College: Future Career (PC Programming/Support/Engineering)

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: senseamp

Umm, no. Electrical engineering is Logic, Math, and Control. Those happen to be very useful in a lot of fields, including business. So if you think your job is going to be safe from an engineer should engineering jobs move overseas, you are sadly mistaken Engineer can almost always go back to school and learn a new profession. The mentality is if someone can handle engineering, they can handle pretty much anything, so engineers generally do good on test scores, and they are desirable college candidates. It is a lot harder for non engineers to learn engineering.
And if you don't think managers are expandable, look at what happened at Intel a few weeks back. Too many managers per engineer, bam, 1000 managers fired in an instance. Not because they did something wrong, nope, just ratio got too high. Nothing personal, strictly business.

The one part that I see being a drawback is that engineers usually completely lack the social skills to be a good salesman. And that's important in business. Engineers behave too mechanically, you need someone who is smooth. Sort of like how Steve Jobs is compared to Steve Wozniak.

 

[theeedude]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: senseamp

That is not true in the tech industry. Maybe in industry with established products where you can just sit back and sell same old thing with little R&D, but not tech.
If you don't spend good money to recruit and retain good talent, your projects will never ship, you will have nothing to sell, and you will go out of business. You can show all the powerpoint slides and do all the beancounting you want, unless an engineer designs that gizmo you want to sell, you will be out on the street. And if you think you can just say, hey buddy in Bangalore, design this for me for fraction of the price, well guess what? Intel tried that. They ended up closing or scaling down their office there.

I think you missed the point I'm trying to make.

I know you have to constantly innovate, but that innovation does not have to occur in the US. A multinational company does not care where their R&D department is, they just want the job to get done for the least amount of money.

1: there are a lot more people in China and India than there are in the US.
2. they work for a fraction of the wage
3. For the same money, you will find a better engineer over there than you will here. Do you think a top-notch engineer will want to work for $40,000 a year here? I bet you'll get the cream of the crop for $40k over there.

It's not that simple. If you think Habib in Bangalore is interchangeable with (probably also Habib ) in Silicon Valley, that is simply not true.
There is a huge cultural component to this that is easy to ignore, but you ignore it at your peril. I think what makes Silicon Valley work so great is that it's a mixture of all different cultures.

 

[theeedude]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: senseamp

Umm, no. Electrical engineering is Logic, Math, and Control. Those happen to be very useful in a lot of fields, including business. So if you think your job is going to be safe from an engineer should engineering jobs move overseas, you are sadly mistaken Engineer can almost always go back to school and learn a new profession. The mentality is if someone can handle engineering, they can handle pretty much anything, so engineers generally do good on test scores, and they are desirable college candidates. It is a lot harder for non engineers to learn engineering.
And if you don't think managers are expandable, look at what happened at Intel a few weeks back. Too many managers per engineer, bam, 1000 managers fired in an instance. Not because they did something wrong, nope, just ratio got too high. Nothing personal, strictly business.

The one part that I see being a drawback is that engineers usually completely lack the social skills to be a good salesman. And that's important in business. Engineers behave too mechanically, you need someone who is smooth. Sort of like how Steve Jobs is compared to Steve Wozniak.

Well, there are all sorts of engineers, and I am sure some of them are more suitable for business than others. But engineer going into business is a lot more likely than a business major becoming an engineer, or managing an engineer. The vast majority of managers at engineering firms moved up from engineering ranks. Usually it goes something like this: first you are an engineer, then you are still officially just an engineer, but you get some junior engineers to help you on a bigger project, then you start delegating more and more work to the junior engineers, and eventually you officially become a manager. It's not like these firms go to a school to hire someone to manage engineers at the same time they recruit engineers there. Also, Steve Jobs sells to the mass consumer, but a lot of engineering companies sell to other engineering companies and not to the final consumer. And if I am going to sell stuff to another engineering company, I need to be up to snuff on engineering as well, because I will need to predict what is going to be in demand in 4-5 years, and start development of that today.

 

[msparish]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: Special K

Well true, but it's not like there aren't a lot of business majors out there. More than engineering I would imagine. It's not like a business degree guarantees you a high level position. I'm sure for every high level manager there are plenty of business majors who are stuck in bean counting jobs for whatever reason. I can't imagine they are much better off than the engineers.

Since management seems to be the only next step in an engineer's career path, I'd try to get the business degree on top of the engineering degree. Spend the extra two years at school, and that way you'll have a step up on the other engineers fighting for the same job when they want to move up.

I'd actually say that this is a bad idea. Get the engineering degree, work for a few years, and then get an MBA. If you are capable of getting into a top program, definitley shoot for an MBA over an undergrad business degree.

 

[HamSupLo]

instead majoring in something for the sake of earning money, major in something that you'll really like so that you'll get a good GPA and letters of rec when you graduate. then you can get into a good grad school and specialize in a particular field. THere's no point in studying something that you don't have a passion for. besides, a BA/BS these days is not enough to make you competitive.

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: Coldkilla
I'm going into my college for "Computer Science", however, I'm already looking ahead into what "Field" I want to go into. There's 1000s of webmasters, 1000s of jobs that people have taken up, and get paid 'okay', but not what I'm aiming for. What I'm looking for, is a job in the PC field that's is or is going to be in a high demand for, but low supply, rightfully a higher paying job too, but i do live in reality and no 2 million a year job, awaits me.. I heard something about a C&C programmer, or programmer in the medical field.

My college doesn't have any "Engineering" courses this year, (99% chance engineering degree will be next year), and that also had me thinking about that path as well. I would love to be a software engineer, but instead of "hoping" to land that perfect job and "gain rank" in an office building, I want to find my self where there's no one else to fill that job void but me.

A friend of mine, (He's 54, I'm 18-- He's been my dad's guitarist for 19 years, so - a friend), he said that this industrial job he used to work at, there was this "C&C programmer" that programed the robot arms that built these gigantic things, he was a stoner, called in sick 3-4 times a week.. because he know they couldn't fire him because there was no one else that has his knowledge. Now I'm not saying I want to be a stoner/lazy/idiot, I'm focused on the "short supply" jobs, that people will pay money for.

I hear the medical field is exploding now with demand, however, are more programmers heading that direction anyway? To say that supply shortage will be filled soon?

I know I keep bringing up programming, and like I said.. I'd like to have some kinda goal out of college, I'm just not sure that programming is for me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love computers/math/and the satisfaction of working on something forever, and finally getting it to work. I've built and rebuilt over 17 computers, and hate electrical 'lingo' so I could never go into hardware engineering. But even though I don't know what exactly I want to go in for, I'm still wondering about the outlook for someone with my education (Going for a major, and dead set on it). All these websites talk about the medical field and whatnot, but from the people I'm around find that that isn't the only real shortage there is, or will be in the near future.

So, as for what I should focus on, your thoughts?

Although no job is future proof, if you want to be a software engineer...
I would suggest some form of Database Programming... all companies have a need to store data, and then get reports from the data to help in business decision making.
Learn to setup database servers, program a gui front-end in a high level language, and then set up a Query and Reporting Software (such as crystal reports). Then if you can add to your skills web development (with data), you should be in demand for quite some time to come.

 

[zerocool1]

Originally posted by: thepd7

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
All I can recommend to you students is to major in business.

No company is going to look badly at you because you majored in business, even if that's not your specialty. If you get your degree in something that becomes irrelevant, it can work against you.

Pick the boring middle ground.

LOL are you serious? Every intelligent person I know looks down on people who get an undergrad degree is business. MBA is a different story, or an undergrad in business at UT, Harvard, UPenn, thats different, but your average run of the mill bachelor's in business? Cop out degree, at least what what I have heard.

<------------- Electrical Engineering major

a straight bachelor's in business management is a cop out. I'm a risk management major. its actuarial sciences without all the math.