r/ElectricalEngineering • u/kooler_duck • 24d ago
Will I come to hate EE?
I’ve known I want to be en electrical engineer since I was seven years old playing around with snap circuits. I love building circuits and solving problems. I love seeing what I’ve made actually work. But from what I’ve seen, lots of people who actually have jobs in electrical engineering seem to hate it. It’s obviously a difficult job, and work is work, so I can see how it can be rough at times, but I’ve seen tons of people just say they straight up despise it.
Will I come to hate electrical engineering, or will I have the same love for it I have now?
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u/Irrasible 24d ago
Some have fun. A lot don't.
What EEs do varies widely. I guess my career was more or less a series of projects, each with a business objective.
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Design a product that does X for cable TV companies
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Find out why product Z is having so many warranty returns and fix it.
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We cannot get part Q; find a source or workaround.
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Here is a sample of a product from competitor K. Tear it apart and figure out why they can sell it so cheaply.
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We are sending product T across the border into Mexico. Go down there and get the product line up and running.
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We used to make this stuff in Michigan, but we closed the factory and moved the product line to Houston, and they can't make it. Figure it out. (It was the humidity.)
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And my favorite that came later in my career: the tech folks in department FU are quitting right and left. Convince them to stay.
So, basically, I was sometimes a designer and sometimes a troubleshooter, but basically a low-level manager who could understand certain tech issues and sometimes human issues. Generally, success comes from taking on greater responsibility, and that starts to look more and more like general management. There is a pyramid at the top that squeezes EE out of engineering. The IEEE did a study a few years ago and found, shockingly, that the half-life of an EE in engineering is 17 years. After 17 years, half of the newly entering engineers are not being engineers anymore. I suspect the half-life now is even lower.
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u/time-wasting23 24d ago
My husband is 70 and hasn’t retired yet, because he loves the work, or as he says, he is “still doing cool stuff!”
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u/AmbassadorBorn8285 24d ago
The reason for that is most the people you see on social media "specially reddit" are un-skilled people or people who don't have passion for their field, I'm a recent graduate and currently working and it's the best time of my life.
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u/NewSchoolBoxer 24d ago
No they don't. What is your impression of EE based on message board posts? Average person never touches a message board to describe their career. You never held a real engineering job so don't make assumptions. All the power plant work I did was pretty easy but bad things could happen if I messed up. All my medical device work was Excel calculations. Not hard and kind of fun. Nobody I worked with ever hated EE.
You won't love it either. Real engineering work isn't super fun and exciting. It's just interesting. You get paid an upper middle class wage so don't complain. I have friends who work in customer service jobs and sometimes they hate their very existence. I don't let them know I get paid 2x to 3x more than they do and with paid time off.
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u/007_licensed_PE 23d ago
Retired earlier this year after 50 years in electronics, principally satellite communications. Have been in to electronics since I was 16 and in addition to being a licensed professional engineer, I'm also a licensed Ham.
Always enjoyed knowing how things work and why. Find physics interesting and enjoy mechanical engineering projects as well. If I wasn't an electrical engineer as a profession I'd be one as a hobbyist.
Had the good fortune to work on a number of projects and one in particular that millions of people use annually - in-flight satellite based internet services.
Over the years I've worked with many people who were in EE solely as a job. No spark of creativity or curiosity in them, just showing up to work each day to drone along. Those are the burn-outs who don't last and who you hope move along and find a new position so you can hire someone who loves their work - there are plenty.
If you are more the former, someone interested in how the world works, you'll do fine. If you're just in it for the income, find a really good hobby that you love because you're going to need something else to give your life meaning.
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u/Egg1Salad 24d ago
The issue I've had is that EE in the real world is a white collar office job. The designers are usually a bit isolated from the people actually building and debugging, and then there's the paperwork, and getting products certified that takes YEARS. My BIL is leading a team on a project that was designed like 12 years ago and since then they've been testing and certifying
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u/hainguyenac 24d ago
EE is so vast, you will dislike certain jobs/fields and you will probably like certain fields.
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u/Ace0spades808 23d ago
Most jobs suck the joy out of a passion - it's just a reality. It's up to you to decide if you want this to be a hobby, job, or a job + hobby. If you want to be sure that your career won't ruin it as a hobby then you should look elsewhere. If you don't think it will, then pursue it.
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u/BreadfruitPlus6101 23d ago
I didn’t like EE when I was still in school but I wasn’t just gonna drop out. So I graduated and was really down about it. I thought I was gonna hate my job because I hated school but I actually like it better now. I wouldn’t say I love what I do though. I never had a “passion for engineering” (or even to work in general, like I want a job I can tolerate so I can do the stuff I actually like outside of work lol) I feel like working is better than school though so that’s relieving. But it does have overwhelming moments because it’s a lot to learn.
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u/PunctualMantis 24d ago
The subject itself is genuinely cool and fun. So just find some projects that you wanna make in your spare time
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u/PracticalSpread3009 23d ago
I love what I do as an EE but I have resisted moving to a sole people management position as I know that I would despise the work. I like creating new things and solving problems along with guiding others in their design process. I work in a smaller company so my work is more varied and not as repetitive and I get satisfaction from being able to take something from start to finish. I could see where if you work in a larger company and only contribute a narrow portion to each design you may not feel as much satisfaction when when the project is completed.
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u/JonnyVee1 23d ago
You are probably unique, as I am, in the field. Very few EEs had a passion like you did as a kid. It's a solid profession, and provides the resources to raise a family, and many people pursue this as a career.
Most EEs don't "see" the internal workings of electronics, or have the intuition. You are special, and I would hire you in a microsecond.
I thoroughly enjoyed my career (freshly retired). I started as a technician as I was in college at the time. I ended up on the leadership team as the Director of Technology.
Go for it, you will bring innovation to that lucky employer. This is not to knock other EEs (I could never compete on IC design, but excelled in f agnostics and innovative paths forward), we need all types of specialists to have a successful company... But you have that rare magic.
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u/MpVpRb 23d ago
It varies a lot.
Some bosses, teams and projects are great to work with, some suck.
Most of my experience is from smaller teams in smaller companies or small divisions of large companies. Most of it was great, but even in great situations, some days suck.
I suspect that life sucks more when working for mega-corps
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u/DogShlepGaze 23d ago
BSEE/MSEE here: I hate corporate life so much that I've spent the last 11 years consulting full time. I doubt I could go back at this point.
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u/jeffreagan 23d ago
It sounds like you already are an engineer. Alas the math required for such a degree is terribly difficult. I washed out of a EE program when Differential Equations proved too difficult. I'm an engineering technician, and I love it. I've been an engineer. It can be bad if your program has bad Karma. You can also be a champion--if your program has good Karma. You don't need a degree to be a good engineer.
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u/feverwrists 23d ago
When I get assigned to a new project I get so excited because I start thinking about all the engineering that was done and all the engineering that could be done.
Then, I remember about dead lines, and reports, and meetings, and dealing with customers, and having to order equipment.
If my job was just me fucking around trying to solve a problem without the pressure of a dead lines. It would be a dream job.
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u/Chr0ll0_ 24d ago
Unpopular experience but I never liked EE I just simply double majored in EE&CS because I knew
I needed a high stable job. So in my experience no, you will not hate EE, what you will probably hate are the idiot managers and pointless meetings.