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I didn't get good grades until grad school. Undergrad was too useless to me and I didn't get interested in any of the material presented before senior year. B

I didn't get good grades until grad school. Undergrad was too useless to me and I didn't get interested in any of the material presented before senior year. But electrical engineering is a useless major anyway. An artifact of the 20th century.

falsestprophet 19y ago
Please explain. I have a few friends studying it and they seem to think they are going to make 80k starting.
- aswanson 19y ago
  Electrical engineering is interesting from an applied physics/mathematical standpoint. From the point of view of day-to-day work, a large segment of it has been reduced to providing a life support system for the microprocessor, which, you guessed it, runs software. Almost every EE I know is a programmer. Analog electronics, one of my early interests, has been pretty much reduced to power supply design and maybe some mixed-signal modem design. On the low end, there are advances in materials that enable Moore's law, but this is more applied physics than EE. Control theory jobs are almost nonexistent outside academia. A lot of the higher level mathematics is cool: I personally liked dsp and stochastic systems but it got repetitive. Most CS programs offer similar math anyway. I wanted to go deeper into how the math was developed. In short, the traditional electrical engineering field is being heavily encroached by software and the high end math isn't interesting enough. Which is why, if I had to do it all over, I would have done math, CS, physics, a lot of chem, and maybe an EE course or two. Boucher is right, it is a very difficult major, but boot camp is difficult too. I just wish it were more relevant to what is going on.
- rms 19y ago
  Well, engineering is never useless if you goal is to get a high starting salary engineering for the man.
- aswanson 19y ago
  Sorry, I didn't address the 80k hopefuls. I would say that given the economic trends (ee is easier to outsource than software and is being replaced by it) that the long-term growth prospects don't look good salary wise. The 80 k entry salaries are dubious unless they plan on using their school name to get a non-ee high paying job (read consulting, hedge fund, finance, etc). 60 is probably more realistic in my area (mid-Atlantic east coast) at the high-end entry level. In the most inflated market (the valley), seems like 100k is reasonable after 3-5 years experience (non consulting). A lot of them want advanced degrees. Of course, most of the jobs are software: http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&dockey=xml/7/f/7f413b489344c22e2b49a54e4ee175ff@endecaindex&source=19&FREE_TEXT=entry+level http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&#3...
boucher 19y ago
Electrical Engineering is useless? Assuming you majored in it, I find it almost impossible to imagine believing this statement. Not only is electrical engineering possibly the hardest engineering degree offered, it is probably also the most important. I mean, honestly, pretty much every advancement in computer technology is a direct result of EE. The rest is mostly physics. And honestly, at the high end of EE, there's very little difference.
- aswanson 19y ago
  I agree with you on the difficulty, believe me. If you make it through that curriculum almost anywhere, you are the real deal. Read my reply to falsestprophet for the rest of the response.
- rms 19y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033
  - boucher 19y ago
    What can I say. The coherence of a degree depends entirely on the set of classes you elect to take. Personally, I took a pretty wide variety, and enjoyed learning a lot of different things. I got a masters degree in Electrical Engineering, mostly digital systems work. I learned to build a large number of highly interesting things. In fact, built a lot more in EE than I ever did in CS. Despite the fact that I now work writing web software, my degree is still highly applicable.

falsestprophet 19y ago

Please explain. I have a few friends studying it and they seem to think they are going to make 80k starting.

aswanson 19y ago
Electrical engineering is interesting from an applied physics/mathematical standpoint. From the point of view of day-to-day work, a large segment of it has been reduced to providing a life support system for the microprocessor, which, you guessed it, runs software. Almost every EE I know is a programmer. Analog electronics, one of my early interests, has been pretty much reduced to power supply design and maybe some mixed-signal modem design. On the low end, there are advances in materials that enable Moore's law, but this is more applied physics than EE. Control theory jobs are almost nonexistent outside academia. A lot of the higher level mathematics is cool: I personally liked dsp and stochastic systems but it got repetitive. Most CS programs offer similar math anyway. I wanted to go deeper into how the math was developed. In short, the traditional electrical engineering field is being heavily encroached by software and the high end math isn't interesting enough. Which is why, if I had to do it all over, I would have done math, CS, physics, a lot of chem, and maybe an EE course or two. Boucher is right, it is a very difficult major, but boot camp is difficult too. I just wish it were more relevant to what is going on.
rms 19y ago
Well, engineering is never useless if you goal is to get a high starting salary engineering for the man.
aswanson 19y ago
Sorry, I didn't address the 80k hopefuls. I would say that given the economic trends (ee is easier to outsource than software and is being replaced by it) that the long-term growth prospects don't look good salary wise. The 80 k entry salaries are dubious unless they plan on using their school name to get a non-ee high paying job (read consulting, hedge fund, finance, etc). 60 is probably more realistic in my area (mid-Atlantic east coast) at the high-end entry level. In the most inflated market (the valley), seems like 100k is reasonable after 3-5 years experience (non consulting). A lot of them want advanced degrees. Of course, most of the jobs are software: http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&dockey=xml/7/f/7f413b489344c22e2b49a54e4ee175ff@endecaindex&source=19&FREE_TEXT=entry+level http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&#3...

boucher 19y ago

Electrical Engineering is useless? Assuming you majored in it, I find it almost impossible to imagine believing this statement. Not only is electrical engineering possibly the hardest engineering degree offered, it is probably also the most important. I mean, honestly, pretty much every advancement in computer technology is a direct result of EE. The rest is mostly physics. And honestly, at the high end of EE, there's very little difference.

aswanson 19y ago
I agree with you on the difficulty, believe me. If you make it through that curriculum almost anywhere, you are the real deal. Read my reply to falsestprophet for the rest of the response.
rms 19y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033
- boucher 19y ago
  What can I say. The coherence of a degree depends entirely on the set of classes you elect to take. Personally, I took a pretty wide variety, and enjoyed learning a lot of different things. I got a masters degree in Electrical Engineering, mostly digital systems work. I learned to build a large number of highly interesting things. In fact, built a lot more in EE than I ever did in CS. Despite the fact that I now work writing web software, my degree is still highly applicable.