Anyone know any electrical engineers?

[AHotGreasedUpJigglyPuff 4 Luvin']

Just wondering if anyone could throw me some insight as to their day to day jobs, or anything for that matter (the google descriptions are kinda vague and impersonal). I figured it might be good to know about the actual job before I decide to major in it.

 

[Jammer]

I know an electrical engineer, but telling you about them doesn't seem to answer your actual post.

What do you mean by "the google descriptions"?

 

[Xsyven]

What do you mean by "the google descriptions"?

This is only a hunch, but I'm guessing that when he said:

(the google descriptions are kinda vague and impersonal).

He meant that he googled the job descriptions, and things came up vague and impersonal.

 

[AHotGreasedUpJigglyPuff 4 Luvin']

As keifed from salary.com:

"Designs, develops, and tests all aspects of electrical components, equipment, and machinery. May use computer-assisted engineering and design software and equipment to perform assignments. Applies principles and techniques of electrical engineering to accomplish goals."

There's the general idea, but it doesn't really paint a great mental picture. Jammer, what does your electrical engineer associate do exactly? Projects, etc?

 

[Eight Sage]

If you're an electrical engineer you can do everything involving technology.

I know EEs who works with radars, radio stations (as mechanics), micro processors, electric systems for cars (such as alarms, sound, panel displays, etc.)

As you see, an EEs can work in anything involving circuits, also they must have programming skills (I have a friend who's EE, He's working at Intel in a project of connecting a Data Base to something, and he told me that most of the time all he does there is program)

 

[TheFifthMan]

It depends. I'm a mechanical engineering student and I have a lot of friends that are EE majors or EE grad students, and you literally can go anywhere, even more so than the ME grad student. ME students can go into any industry that involves moving parts (read: Automotive, Aero/Astronautics, HVAC systems, Manufacturing, Consumer goods, maybe even Biomedical if you have the right background)

EE students, however, as Eight Sage says, can do anything involving circuits, which, as you can probably tell, goes everywhere now; Software development, biomedical, VLSI (processors), communications (radio and phones), circuit analysis (don't even get me started) although a lot of my EE friends are doing software development and networking.

I'm doing ME because it seems a lot more interesting to me. I did a project a year ago as an ME, and when something fails (as it did quite often), we can point at the failure and say, "Oh, the problem's over here," and fix the problem accordingly. If a EE project has a component failure, you gotta break out the test probes and test each individual circuit. If there's a bug in code? You gotta go back to the code and debug, or worse, scrap the code entirely. I like being able to see my failures.

 

[Lightsaberboy]

there's so many different fields of EE. you can focus on robotics, nanotech, RF, electromagnetics, there's just so many different options for you depending on what you like, and the work is different for each field. when you take EE as your major, you'll start out with the basic courses then prolly move up to stuff like signals and systems and embedded systems, then after a while you'll be able to focus on a particular area of EE you want to work on.

the work varies a lot from the job so you can basically do anything. I'm an EE and my job is gonna be mostly testing and operations and analysis of data, and after a while i'd like to focus more on hardware design and integration.

 

[AltF4]

Yea, Electrical Engineering isn't a job, it's a field. A pretty broad field. That's why the job descriptions are really vague. There's a lot you can do with an EE degree, all involving technology of some sort.

Important thing to remember: The first two years in college you'll be taking some basic science and engineering courses. Not too many devoted solely to EE. That means you can get a feel for it, and if you don't like it, you can switch without much penalty to another engineering major.

 

[Silent_Jester]

My dads an electrician, he complains about work in the morning, then goes and comes back really cranky.

 

[AltF4]

Haha!

Well... an Electrician and an Electrical Engineer are not at all the same thing.

 

[Eight Sage]

Important thing to remember: The first two years in college you'll be taking some basic science and engineering courses. Not too many devoted solely to EE. That means you can get a feel for it, and if you don't like it, you can switch without much penalty to another engineering major.

Oh no! I forgot I spent two basic years! lol

Take that quote, firsts years helps you to understand what's the best for you, and in your university they'll tell you what to do next having in mind what you want. It's worth the shoot. I was between EE and SE (system engineering). EE is very interesting, but really hard. SE lets you be on front of software innovations, so I choose SE.

 

[AHotGreasedUpJigglyPuff 4 Luvin']

Important thing to remember: The first two years in college you'll be taking some basic science and engineering courses. Not too many devoted solely to EE. That means you can get a feel for it, and if you don't like it, you can switch without much penalty to another engineering major.

Phew, I like the sound of that. I'm still unsure as to which section of engineering I want to branch out into, so this helps alot. And now, thanks to fifthman, I'm gonna go research ME, and maybe for giggles, CE.

Thanks everyone else for all the good input! I may just make an engineering degree happen after all.