WHat do I know?

[3v0]

I recall that as a first year electrical engineering students (4 year program) were were told two things.

• You are here to learn to learn. What you learn is less important.
• Many people who graduate as engineers will not do any engineering. Some may not even work with companies that do engineering.

EE is a huge field. A university EE education is an introduction to several of the major areas. Much of it theory. That is very boring if your focus is on the practical.

The second point makes sense in that engineering students should be taught to organize, solve problems, and understand or develop processes.

This explains why less then half of the freshman students who enter EE actualy graduate. The ones who graduate have proven they have the discipline to learn things that are both difficult and often uninteresting.

EE was not for me and it took me 2 years to figure that out and left school. But I liked digital digital logic and computers. I returned to schol and switched to computer science and took the EE classes related to computers.

I landed a job with an engineering company but ended up doing maintenance and GUI work for several years. (not all bad) Eventually I joined a product development team with several very sharp EE's chasing the bleeding edge. It was a blast.

 

[psecody]

Well I figured out last year that going to junior college and getting basics for me was a waste. My councillors put me in classes that I didn't need so last year when I finally got to a 4 year college I ended up with about 4 hours transferring and having to start from scratch. I kind of agree that the classes we have to take that are unrelated to EE are kind of a waste of time. I believe that everyone needs some type of English or Language class but why am I having to take 2 years of it and another two years of Spanish? I live in Texas so with all the mexicans around spanish is helpful to know but I'm a firm believer in the thought that they should learn what we speak here to live here. My chemistry class, while interesting, doesn't really do too much in my opinion. Especially not two semesters of it. In truth I can see why chemistry would need to be taken more than I can see why I need all those language classes, I'm just really put off of chemistry because the teacher is India (no offense) and talks very quickly, softly, and his english isn't great so really he might as well be speaking another language. I'm dreading the second semester of that.

As for engineering related classes so far there haven't been that many. I actually took the first two engineering classes in reverse order because of some reason I can't remember at the moment, but my councillor did approve it. First I took intro to EE which was a fairly interesting class but nothing really special. We never did anything more in the labs then take a schematic and solve it, then build the circuit and prove that we solved it correctly. Nothing much in depth, we never used anything but resistors to build the circuits which stunk but we got to keep all the resistors at the end so that was a plus and I also got a big breadboard out of it because they were cleaning out their supply room. The intro to EE was mainly how to use Ohm's Law, Kirchhoff's Voltage/Current Laws, Watt's Law (very briefly covered), and maybe one other thing but I'm not sure there was another. It was a very basic class but the teacher made it seem like you had to be a math wiz to complete the course. I hadn't finished Calc 1 at the time and she insisted I wouldn't know what to do for half of the course... Which as long as you can handle simple +, -, x, / there is nothing hard about that class. Then the other class I took was Intro to Engineering which was more of a "show you different types of engineers" program. The teachers (one from each discipline) split the class into groups of six containing one EE, one ME, one aerospace engineer, an industrial engineer, and I can't remember the other two. But the whole class was the teachers assigning projects to build and the main focus being each student keeping a log book correctly documenting each projects development. It was fun but sort of pointless for EE's because none of the projects allowed the use of electronics.

This coming semester I'm focusing on getting all of the remaining prerequisites finished up so I can start on all the EE classes. I'm excited to take a few of them and am looking forward to them. That doesn't completely relate to the original question but I thought I would just share my college story so far.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

I'll give you an example from an real example:

The engineering student asked:

Can I jump my car with an extension cord?

The two year degree guy would say no. The engineering student was clueless.

Now, the marketing guy would say, But you can charge the battery through the lighter sockets of both cars, right?

He asked me. I had both at the time.

 

[cr0sh]

I'll give you an example from an real example:

The engineering student asked:

Can I jump my car with an extension cord?

The two year degree guy would say no. The engineering student was clueless.

Now, the marketing guy would say, But you can charge the battery through the lighter sockets of both cars, right?

He asked me. I had both at the time.

Meanwhile, the shadetree mechanic would just strip the ends and try it out.

Honestly, it would probably work just fine, provided that:

1) The conductors in the cord are of a large enough gauge (12 or 14 gauge would probably be sufficient).
2) You kept the length of the conductors as short as possible (less than 6 feet).
3) You connected them, started the good car and let the batteries charge for a while (15-30 minutes).
4) You disconnected them -before- cranking the car with the bum battery.

Step four is very important - for charging, the wires in an extension cord should be able to handle the current just fine (it may get warm); but for cranking - no way. If the car didn't start (but would almost turn over), then put it back on charge for another 15-30 minutes and try again.

/having a fire extinguisher handy might be useful, though...

 

[Reloadron]

I'll give you an example from an real example:

The engineering student asked:

Can I jump my car with an extension cord?

The two year degree guy would say no. The engineering student was clueless.

Now, the marketing guy would say, But you can charge the battery through the lighter sockets of both cars, right?

He asked me. I had both at the time.

Actually happened to me in real life. It was a cold December evening in NY and my grandparents were visiting. When they went to leave their car battery was dead. I suggested we just put an extension cord between my dad's car and the Lincoln and start their car. We had lots of wires in the house. My dad (an actual EE) opened the trunk of his car and got out these huge jumper cables and connected them. He let his car run a long time then my grandparents started their car. I couldn't understand why the cables needed to be so big? I was proud of my suggestion of using an extension cord. I didn't understand why it would not work. Grandpa did get a new battery. When I asked my dad later why my idea was no good he just replied "Ronald, you need to understand current".

Now in my defense is that was 1960 and I was 10 years old. Within a few days I had a full understanding of why my idea sucked.

I hear countless stories about engineers (electrical) and for the better part most are ********. Many young engineers we interview right out of school are pretty bright people. Two hires ago we hired a kid (sorry but 24 years old is a kid) who was strong in programming skills. Imagine that, programming skills. When I went to school there was no programming skills unless you could work with eniac. The last hire I needed theory with a focus on IGBTs and motors. The closest I ever came to an IGBT in school was likely a CK722 which sure as hell is no IGBT. Though I did smoke plenty of CK722s. Today that second hire is working on a new project called M-Power.

The second hire travels quite a bit interfacing with other companies working with us on the M-Power Project. This is where the cliche of excellent written and verbal communication skills comes into play. The clients need to fully understand where we are coming form as we do them. That is his responsibility. There is no room for "I thought they said or meant" as screw ups are expensive. An expensive screw up is a very bad thing. You want the brightest and best and you pay them well.

Anyway, from a very, very old school, the classic arguments of how 4 year degree engineers don't know much doesn't fly well as today most companies seeking them are looking for people bright enough to learn.

Just My Take
Ron

 

[tcmtech]

I'll give you an example from an real example:

The engineering student asked:

Can I jump my car with an extension cord?

The two year degree guy would say no. The engineering student was clueless.

Now, the marketing guy would say, But you can charge the battery through the lighter sockets of both cars, right?

Now ask a farmer that question and he will tell you that there are two variety's of cables. Booster cables and jumper cables. Booster cables are too light to start anything bigger than a riding lawn mower but will charge a weak battery over a period of time providing that its still capable of being charged.

Jumper cables are the big heavy ones that can jump start most anything regardless of if the battery is good bad or possibly missing in some cases.


And gosh do I envy you guys who went to universities that actually taught EE related subjects for the EE program.

 

[Mr RB]

When I worked in industry in the late '80's in a steelworking town the tafe college was optimised with all the equipment and courses to turn out excellent electrical engineers (certificate) and the Uni was optimised to turn out degree engineers with all the courses optimised for paperwork. The CE's wore blue and did all the design installation supervision and diagnosis of all the high tech equipment and the DE's wore green and sat in an office filling out requisition forms and arguing with suppliers on the phone. Secretaries, they got called.

In the lunchroom after a college day the CE's would be talking how they spent the day programming and hooking up microcontrollers to closed loop power systems and fine tuning the results, the DE's spent their Uni day in lectures on meetings, office protocols and some silly subjects like atomic particle theory. What ticked me off was that the DE qualification was considered "superior", by those who didn't have a clue. Unfortunately the people "without a clue" included upper management who wrote the paychecks. I was out of there ASAP and by the time I left I had accumulated more real world EE knowlege from working for myself making money in parallel to my "job" than from the job itself.

Tcmtech- The trouble with the extension lead example is the engineering student would plug the extension lead into the mains and attach the other end to the car battery - it's the kind of crap they see in movies.

 

[RMMM]

Often, university degrees simply show that the person learned how to learn.

They may not KNOW all they were taught, but they have a foundation.

You absolutely can get hired WITHOUT a degree. Impressing the hell out of a interviewer by displaying great people skills and a box full of your work can do the trick.

The degree shows less than the box of projects. The degree shows a willingness to learn, but the projects show an urge to learn.

Without a teacher, you went on your own (Showing great personality traits) educated yourself past the point of most in your position and designed, built, debugged, coded, etched, etc... you own products.

You can read and understand a schematic, you can read and understand a datasheet, and you know what boron and phosphorus is used for.

You may start a job at a lower pay grade, but you also dont have the college loans to pay back.

At the rate that technology changes, a good self-educator is better than a good learner. WHY?

Because no one is teaching you after you leave the school.

The autodidact is interested in the technology as a hobby and not just a job. The company can be confident in the fact that you will keep them competitive without having to hire n00bs every year just to have someone on the team that knows the latest things being taught in school.

If you have products you made in your hands, that proves that you can make a company products that, with their marketing, can prosper.

Me? I'm relegated to washing toilets.