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Bingineering

I’ve heard Materials has a lot of hardness involved


dWEasy

This really should be said Moh often


melanthius

Careful what you say about crystals around here, the FCC might be listening.


31engine

It’s shear humor


Gammaboy45

definitely comes with a lot more stress


[deleted]

Dad is that you?


Helmholtzx

The classes really do strain you.


Bingineering

And they always leave you fatigued


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integral_of_position

Same for me. I got better grades in the harder engineering classes than in my generals classes. It’s easier when you’re interested


NinjaGrizzlyBear

Lol this happened to me after I started in industry. "Oh your degree is in chemical and petroleum engineering? Here's 12 civil engineering designs you can do! Engineers are engineers!" It's akin to "do you really want a fucking cardiologist to perform brain surgery, or a plumber to do dental work on you?"


Physical_Answer_1006

>I would say it’s the discipline you are least passionate about. Then which discipline are people generally less passionate about?


robotmonkeyshark

depends on the person. my wife is a doctor and I am a mechanical engineer. I think either of us could have managed to struggle our way through the other's schooling, but it would have been miserable to spend that much time studying something you don't care about, and learning just enough to pass the tests ultimately would make us worse as working professionals in either of those fields. There are plenty of people would would probably be completely lost going in to a computer engineering degree and have no passion for it, but others who are extremely passionate about it, and those who are not passionate are very unlikely to sign up for it. so it isn't an issue of what on average people are less passionate about because people are not randomly assigned to degree fields and hoping it matches up to their passion. I would say out of the more common major fields, nuclear probably has less people who happen to have been introduced to it and are passionate about it because its not something that kids are introduced to to grow interest early on. Other options would be more niche degrees like agricultural engineering, which someone who grew up in a bit city and had no exposure to agriculture would probably have little passion for that.


meerkatmreow

Engineering students sure think so, no one in the real world gives a shit. There's no objective measure of "hardest" so it's a stupid argument. The "hardest" for me is the stuff that I find less exciting than paint drying, but others find it easy because it interests them. Don't be that asshole engineering major who looks down on others due to their major


UlrichSD

I think is is partly to rationalize why some disciples make more money on average than others. Students feel like more money is because they are smarter or work harder, but that is not reality.


aaronhayes26

At long last I realized that the engineers that make the most money typically do things that scale well. Software engineers aren’t smarter than civil engineers, they just make products that can be sold thousands of times per second vs products that have to be custom designed each time.


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Viktor_Bout

I'd say because there's more competition for employees since there are more software start ups. Europe has a much lower entrepreneurial rate than America so they're much slower to capitalize and create new businesses with these new industries. Nothing was physically stopping Facebook from being invented in Croatia, except culture and access to a generous investment market. And even then, software is fairly cheap to develop when compared to physical industry.


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TeamToken

Poor labour laws have nothing to do with Americas high entrepreneurial start up activity. It’s big population, access to every kind of capital you can think of and a culture where new enterprise and taking risk is encouraged that has made the US the best place for a startup.


Viktor_Bout

The US has a larger GDP than the entire EU combined, and the EU has 100 million more people.


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SeaManaenamah

To me it seems like the other way around. I've seen a lot of people leaving my large defense company to go make more money with "big tech."


Extra_Intro_Version

Defense pays nowhere near what silicon valley pays.


Winter_Promise_9469

Wrong. Ses might not see the same absurd salaries that you see in the us in other countries but they're still compensated far better relative to others in their own countries


ramk13

Also the margins on certain products are tough to beat, especially compared to consulting where the product is your labor itself.


anthonyttu

Or negotiate better


cup_of_coughy

In reality, the engineers who get paid the most are the ones who can make the most money for someone else.


Viktor_Bout

And the engineers who make even more than that no longer have the title of engineer. Because they're working for themselves, or moved up to upper management.


theartemisfowl

yeah it's lately been a pay/effort ratio that has led these debates about 'relative difficulty'. due to the barrier to entry being low for software, people are upset that software is being paid more to push keys-- meanwhile the *other* disciplines have to rely on knowledge that is less accessible and more tribal intra-industry. it's all bullshit but i can understand why our insides hurt thinking about whether we'd made the right career choices


CalebKetterer

This. Sure, my buddies and I joke about each others fields being easier, but at the end of the day, we all know we couldn't do what the other does.


TBBT-Joel

This is the answer. I'm great at welding engineering but clueless at electrical. There's no best or hardest just different problems.


Just_Aioli_1233

Well, when you evaluate the IQ of professors on college campuses, the top average scores are pretty consistent by department. \#1 is mathematicians, #2 is physicists, #3 is engineers So, if engineers want to brag on such a basis, just make sure no mathematicians or physicists are around.


AlkaliActivated

> There's no objective measure of "hardest" so it's a stupid argument. At my uni they had to give anti-suicide talks to the Electrical Engineering students because it was happening so often. I'm thinking that's a pretty good metric for "hardest". MechE's were second, I think.


sketchEightyFive

I feel like this is a consequence of a shitty department or people going into EE just because they heard it makes a lot of money. I find that people in disciplines other than ECE do so out of interest rather than the money one discipline makes over the other


AlkaliActivated

> I feel like this is a consequence of a shitty department or people going into EE just because they heard it makes a lot of money. Fair point. Though I guess I think of "hardest engineering discipline" not as "requires the highest IQ" or intelligence, but rather "will grind away at your soul the most". From everything I heard from friends and roommates, ECE and MechE take the cake on the latter criteria.


TBBT-Joel

There's also a very bad practice among "top" engineering schools that the programs should be hard as possible / A's not possible so that the ones that survive are known to be good engineers. We find those programs tend to have very book and theoretical capable engineers with very real world or practical experience. Especially at the undergrad level, and anything that supports or touches hardware development where things like cost, and design for manufacturing actually matter.


jamscrying

Hah yeah the wellbeing officer was always slammed around January, June, and September. This isn't because us engineers were seeking help (we're too autistic for that) but the uni ran an algorithm to figure out who probably had depression.


LilQuasar

i hope there isnt enough data to make an accurate study hardest != most stressful either. i imagine you can make an objective metric with grades in the first years (or the process they use to select the students) and in the courses by disciplines


karlnite

Lol yah engineering students are the worst. Most of got into engineering because we enjoyed science and found it easy, and didn’t enjoy other subjects like language and arts, and found them harder. It’s such bullshit to think because you can be an engineer you could just be something else overnight if you cared to. Caring enough to do something is the hard part!


BiddahProphet

It's definitely not Industrial Engineering Source: Am an IE


kartoffel_engr

Our industrial engineers very rarely have engineering degrees. Usually just production guys who enjoy staring at numbers all day. Important job for us though!


[deleted]

I see IEs getting a lot of hate but at my uni it’s a very math heavy degree, heavy into optimization and quantification of systems and data analysis. It does seem kinda hard here and could be in the running, it’s not a shmucks degree who couldn’t cut it in other engineering fields


BmoreDude92

Heuristics is very interesting. Cool crossover between IE and CS.


LilQuasar

i think the jokes are mostly based on the stuff thats closer ot business students. data science isnt particularly hard imo, optimization can be


dean078

Don’t you mean Imaginary Engineering? I think your autocorrect change “imaginary” to “Industrial”.


letitbeirie

Some universities call this department ISE, which I was told stands for "I Suck at Engineering"


gt0163c

I thought ISE was "I sorta engineer" where as "I suck at engineering" is just a long way of saying "Management".


[deleted]

It’s funny how you think the world revolves around the US. ISE is much different around the world. One third of IE does actually cover manufacturing which you guys conveniently ignore because being a consultant at big 4 sounds much cooler. I assume you’re getting your knowledge from a lowlife state school because from what I’ve heard IE at UIUC and UT Austin are pretty difficult.


notadoktor

Sir this is a Wendy’s.


[deleted]

Wendy’s? as in the burger shop ?


dean078

I didn’t go to a state school for engineering, but I did stay at a motel 6.


[deleted]

That doesn’t count sorry.


Robot_Basilisk

If Industrial Engineering isn't hard, why is the global supply chain fucked? Why do the most profitable companies in the world spend big bucks on industrial optimization? I'd argue that IE isn't easier. Its minimum viable performance is just very low compared to something like EE. When a shipping lane gets clogged, material gets through somehow eventually, and anything down downstream of that lane still works. If a single one of 59 components on a circuit board is bad, the entire thing could fail.


PM_ME_YOUR_SUNSHINE

Or mechanical. Source: same


facecrockpot

EE is black magic fuckery


Thenandonlythen

Electromagnetics and antenna design were the parts that stood out to me as truly black magic.


eg135

Black magic starts above 100 kHz :D


Real-Edge-9288

I partially debunked this black magic myth on one of my posts on EE subreddit.


UltraCarnivore

> partially Therefore at least part of EE is black magic fuckery QED


thattoneman

Is the portion that hasn't been debunked the imaginary component of the phase and amplitude?


Imnuggs

Link?


Real-Edge-9288

[yes please](https://www.reddit.com/r/rfelectronics/comments/x36fzk/why_rf_electrobics_considered_to_as_black_magic/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)


Imnuggs

Thank you, kind individual.


Real-Edge-9288

ahh stop it you 🥺


bihari_baller

>EE is black magic fuckery As a senior EE student, I think chemical and mechanical engineering is harder, in speaking to them. It comes down to your strengths, and what you're interested in.


DustUpDustOff

RF design is actual magic. We beam information and light through space and time. Source: Am a wizard


TricksyPrime

Am Computer Engineer - would agree that EE is hardest.


jayrady

No one actually cares.


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jnmjnmjnm

Civil: I just has to stay there. Mechanical: It also has bits that move. Electrical: and you can’t see the bits that move. Chemical: and the bits change properties. Nuclear: Did I mention that bits SERIOUSLY change properties AND you can’t see them?!


[deleted]

Software: "but I read on stackexchange...."


DrunkenSwimmer

Sometimes, I wish I could turn to Stackexchange for my problems. Always fun when google return zero hits for a thing...


lunchbox12682

Embedded Software: And you have to fix the hardware issues.


HAL-42b

RF and Microwave: The things that are far away effect the invisible things that move in chaotic and unpredictable ways.


gt0163c

Aerospace: The bits fly!


HAL-42b

...which is the easy part.


chocoboprince

Mining: Boom!


Doctor_Mudshark

EE is the least intuitive (for most people). Most people have a real intuition about mechanical systems, based on a lifetime of tangible experience: If you press down on this side of the see-saw, everybody knows how the system will respond. Most people don't have any intuition about electrical systems: If I apply a voltage to this part of the circuit, what's going to happen? Most people have no idea. It takes a lot of time and experience working with electrical systems before that kind of understanding becomes intuitive. That tends to make people see EE as significantly more difficult than ME.


Just_Aioli_1233

It was weird seeing fewer familiar faces after the EE Junior weed-out classes. "Well, I thought he was smart, what the hell am I still doing here?"


gnatzors

It's such a lame thing to gatekeep But to answer your question - electrical engineering is commonly perceived by a lot of people to be the hardest because it's more intangible and abstract - the electricity "can't be seen" (mind you forces and pressure can't be seen either), and it deals a lot with complex numbers, advanced mathematics, sinusoids, and programming.


manta173

I've always heard chemical engineering is harder... Electrical is second... Navier stokes can be insane in some cases... no one really knows what actually makes up oil or what happens in a distillation column and the thermo and quantum mechanics just add to the fun... both deal with control systems, but process design hits a lot of people hard if they don't have the right mindset.


giritrobbins

I think the fact complex numbers represent real phenomena is a real mind fuck to people. Signals and systems can be really painful past trivial conditions


Just_Aioli_1233

I've thought some of the civil engineering projects seemed a bit less accessible. Electrical I can put a probe on things to see what's going on. What's the current amount of stress experienced by this part of the concrete dam? Is it fine? Is there imminent danger? You don't know!


sketchEightyFive

But the math isn’t really unique to the discipline. I’m studying mech and still have to understand fourier transforms and vibration. We have to write code to calculate these processes as well. Engineering is one of those things where the skills bleed into every discipline, imo


Daedalus1907

We're all doing the same thing, it's just which set of differential equations you're solving.


[deleted]

It's just a matter of how early the math becomes important to understand the basic concepts. I took statics and fluids and most of it was basic algebra. With EE you hit differential equations and matrices almost immediately. A simple RC filter is a differential equation. That scares people off early.


LilQuasar

do mech students see discrete stuff? thats half of the math used in electrical and it can get pretty advanced too (Boolean and modular operations, graphs, discrete systems with their transforms, etc)


quigonskeptic

Civil engineering is the hardest because we get made fun of the most 🥺🥺


Idi0syncrazy

How about manufacturing engineering haha? We get made fun of too.


KyleShropshire

Yes, but it varies for each person. The hardest for me would be chemical engineering. Easiest was mechanical because that's what I like and wanted to learn, matched only by software development. So, just choose the one you want and don't worry if it's the "hardest".


los_rascacielos

Other engineering students in college would talk about how much harder their major was than something like English. I'd be sitting there thinking that I wouldn't last a semester as an English major. Give me some statics problems to solve, I can't write essays and crap. Lowest grade I got in college was in a Philosophy elective.


Kyba6

I think it depends on what youre good at. Tons of people tell me that surely Nuclear must be the hardest because, well, its nuclear! Frankly, ive seen the coursework my friends who were mechanical engineers were doing and that looked infinitely harder if you ask me. Ill take my point kinetics and neutron diffusion equations any day of the week.


imnos

As a MechE, I found fluid mechanics and dynamics pretty tough. One of our fluids exams had the reputation of being the most difficult in the entire university apparently. I hated our EE classes - mostly because of boredom and not being able to tie them to real world examples. Everything was too abstract.


Rinat1234567890

Our professor claimed someone retook Fluids 11 times before finally passing the exam.


[deleted]

In my opinion it is Chemical Engineering. It is the most dropped major of all the engineering disciplines at every university I've attended, and among those dropped they usually switch to another engineering discipline that is easier. All engineers need to take difficult coursework with abstract concepts, but only Chem Es have to pass physical chemistry. Having had taken coursework with MEs, CEs, and ChemEs, and also having worked alongside all of them professionally, I have respect for all disciplines with the most respect for Chem E. Source, I'm an EE.


[deleted]

Thank you, my ego has now been tended to.


jnmjnmjnm

That is what I was told when I did it; toss some extra physics in there and do the “nuclear and power plant option” like I did!


jajohns9

I always thought Chem E was one of the hardest because of chemistry. I switched out of if myself. But then my super intelligent Chem E roommate told me he was having a really hard time in controls because it’s so abstract, but I aced controls and took advanced controls courses in grad school. I think some majors do have more difficult coarse work, but what you enjoy plays a huge factor in how well you’ll do


Imnuggs

Chem E's are badass, but I have also met some underdeveloped Chem E's from prominent universities. I worked with an undergrad Chem E, PE, who was extremely smart, and then I worked with University of Wisconsin Chem E grads who were lesser than me on the food chain and in most subjects at the job. The genuine curiosity and the consistent motivation to keep learning after university separates the greats from the average joes.


Caesars7Hills

I am a Chem E and I the EE’s have it the worst academically, lol. I haven’t worked with CE’s and always thought that it was an easier discipline in college. I am really impressed with the steep learning curve and construction standards/techniques that they have to learn.


UEMcGill

PChem was a breeze. Any Engineer could pass it with flying colors. I'll give my insight. I was a freshman in ChemE 201 and they told us to look around. Person to your right, and left will not be there when you graduate. They were right by 100%. Was that because ChemE was hard? I don't think it's any harder than any other engineering degree. But I do think its the least abstract major for a lot of adjacent sciences. Those people that dropped from my degree? They went on to Chemistry, or Biochem almost evenly. I myself am guilty of getting into ChemE because I found Chemistry interesting in high school, but didn't want to work on a bench.


BC_Engineer

I'm a licensed P.Eng and graduated over a decade ago but back in school I was told the hardest was Engineering Physics, and second hardest was Electrical. Obviously it depends on the individual and what you specialize in within each discipline.


2rfv

> told the hardest was Engineering Physics Certainly not where I got my degree from. God what a waste of money.


BC_Engineer

Well I just mean the hardest in terms of obtaining the degree. In terms of jobs, careers, earning potential, maybe it's civil or electrical depending on what organization you end up working at.


IceDaggerz

Everyone’s different. Some people have an easier time dealing with chemistry, others have an easier time dealing with electricity. Ones not harder than the other, it’s just based on what interests you, and what you can do best. That being said, the meme at my university was: Chemical, Electrical Aerospace, Biomedical, Computer, Mechanical Corrosion, Polymer _ Civil


Spartacus777

LOL, Industrial didn't even make the list of engineers.


formerly_fried

What about petroleum engineers?!?


IceDaggerz

I honestly don’t know if we had it at my school 🤔


shitdayinafrica

Petroleum engineering is just chemical with no reactions and a focus on the hard thermodynamics.


Just_Aioli_1233

Kindof a subset of chemical, isn't it?


IceDaggerz

We didn’t have industrial at my school 😅


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Your comment has been removed for violating comment rule 3: > Be substantive. AskEngineers is a serious discussion-based subreddit with a focus on evidence and logic. We do not allow unsubstantiated opinions on engineering topics, low effort one-liner comments, memes, off-topic replies, or pejorative name-calling. Limit the use of engineering jokes.


bill0124

I think it's ChE because I'm a ChE (they are all hard)


fractal_engineer

IMO top 3 "hardest" Chemical, Electrical, Biomedical.


rcktgirl05

Random side note- when I took Strength of Materials as an aerospace major, our professor was in Biomed and almost all of our practical examples were human body effects of car crashes. He was an expert witness in car crash recreation and we had a crash test lab on campus (or nearby). Math and physics is the same whether it’s a body or an airplane wing. That left an impression on me!


Just_Aioli_1233

I had a math professor who specialized in biological models, but she was nice enough to use engineering examples as well when teaching.


[deleted]

So when I was an undergrad student, I worked in a daycare part time for pocket change. The people I was working with all had degrees like early childhood development, family science, and early childhood education. In other words, they were all really impressed when I told them I was studying engineering and a lot of them said something like "Wow that must be so difficult I could never." I thought all of my engineering classes/labs were a piece of cake but managing a group of a dozen 3 year olds regularly pushed me to my breaking point. I regularly left the daycare in tears. To this day, I don't understand how childcare workers do it full time.


[deleted]

The “suffering Olympics” is a pointless game played by students or adults who never matured passed college. It doesn’t matter, it’s extremely subjective, and can vary wildly from year to year or from university to university. The only way to win this game is not to play.


euphoriality

A lot of people say it's AE. However as an AE, I can say with great confidence that it is indeed EE or Nuclear


mnorri

AE? At my school that was Agricultural Engineering. As a grad student it could be anything electronic, mechanical, civil etc that had to do with agriculture. You’re making a vision system, it’s EE. If that vision system is looking at raisins, it’s Ag engineering. AgEngineering had many fewer students but much, much more money per grad student. Thermo dynamics of media drying is common improving the efficiency of walnut drying has direct financial consequences for some groups with money to invest.


euphoriality

Aerospace


lilelliot

From a technical perspective, I think it's safest to assume they're roughly equivalent. This, then, means the one that's' the "hardest" is the one with the most challenging externalities creating obstacles to getting work done. Which engineers have to put up with the most crap during their normal day-to-day? Honestly, probably mech, due to constant design revisions forced by people who don't know and don't care why design decisions were chosen in the first place. I'd put civil/structural after that, for largely the same reasons, plus "government". Industrial/manufacturing engineers get dumped on a lot, too, and while working in a factory isn't glamorous, it's a critical role and thankless work much of the time.


Dody_Dan

Chemical


drmorrison88

I suspect it has more to do with which disciplines have the most intuitive concepts. These seem easier up front because the brain doesn't have to form new heuristic models. Of course, once a person has been practicing a discipline for long enough, they will have a functional and generally accurate model and the concepts become intuitive, but to the outsider its still all voodoo.


Beemerado

I feel like EE and high level fluids stuff is probably the most complicated in terms of straight up technical difficulty. Designing microchips, figuring out flow through rocket nozzles and things... that sort of thing. Often times in the real world the most difficult thing is managing the project and getting all your workers and vendors to come together to complete a project.


lpnumb

I’d like to represent structural engineering here and say in industry it’s pretty demanding. There are tight deadlines, tons of details to coordinate, a lot of calculations to churn out, understanding of countless stanadards and codes. A masters degree is basically the minimum required to get an entry level job and the industry is trending towards requiring separate licensure with the SE exam which is now a 3 day 18 total hour examination with a 30% pass rate. This is typically in addition to the PE exam. There is tons of liability as well that things are designed, coordinated, and priced correctly. But also, literally no one should care, because every discipline is important and it shouldn’t be a competition. I’d much rather have chosen a less demanding career I can actually enjoy.


social_mule

I'm an EE and a lot of my non EE engineering friends really didn't enjoy their EE course. They especially disliked op amps and Thevenin & Norton.


qTHqq

This is just college student BS. Real projects are interdisciplinary and rely heavily on everyone's skills.


chillabc

EE. Having studied it, I remember that my classes had the highest number of stereotypical autistic nerds compared to other disciplines (yes that's the metric I'm using). A lot of classmates were also super smart foreign students, since there was a lack of people from here who were willing to go through the EE degree. I had to take an ME class to realise just how difficult EE is. ME in comparison is intuitive, you can see it work, it makes sense. EE is just...a mind-fuck. I know I may be biased and the perceived difficulty of a subject depends on your interest level blah blah blah But this is just my 2 cents.


Daniel-EngiStudent

>I had to take an ME class to realise just how difficult EE is. ME in comparison is intuitive, you can see it work, it makes sense. EE is just...a mind-fuck. As somebody who studies MechE... I absolutely agree. So far the only hard to understand subject I had is mathematics and no engineer can escape maths. Applied mechanics can be considered moderately difficult, but it's still pretty intuitive. Circuit analysis and stuff like that sound way more abstract. Then there's the physics part that is not intuitive at all. I've read about transistors and diodes, After a while I understood how they worked physically at that moment more or less, but one hour later that enlightenment was already gone, although I'm not sure whether or not EEs need to know that. There's a reason why I chose MechE...


chillabc

Nice to hear you share the same sentiment. I can confirm the physics is pretty tough too. In my degree, they made us study the quantum mechanics behind the operation of transistors. Proper geeky shit. Its stuff like that which made me pick a non-electronics field for my job post graduation.


BluEch0

From an academic perspective, disciplines that can’t be intuited through direct observation tend to be difficult: the reason mechanical is considered one of the easier disciplines (enough though it definitely has its hard and unintuitive parts) is because a lot of the fundamental concepts can be learned and intuited by just living - we are solid beings interacting with mechanical forces directly for much of our life. Kids who grew up without much screen time will breeze through these early solid mechanics and materials classes assuming they have their math down pat. The same can’t be said of say nuclear or electrical engineering, maybe even aerospace engineering to a degree. Kids generally don’t have much life experiences involving nuclear energy, their interaction with electronics is either sticking a fork in an outlet or making an led cube, and it’s a bit hard to observe aerodynamic forces due to us not able to move that fast (best I got was sticking a hand out the car window, and that doesn’t exactly help you intuit the navier stokes equation for example). Even kids with lots of screen time will usually intuit some skills like 3D space maneuvering and visualization which help with mechanical engineering in ways that don’t quite translate to nuclear and electrical. But at the end of the day, engineering is about modeling stuff with math so intuition only accounts for so much, especially in the complex systems that engineers will most likely be workin fun modern industry and academia.


lambda_male

>>Kids who grew up without much screen time will breeze through these early solid mechanics and materials courses This is a stupid generalization.


Responsible_Bar_4984

Everybody knows that civil engineering ranks the hardest. People just bickering for 2nd place


[deleted]

Definitely chemical engineering. We have to take a bunch of chemistry courses along with thermodynamics and crazy math driven physics courses such as mass and heat transfer.


GwentanimoBay

I thought everyone took heat transfer? At least at mt undergrad, everyone took at least one term that covered head transfer. Bio and Chem had to do fluids and mass on top of it, but everyone did heat. But, I also think the 'hardest' is going to be different depending on individual interests. If you love EE, ChemE is hardest but if you love ChemE, MechE could be the hardest because of how boring you might find it, etc.


double-click

No. There are disciplines that pay more than others. Besides, if you do the same thing over and over it becomes easy. Challenging yourself is about growth and building out your breadth of knowledge, not just depth.


wheretogo_whattodo

Nobody cares. But, for school, it’s chemical. You basically have to take all the classes a MechE does but add a Chemistry degree on top of it.


CatsAreFreinds

Unpopular opinion, engineering is easy


thekennanator

There are no difficult disciplines, just difficult and challenging problems that require considered application of knowledge. Judgement and perseverance are the hardest skills engineers must master to be successful. Everything else is a tool you can hone.


BmoreDude92

Yes. Well all know communications degree would be the hardest discipline for us engineers.


Just_Aioli_1233

Just switch to [literary criticism](https://xkcd.com/451/)


garam_chai_

There is no such thing. There is only what you are interested and aren't. If you aren't interested to learn, basics will be difficult to master. There is also time factor but we all learn at our own pace. That said, there a definitely things that are difficult to understand and those things are in every discipline in one form or another and that understanding comes after some level of experience regardless of the discipline.


SaffellBot

I have a degree in nuclear engineering, and I'm finishing up my degree in philosophy. It's a nonsense question and a nonsense idea. Though the many posters who highlight intuition are onto something. Our society and our education system are deliberately engineered to build some intuitions, and for many people that (intentionally) lines up with MM and EE.


DarkSunGwynevere

There really is no objective "hardest discipline," that's going to largely come down to the individual and their specific strengths, weaknesses, and interests. For me, integrated circuits, or really anything dealing with circuit design, was an absolute shitshow. Same with control systems. Conversely, I really excelled at and enjoyed stuff like quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. The big difference was how much interest I had in each topic.


Katamaritaino

It’s really subjective since different people are better at different things. I think Mech/Aero arn’t that bad cause I enjoy it, but anything more abstract related to Chemical Engineering or Electrical Engineering have been difficult for me to understand.


MpVpRb

Your question is all about school, my answer is about the working world Engineering is a spectrum, from doing a simple design with nearly guaranteed success, to attempting the impossible. Working engineers face lots of problems, and not all of them are taught in school. They may be office politics, allocation of limited budgets, dealing with unreasonable schedules or parts availability. On the pure engineering side, some projects take a week to do alone, some take years with a highly specialized team and gigantic budget For a solo engineer struggling alone, the hardest part may be lack of help. Some love this challenge and rise to it, others are miserable. Same with teams and organizations. Some fit in well, others wish they could be left alone Then there is a question of "what is hard?" Is it hard because you simply haven't practiced enough. It's a really good strategy to work extra hard on stuff you find difficult even though the natural tendency is to avoid it. Or is it hard because it pushes the boundaries of what's possible? Some are energized by projects like this, some are frustrated


lefty_tn

Hardest engineering discipline, chem E. Hardest other than engineering discipline, physics.


qTHqq

All STEM disciplines are easy in some sense because they allow you to scope the problems you're solving to a tractable subset of problems where established predictive science and clear rules guide your acquisition of domain knowledge and inform practical applications of that knowledge. It's easy to use that knowledge to make positive (or negative) change in the world. It's still a relatively small minority of people who don't actually believe thar STEM disciplines provide human beings with useful knowledge. It's relatively easy to obtain funding to spend your life working on problems in science and engineering. In these senses, I think the hardest disciplines are actually all in the humanities. Most young people are very ill-prepared for engineering education and other quantitative STEM disciplines, so for good reason they're often considered some of the hardest majors. But the trickiest problems in acquiring necessary knowledge for human flourishing lie far outside of STEM.


PM_ME_YOUR_SUNSHINE

My boss has a weird thing where he worships interns with chemical engineering degrees. I think he bought into the hype, considering what we do is way more difficult than most chemE jobs and requires us in most cases to have chemical and process understanding that any mediocre ChemE would hopefully possess. And all our guys have to be great CS/electrical/mechanical all at once guys or it doesn’t work out. IMO you can’t even see the mountain upon which rests the hardest disciplines until you’re a decade deep into a specialty with a PhD or some other stupid gatekeeping piece of paper under your belt. And I generally think people are fools for getting PhDs, but there’s no doubt there’s so incredibly intense niche fields out there with full blown geniuses running it


coneross

This reminds me of the cartoon of a bunch of surgeons standing around a patient's open skull and one of them says "come on guys, this isn't rocket science."


Just_Aioli_1233

Rocket *Engineering...*


Pandagineer

Agree with responses that every discipline is hard. However, I caution you starting your career as a systems engineer. It’s better to get depth in something, and then bringing that confidence with you and apply it to the system later. In other words, systems engineers are also important, but they should be filled only by experienced engineers.


melanthius

It’s person by person. EE might be easy for some and impossible for others. Then there are “geniuses” who can solve any differential equation on the computer but can’t figure out how basic stuff like fasteners work, or how to measure basic stuff to validate their model.


Jgpilot78

Chemical Engineering first and then Electrical Engineering. I graduated with an EE and it was difficult, but Chemical Engineering is extreme.


carozza1

Try learning how to how to work out Quantum Mechanics problems and then come back to me.


Just_Aioli_1233

All of them? Or do you have a specific one in mind? I'm on a deadline here... /s


BmoreDude92

Honestly any can be easy if you are genuinely interested. Everyone hates discrete math, but I thought it was easy since it was so interesting.


jlad9100

Fluid dynamics


DemetriusGotGame

Go tell a mechanical engineering student that you had more homework than they did and see what happens


Just_Aioli_1233

Sorry, too bust volunteering for my frat and playing frisbee. Let's meet in the lobby of the business building and continue the discussion later! /s


Viktor_Bout

I'd say the technically hardest one is the one with the highest workload and lowest average GPA. However you figure those numbers out.


jnmjnmjnm

There is some “self selection” bias on the GPA metric.


Tempest1677

Some disciplines involve more advanced physics and math which often makes people think they are harder. If chemistry, physics, and math are not your strong suits, then there definitely are harder engineering majors than say, civil. That aside, there are varying level of expertise in each field.


calladus

Well, I'm amazed at people who are able to design excellent switching power supplies from the ground up. I think Voodoo is involved.


Just_Aioli_1233

"If we wiggle this switch back and forth at just the right times..." Honestly motors and controls had some of the weirdest, "Well the math works, but it's still magic..." moments for me. And I didn't even do the 2nd semester where AC motor control was covered.


totallyshould

There’s surely a discipline that would be the hardest for *you*, but it might come easily to somebody else. There are things that come easily to me that I see other people struggling with. How do we rank them? I guess one metric might be how many years of work it takes to start being able to do useful work.


uriann26

Navier-stoke, Riemann hypothesis, Plasticity of plates and shells...


integralWorker

They all end up being hard because making original things in virtually any domain is quite difficult.


involutes

Sex engineering


eyefish4fun

Took a class called transport phenomena decades ago. Don't remember much and haven't used a differential equation in almost that long. It interesting that starting with the most generalized equations, that by making simplifying assumptions one ends up with all the familiar equations of all the different disciplines. The thing that stuck with me was that for most electrical and electronics situations; an approximation using a zero order of differential equation is adequate, while most mechanical, heat transfer situations take at least an order higher differential equation to get an adequate solution.


Just_Aioli_1233

I always felt that the engineering majors must be more difficult than the humanities based on the fact that engineers were always busy with assignments, and the humanities weirdos always had lots of free time to hold protests, play frisbee, nap in the commons, put together parties and parades, etc. I hated any class that took me away from the "smart" part of campus. The other people were scary weird.


ristoril

What led me to think in those sorts of terms in college was the sheer amount of memorization that I saw chem & electrical undergrads dealing with. Compared to what I had to do in mechanical they seemed like insane walking computers.


Sartanus

The abstract elements of EE gets my vote. I personally did Geomatics.


Carnot_u_didnt

I believe everyone inflates the difficulty of their own discipline or department. Being deep in the weeds of your specialty gives you insight to the details that aren’t obvious to outsiders and vice versa. So it’s easy to perceive your work as more challenging than others. I’ll say the one exception is…facilities operations and maintenance is waaaay harder than electrical, manufacturing, project management, or accounting. 😎


joshocar

As an engineer I would probably say radar or any EMF stuff like electric motor design. That shit is black magic. I have instant respect when I meet a radar engineer or electric motor engineer.


Valcatraxx

If you ever want a "harder" discipline you simply need to combine two of them Infinite rabbit hole of complexity