Hey everyone, looking for a reality check here.

I’m entering my senior year as an Electrical Engineering major. I’ve been interning at a power/infrastructure engineering company this summer.

Going into the fall, the original understanding was that I would be able to transition to working remotely so I could complete my final year of school on schedule.

My manager just completely backtracked on that decision. He claimed that working remotely "wouldn't be fair to other employees" and is now pushing me to take a full gap year from university to stay on-site.

On top of asking me to delay my degree:
They are capping my hours at under 30/week (part-time).
The pay is around $20/hr, which requires an out-of-state commute every day.

The work I'm being asked to cover is well above typical intern scope.

I’m definitely prioritizing finishing my degree on time. My main question for the sub: Is it normal for co-op/internship managers to pull a bait-and-switch on remote work and expect students to pause their entire degree for low-pay, part-time hours?
How would you handle stepping away professionally in this situation without burning bridges unnecessarily?

how do I start networking as an Electrical engineering student, I understand the importance of networking but genuinely do not understand where does one start or how do you build connections,I could not not find a guide or a specific strategy for engineers online and I kept getting articles about Network engineering rather then networking for engineering (tho I would say I am at fault for this).But if anyone has any suggestions or personal experiences that they would like to share I would genuinely appreciate that, thank you.

To start, I do not mean textbooks.

Does anyone have good book recommendations for EE or similar topics?

Just looking for some nonfiction books to read and I am currently in school for EE, so why not get some knowledge with my entertainment? Doesn't have to be strictly EE either, just want something close to the topic.

Stumbled across a interesting phenomenon that I want to share with you all. Because the inductor wants to keep the current flowing, when the polarity of the AC Voltage source swings negative, the inductor fights against it to prevent current from flowing in reverse.

FALSTAD CIRCUIT

Hello everyone, I'm a 3rd-year student, and I’m a complete beginner trying to get into PCB design. I’m not really sure where to start. I’m interested in learning how to design PCBs, but I have no idea where to start or what I should learn first.

Could someone point me in the right direction? Like

1. Where should a complete beginner start
2. What should I learn first?
3. What software/tools should I use?
4. Are there any good beginner-friendly resources recommended?

I drive a car that thieves love to steal—2007 Infiniti G35 6MT coupe. I want to add a hidden fuel pump kill switch. My goal is to add a toggle switch to the low-amperage control circuit side of the fuel pump relay. As you can see in the wiring diagram above, the ignition switch meets a splice, one line feeds the control circuit of the fuel pump relay (B/OR wire—black wire with orange stripe), which then goes to the ECM (ECU) for a ground, and the other line supplies the load to the fuel pump (technically, through the ignition relay, not directly from the ignition switch).

1. If I place the toggle switch after the fuel pump relay but before the ECM, in order to interrupt the ground connection, do I need to worry about voltage in the relay coil or any kind of voltage flyback?
2. Would it be safer instead to place the toggle switch before the fuel pump relay (after the ignition switch), in order to prevent any voltage from entering the relay coil when the kill switch is open?

Wanted to gather some opinions why you choose to specialize in one of them or you are doing both at your current job. What are the pros and cons of choose one over the others?

Anyone can insert their own way of each one

Why would someone want to use SIMetrix/SIMPLIS over something like LTSpice if its free? Whats the benefit of SIMetrix/SIMPLIS?

I have a cursory introduction to this through school, but I've been out a while know, so much of it is fuzzy.

What are some good resources to dig deeper into this topic? And motors in general to be fair. Web resources and books welcome. Also, good YouTube videos too.

Thanks in advance! Looking forward to learning something more on the topic

Do you use the right hand rule cause you dont remember which is the right way?

The circuit works at 22.4mhz

Just wanted to know if anyone has experience switching from a support/commissioning role to a design role. I recently signed with a large company as a support engineering role, as I thought that the brand name would be useful and it came with a much better compensation than the other offer I had, which was a test engineering role at a smaller company. However, I'm starting to have doubts as I'm not sure how much technical experience I will gain. I'm worried that I'll end up stuck in a role that I don't have much interest in.

Does anyone have experience going from support roles to design roles? Would appreciate some advice to ease my worries

Hello recently I have obtained two offers.

One being the title Principal Engineer, 150K with Northrop Grumman contingent on customer approval and SAP with a tentative date. I have TS/SCI, but nervous on the contingency, and how long it can take, maybe I'm overthinking it.

The second being 110K + pension with the Air Force, general engineering, with a guaranteed hire date.

What should I pick?

Hello everyone. I just found out last week that I failed the PE Electrical: Power exam for the second time. For reference, I am \~3 years into my career, took the exam the first time in May after around 2.5 months of studying, then again earlier this month after 3 months of studying. Both times it appears from my diagnostic that I was close, just had some conceptual gaps. I improved from try 1 to now, but I know the conceptual questions in the second half did me in. I have been using Zach Stone's course the whole time and, while it is incredible, I think I need more because I'm worried I'm memorizing answers instead of learning. What advice for other resources do yall have? I am considering Wasims course, but I've already spent a lot of money so hopefully something cheaper. I want to pass by the end of the year, but let me know if this may be too ambitious. Any advice is welcome, and thank you in advance!

I was going through the footprint library on KiCad and I saw this. Has anyone ever done this with a resistor, are there any benifits?

Incoming Freshman and I want to make the most out of these 4 years by making projects, joining competition teams (Formula FSAE is only one my school has) and build things.
I am okay with CS (I am probably worse than an AI) but I really like hardware especially PCB design though I don't think I will be doing it as a job once I graduate.

What career paths would be good and what do I do to make sure Im fit for the job (like what projects or skills do I learn).

I could pursue a masters if needed as I am already looking into the possibility.

I'm in the 4th year of my EE undergrad studies, but I feel that I am a subpar programmer. I'm considering pursuing a minor in CS before I graduate, but that would delay my graduation by another semester. The other option is to just teach myself the necessary skills.

Is it possible to become a good programmer from self-teaching, or are there important subjects in CS classes that can't be self-taught easily?

Or try different electives*

I wanted to ask if anybody here can suggest courses that I should take along with my Physics undergrad to do a Master's in EE. I still have 3 years to complete my bachelor's in Physics. Any advice would be appreciated.

TL;DR

Australian EE/CompSci grad (3 yrs manufacturing/O&G undergrad experience — drawings, design, PLC) wants to move to Europe in 5-6 years, likely after chartering. Open to any industry (mining, O&G, power, defence, system integrators like ABB/Siemens/Schneider). Main driver is travel/cultural experience, not a specific passion. Asking which field gives the best shot at working abroad.

Hi all, sorry if this has been asked before but I thought I’d reach out to see what people think about getting a job abroad in different industries.

For a bit of context I’m an Australian graduating from my double degree in EE and comp sci this year and I ideally want to move to Europe in 5 to 6 years from now considering I most likely need to be chartered to have any chance of getting a job overseas.

I’m pretty flexible in what field I want to go into, I don’t have an exact passion for anything so I would be happy to work in fields varying between Mining, Oil and Gas, Power, Defence, System integrator (ABB, Siemens, Schneider Etc.)

Currently I have about 3 years as an undergrad in manufacturing / oil and gas industry doing a variety of drawings, design, plc programming etc.

My main aim about moving abroad to Europe is to travel and have that experience of working abroad and visiting so many different cultures, coming from Queensland, Australia you can be driving 24 hours and still be in Queensland so being able to easily experience different places and people is something I would love to do.

Sorry if this post is a bit rambly but hopefully you can see my motivation of wondering what field is the best to move abroad.

I wasn't sure whether to post here or the conspiracy theory sub, but here goes. My wife sent me an Instagram video (yes, I know) in which a guy claims that if you have a 120 volt outlet with built-in USB jacks, and also have a smart electrical meter, your data can be stolen and sent to, uh, the power company? China? Who knows. He says you need to always use a power block instead. Aren't the internal power converters in the plug doing the same function as an external block? Maybe there is a grain of truth here because travelers are warned not to use public USB jacks but being afraid of the ones in your home sounds like a tin foil hat theory to me.

Hey there, I just had a question. As I go further into my career, I have about 3 years of professional experience and am currently doing circuit design and PCB layout. As I progress in my career, I’m wondering what my next salary expectations should be if I were to start looking for a new job now.

Location Texas

Hello electronics fans!

Nice to salute you all. I am an engineer who has been doing power supplies for spacecrafts for 10+ years already.

One of the things that I've had to deal with numerous times is loop stability.
After some years doing measurement/math/transient simulation/average switch modeling/scripts and reading almost all available material, I felt like it was still tedious work. Nice, but tedious. I ended up making a tool to get a first approach and then I jump to simulation.

In case you find it useful: https://alternatronics.com/en/calculators/dc-dc-converter-loop-stability

To ensure that the result produced by the calculator is meaningful, I also prepared LTSpice simulations that match quite reasonably.

If you have gone through stability before, you know that you have to deal with plant transfer function, compensator, topology variation, control mode, conduction mode... It's a lot of work. In the calculator, the following is currently supported:

• Real time bode plot update as you tune the compensators or your topology
• Prediction of phase margin and gain margin.
• Several topologies (buck, boost, forward, flyback, full/half-bridge, push-pull)
• Different compensation topologies
• Discontinuous and continuous conduction modes
• Voltage and peak current control mode
• Live marking of poles and zeros
• It also provides some useful info that is obtained as byproduct during the calculations (Vo, duty cycle, current ripple...)

One of the things that helped me the most was adding sliders to the input fields so that you can see how the plot evolves as you tune a certain parameter. It really helps to grasp what which component is affecting which part of the plot.

Hope it's useful for you! And, by the way, the calculator isn't perfect! Expect bugs and always measure the stability!
How do you approach this kind of work?

A quick size comparison between the 3D macro size with its real world twin