Electronic engineer job qualification help. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: deltawars
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 03:30:45 pm
content: Hi i'm 15 and i'm very passionate about Electronics and want to be a Electronics engineer, but i'm not sure what to do to get there. Should i get qualifications, apply for a apprenticeship and show what i worked on, or do both and if so what type and level of qualifications should i get?Many Thanks-Ethan

author: dr.diesel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 03:33:08 pm
content: Without a doubt, get a 4 year BS degree in Electrical Engineering.

author: Phaedrus
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 03:47:02 pm
content: Go to university and get a 4 year degree in EE, but while you're in high school, start teaching yourself about circuits. Take things apart: power supplies, TVs, stereos, cameras, you name it. Get a soldering iron and multimeter. Look at components and research what they do. Try building simple analog and digital circuits.And take some AP math courses. You're going to need 'em. I foresee differential calculus in your future if you choose the life of an engineer.

author: smashedProton
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 05:08:59 pm
content: I was there were you are, except i was still fiddling with circuits and not thinking about a career. My opinion is that you should get as much experience as you can with using the equipment, speaking the language, and getting a basic intuition with op amp circuits. Its VERY important that you do this early if you want to be a great engineer, because your brain is still coming together. Dont be discouraged about the price of equipment, nothing is too expensive for you to work for it. you can get a basic lab up to 100 mhz by the time you graduate. Which in my experience from visiting MIT, its better than their undergrad labs :/ . In reguard to summer jobs, go ahead and look for local industry. don't get upset if you can't find anything. you can always get money from freelance repair like I do. Get the curriculum nailed for EE for your first two years, that way you will have a massive leg up over everyone else in your class. you should be able to get on research that will give you a further leg up.Opportunities multiply as they are siezed - Sun Szu

author: AG6QR
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 05:28:29 pm
content: I'll join the chorus. Get a four year BS degree in electrical engineering. It will give you the math background and fundamental theory needed in order to understand what's going on well and to make your own serious designs.And yes, do all the tinkering you can on your own in addition. Follow your interests.There are two sides to EE; theory and practice. You need both to be really good. Most schools will spend a lot of their time teaching you theory. That's probably good, because the theory will easily last a lifetime, whereas a lot of today's practical details will change at least a bit before you retire. But you need to know how to put the theory into practice, and the practical experience will also help reinforce the learning of theory.The more hands-on work you do now, the better you'll understand things as they're presented in school. This will give you an advantage over those classmates who just follow the curriculum.

author: Alana
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 06:14:49 pm
content: And dont let your parents persuade you to study instead of tinkering. In EE this tinkering is important stuff and rest is rather tool you use while tinkering.

author: deltawars
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 06:25:26 pm
content: Thanks for your help everyone, i just looked into getting a BS degree in EE and happily i'm already taking Maths,Chemistry and physics gcse required to get the A-levels required for the course to get a 4year BS degreeI already have a basic electronics lab so i do some tinkering and creating, Just need to get myself a old oscilloscope!

author: marshallh
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 07:07:43 pm
content: Don't count on learning much practical knowledge out of your 4 year degree.If you want to build something, BUILD IT. Yourself. Because you won't build it in school.Bad analogy time - imagine you were taking a degree that would prepare you for a logging career. Cutting down trees with chainsaws, hauling timber from the site, etc.In school, you would learn:1. How internal combustion engines work2. Physics and applied material science behind chainsaw blades3. Health and safety impacts of using such an ozone-depleting, wildlife-threatening device.You will not learn:1. How to cut down a tree.2. How to USE the chainsaw.3. Anything relating to site management.4. Anything involving running a logging business.

author: Excavatoree
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 07:13:19 pm
content: Quote from: marshallh on October 29, 2013, 07:07:43 pmI'm sure all schools are different, but I spent many hours in the lab cutting down trees, using and maintaining my chainsaw, and performing site management and running the logging business. Yes, there were things that were not handed to me on a silver platter, but, more importantly, my professors taught me how to learn these things for myself.

author: Stonent
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 07:32:54 pm
content: If all else fails get a liberal arts degree. You'll learn the coffee making part on the job.Low fat no whip organic soy latte anyone?

author: nanofrog
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 07:47:28 pm
content: Quote from: marshallh on October 29, 2013, 07:07:43 pmYou must have gone to the same schools I did.All practical knowledge I picked up came from a mix of self-study and help from more experienced engineers.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 08:52:24 pm
content: Don't let the idea that you won't learn anything "Practical" in college make you think less of the experience. Especially right out of school, the fact of the matter is that whatever job you end up taking will be specialized to the point that on-the-job hands-on training with whatever the company actually makes is really the only way you will get the experience to really contribute. Sure you can be a lab tech and do PCB rework or something starting on your first day, but you need to learn what the company does and how to do it to do design work. There is no way any college can have the breadth or depth of experiences (or time) to cover all the potential jobs out there. If they spent an extra year (which isn't enough time anyway) teaching you how to be an RF engineer or something, that wouldn't prepare you for doing power electronics, or writing FPGA code. Even if you have a bunch of industry experience doing something, if you switch jobs and the new company doesn't do exactly the same thing (or something really similar) as your last company you will always have a learning/training period before you really start contributing. Sure there are some exceptions, but that's generally the way it is.What college gets you ready for is experience doing that "learning" phase.Doing side projects to gain experience and understanding is a great idea, but it shouldn't be something you have to force yourself do either. It shouldn't be like homework. If you don't have the drive to work on stuff because you think it's interesting and you just want to know how stuff works you should reconsider your career options. I have some issues with people who are engineers just as a path to management and don't really enjoy it for it's own sake.While you are at college, having some form of job experience like an internship or research assistant or something really makes you look more appealing on your resume. It doesn't have to be full time. Just something you can speak intelligently about at an interview with some detail. The worst is when you ask some applicant what they have worked on and their only answer is "not much".

author: Neilm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 09:11:46 pm
content: Practical experience might be lacking at college, but some employers out there will just look at the qualifications anyway and ignore practical stuff.

author: dr.diesel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 09:34:59 pm
content: Quote from: Neilm on October 29, 2013, 09:11:46 pmFor true EE jobs, most companies HR will toss the resume without a 4 year BS, won't even make it to the hiring manager.

author: AG6QR
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 10:02:19 pm
content: I come from more of the software than the hardware side, but let me relate my own experience between the practical and theoretical side. I graduated with a BS in CS in the year that IBM introduced their first PC. My practical experience in college was, of course, on machines of the day. Most of my programming experience was in FORTRAN, PL/1, and Pascal, on state-of-the-art CDC mainframes. A little bit was on Z-80 systems running CP-M on an S-100 bus. I did a lot of graphics work using a Tektronix 4014.Four years after graduation, I was not using a single computer architecture, language, or operating system that was available to me during my school years. But I was using the algorithms and data structures that I learned, along with the calculus and analytic geometry to support 3-d graphics (this time on hardware more sophisticated than a Tek 4014). None of the theory had changed, and it was all valuable. Most of the practical details were different, but, since I had a good foundation in the theory, it was very easy to pick up new practical details.To bring it back to electronic hardware, I'm a member of a Ham Radio club, and our meeting spot has a good library of old donated electronics texts, some from the 1940s, '50s or so. As you can imagine, all the practical implementation details have changed in the past 60 years. As I skim those old texts, the sections on impedance on the complex plane, poles and zeroes, passive filter design, Bode plots, amplifier feedback loops and stability criteria, RLC resonant circuits, and that sort of thing are almost exactly as they would appear today. There are implementation details having to do with tubes which are now obsolete. And of course today's details around transistors and IC chips are all missing.If a kid had graduated in 1950 knowing a whole lot of details about different tube part numbers, pinouts and plate voltages for various pentodes, tricks of bakelite construction, etc., that knowledge might have gotten him a quick job as an assembler or service tech right away. But it would have become stale pretty quickly. On the other hand, if he had a good foundation in the fundamentals of engineering analog AC circuits, that knowledge could have carried him through a long career from tubes to transistors to ICs and SMD PCBs.Much of your education should remain valuable until you retire. Yes, you do need to know how to apply the fundamental principles to real practical problems, so you absolutely must learn the practical details. But you'll have plenty of time to learn, re-learn, and re-learn yet again lots of new and different sets of practical details as they change during your career. On the other hand, if you don't understand the fundamentals on graduation day, you're unlikely to teach yourself those on the job.

author: lemmegraphdat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2013, 11:56:49 pm
content: Don't forget to work hard and don't worry about getting any sleep.

author: smashedProton
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2013, 01:53:40 pm
content: Oh, grt any official qualifications that you can get. That means extra class ham radio and some robotics. Maybe do some science fairs