Hi,

I'm an EE student and will be a third-year student next year. Most people in my cohort are confused about which field they want to pursue. What I would like from you is to share your experiences, your area of expertise, and whether you work in R&D.

Personally, I have enjoyed working with op-amps and transistors—I haven't worked with much else yet—and a little bit with STM32. I might be interested in working in automotive electronics, possibly for jets or ships and a plan to start a car ecu-modify the software- shop. RF and radar also sound interesting to me, but I’ve heard that this field is significantly more challenging compared to others.

To sum up, I would be happy to read about your experiences, comments, and to learn if you work in R&D, as well as information about salaries.

 

You have to decide what area interests YOU most and can provide a lucrative enough living.
Explore the different areas and come up with what you like most.
If you end up enjoying what you do for a living, it is not Work!

 

You have to decide what area interests YOU most and can provide a lucrative enough living.
Explore the different areas and come up with what you like most.
If you end up enjoying what you do for a living, it is not Work!

This is why I posted this thread , I want to learn what do People do when working in different fields and about experiences.

 

I started out in the industrial electrical installation field and moved in to industrial Electronics machinery repair and custom retro-fitting, this became more involved when the popularity with CNC controlled machinery came about.
As well as diagnosing existing CNC equipment problems, I designed small custom CNC systems built around PC based servo motor cards such as Galil Motion etc.

 

One strategy, while you're still young, is to not keep a job for more than 3 years. Never quit until you have another on the hook. Then move to a new job with a nice bump in salary to go with it. After about 15 years of this you will know just what you are truly interested in as a career and can find that job to settle down with.

 

Hi demir,
I would say that @SamR covers most of the way I think about career development.
Adding to that if you are being promoted up within a Company, is to extend that 3 years to say 5 years, then move on.

I ran my own small international electronics company for the last 14 years of my working life.

Designing and manufacturing Marine and Land Based Surveying equipment.

Mainly microcontroller based products for Hydro-graphic and Land surveying applications.
Range finding lasers, Scanning lasers and laser Bearing units, Water Depth Echo sounders, Tide gauges, Digitisers, Data Loggers, Chart Annotators, Electronic compass, GPS etc.....

Your goal should be to create your own company when you have sufficient experience.

E
I have sent you a PM.

 

Soon you will realize most teachers don't know how the real-world works. If they did they would not be teaching.
I asked my Dad what he most regrets in life. (12 years at university- holds lives in his hand, long gone to rest) Dad said it took him 10 years and many deaths to understand 50% of what he was taught was wrong, then it took another 10 years and many deaths to understand the other 50% was also wring. Someday you will yell, "why did I go to school, they did not teach any of this". Learn, learn and then learn. To be a decent engineer you must learn something every day of your life. Engineering changes very fast. Your books are years old and the teachers are more out of date. You must run to catch up.

There are several things that will decide where in life you will go.
>What do you want to do.
>What will a company pay you to do.
There is a good chance you will be offered a job doing something that you do not like much. You can do what SamR said and work until you find different. Or you can find a way to like it. Unhappiness is a choice.

I have worked a lifetime in R&D. (mostly) R&D is not for most people, and there are not many openings. I have hired many production engineers. They fascinate me. They are very important. I have hired many test engineers and field sales/engineers.
I try to have a wide area of experience. Find something that is interesting enough that you can do it for 30 years.

Set goals. I did automotive R&D for two years. The chief engineer was a piece of $h1T. My goal was to have his job, or at least get him out of my life. I got his job. I have a goal to be that one person the company can't afford to fire. Then I can be that wild and crazy engineer that R&D needs.

 

Your goal should be to create your own company when you have sufficient experience.

That is what I ended up doing, very profitable.!

 

Hi, your experiences and suggestions are invaluable to us. I understand that beyond specializing in one subject, as engineers, we can broaden our knowledge and advance in our careers. I have a few business plans for when I have enough economic power, such as luxury home electronics and lighting, and ECU tuning and engine mapping. At the moment, I'm undecided about whether to start as an RF engineer or an embedded systems engineer. I know I enjoy creating and producing things. My short-term goal is to participate in a defense industry company's trial program in either an RF or embedded fields and see if I enjoy it in the second semester of this year.

The idea of working on communication or radar systems for jets, ships, and similar applications is also very appealing to me.

We’re curious to know if RF engineering is significantly more challenging compared to other fields.

We would also be very grateful if you could share the career path you followed, similar to what Eric and MaxHeadRoom have done.

 

new things and technologies are emerging rapidly and things are only moving faster... RF was around long enough but lately it is experiencing rapid growth. things with fast growth tend to be good choice.

 

Soon you will realize most teachers don't know how the real-world works. If they did they would not be teaching.
I asked my Dad what he most regrets in life. (12 years at university- holds lives in his hand, long gone to rest) Dad said it took him 10 years and many deaths to understand 50% of what he was taught was wrong, then it took another 10 years and many deaths to understand the other 50% was also wring. Someday you will yell, "why did I go to school, they did not teach any of this". Learn, learn and then learn. To be a decent engineer you must learn something every day of your life. Engineering changes very fast. Your books are years old and the teachers are more out of date. You must run to catch up.

There are several things that will decide where in life you will go.
>What do you want to do.
>What will a company pay you to do.
There is a good chance you will be offered a job doing something that you do not like much. You can do what SamR said and work until you find different. Or you can find a way to like it. Unhappiness is a choice.

I have worked a lifetime in R&D. (mostly) R&D is not for most people, and there are not many openings. I have hired many production engineers. They fascinate me. They are very important. I have hired many test engineers and field sales/engineers.
I try to have a wide area of experience. Find something that is interesting enough that you can do it for 30 years.

Set goals. I did automotive R&D for two years. The chief engineer was a piece of $h1T. My goal was to have his job, or at least get him out of my life. I got his job. I have a goal to be that one person the company can't afford to fire. Then I can be that wild and crazy engineer that R&D needs.

Rest in peace sir. Thank you for sharing the path.

 

Learning and working with transistors and op amps is enjoyable. But this is bread and butter stuff, like learning arithmetic and algebra. You need to master these subjects and move on.

You need to look at the bigger picture, not just components and circuit elements. These are just the tools of the trade that you already have mastered. Now you need to use these tools to create something bigger. Look around you and think of things you can make better, or something that no one else has created,

 

Learning and working with transistors and op amps is enjoyable. But this is bread and butter stuff, like learning arithmetic and algebra. You need to master these subjects and move on.

You need to look at the bigger picture, not just components and circuit elements. These are just the tools of the trade that you already have mastered. Now you need to use these tools to create something bigger. Look around you and think of things you can make better, or something that no one else has created,

Yes you are right , actually these amplifiers etc was next semesters subject. Now I try to master them.

 

Hi, your experiences and suggestions are invaluable to us. I understand that beyond specializing in one subject, as engineers, we can broaden our knowledge and advance in our careers. I have a few business plans for when I have enough economic power, such as luxury home electronics and lighting, and ECU tuning and engine mapping. At the moment, I'm undecided about whether to start as an RF engineer or an embedded systems engineer. I know I enjoy creating and producing things. My short-term goal is to participate in a defense industry company's trial program in either an RF or embedded fields and see if I enjoy it in the second semester of this year.

The idea of working on communication or radar systems for jets, ships, and similar applications is also very appealing to me.

We’re curious to know if RF engineering is significantly more challenging compared to other fields.

We would also be very grateful if you could share the career path you followed, similar to what Eric and MaxHeadRoom have done.

One of the other things you have to think about is the amount of travel you will have to do and where you will have to go. This can be a very big factor. I'll mention a few I was faced with in my past.

First, I had to fly to different states and Canada to do some system setups and also to do some modifications when a device was found to need some issue fixed because of a design problem. I didn't like flying but I had to because that was part of the job specification.
Second, I was offered a really, really high paying job as project engineer but it would have meant relocating several states away from family and friends, so I had to turn it down.
Third, I almost had to fly to South America and then travel by small boat to a remote location in a jungle like environment to evaluate the type of systems they would need there. Luckily I did not have to go.
Same with an almost trip off the cost of California to do a similar evaluation. Off the coast also meant traveling by small boat to the location. Again, lucky I did not have to go.
So I lucked out in some cases but not others. I had to fly and often that meant taking a lot of test equipment, and Canada was a pain with customs. The hotels were very nice though with dining rooms on the first floor and live entertainment.

This shows how travel can get into the job description sometimes, and I really did not like traveling much. That's also what kept me from staying in a rock band when I was younger. There were gigs, but in other states, and one was in Florida where I did not really want to go.

 

One of the other things you have to think about is the amount of travel you will have to do and where you will have to go. This can be a very big factor. I'll mention a few I was faced with in my past.

First, I had to fly to different states and Canada to do some system setups and also to do some modifications when a device was found to need some issue fixed because of a design problem. I didn't like flying but I had to because that was part of the job specification.
Second, I was offered a really, really high paying job as project engineer but it would have meant relocating several states away from family and friends, so I had to turn it down.
Third, I almost had to fly to South America and then travel by small boat to a remote location in a jungle like environment to evaluate the type of systems they would need there. Luckily I did not have to go.
Same with an almost trip off the cost of California to do a similar evaluation. Off the coast also meant traveling by small boat to the location. Again, lucky I did not have to go.
So I lucked out in some cases but not others. I had to fly and often that meant taking a lot of test equipment, and Canada was a pain with customs. The hotels were very nice though with dining rooms on the first floor and live entertainment.

This shows how travel can get into the job description sometimes, and I really did not like traveling much. That's also what kept me from staying in a rock band when I was younger. There were gigs, but in other states, and one was in Florida where I did not really want to go.

After having some experince in my homecountry my plan is to go abroad. Maybe Europe maybe Canada Who knows.. That much travelling must be tiring.

 

Also worth considering is what sort of environment you want to work in. I lasted 3 months in corporate Britain before realising that two stages of promotion would mean constant meetings and paperwork and no engineering. So I found a family firm whose family skills didn't extend as far as engineering, and stayed there for 20 years.
If your aspirations are to maximise income with a huge house in the suburbs, an equally huge carbon footprint, and are willing to work 12 hours a day and be on call all weekend, then that's your choice. Family firms don't pay as much but you might find they have a van you can borrow when you need one, a colleague who can help wire your house, customers who send you a bottle of whisky or cook sausages from their own farm for your breakfast when you are working there.
Also, one think I don't like to have to mention, that whilst engineers are in demand all over the world and all countries would give you a visa, the amount of anti-immigration sentiment is rising in nearly every country. There will always be someone telling you that you are "stealing their jobs" even you are there because there aren't enough qualified people in that country do to those jobs.

 

The best job satisfaction I have been fortunate to have is being your own boss. You call the shots and you take all the responsibility.

 

The best job satisfaction I have been fortunate to have is being your own boss. You call the shots and you take all the responsibility.

I tried it for a while, but I didn’t enjoy being my own accountant, salesman and debt collector.

 

Personally, I have enjoyed working with op-amps and transistors—I haven't worked with much else yet—and a little bit with STM32.

That’s perfect for a lot of “small company” electronics.
Mostly, you will have to measure stuff, do a few calculations, switch some outputs, and maybe send the data by some means or show it on a screen.
So, if you get familiar with a bit of analogue signal processing, so you can deal with battery voltages,temperature sensors, current transformers, etc. and a few processing routines, like how to calculate RMS and Basic IIR filters, and how to work a SPI-interface LCD display, you’ll do OK.

 

I tried it for a while, but I didn’t enjoy being my own accountant, salesman and debt collector.

Hi Ian,
If you out hire the above services for your company, the costs can be reasonable.
Also, it leaves you more time to do the money making activity that will bring in more money.

E