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So, next year I need to choose an engineering major that I want to pursue throughout college. Today I sorta had a fight with my dad. He asked me about what major I wanted to pick and well, I told that I am interested in Industrial Engineering and Computer/Electrial Engineering.
However, he thinks I should go for Biomedical. He tells me that at my school, BME is probably the best program and is also a well-paid job. While that might be true, I think to myself: Would I be interested in BME?? TBH, not really
He thinks I'm not suitable for computer engineering but honestly, who is he to judge? Isn't that what college for? To learn a certain major in depth that you have interest in. I also considered Industrial because it's basically studying business with broad engineering courses thrown in. I am also interested in business so it's sort of like learning two in one. But my dad says it's hard to get a job with computer engineering / industrial engineering degree. Is this true??
Let's say I did study BME, and got a job. If I didn't enjoy it, what would be the point, despite me earning a good amount of money? This is my career, so it can't be taken lightly since I'll probably be doing it for the rest of my life.
And can anyone who's an expert in the Engineering field tell me the following:
-which engineering earns the highest/lowest pay.
-which engineering is easy&hard to find a job for.
-what would you do if you were me??
  
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i would do the thing that interests you the most, not any of those first two questions you asked
the glass ceiling in engineering can be low, so make sure you really are interested by/enjoy what you are studying
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I dunno I think the reason why he's telling me this is due to the fact it's so hard to find jobs nowadays (like profession) and due to the depression, it's only making matters worse.
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I'm looking forward to the responses in this thread. I'm a senior in high school and I plan to study engineering in college although i'm unsure of what specific field I want to go into.
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Did you go mining or are you buying your materials
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My own dad has been telling me for a while that (computer)engineering has peaked and that the next big field is biotech. Basically he has been saying that I should major in that as well, ofc I am a music major hahaha...
But yeah, my dad has been a pretty high level manager at several companies, currently at Motorola. So I think it is safe to say he is pretty qualified on this subject.
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the job market now won't be the same job market in 4 years when you graduate, picking a career for anything other than that it interests you will lead to a long, boring, depressing career
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
I'm doing electrical engineering myself.
You should do the one you are more interested in.
I previously started doing mechatronics engineering, but failed due to lack of motivation. There wre just too many mechanical eng subjects, which wasn't the sorta direction I was going for (more control systems etc).
When doing an eng course your not interested in, engineering can be extremely... dry....
You should go with the course where you are more likely to enjoy the subjects. If your interested in all of them however go ahead and choose whichever you think is more likely to net you a better career.
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I'm doing EE as well.
Electrical engineers/computer engineers are in pretty high demand (the current state of the economy will effect that, but it'll effect basically any job). The pay is fine too.
But do what interests you or you won't enjoy it and will regret not doing what you enjoyed years down the road.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
I highly highly suggest you do a CS minor if you do EE. I'm an EE major and tbh the job market blows, the vast majority of the highest quality jobs are coding related. A CS minor that covers all the bases would server you well even if you don't decide to go down the coding route (I hate coding, but moderately regret not going through with it and learning more)
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
let me put it this way: the demand for HARDWARE type engineers is decreasing every year, it's a trend that started like a decade ago. It's all about coding, logic design, FPGA etc.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
DO NOT do your EE concentration in semiconductor design, semiconductor physics, or circuits. DO NOT DO IT.
Go for signal processing type stuff, or logic design (aforementioned FPGA etc), ANYTHING BUT BRUTE HARDWARE
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
YOU ARE SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE LEG PLAXICO BURRESS STYLE IF YOU MAJOR IN HARDWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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clazziquai:
1) biomed is promising in terms of job security
2) its hard to survive in engineering without a passion
3) hardware is unreliable
its ur call, i suggest follow ur passion
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Hahaha I like how haji's successive posts get more and more passionate; but yeah, I'd trust haji's advice.
Doing what you like vs doing what will earn you a living
Your dad does have a point when he says earning enough (or a lot) is more important than doing something you like. Even if you like your job, the rest of your life will suck if you do not have a steady flow of income. I'd say find something that makes ends meet, plus a little more - as long as you fulfill this, whatever you study or do as a job will be fine, so go for something you like as long as it meets your basics plus a little more.
edit - typo
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hwo would you guys think of industrial engineering in terms of job security/salary wise?? also, what is the average pay in BME?
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im EE in the biomedical branch. internshipppppp!
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TIP: FORGET what your parents tell you, do what you love/like or you will most likely end up hating your job.
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my dad was an electrical engineer
he said that i could do wahtever i wanted in college, but don't be an engineer, he hated it that much and found it useless after three years
^^
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On January 10 2009 16:07 thedeadhaji wrote:
DO NOT do your EE concentration in semiconductor design, semiconductor physics, or circuits. DO NOT DO IT.
Go for signal processing type stuff, or logic design (aforementioned FPGA etc), ANYTHING BUT BRUTE HARDWARE
fucking agreed. LOL.
assembly language will FUCK YOU.
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What about civil engineering? I was doing biomedical to go into dentistry but chemistry is too hard for me so I decided to switch to civil..
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hey I'm doing EE/CS major and yes knowing how to program definitely helps you tons  be a software engineer, actually. The job prospect is probably better
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I don't know about the engineering specifics, but honestly, for what major you pick, it really depends on what you want to do with your life. If you are looking to work after you graduate, pick a major that will help you find a job. If you are looking to go to grad school afterwards, pick a major that the type of grad school youre going into likes (ie. something biology for med school). If you want to travel and not really settle down until you're older, then pick a major that you just want to do for fun. At 17/18 years old, you probably won't really know what you want to do afterwards until you have a little more experience in life and learn what its like to have some independence from your parents. But keep these questions in mind as your going through your first/second year and always be receptive to advice.
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I actually started in Biomedical Engineering, but transferred into Computer Engineering after a semester after I realized how much I hate physiology.
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You'd be surprised how much BE, CS, and EE overlap. In fact, if you drew a Venn diagram of what topics those three covered, there would be a place where they all overlapped.
For example. Electrical engineering has a lot of system theory, statistics and signal processing in it. In fact, DSP (digital signal processing) is an area of EE that is basically all software. Anything dealing with the brain or nano-tech could fall under electrical engineering. And obviously there is a lot of software requirements when dealing with these topics as well.
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As a fellow engineer, let me give you a few tips :
1) Don't go into a field for money unless you want to be one of those thirtysomething guys who sits at his bedside with a pistol every night wondering what your life is worth.
2) Industrial Engineering is about to make a BIG comeback, especially in the western world. As soon as the current recession/depression passes, assuming that everything doesn't completely go wrong, manufacturing is going to make a big resurgence in North America and Europe. With Asia coming to the end of its industrial development cycle, and with Asia holding massive debts of Western countries, there will come a day when China, India, etc, no longer will ship cheap goods to the West in exchange for worthless paper money. New development in manufacturing, hard goods, commodities, etc, is going to have to pick up or else the West is going to drown in debt.
3) If you really live in Brunei, though, then you have a lot of opportunity in the electrical/computer engineering field. I would suggest a combination of materials/physics and electrical engineering because that's where the technology is going - you have to know solid state physics these days and you need to understand engineering materials if you want to be in development or fabrication. Especially for things like OLED, organic and polymer electronics, etc, it's really becoming a cross-discipline field, but also for semiconductor chip development, etc.
4) As for which it's easy or hard to find a job in, it really depends where you live or where you want to live. If you want to move to Korea, then display and communications technology is where the bulk of the jobs are. If you move to northern Canada, you'll find that forestry and mining engineers are the only ones who get jobs. If you move to the Middle East you can do well in petrochemicals and derivative industries thereof. The list goes on - each country and each city has its own big industries and those will be the ones where you'll get the jobs. Either pick a place you want to live and then choose a discipline based on that, or choose a discipline and pick a place to move.
5) Start reading financial and economic news - this is the best tool to help you understand where markets are going, what is on the downside and what is moving up. Listening to your parents is often a bad idea - they're behind the times. Everyone who listened to their parents in the 60s and 70s ended up as car mechanics making crap money because in the 50s it was good work to be in the automotive industry. Everyone who saw computers coming got rich. Everyone who listened to their parents in the late 90s ended up being first and second level tech suppport and MSCEs making crap money because IT was hot item before. Now things change even faster. You have to look to the future, not at who is making money today. I've just seen students spend years getting a PhD in a quantitative discipline because they saw big money being made in financials and fund management, only now to find that the entire industry has collapsed. Pay attention to the world around you and you will be in a good position.
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jgad: I'm currently living in the USA (NJ to be exact). Haha, I picked a random country for fun.
Thanks A LOT (like a huge ton) for all that information, though.
The two places i want to live/work is either in the USA or back in Korea.
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And who keeps rating my blog a fucking 1/5.
STOP!!!!
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You could always start with bio and then switch if you really hate it. But tbh you do not know what you want before you have tried it.
Also there are a lot more chicks at biomed than at industrial/computer/electrical and that will make the studies more fun even if the subjects aren't super fun.
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I'm sure you'd have no trouble finding a nice job with any of those concentrations.
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Cadical
United States469 Posts
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THANKS SO MUCH Cadical!
Haha this could be useful. <3333
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Thanks Cadical those statistics are really helpful!
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oh wow, thats really helpful. holy fuck @ architecture LOL.
lmao @ aerospace engineer = so little money.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
BE I would imagine is similar to ChemE, so about 70K from a reputable institution.
On January 11 2009 00:55 fight_or_flight wrote:
You'd be surprised how much BE, CS, and EE overlap. In fact, if you drew a Venn diagram of what topics those three covered, there would be a place where they all overlapped.
For example. Electrical engineering has a lot of system theory, statistics and signal processing in it. In fact, DSP (digital signal processing) is an area of EE that is basically all software. Anything dealing with the brain or nano-tech could fall under electrical engineering. And obviously there is a lot of software requirements when dealing with these topics as well.
I just menionted this thread to my brother who did a Computer Engineering degree at one of the best Bio instutitions in the world, and his opinion was
"Why doesn't he just do all three, there's tons of overlap and CE / EE are useful even if you do BE anyways"
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On January 11 2009 01:52 clazziquai wrote:
jgad: I'm currently living in the USA (NJ to be exact). Haha, I picked a random country for fun.
Thanks A LOT (like a huge ton) for all that information, though.
The two places i want to live/work is either in the USA or back in Korea.
Curious. Where are you going to school?
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Im doing mechanical engineering with a focus in biomedical which seems the most promising and interesting.. So far its all math and physics. If you do do mechanical (or any engineering really) you are going to be taking all of calculs up to calc III and also linear algebra. You will do a fast paced chemistry class and 2 semesters in physics then go into a purely engineering course schedule which will be your entire career from there on ( in school)/
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@ Clazziquai:
I'm graduating this semester in EE and a lot of people I know are doing BME. I can say the following things with confidence:
1.) Most students that do BME in my school simply use the degree to go on to either med school, dental school, etc. This is because getting the BME undergrad is a safer bet in case you don't get into med school/dental school/etc. than getting a degree in biology because you can't do shit with just a bachelors in biology whereas the BME degree is more useful by itself.
2.) I don't know where the above posters are getting their information from when they say that BME is a hot field. Perhaps the field itself is hot, but the degree is not. If you choose a BME major you have to select a concentration within BME such as biomaterials, electronics, mechanical, etc. But if you were the employer, and needed some guy to do the electronics aspect of your biomedical engineering project, would you hire a BME major or an EE major? That's the problem is a lot of the BME undergrads; they're getting beat out by people who actually concentrated on one thing, rather than have a decent knowledge of everything. There are companies who hire BME majors, but from what I've heard there's a lot of competition for these jobs and usually a master's degree is required. However, take my advice with a grain of salt because I live in Connecticut and a lot of the BME jobs are elsewhere.
3.) I think the statistics that Cadical linked are really misleading. Just know that upon graduating with a BSE in EE/CE/CSE/ME will get you about +/- 60k starting salary. 70k starting salary is really pushing it....only one person I know made this amount right after graduation--but he was working for a hedge fund doing quant analysis even though he did EE. Especially in today's market I seriously doubt anybody's going to be making 70k right out of college.
you can pm me if you have any questions.
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On January 10 2009 16:05 thedeadhaji wrote:
I highly highly suggest you do a CS minor if you do EE. I'm an EE major and tbh the job market blows, the vast majority of the highest quality jobs are coding related. A CS minor that covers all the bases would server you well even if you don't decide to go down the coding route (I hate coding, but moderately regret not going through with it and learning more)
isnt that computer engineering?
the CE program that im in involves almost all the aspects of EE but i do programming courses instead of the electives that EE's get
for the CS part in my program, i do courses on C++, java, assembly, data structures/programming, comp architecture, software engineering and operating systems. hopefully thats enough
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this blog is so interesting
good luck with whichever path you choose!
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OK, here's the thing: innovations and domestic demand are highest in software. haji hit the nail on the head, on page 1.
Once you find a field you are happy with, you are motivated to develop yourself and become competent. And if you're great at what you do, you will ALWAYS be able to find a job, no matter the demand fluctuation.
I think haji had a great idea about minoring in CS. Take a few lower division programming courses (C/C++ if you can help it, since this is closest to hardware engineering/assembly), and if you like programming, take the CS minor. If you love it, major in CS.
Knowing how to program makes you viable in every field.
CE depends on the institution. Some places, it's very software heavy. At UCSD, CE majors take (almost) all the same classes as CS majors in addition to 4 more EE courses.
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Thank you so much for everything guys.
I decided I'm going to go for Industrial or ECE. Honestly, this was my plan all the time and my dad kept telling me to do BME but I just don't feel like I'm going to like it. AT ALL.
2) Industrial Engineering is about to make a BIG comeback, especially in the western world. As soon as the current recession/depression passes, assuming that everything doesn't completely go wrong, manufacturing is going to make a big resurgence in North America and Europe. With Asia coming to the end of its industrial development cycle, and with Asia holding massive debts of Western countries, there will come a day when China, India, etc, no longer will ship cheap goods to the West in exchange for worthless paper money. New development in manufacturing, hard goods, commodities, etc, is going to have to pick up or else the West is going to drown in debt.
Mind I ask how you found it it's going to make a big comeback? Like is there a news source for this? Or an article, by any chance. Anyone can help me on this, I just want to show my dad that Industrial Engineering isn't a bad Engineering subject to go with. Even though he tells me I can do anything I want, he's very stubborn on the fact I won't get anywhere far with it due to it not being "hot" in the "job market". I really want to prove him wrong.
Thanks!!
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It's not in the news, it's just my perspective - an educated guess based on the current geopolitical situation, the movement of capital in the global market, etc. That's to say that it will be making a comeback in the US, specifically. Still, my outlook is that life in the US is going to get a lot poorer nevertheless - at least as compared to the rest of the world - but, if you're going to be there, I think things like industrial commodities are going to be leading the way in moving the economy forward. Search around youtube or whatever for news clips of Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Peter Schiff - these are all investment types and they're all saying basically the same thing : Asia -> future looks good, US -> future looks bad; big money in industrial commodities, agriculture, hard goods.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
JUST DONT DO HARDCORE HARDWAAAAAAAAAAAAAREEEEEEEEEEEEE
Minoring in CS is really demanding on top of the standard EEorCE courseload, but it should be tremendously rewarding, try to get up to 300 level courses, where you take a course that teaches you multiple languages (I forget what our equivalent was, it was taught by Kernighan), Operating Systems, Networking maybe?
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EPT
