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If there’s anything I’ve learned it is that you should always make your own mistakes. Your parent’s mistakes don’t even make sense any more 30-40 years down the

by hughrr 5y ago

If there’s anything I’ve learned it is that you should always make your own mistakes. Your parent’s mistakes don’t even make sense any more 30-40 years down the line. My father pushed me into EE. I burned 5 years in industry being paid crap and then discovered it was actually a fairly low paying profession in the UK. Ended up supporting a bunch of Sun machines for other EEs which was more fun. So i learned Perl one weekend, bailed out and lied my way into a sysadmin job for 2x the money. 20 odd years down the line I’m glad I made that choice.

Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
When offering PhD studentship positions, I have had several cases of people from developing countries who wanted to come work in my group, but didn't, and the reason (from their own accounts) was that their parents wouldn't let them go get their PhD anywhere not in the US. They ended up at groups in the US with much worse scientific output than mine (it's true that well-known US universities wipe the floor with mine in every metric, but that's not true when you go down to the level of individual groups, labs or fields of research), while working unpaid while I was paying a decent salary. They were bright people so I think and hope they'll have fruitful careers, but their parents (with their best intentions, I'm sure) surely put a roadblock in front of them due to the prejudice that there are no good opportunities outside the US.
- teekert 5y ago
  This. I also had a M.Sc. student work at my company, a brilliant guy from China, he deserved the best Ph.D. Which in my opinion is with a Professor that made his mark, has a secure position (so he is not still in his publish or perish period), enjoys what he does and cares about his Ph.D. students' development. His parents didn't agree, they wanted him to go to the most prestigious lab he could get into. Probably to be worked like a measurement slave for 4 years + the inevitable extension. I told him to beware, talk to other students and try to gauge the atmosphere in the lab. If you're smart and motivated you'll make it. But will you have fun and be happy? What do you want out of life? I have friend that made "Associate Professor" at an impressive age. He does make 80 hour weeks and travels 50% of his time. It can be fun and it is an adventure, but is it what you want? This life is pretty incompatible with having a family for example. Beware of the fact that your parents may define success very differently from you.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
neilo40 5y ago
I had almost exactly the same career arc. Perl became Python, Sun became Linux and I eventually moved beyond sysadmin work into automation, then API development and now I lead software development teams. Are you still doing sysadmin work?
- hughrr 5y ago
  Same progression and situation as you actually. I am still very hands on. Think my position is probably “internal consultant” really.
Tycho 5y ago
Why is EE so bad? On the surface it looks like a degree with a strong grounding in mathematics, exposure to programming, the discipline of engineering, and a diverse range of applications across industry. It kind of seems like the ideal degree if you want to hire someone. I'm always baffled when I hear stories like this.
- thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
  I think some of it must be 'sticky' culture. I'm another former EE who left the field to develop with much better pay so the inter-discipline competition does exist in some form. What I saw of EE jobs didn't have the dress codes and comfortable offices.
- murgindrag 5y ago
  An EE degree IS awesome. It gives a generalizable mathematical foundation which applies in just about any other field of work. It gives a huge competitive edge. For example: * Circuits are physical implementations of differential equations, and EE gives a unique way to intuitively think about dynamics, which applies to finance, epidemiology, and just a really diverse range of domains. * With a rigorous EE background, you can rapidly pick up most domains of engineering (think Elon Musk), since you've got all the mathematical foundations. The reverse isn't true. The way math is taught in EE is broader than e.g. mechanical, civil, or other engineering disciplines, where it tends to be more domain-specific. EE gives you a lot of depth in probability, error analysis, signal processing, controls, calculus, linear algebra, etc. I think the only things missing are statistics and discrete math, and I picked those up elsewhere. High-performance board-level EE is insanely fun. Incredibly creative. You get to build stuff, design stuff, do math, and it's just a huge diversity of intellectually-fulfilling stuff. IC design is a bit less fun, due to the many-month turn cycles (develop, wait months and hundreds of thousands dollars, and test/debug), but not bad. However, the EE industry sucks: - Pay is not bad, but much worse than other jobs you can get with an EE degree. - Work culture has all the worst excesses of the eighties -- think of Office Space style cubicle farms, dress codes, conservative management, ISO processes, and paperwork. - Yet it's somehow adopted some of the worst excesses of the 2010s; it no longer feels like work is a family or a community - And it's hard to get into. There are virtually no jobs for junior-level EEs (which isn't just BSes -- in the Great Recession, I knew bright newly-minted Stanford/MIT/Caltech/etc. Ph.Ds who couldn't find jobs). - Even at the senior-level, there's a bit too much of a boom-and-bust cycle, without the booms ever getting that boomy, but the busts being pretty busty. I spent maybe five years doing EE work after my EE degree, and I think that was enough. I've been out for a long time now. I still do EE as a hobby, and I enjoy it, but the industry culture isn't one I remember with fondness. I suspect a lot of this stuff will continue to disappear from the US into Asia; that transition is rapidly in progress. US firms maintain specialized knowledge in some areas (e.g. particular types of MEMS devices), but there are plenty of places we've fallen behind. I don't see us on the path to regain leadership. I think some of this is cyclical. Declining industries don't make for good employers, and poor employers don't make for growth industries.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Considering how hard it can be, EE is seriously underpaid compared to software.
- sidlls 5y ago
  Same for physics. I earn over 3X what I could make as a top-tier researcher paying myself out of grant money and have had a handsome seven-figure IPO (close to 8 figures, if the market price holds). It's quite shameful, as physics research is almost uniformly more important and relevant to society. Now that I'm set for life, financially, I very well might return to physics. In America, we value frivolous crap over serious scientific and artistic endeavors, mainly because the masses are terribly dumb. Idiocracy was quite close to the truth, as good satire must be.
victor106 5y ago
In hindsight this may seem wrong but I don’t completely blame him. The offshoring of IT was so novel unlike say manufactured goods. Governments can’t stop it although I think they should in some form if you think it’s important for your country
wirthjason 5y ago
+1 for “make your own mistakes” It’s easier to take ownership of a failure as move on when you made the choice.
the_only_law 5y ago
> I burned 5 years in industry being paid crap and then discovered it was actually a fairly low paying profession in the UK I was absolutely dumbfounded when I looked up engineering salaries in the UK. I mean, even in the US, I don't consider most engineering fields particularly high paying, but the UK is something else.
- hughrr 5y ago
  Oh yes it’s absolutely awful. One of my former peers is working in China now because they pay better!

by hughrr 5y ago

Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago

When offering PhD studentship positions, I have had several cases of people from developing countries who wanted to come work in my group, but didn't, and the reason (from their own accounts) was that their parents wouldn't let them go get their PhD anywhere not in the US. They ended up at groups in the US with much worse scientific output than mine (it's true that well-known US universities wipe the floor with mine in every metric, but that's not true when you go down to the level of individual groups, labs or fields of research), while working unpaid while I was paying a decent salary. They were bright people so I think and hope they'll have fruitful careers, but their parents (with their best intentions, I'm sure) surely put a roadblock in front of them due to the prejudice that there are no good opportunities outside the US.

teekert 5y ago
This. I also had a M.Sc. student work at my company, a brilliant guy from China, he deserved the best Ph.D. Which in my opinion is with a Professor that made his mark, has a secure position (so he is not still in his publish or perish period), enjoys what he does and cares about his Ph.D. students' development. His parents didn't agree, they wanted him to go to the most prestigious lab he could get into. Probably to be worked like a measurement slave for 4 years + the inevitable extension. I told him to beware, talk to other students and try to gauge the atmosphere in the lab. If you're smart and motivated you'll make it. But will you have fun and be happy? What do you want out of life? I have friend that made "Associate Professor" at an impressive age. He does make 80 hour weeks and travels 50% of his time. It can be fun and it is an adventure, but is it what you want? This life is pretty incompatible with having a family for example. Beware of the fact that your parents may define success very differently from you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

neilo40 5y ago

I had almost exactly the same career arc. Perl became Python, Sun became Linux and I eventually moved beyond sysadmin work into automation, then API development and now I lead software development teams. Are you still doing sysadmin work?

hughrr 5y ago
Same progression and situation as you actually. I am still very hands on. Think my position is probably “internal consultant” really.

Tycho 5y ago

Why is EE so bad? On the surface it looks like a degree with a strong grounding in mathematics, exposure to programming, the discipline of engineering, and a diverse range of applications across industry. It kind of seems like the ideal degree if you want to hire someone. I'm always baffled when I hear stories like this.

thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
I think some of it must be 'sticky' culture. I'm another former EE who left the field to develop with much better pay so the inter-discipline competition does exist in some form. What I saw of EE jobs didn't have the dress codes and comfortable offices.
murgindrag 5y ago
An EE degree IS awesome. It gives a generalizable mathematical foundation which applies in just about any other field of work. It gives a huge competitive edge. For example: * Circuits are physical implementations of differential equations, and EE gives a unique way to intuitively think about dynamics, which applies to finance, epidemiology, and just a really diverse range of domains. * With a rigorous EE background, you can rapidly pick up most domains of engineering (think Elon Musk), since you've got all the mathematical foundations. The reverse isn't true. The way math is taught in EE is broader than e.g. mechanical, civil, or other engineering disciplines, where it tends to be more domain-specific. EE gives you a lot of depth in probability, error analysis, signal processing, controls, calculus, linear algebra, etc. I think the only things missing are statistics and discrete math, and I picked those up elsewhere. High-performance board-level EE is insanely fun. Incredibly creative. You get to build stuff, design stuff, do math, and it's just a huge diversity of intellectually-fulfilling stuff. IC design is a bit less fun, due to the many-month turn cycles (develop, wait months and hundreds of thousands dollars, and test/debug), but not bad. However, the EE industry sucks: - Pay is not bad, but much worse than other jobs you can get with an EE degree. - Work culture has all the worst excesses of the eighties -- think of Office Space style cubicle farms, dress codes, conservative management, ISO processes, and paperwork. - Yet it's somehow adopted some of the worst excesses of the 2010s; it no longer feels like work is a family or a community - And it's hard to get into. There are virtually no jobs for junior-level EEs (which isn't just BSes -- in the Great Recession, I knew bright newly-minted Stanford/MIT/Caltech/etc. Ph.Ds who couldn't find jobs). - Even at the senior-level, there's a bit too much of a boom-and-bust cycle, without the booms ever getting that boomy, but the busts being pretty busty. I spent maybe five years doing EE work after my EE degree, and I think that was enough. I've been out for a long time now. I still do EE as a hobby, and I enjoy it, but the industry culture isn't one I remember with fondness. I suspect a lot of this stuff will continue to disappear from the US into Asia; that transition is rapidly in progress. US firms maintain specialized knowledge in some areas (e.g. particular types of MEMS devices), but there are plenty of places we've fallen behind. I don't see us on the path to regain leadership. I think some of this is cyclical. Declining industries don't make for good employers, and poor employers don't make for growth industries.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Considering how hard it can be, EE is seriously underpaid compared to software.

sidlls 5y ago
Same for physics. I earn over 3X what I could make as a top-tier researcher paying myself out of grant money and have had a handsome seven-figure IPO (close to 8 figures, if the market price holds). It's quite shameful, as physics research is almost uniformly more important and relevant to society. Now that I'm set for life, financially, I very well might return to physics. In America, we value frivolous crap over serious scientific and artistic endeavors, mainly because the masses are terribly dumb. Idiocracy was quite close to the truth, as good satire must be.

victor106 5y ago

In hindsight this may seem wrong but I don’t completely blame him. The offshoring of IT was so novel unlike say manufactured goods. Governments can’t stop it although I think they should in some form if you think it’s important for your country

wirthjason 5y ago

+1 for “make your own mistakes” It’s easier to take ownership of a failure as move on when you made the choice.

the_only_law 5y ago

> I burned 5 years in industry being paid crap and then discovered it was actually a fairly low paying profession in the UK I was absolutely dumbfounded when I looked up engineering salaries in the UK. I mean, even in the US, I don't consider most engineering fields particularly high paying, but the UK is something else.

hughrr 5y ago
Oh yes it’s absolutely awful. One of my former peers is working in China now because they pay better!