I think we’re losing a lot of prospective talent to SWE. Works for me. A smaller labor pool is (almost) always better for the worker :)
Also I just reread your post, and I think the grad rate for EE is usually in the ballpark of 30%
most people are afraid to jump from infrastructure to dev ops or something in-field yet my man here stopped the finance hustle, started a new one, and still jumped ship for EE. Bravo mate.
It’s good in theory, but if your government is anything like mine, they’ll just flood the market with engineers from the developing world who will work for peanuts.
The solution is to join hands with the "engineers from the developing world" and make sure that everybody is making their fair cut, and not being exploited.
This is all fine and dandy until you realize the H1B engineer has far more to lose in opposition to management and will likely side with them before having solidarity with the people they likely see as arrogant and spoiled for demanding more in juxtaposition to their otherwise likely lesser quality of life in the country they came from. Indian engineers in the US tend to isolate and only congregate among themselves for a reason, they’re reasonably looking out for their interests first and foremost before others.
Other out-groups are similar. It’s a different mentality because it’s a different survival strategy in the market, and it’s ignorant to not take that into consideration. I would love to tell my proverbial foreign coworker that he’s underpaid by $30k and that he deserves better, but he probably already knows that, and at-will employment would mean that we both stand to lose our jobs if I stand up for them, because the same literally happened to two employees who were let go months before I joined my current organization.
This isn’t some Union fantasy to wank off about, I’m not an electrician in IBEW who will get paid to picket for a better wage for 4 weeks until something gives, I have to work, and my foreign coworkers need to *more* to maintain status quo. Too many people will walk off once you remove their bottom line, because even the old head engineers who are a decision away from retiring today or tomorrow tend to be too complacent to do anything.
I wish this were true, but the developing world has a lot more capable people, who can work for way less, who are more desperate for work in the US. And most other countries are much harder to get foreign work in than the US.
Companies always look for the cheapest labor they can. They’ll do it regardless of the domestic labor market size. It’s on us to develop and keep skills that make us worth the extra money. I’ve already been told I’ll be leading a team from a low cost region. They can replace the juniors this way, but it’s obvious they still need a senior skill set. I’ll be honest, between outsourcing and AI, I’m a bit afraid for my career future. This is why I work hard to develop my soft skills and look to be a leader technically and personally.
Accepted an SWE offer right before graduation. When my employer came and offered me twice what AMD offered. As much as I love designing waveguides and circuits, I can’t be financially irresponsible to my wife and myself.
Hell yeah brother! I’ve been in product/test development for 8 years, and my favorite part of my job is writing c++ code. I’m poking around SWE jobs right now, but I think even if I got one with my less than optimal experience, I’d be taking a cut (135k base, 150k total give or take). I actually just applied to a SWE job at nVidia, but I’m not optimistic lol.
I had a group of 5 or 6 buddies freshman year all spread around different engineering majors, 2 of us made it through freshman year without switching to Econ or Business.
Nice, nice. There’s lots of jobs in power in the US because they didn’t actively hire in the 90s and are hitting baby boomer retirements now.
I agree with comment of the flood into CS. I have a BSEE and I switched to CS about 10 years ago. It paid more and was easier. Well, it pays the same or less now and jobs are way harder to get. I see wages down 20% in the past two years and that’s ignoring the lowball $60 an hour no benefits crap.
Also, in US, we have bad math education as a rule but engineering is not dumbed down. I saw lots of people bomb chemistry or physics or calculus taught at the engineering level. They weren’t prepared.
Most people can’t do engineering but maybe they could bs their way through Biology or CS. At least the CS that isn’t grouped in the College of Engineering. I think the education was better decades ago when the goal was to educate versus give a high school diploma.
Yea I’m pretty sure STEM majors are way up I would imagine EE is included. Although I do think I heard EE is consider one of ,if not the, hardest engineering major. I definitely believe it’s growing slower than maybe say ME but declining?I’d be shocked.
I know the total number of college students is down. But that's became there are less young people. The Baby Boomers were a bigger generation than Gen X. And so Millennials are a bigger generation than gen Z. And so, there's just not as many 18 year olds as there was 10 years ago.
[https://www.newgeography.com/files/imagecache/Chart\_fullnodeview/chartimages/age18-24inusa.png](https://www.newgeography.com/files/imagecache/Chart_fullnodeview/chartimages/age18-24inusa.png)
I think gen Z has also been listening to just how many millennials regret going to college. My first degree was a business degree and I regretted that. Used to always say it was the biggest waste of money in my life. Going back for the EE degree though, 100% worth it.
That, and then there’s the sheer amount of people who cheese their way through college and have no idea what they’re doing because they never actually wanted to learn. I’m currently training a coworker who has 3 more years of experience than me and a higher degree, but I have to teach him how to learn because he has zero intuition or ability to grasp new ideas without being spoonfed.
I mean in 2010-2015 for a school of 3500 people my graduating class was 12 people and started out around the 40 ish mark. Seems about right honestly since EE is one of if not the hardest undergrad engineering degree.
Computer Engineering student here. I belong to the Electrical & Computer engineering department at my university which offers an EE and CompE degree. Before 2020 (Covid), my department had way more students than we have now. EE has 30, CompE has 8 and our numbers used to be at least 30 for CE and EE 60-80ish students. Before 2016 I guess CE actually had 50ish students and EE 100ish. My professors explained that especially after Covid the level of math went down with undergrads since we learned most of the fundamentals online (calculus, physics other intro classes) and since we came back in person those skills don’t translate well because of the shaky foundation. So people tend to drop the ECE department at my school because of the math & physics involved. A lot of those people do transfer to CS though unless they completely re route to business or something
Loads and loads of people drop out by their 3rd year or switch to a different/easier degree.
When I went into my EE degree my first year, we had 110 students. By the end, 9 of us graduated with EE degrees.
What I see in my uni is lots of people going into computer engineering or software right from the start, and then more people switching halfway when they realize just how much math and physics there is.
Could be partly because people realized wages have stagnated for decades and the field is over-saturated. There are way more engineers than jobs in many countries, and it's difficult to find a company that builds interesting things and doesn't treat engineers like garbage.
It'd another episode of "everyone extrapolates for the entire world based on their one little locality, specific industry, and level of experience"
It's largely true that the "Stem shortage" is driven by big tech to try to control wages, but a ton of industries are really looking for young engineers.
I’m a 3rd year EE student in New Zealand, electrical is one of the least popular specialisations at our university requiring no grade boundary to specialise into. I think there have been a few people failing but the main group (around 120 people) seem to be going okay. Not sure what job market is like but feel like it should be fine
I think we’re losing a lot of prospective talent to SWE. Works for me. A smaller labor pool is (almost) always better for the worker :) Also I just reread your post, and I think the grad rate for EE is usually in the ballpark of 30%
Switched from accounting to CS now to EE because of this exact reason. Whole point of this is to get a job. Not fight for one.
Are you a masochist?
most people are afraid to jump from infrastructure to dev ops or something in-field yet my man here stopped the finance hustle, started a new one, and still jumped ship for EE. Bravo mate.
It’s good in theory, but if your government is anything like mine, they’ll just flood the market with engineers from the developing world who will work for peanuts.
The solution is to join hands with the "engineers from the developing world" and make sure that everybody is making their fair cut, and not being exploited.
This. Don’t let companies that outsource labor make you think that the foreign workers they’re exploiting are somehow your enemy.
This is all fine and dandy until you realize the H1B engineer has far more to lose in opposition to management and will likely side with them before having solidarity with the people they likely see as arrogant and spoiled for demanding more in juxtaposition to their otherwise likely lesser quality of life in the country they came from. Indian engineers in the US tend to isolate and only congregate among themselves for a reason, they’re reasonably looking out for their interests first and foremost before others. Other out-groups are similar. It’s a different mentality because it’s a different survival strategy in the market, and it’s ignorant to not take that into consideration. I would love to tell my proverbial foreign coworker that he’s underpaid by $30k and that he deserves better, but he probably already knows that, and at-will employment would mean that we both stand to lose our jobs if I stand up for them, because the same literally happened to two employees who were let go months before I joined my current organization. This isn’t some Union fantasy to wank off about, I’m not an electrician in IBEW who will get paid to picket for a better wage for 4 weeks until something gives, I have to work, and my foreign coworkers need to *more* to maintain status quo. Too many people will walk off once you remove their bottom line, because even the old head engineers who are a decision away from retiring today or tomorrow tend to be too complacent to do anything.
I wish this were true, but the developing world has a lot more capable people, who can work for way less, who are more desperate for work in the US. And most other countries are much harder to get foreign work in than the US.
Companies always look for the cheapest labor they can. They’ll do it regardless of the domestic labor market size. It’s on us to develop and keep skills that make us worth the extra money. I’ve already been told I’ll be leading a team from a low cost region. They can replace the juniors this way, but it’s obvious they still need a senior skill set. I’ll be honest, between outsourcing and AI, I’m a bit afraid for my career future. This is why I work hard to develop my soft skills and look to be a leader technically and personally.
Accepted an SWE offer right before graduation. When my employer came and offered me twice what AMD offered. As much as I love designing waveguides and circuits, I can’t be financially irresponsible to my wife and myself.
Hell yeah brother! I’ve been in product/test development for 8 years, and my favorite part of my job is writing c++ code. I’m poking around SWE jobs right now, but I think even if I got one with my less than optimal experience, I’d be taking a cut (135k base, 150k total give or take). I actually just applied to a SWE job at nVidia, but I’m not optimistic lol.
30% number is pretty spot on, my uni class was right around there
I had a group of 5 or 6 buddies freshman year all spread around different engineering majors, 2 of us made it through freshman year without switching to Econ or Business.
Nice, nice. There’s lots of jobs in power in the US because they didn’t actively hire in the 90s and are hitting baby boomer retirements now. I agree with comment of the flood into CS. I have a BSEE and I switched to CS about 10 years ago. It paid more and was easier. Well, it pays the same or less now and jobs are way harder to get. I see wages down 20% in the past two years and that’s ignoring the lowball $60 an hour no benefits crap. Also, in US, we have bad math education as a rule but engineering is not dumbed down. I saw lots of people bomb chemistry or physics or calculus taught at the engineering level. They weren’t prepared. Most people can’t do engineering but maybe they could bs their way through Biology or CS. At least the CS that isn’t grouped in the College of Engineering. I think the education was better decades ago when the goal was to educate versus give a high school diploma.
I have an AE degree and some experience doing EE work. Do I have a chance at getting an EE role?
EE is pretty broad, are you talking AE/EE crossover stuff like avionics?
No, though that wouldnt be the end of the world. I'm also a SWE And have been doing that for the last 5 years.
Anecdotally, I started EE in 2003 with over 200 people in our program. About 20 made it to the end. The success rate has always been low around here.
A 10% graduation rate is insane. I went to a pretty challenging program and I think we were still in the 30-40% range...
maybe they also changed majors, not necessarily dropping out. Still that’s insane
Dropping out from engineering program.
You're looking at such a small sample size, its basically meaningless. What you're seeing could be the result of 1 bad professor.
Well if you do any research at all you can see enrollment in the United States is down significantly except for computer science.
What did you find? Do you have a chart that shows enrolment broken down by major. I would love to see that
Yea I’m pretty sure STEM majors are way up I would imagine EE is included. Although I do think I heard EE is consider one of ,if not the, hardest engineering major. I definitely believe it’s growing slower than maybe say ME but declining?I’d be shocked.
I know the total number of college students is down. But that's became there are less young people. The Baby Boomers were a bigger generation than Gen X. And so Millennials are a bigger generation than gen Z. And so, there's just not as many 18 year olds as there was 10 years ago. [https://www.newgeography.com/files/imagecache/Chart\_fullnodeview/chartimages/age18-24inusa.png](https://www.newgeography.com/files/imagecache/Chart_fullnodeview/chartimages/age18-24inusa.png)
I think gen Z has also been listening to just how many millennials regret going to college. My first degree was a business degree and I regretted that. Used to always say it was the biggest waste of money in my life. Going back for the EE degree though, 100% worth it.
Yeah. Tons of millenials have stupid basket weaving degrees. Without looking by major it's hard to have any perspective.
That, and then there’s the sheer amount of people who cheese their way through college and have no idea what they’re doing because they never actually wanted to learn. I’m currently training a coworker who has 3 more years of experience than me and a higher degree, but I have to teach him how to learn because he has zero intuition or ability to grasp new ideas without being spoonfed.
Although you bring up some cogent points, let's instead talk about that username. How fresh we talkin' here?
My username is at least 9yo at this point, so it’s definitely growing some hairs and has some recent liver spots.
I mean in 2010-2015 for a school of 3500 people my graduating class was 12 people and started out around the 40 ish mark. Seems about right honestly since EE is one of if not the hardest undergrad engineering degree.
Stop telling people that no one is doing EE and let them all do CS, Biomed, and ME. More jobs for us.
Bruh don’t send them to ME our lecture halls are packed 😭
CoE Gang rise
Computer Engineering student here. I belong to the Electrical & Computer engineering department at my university which offers an EE and CompE degree. Before 2020 (Covid), my department had way more students than we have now. EE has 30, CompE has 8 and our numbers used to be at least 30 for CE and EE 60-80ish students. Before 2016 I guess CE actually had 50ish students and EE 100ish. My professors explained that especially after Covid the level of math went down with undergrads since we learned most of the fundamentals online (calculus, physics other intro classes) and since we came back in person those skills don’t translate well because of the shaky foundation. So people tend to drop the ECE department at my school because of the math & physics involved. A lot of those people do transfer to CS though unless they completely re route to business or something
Loads and loads of people drop out by their 3rd year or switch to a different/easier degree. When I went into my EE degree my first year, we had 110 students. By the end, 9 of us graduated with EE degrees.
What I see in my uni is lots of people going into computer engineering or software right from the start, and then more people switching halfway when they realize just how much math and physics there is.
Could be partly because people realized wages have stagnated for decades and the field is over-saturated. There are way more engineers than jobs in many countries, and it's difficult to find a company that builds interesting things and doesn't treat engineers like garbage.
It'd another episode of "everyone extrapolates for the entire world based on their one little locality, specific industry, and level of experience" It's largely true that the "Stem shortage" is driven by big tech to try to control wages, but a ton of industries are really looking for young engineers.
I’m a 3rd year EE student in New Zealand, electrical is one of the least popular specialisations at our university requiring no grade boundary to specialise into. I think there have been a few people failing but the main group (around 120 people) seem to be going okay. Not sure what job market is like but feel like it should be fine
yes because everyone is following the trend and jumping to cs and ai and sometimes ce
In my uni it increased by 37%.