Not Sure if Enginnering is For me?

[solis365]

in a test position you will probably end up developing test procedures, or at least following them at first. documenting failures, reworking boards. personally i like design work a lot better but its all what you like.

though i agree that you might want to find a design position in a bigger company. that way theres less initial responsibility and you can work your way up to more responsibility as you get better. seems like the best option for you based on what ive heard so far.

i also think its ridiculous that you dont get simulation software to help with designs. its very, very difficult to correctly account for everything in a design with your head and software really helps catch small oversights, in addition to helping you optimize your designs and try out other solutions.

however you said that you rarely do designs and more often do reworks of previous designs. so you are optimizing or changing old designs for new products? and designing pcbs and such? can you give more detail as to what exactly you do? like what does a typical "job" entail for you? the way i see it now is "get old design and new requirements. rework design to meet new reqs, design pcb, send to production" that right?

 

[wuchy143]

however you said that you rarely do designs and more often do reworks of previous designs. so you are optimizing or changing old designs for new products? and designing pcbs and such? can you give more detail as to what exactly you do? like what does a typical "job" entail for you? the way i see it now is "get old design and new requirements. rework design to meet new reqs, design pcb, send to production" that right?

Sales makes a sales spec where they figure out what the customer wants and they find a product we make(usually a keyboard or Trackball) where they base the spec from. They usually get it close for most designs where there isn't too much engineering envolvement. For the designs that need some extra "tweaking" I usually will grab the sales spec and use that as my starting point for the re-design/new design. From that and talking with my boss we decide if we need to spin a new PCB which could add our PWM backlighting technology to the design for example..add in USB capability....put in a speaker which makes a beep...simpler things like that. I also add more capacitive switches...add some discrete components to add for better EMI protection if we are going through mil std 461. Once I have ironed out the design we have a design review where the general manager of the company..my boss(eng man.) and the firmware guy sit down and try to find mistakes. Or we think of better ways of doing things..stuff like that. ONce that is complete I send out my netlist, schematic, mechanical outline(made by the ME), excel sheet of packages(usually thru-hole PCB's) and another company does the layout for us which I closely monitor talking back and forth with the PCB designer.


Once I get the PCB's in house I work with the documentation guy where we make an AP(assembly print) and a BOM to go with that. These are the documents to get the board stuffed correctly. If all goes well it works if not I debug and figure out what's wrong. Any changes get thrown into the "IPC" bucket where once the product is shipped we then take the IPC and release the finished good product and do the necessary fixing of our documentation to reflect the "as shipped" product.

My first project was keyboards and keypads for a military airplane(sorry can't say which one). We went thru EMI testing for that obviously so I have had to troubleshoot things that wern't passing. For example we were radiating and miserably failing a test. So we rented EMI equipment and on the spectrum analyzer saw the "tall grass". I get some support in testing but my boss and anyone else in the company tries to help me when they can but usually they are too busy to REALLY help. I"m so lost at times I basically just spin my wheels. But I don't give up! For that particular test I found that we were using an incorrect value cap on a DC/DC my boss made. I popped the wrong one out and put the correct one it. It made the "tall grass" decrease by about 20dB. It still didn't technically pass but almost did. It was very very close. I was grasping at straws with that one...but it worked.

Other than that most of my time is taken peeling potatoes like making drawing with the documentation guy so the cable department can make the cables for the design I just did. I support the test engineer when he has problems with testing. Usually it's something simple like the wrong value cap installed...or a pullup resistor missing.

I don't want to continue doing what I'm doing. I think that the experience I've received is good but it's taking me down a path I really just don't want. If you can't tell I'm very confused. But, I know that there is something out there that I can do which having my EE bach. degree and 2 years experience will only help me get that position. I'm just doing whatever I can to get there. Even if it means sounding like a sally on an internet forum

-mike

 

[wuchy143]

I'm getting the feeling you've told us a LOT more about how you feel than what you have told your boss. Maybe it's time to tell him too.

I agree. But it's tough right now risking telling my boss. I like my boss a lot. He treats me well. I"m not sure if he knows how I feel. I'm good at putting up a front because well it's my job and I need to keep it for now. I really don't know how he'll react if I spill my guts. And the biggest thing that scares me is there really isn't any other job for me here. So if I were to tell him about it, it would basicly be telling him I quit. Also the president of the company is a loose cannon and regularly looses it and swears, yells, and is irrational. I'm not scared of him...I'm just scared that I could loose my job in an instant if he finds out. It's sort of a three ring circus here but I hear it's a three ring circus any where...so I really can't complain.

-mike

 

[MrAl]

Hi,

If you like math and physics then you might like engineering.
If you dont like either of those, or using computers, you wont like it.

It takes time to get really good at engineering, or at least begin
to understand where the pitfalls might sneak in at. If you are doing
circuits, then you should be looking at lots of circuits and trying to
analyze them and understand exactly how they work and why all the
little details have been included. Once you have looked at 1000's
of circuits you will get more confident, and once you have considered
lots of design alternatives to various applications you will get better
at it and make less errors.
You can not expect to make zero errors however because it just isnt
possible sometimes to cover all the bases. You should be able to
tell what is wrong after building the prototype and correct it, but
that still doesnt mean you will never make a mistake.

It does take a lot of attention to detail so you have to think about if
you want to work this way the rest of your life or not.

 

[Autarchex]

Any job has ups and downs, but clearly this is not the place for you. My advice would be to not judge an entire career choice based on one job, and certainly not based on your *first* job in that field.

Get the heck out of that place and go somewhere else. Engineering can and should be exciting. It is inherently exciting. If it isn't exciting, your employer is doing it wrong. You mentioned that you don't even get simulation tools. That is a really bad sign.

Do you have an oscilloscope? I've run into a surprisingly high number of engineers that could not manage to convince management to provide them basic tools. They all hated their jobs and were always depressed. Their worlds brightened considerably when they jumped ship to other companies.

 

[wuchy143]

Get the heck out of that place and go somewhere else. Engineering can and should be exciting. It is inherently exciting. If it isn't exciting, your employer is doing it wrong. You mentioned that you don't even get simulation tools. That is a really bad sign.

Agreed!! If I could simulate the keyboards, my mistakes would be 0%. Really. The technology is also from like....1979-1985ish. We use an 8052 micro with discrete components to scan all the keys.(we have capacitive keyboards) We use latches like 74HC374 and 74HC373 because at times we don't have enough port pins because we use a 40 pin dip package. To get any type of USB or RS422 or RS232 communication we usually just have a chip that we plunk on the board or for USB we have a PIC which an outside company programmed for us. I feel like engineers at my age arn't doing this type of design. It's old right? I also feel like It's equivalent to me programming in assembly when all the "cutten edge guys" are programming in C. I feel like I"m getting behind the curve and becoming less valuable to companies...other than the one I"m at now.

Do you have an oscilloscope? I've run into a surprisingly high number of engineers that could not manage to convince management to provide them basic tools. They all hated their jobs and were always depressed. Their worlds brightened considerably when they jumped ship to other companies.

None of the scopes here really work reliably. So, I was forced to bring in my home handheld one. It's actually not a bad one. They would never buy a new one. Just too much money. So, jumping ship seems like an enevitable reality for me. But I feel like if I put in my resume any bigger company will laugh because I have no experience with things other than what I've been doing. Which if you read above is basicly just re-designs/tweaking existing designs to make a new PCB which requires very little real EE and mostly just connecting things up logically that already work. Kinda of like having a function in programming that you know works so you can use it in anything. That's sort of how I do the design.

Any advice as to what type of job I would expect to receive given the experience I have? Or what type of experience should I expoit when meeting with a future employer? How should I present myself? I don't want to talk bad about my current employer because that would just look bad. Also, I leaning towards not getting a position where I would do actual design. Is that even possible in EE?


-mike

 

[Autarchex]

Except for the fact that I favor Atmel AVR microcontrollers over PIC, none of what you are describing sounds all that strange even for new designs. There are a number of fairly old parts out there that have stuck around because they are well-suited to certain tasks; it would be a waste of time and money to reinvent the wheel. New parts tend to be fast parts. Fast parts can actually cause serious problems in situations where speed is unnecessary, such as in a keyboard embedded control system, for example. New parts also tend to carry a price premium that cannot be justified in commoditized products.

Also, I am 25 years old, yet I favor assembly over C for most of my simpler microcontroller projects because I can get the job done faster and I have more control over the hardware that way - so it isn't just something "old" guys use. Granted, I wouldn't be using assembly for anything really huge and complicated...

It isn't always what the parts are so much as what you're making out of them. It sounds like making keyboards does not excite you much. I can't blame you, really. But remember that you can do some amazing things with a pile of 20 year old op-amps or a fistful of 74HC chips. I would find another employer that will let you explore more interesting directions.

As for the advice, I'm not sure what you mean by an EE job that does not involve any "actual design". Even if you are not designing products, but are working in some sort of R&D or testing or failure analysis or troubleshooting role, you will still need to employ the same skills you would exercise as a designer. If you are asking if there are any EE jobs available which do not involve any thinking, well yes, there are two: management and assembly line worker. However, I suspect some common sense and thinking will still be required as an assembly line worker.

 

[Mr RB]

yeah.

But don't get reckless and go to jail..

Hmmm, I suggest doing what you feel like... and you directly infer something that would put you in jail?

Hehe. Just what is this thing you really feel like doing that would put you in jail??

 

[wuchy143]

after reading all these posts I've been able to gather a lot of information from very kind intelligent members of a great community. I have been thinking a lot about this....obviously...it's my career. I have been fighting it for a while but deep down I don't want to be an electrical engineer...period... I am a hobbyist.(not saying that hobbyist arn't great engineers!) I like doing fun stuff with electronics in my basement where mostly I only see.(or my girlfriend when I force her to see ) I recently bought an LCD display from Sparkfun.com and had fun hacking the code with that and getting things to be displayed. Changing things around...almost like trial and error. But I wouldn't want to be on a project where I had to design a full out LCD interface so a user could work with the LCD to control "something". Perhaps I will get to that point playing in my basement..but as for a J.O.B I don't think its for me. This has been really tough for me to figure out. Getting a degree and paying lots and lots of money..which I obviously still owe..never mind the blood sweat and tears to achieve the degree..and now finding out that I probably will not use that degree in a direct way is a little sad.

I"m not happy doing what I"m doing and I've been looking at a lot of bigger company job opportunities over the past few days while talking to you guys. BAE...Raytheon to name a few. I look at the potential jobs that would apply to me and I don't think I would want them.

This has been a long thread and didn't intend it to be so long winded. Now I'm confident EE isn't for me. So some good/bad things have come out of it. I have been helped in finding out EE isn't for me....and the bad..well just that...my current occupation isn't for me. Wow...that's scary to say.

If people are still following this thread I'll be amazed but perhaps some can give me insight into where I can go from here. It's going to be tough explaining this to a lot of people which I"m not overly concerned about. I'm actually excited to lift this burden off of me. Although I'm a little scared because well lets be honest. Chances are any job I change to will be much less pay than an EE working in Boston. I will have to change a lot of things in my life. I know figuring out what I want to do is somethign only I can do but perhaps you guys know of jobs or a career where having my degree would be helpfull?

-mike

 

[Willbe]

work in general

Frederick Herzberg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Mr RB]

A few people have said similar things above, maybe you shouldn't give up ALL fruit forever because you bit into ONE bad apple?

You've got a boss you say you like but won't talk to, preferring instead to talk to total strangers. You've got a company you don't like, that won't provide you with decent equipment, with bad budgets, run by a guy who's emotional and unreasonable, making products you don't like, using boring obsolete components... Have I left anything out?

If these are the reasons you don't want to do it anymore, there's NO indication that any of those reasons will apply to your next job in engineering design.

If you didn't like working with electronics that would be a different matter. Maybe then engineering is not for you. But ALL the problems above relate to one specific workplace, not to engineering as a career in general.

So maybe the decision is not to rule out a future in engineering, but to rule out a future at THAT workplace.