow field, holding patents and being generally respected by his peers for his expertise. He is, however, charmingly inept at all things electrical. He scarcely understands the basics of electronics design or electrical transmission and dismisses all practical questions as things for "technicians." By all accounts, he is a stone cold wizard on the mathematics of extremely highly charged electrical fields and the tipping point at which a spark will bridge the two electrodes and screw up the field. He knows the practical use of his specialty, but doesn't really seem to care about anything other than the math.

Aside from your Laplace transforms problem, I think the rest of your self-description would accurately describe him. Well, actually, he didn't get all As because he couldn't be half bothered to make the effort in some of his classes.
posted by Lame_username at 11:53 AM on March 28, 2007

Life in the real world of engineering is quite plug and chug. You have demonstrated through your grades that you are able to do this. You will succeed as an engineer no doubt.
posted by caddis at 11:58 AM on March 28, 2007

"Why the hell would you waste your life doing something that you didn't really want to do?"

Because I don't want to be a jobless, heavily indebted P.h.D. in a fascinating subject.

The only academic subject I'd really enjoy studying would be linguistics, and I have read and heard enough to know that job prospects for people with P.h.D.s in linguistics are very small. Assuming I managed to find a job in something unrelated to studying ancient languages and their relations to each other, the outcome is the same(doing something I didn't really want to do), except that I'd be a lot poorer.

I've heard the "follow your dreams" speech countless times, guys, and already made up my mind, so I'd appreciate if any other answers would not criticize my life choices.

chairface: Yes, I'm going to an American public university.
posted by pravit at 11:59 AM on March 28, 2007

1) Yes
2 & 3) Because you will start to understand it as you work with it. Also, you know more than you think you do. Workplace issues will come up and you'll recognize a pattern from school and you'll apply a solution. If it works, great. If it doesn't, you'll have to figure out why and in the process you'll understand both the problem and the solution better.
posted by DU at 12:00 PM on March 28, 2007

Shit, if you're going into a field just for the money, why the hell would you pick engineering? With straight As and top-notch test-taking skills, you should definitely look into medical or law school. Maybe get a masters in biomedical engineering first if you decide you want to be a doctor; it should be no problem to get into a good masters program.

To answer your actual questions... My experience is with the academic path in another engineering field, but I know a lot of academic EEs. You might be able to manage a masters program, but if you're looking at getting a Ph.D., yeah, you're gonna hit the wall pretty quick and pretty hard.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:02 PM on March 28, 2007

You are not alone. I am not exactly the same as you (as I did do the required reading, went to lectures, etc.) ... but I went to business school. There was a strong push by students and perhaps even by faculty to be pragmatic. Many upper division calculus and statistics classes I took (really it was how to apply statistics to quality control, continuous project management, etc.), I was told to "just understand how to do the formula".

After I graduated I became very neurotic about not really understanding anything and just being able to spout out how things are. This really lead me down the road to start a very basic level of mathematics, where I started to deviate from having an intuitive understanding -- that is calculus. I read a series of books (The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development) simultaneously while studying some fundamental papers in finance and my field, namely Bachelier's Theory of Speculation. I took a very detailed and thought out course on the origins of finance up until the Black-Scholes model and some papers after that.

What I came to find out:

(1) A lot of things must be taken on faith to be pragmatic and not lost to purely intellectual endeavors. I understand Brownian motion, I understand binomial theory, I do not understand why it works in markets and why it fails. I am not alone in this, these are very basic questions that leads people to question the entire system or modify existing models to compensate.

(2) Some very basic philosophical problems of calculus were rather glossed over in my calculus and calculus of probability classes. These problems kept Archimedes from developing the calculus and took a century of doubt after the modern discovery of calculus for the mathematic community to come to generally accept calculus. I hope I did not just botch the history of calculus for the mathematics people out there.

I realize that this is rather a personal take, but I was haunted with not really understanding some things I thought I was suppose to understand intuitively. I began to doubt myself and believe that I was not as smart as my peers (even though I graduated towards the top of my class and never had trouble with tests and such).

This really stems from my philosophical and intellectual upbringing and I was somewhat disappointed that many college classes were geared toward just learning the pragmatism of a given profession, when I believe such things would come easily and college courses should stay away from Platonicity and teach us to be more skeptical and the problems in modern thought.

I realize that was somewhat of a derail, but when I read your questions I thought immediately of myself. I recommend you start reading up on the philosophy of science and see where it takes you, especially some counter-enlightenment thinkers. Some of the big players on the field (and I don't mean to patronize you if you have already read them) are Karl Popper and his responses to the Vienna Circle and Wittgenstein. I have not really progressed beyond them as their work is extensive and I just really started questioning this in the last year.

Realize that yes, you can get a job if you are as smart as you say you are. The world is full of people who are smart but don't question theory. I do not know if you are ambivalent towards theory because it is presented in a bad way or you are really not an intellectually motivated person.

Again, I never really understood advanced things intuitively, I had to go back and read the original papers and the history of the development of the idea. I do not know how you can understand such advanced ideas intuitive by just reading the equations and how they are currently used, I think it leads to a lot of people being unaware of the pitfalls and the original intentions of the equations. A good quote is "science is the progression of funerals", Newtonian physics worked until people began working on a more fundamental level and then realized that Newtonian physics only really worked in the aggregate. I do not know what field you will be getting into but developing circuit boards will probably get you by with knowledge you know now, going into an esoteric EE field will require you to truly understand and look in depth.

In many practical fields, theory is often glossed over (as has been my experience). Don't let that discourage you and think that the theories and fundamental concepts aren't important, or come to an existential crisis that you are coming to now. I hope this helps.
posted by geoff. at 12:05 PM on March 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

That said, once you hit that wall, you're going to be forced to understand this stuff. It's my experience that a lot of people going into grad programs only have the most cursory plug-and-chug understanding of the basics, and grad school becomes a trial-by-fire to get a solid grip on things. This is especially true if you wind up having to teach.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:05 PM on March 28, 2007

So here's my problem... I graduated with an EE degree, but by my junior year I knew I hated electrical stuff, so I started taking ME classes. I'd completed the minimum EE requirements -- which meant I didn't have a ton of intuitive depth in anything electrical -- , but then I was stuck trying to get a job with a degree I had no interest in. My solution? I've been doing electrical QA for about eight months (all I need is the ability to read a schematic, use a voltmeter, and apply the process of elimination) while working my way into higher-level systems engineering. It's served me very well. When I make it to grad school, I want to do controls/robotics, so the ME classes will help out more there.

Also, don't underestimate the value of an engineering degree in other fields. Business? Medicine? Investment banking? (seriously on that last one) The ability to think analytically -- which, hopefully, you *have* gotten out of your education -- may be what you need to market, rather than anything engineering related. And those jobs pay just as well, if not better, than your standard engineering position.
posted by olinerd at 12:22 PM on March 28, 2007

Oh yeah, as long as you don't want to open an art gallery or go into publishing your degree should get you into anything. Modeling systems is a pretty wide field.
posted by geoff. at 12:30 PM on March 28, 2007

I got a job in programming with my EE degree and forgot everything from the first two years of classes.

Incidentally, one of my junior year professors got so incensed at how many people were screwing up stuff like voltage drops in an Advanced Analog Electronics class that he started putting EE 101 problems on our exams. So, you're not alone. It's easy to only concentrate on the current class, and a lot og higher level courses just don't use the basics.
posted by smackfu at 12:36 PM on March 28, 2007

Shit, if you're going into a field just for the money, why the hell would you pick engineering?

I know many engineers and lawyers and a few doctors. The engineers, without exception work the least overtime. All three professions, in my experience, net about the same pay on average.
posted by solid-one-love at 12:49 PM on March 28, 2007

I am an EE and I'm about to graduate with a B.S. I go to a Big Name U (but not one that's particularly top-notch for EE/CS).

I find that what you describe is true in some respects; I know a lot of theory, but when it comes to applying it, I know, almost for certain, that I probably wouldn't know the best way to go about doing it.

Your concerns are also dependent on what sub-field of EE you're talking about, becuase if you're an expert in image processing, analysis, and medical image reconstruction, it's not very likely that you know what the best way to design the best high bandwidth amplifier circuit with device X, Y, Z. So, take that for what it's worth.

I can take a stab at 4, 5, 6 based on what I've observed as research assistant, but since I don't know anybody going into industry or anybody currently in industry, I can't answer 2 or 3.

4) Yes, after a while, I think things do make sense and you can conceptualize these abstractions and mathematical formalisms that are used all the time in engineering.

5) You do need to know the basics of the theory of how things work, and the principles of design to do well in engineering grad school. Because I find myself lacking in a solid CS background, when I try to solve a programming problem in the work I do, I find that I'm going about it the wrong way. Furthermore, at least for PhD programs, you will have to take a set of qualifying exams that test your background in the basic theory of your sub-field in EE/CS.

6) Finally you do need to be passionate about what you do in grad school otherwise you will find yourself looking at the long hard slog ahead of you and wonder why you got yourself in that position in the first place. If you're in it for the money and not because of any sort of intellectual curiousity, I suggest that grad school is probably not for you.

Anyway, I've been sorting out these things myself the past few weeks as I wrap up interviews for grad school and I hope this helps.
posted by scalespace at 12:55 PM on March 28, 2007

I recommend buying some electricity learning kit for kids and playing with it.
posted by qvtqht at 1:12 PM on March 28, 2007

Most people "fake it" to some degree or other. In college, I often didn't understand the principles or motivation but I could do the math, that's basically what you're saying. Will it stall you in a future job? or getting into grad school? I'd say not really. It's kind of along the lines of "you don't need to know how a car functions internally to drive it." However, it would definitely help to have the fundamentals and intuition. As others have said, you will hit a brick wall at some point (the car may break down on a deserted road) but hopefully by then you'll have picked up a few more tools to keep things going. It's also my experience that as you work at something enough, you begin to get a feel and intuition behind the things that you use. The classroom is set up more for repetition and regurgitation, not for intuitive understanding. I know it shouldn't be like that but class rooms don't often generate the interest and curiosity necessary to want to fundamentally know something, unless the professor is very very good and inspirational (also rare).

My current take on my college education, especially after having forgotten 99% of what I encountered in the class: College classes were just there to give me enough exposure to things that I may or may not use, to where it slightly decreases the time it takes to learn it anew if or when I see it again.

BTW, don't discount the possibility of using your practical EE pursuit in conjunction with your passion for linguistics. My degrees are in EE but my thesis and current work were/are in speech recognition and thus I had to do a fair amount of interdisciplinary learning, including linguistics, computational linguistics, phonetics, phonotactics, physiology, psychology, etc. I know linguists and language modelers with PhD's in physics. Everything can be used as a springboard to some degree.
posted by mikshir at 1:23 PM on March 28, 2007

You're right in your suspicion that the education received during bachelor's degrees in technical fields aren't worth much in the modern world. If you went out into the workforce now, you'd be hired by someone who was expecting to have to train you in the work they needed you to do. That work wouldn't be creative or innovative; it'd require the ability to learn technical facts and methods. You've demonstrated that ability with your straight A's.

The things you're worried about would be things you'd have to learn in grad school. You're supposed to get a promising start on them in college; that's all. But in grad school you have to master them. If you ever want to do creative or top-level work in your field, you have to master them; if all you want is well-paying technical work, you do not.
posted by ikkyu2 at 1:46 PM on March 28, 2007

It's been said already, but it's worth repeating that an engineering degree can help you get a wide variety of jobs, not just in engineering.

Then again, why not try taking one course where you put in as much effort as you can and go beyond what's required, just to see if you can do it. (i.e., putting in serious effort is a skill in its own right, so find out if you have it?)
posted by lullabyofbirdland at 3:33 PM on March 28, 2007

Wow. I am the polar opposite of the original poster.

I was messing with batteries and trains and lights and telegraphs and such in public school, I was building radios and amplifiers in highschool, I scored a summer job at a radio & TV operation when i was 16.

I took EE because it seemed to be the natural direction for my passion for all things electronic. I then proceeded to bomb out of 2 different universities over 4 years, mostly due to my difficulties with calculus (and the fact that just about all of the last 3 years of EE revolve around 2nd order differential equations)

Despite that, I was able to build a quite decent career in broadcast engineering & maintenance, and i've since crossed over into programming, because it interested me, and again I've got a nice career going.

I since came to understand that the majority of EE grads end up in mid and senior management, and since i love the hands-on, that wouldn't have been for me anyway.

So, if you're indifferent to EE but are aceing it, then two comments - you lucky bastard! ;) (I'm jealous), and ... unless you believe in reincarnation, you only have one life to live; why wouldn't you spend it doing what you love? With your academic prowess, you could graduate with honours in ANYTHING.
posted by Artful Codger at 3:40 PM on March 28, 2007

I sounds like you have an aptitude for the mathematics but no real interest in its application to electrical engineering. You could consider an mathematics graduate degree. With a general mathematics background you could find a good paying career in any number of fields -- chemistry, biology, physics, law, medicine, finance, actuarial science, sales and marketing, business administration, accounting, computer science, teaching, research -- to name just a few. Why lock yourself into a career in which you have little interest.
posted by JackFlash at 3:55 PM on March 28, 2007

You will not understand everything.

I teach (now and again, and not at a challenging level) integral transforms to university students, and whereas Fourier transforms have an intuitive physical meaning, and many similar orthogonal basis function transforms have intuitive meanings, it's just plain awkward to explain what a Laplace transform is. It just happens to be very very useful. Don't try to interpret it, or many other things, beyond the mathematics unless someone gives you good reason to do otherwise.

Some things are intuitive, some things are useful, and some things aren't intuitive and some things aren't useful. The set comes in various combinations. Know the useful things, understand the intuitive things, and don't get too het up about the rest.
posted by edd at 3:58 PM on March 28, 2007

Wow, so many great responses. Thanks, keep them coming! The responses from other EEs are pretty relieving.

Actually, things are not really as depressing as I made them seem. I'm a bit of a tech geek, and I think programming is fun. I'm taking computer architecture classes, which I both understand and find interesting, but it's so far off from everything I've done in EE that I consider it a CS class. I'm thinking about going to grad school in CS or at least going further with computer architecture in EE(some unis put comp. architecture in CS anyway). I think pretty much everything else in EE is boring, especially power, electromagnetics, electronics, etc. although I think controls, DSP, and the other more abstract math/computer stuff is more bearable. But I'm still worried about it because 1) I might not be able to get a job in computer architecture, 2) if I'm going into an EE grad program to do architecture, I assume I will still have to know some of the other stuff to pass qualifying exams, 3) everyone I know who has a CS job says it's boring database/admin work.

And then I think that maybe I should specialize in some more marketable EE field, because I'd like to be fairly mobile and be able to live and work abroad, East Asia/China in particular(I speak Mandarin), as opposed to chained to some computing lab in the US.

ikkyu2 did mention something that really struck me: I don't want to be stuck in some low-level tech position forever. Mikshir and others mentioned how an EE degree could be used to do other, more interesting things. So I guess it's off to the books to relearn all this stuff, and hopefully, on to grad school...

You guys did mention so much other work like investment banking, business, biomed, that it's sparked my curiosity into researching it further. Maybe I'll ask about jobs/other grad progams next week...
posted by pravit at 4:19 PM on March 28, 2007

Just chiming in here as an EE myself.

I took EE, and like you passed but didn't feel I understood everything completely. (faking it sort of.) I went on to work at an engineering firm designing circuit boards and programming FPGAs for embedded systems.

hated it. every single stinking minute.

Fast forward 10 years later, and I'm now a fairly successful software developer. My advice get your EE degree, I always considered EE a boot camp for smart people. Maybe you'll never use it. But it will get your foot in many doors.
posted by patrickje at 4:26 PM on March 28, 2007

Electrical Engineers are fuzzy, noisy, post-modern thinkers. Computer Engineers are determined, discrete, modern-mechanistic thinkers. Maybe you just chose the wrong specialisation.
I expect 4 denials of my observation. +/- 3dB

About the technical stuff.. I had a prof. who said "You don't learn how this stuff works, you just get used to it."
posted by Chuckles at 6:35 PM on March 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

You are interested in linguistics, computer science, grad school and lots of money? Have you looked into computational linguistics? Dragon is making lots of money with the stuff, among others.
posted by gmarceau at 7:04 PM on March 28, 2007

You'll get tons of job offers in all kinds of fields, like consulting and all. I know tons of engineering grads who went on to get finance jobs or management consulting or software consulting jobs. Guess you just have to keep up that GPA and figure out what kind of job sounds interesting to you.
posted by onepapertiger at 7:21 PM on March 28, 2007

I never pay attention in lectures, read my textbook, or study at all - at the most an hour or so before an exam. I know the definitions of most things, but have no real understanding of them or what the definitions actually mean. I treat everything as some kind of special puzzle or game without understanding the basic theory behind it.

[...]

I feel like I haven't learned anything and have been spending the last three years doing meaningless calculations

Fixed that for you.

No, really. You obviously know how to manipulate the mathematical model of electrical phenomena. You've even got the more useful parts memorized. But you did it for four years straight without ever bothering to see what it was a model of? Way back when they taught you Kirchhoff's laws, you never thought, 'I wonder why the sum of current going into a junction should equal the sum of current coming out—it's almost as if current were the movement of stuff that can't be created, destroyed, or compressed!' and therefore never had the eureka moment wherein the units of current (ampere = coulomb per second) make sense?

You, my friend, have got some seriously turbocharged abstract logic skillz going on, but what on earth happened to your curiosity?

(a) I never had any. Please, please, please stay out of my field.
(b) I spent it all on linguistics and other cool stuff on the sidelines. Please, please, please bring your rigorous mind into my field.

But be aware that linguistic data are friggin' messy. The abstract purity of physics does not apply to what comes out of people's mouths, and that may make you uncomfortable. This discomfort is the same discomfort I felt when I learned about game theory and had to reconcile myself to the notion that some best strategies are not deterministic. It is the same discomfort many people face when they learn about cryptography and find that a zero-knowledge proof is not an absolute proof at all. It is a good discomfort and will make you a better person. But it takes some getting used to.

Other people have adequately addressed the question of motives: Intellectual beauty and wonder versus tedium and the empty security of cash. So I won't go there.

I am heartened to see that the overlap between electrical and language interests is not confined to me and my dad (one of us in each profession, but with a fair amateur interest in the other). But really—care about what you do, and do something you care about.
posted by eritain at 10:03 PM on March 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

Many people mentioned that EEs can work in lots of different fields(which is very intriguing), but how do you go from EE grad to investment banker in a day? Do you just apply at lots of different companies you think might hire someone with an EE background, or wait for them to approach you, or what?

Eritain: I spent most of my curiosity reading about history and obscure languages. I think there were times in EE 101 when I was curious enough to think about what voltage and current really meant, and at one point I might have understood it. But I forgot it again, I guess because in all of the work afterwards there was never any need to treat voltage as anything more than some magical property that interacts with other magical properties in certain (magical) ways.

I think there was a time when I tore my hair out actually trying to read extremely tersely written engineering textbooks, but things became so much easier when I stopped trying to make sense of them and treated everything like a (boring) game with various bizarre rules. I would love an engineering textbook that would throw all the formal definitions and derivations for a general layman's explanation of what the equations mean and how everything relates, though.

I had a hard time developing curiosity for any of my courses after EE101 when things became less like an intuitive visual puzzle and more like an ugly mishmash of equations that you used in various ways to produce other ugly equations. It's pretty hard for me to get curious about PID controller gains, for example. As far as I care to know, they are calculated in specific magical ways and used to control a magical device which, uh, controls things.
posted by pravit at 11:52 PM on March 28, 2007

Electronics technician here, now studying Applied Science (with hopes of microbiology & biochemistry).

I know you said you don't want answers criticising your 'life choices' (though it seems you're actually doing that fine by yourself!), but I'll just give a little bit of advice:

• You can follow your dreams now, while it's easy
• You can follow your dreams later, when it's much harder
• or you can regret not following your dreams at all

FWIW, I think if you keep up with the degree you'll end up being just another average EE - unless you have a real interest and understanding, you'll never be great or exceptional. Don't kid yourself that those straight A's mean anything other than a real good pass at uni.

If I were you, I'd be looking at leveraging what you've already done into something that interests you - computational linguistics maybe? You seem to have a quick grasp of practice and the ability to intuitively choose the right solution to logical problems, which comes in handy anywhere. There's some odd double degrees around that turn out to be interesting and useful combinations, and dramatically increase your options.
posted by Pinback at 11:56 PM on March 28, 2007

how do you go from EE grad to investment banker in a day?

You can develop mathematical models of financial markets the same way you can develop models of other systems. That kind of modeling is a major topic in electrical engineering. So, while there is a certain "you have a degree, we have a job" factor, there is also overlap technically.
posted by Chuckles at 12:15 AM on March 29, 2007

There's money in EE? I am planning on going into it next year (coupled with Linguistics and Languages, funnily enough) but didn't think there was much in terms of earning potential.
posted by PuGZ at 1:48 AM on March 29, 2007

I also find it greatly refreshing that I'm not the only one with this odd pair of passions!
posted by PuGZ at 3:49 AM on March 29, 2007

History degrees are not "much in terms of earning potential". Or undergrad science degrees. Engineering is more like a vocational degree.
posted by smackfu at 7:29 AM on March 29, 2007

There's money in EE?

It is all about your personal motivations. Really. Nothing more needs to be said.

OK, fine.. If you are just enthusiastic about the field, want to work on interesting problems, and get on with your own life, there isn't that much money in it (in a comparative sense, our society is extraordinarily affluent). What I was talking about last night was a specific research field. If you have the right personality and ability to jump on a hot research field, business and academia will both pay you a pretty serious salary, but that isn't the average experience. If you are just trying to be a corporate manager or business consultant, or whatever, you can probably use your engineering degree as propaganda for your ignoble goals.
posted by Chuckles at 8:14 AM on March 29, 2007

how do you go from EE grad to investment banker in a day?

You get a Master's in financial engineering/computational finance/mathematical finance. Throw "site:.edu" into the queries to get just degree programs.

It will take longer than a day, I guess.

Based on what you've said, you'd probably be decent at it, but I'm just guessing that treating it at least partially as a game with arbitrary, magical rules would work decently - might be wrong. If you get a degree in a good program, you're pretty much guaranteed a fat salary. You might also hate your life; make sure you'd be happy doing that sort of thing every day.

And yeah, PuGZ, there's money in EE. Obviously not rockstar or investment banker kinda money, but it's definitely enough to live on comfortably. On preview: With regards to "our society," all of the BS.EE grads I know started with salaries well above the national median household income (~$46,000), and close to the median household income of just the richer states (~$70,000). And engineers get raises.
posted by whatnotever at 8:58 AM on March 29, 2007

I don't see what is so "ignoble" or wrong about seeking out a reasonably interesting, stable job that pays well. Unlike everyone else in school who had their hearts set on being marine biologists, anaestheticians, or criminal defense lawyers, I never really had a "dream job." I think history and linguistics are interesting, but realize that there are very few jobs directly related to those fields(maybe a few places in academia). As for all the marginally related jobs you could get with a history or linguistics degree(say, ESL teacher), I don't find them any more interesting than EE or any job I could get with an EE degree, and they seem to pay a lot less. It's just a question of priorities and risk: because the chance of getting my ideal job(say NBA star) is extremely small, there is a high probability that I will end up broke and jobless if I pursue it. Given the large risk involved, I chose not to, because having a 100% ideal job has relatively low weight in my overall "dreams" compared to stability, a comfortable salary, and the ability to someday provide for a family. It doesn't mean I'm some soulless money-chasing dream-forsaker. There are other things in life(which, incidentally, require money) such as living well, eating out, traveling, raising a family, that are more important to me than having an absolutely thrilling job.

Thanks, everyone, for your advice and experience.
posted by pravit at 10:23 AM on March 29, 2007

I fully expect somebody to take issue with what I'm actually saying, but just to be clear:

If you are just trying to be a corporate manager or business consultant, or whatever, you can probably use your engineering degree as propaganda for your ignoble goals.

posted by Chuckles at 10:39 AM on March 29, 2007

how do you go from EE grad to investment banker in a day?
You get a Master's in financial engineering/computational finance/mathematical finance. Throw "site:.edu" into the queries to get just degree programs.

Actually you just sign up for the interviews when they come through your campus. The consulting and finance firms take in a lot of science and engineering graduates. Most of those graduates have some coursework or at least interest in business/money/economics/blah, but not all. This happens at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
posted by whatzit at 9:17 PM on March 29, 2007