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More people should get into EE and see it all the way through. And, rather than getting a masters degree or PhD, go straight into industry. Why? Because just be
by phendrenad2 1y ago
More people should get into EE and see it all the way through. And, rather than getting a masters degree or PhD, go straight into industry. Why? Because just beyond what you learn in your BSEE degree lies one of the most fascinating topics ever: Signal integrity.
I understand why a lot of people bail out of EE, and why a lot go to web dev specifically. EE relies so heavily on simple calculus that there's a distinct moment where you have to go "what the heck am I actually learning?". And seeing that software has this apparent depth (design patterns, OOP principles, Haskell, ORMs, Fieldingian REST, GraphQL, 10,000-word blog posts on vim vs emacs, etc.), they naturally get drawn there.
- Liftyee 1y agoI am currently on the EE path but the CSEE side is very tempting. Right now the "information/computer engineering" seems much more popular than "plain" EE. I wouldn't study pure software because it doesn't seem connected enough to the real world (...or I am coping for my weak algorithmic thinking skills). Maybe one day I will actually understand signal integrity but so far my experience has been "check return paths, match impedances and pray to the EE gods".
- stn8188 1y agoYou exactly describe my journey! After undergrad, I went right to industry doing hardware design. Given a complex PCB, I was confronted with this field of signal integrity and I fell in love with it. My undergrad didn't explicitly require EM courses, but I learned on the job (lots of reading plus guidance from some experienced RF engineers). Eventually I went back for my master's, and it was so nice knowing exactly which niche I wanted to focus on (and finally get a ton of EM fundamentals under my belt). It truly feels like EE is an infinite field with no limit to the possible type of work...