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Going Back to Engineering?
JoeLinux asks: "I am a Systems Engineer for a Big Engineering Company(tm). I've been in the position for four years after getting my undergrad in Electrical Engineering. I've finally come to the conclusion that I will never see any form of technical challenge despite the continued promise of such. The problem is that almost all engineers usually make the transition the other way (E.E. to Systems). Seeing as Systems is looked at as a possible gateway to the dark side (Management), is there any going back to 'real' engineering? Have any readers successfully made the transition? How do you justify what would typically be considered a step back?"
Either get a hobby doing challenging projects or strike out on your own and do consulting in a field that you particularly enjoy.
Join an OSS developers list and start hacking. Buy some hardware and get to porting. Write the next great killer application.
Whatever you do, don't move backwards in your career. If you think a move back to development is a step backwards, I'd recommend you adjust your attitude a little.
Quit your job, it'll be outsourced by the end of the year anyway. Instead, start a Sourceforge project for a next-generation text editor. Use your newfound freetime to beg for donations on the interweb and be sure to cultivate a dirty GNU/Hippie beard. Don't forget to watch plenty of tentacle hentai for inspiration!
Although I can see how you might yearn for those 'challenges' you haven't seen, you are in a much better place that you would if you went backwards into base EE engineering. Of course that depends on just kind of SE you are doing. If its the paper chase kind then I would say move on to another employer. That's not real SE. Sure SE needs documentation, but the real value comes from the other end, the understanding of the connectivity, cohesion and architecture of a solution.
However wherever you are, you do need to understand that even 4 years isn't a long track record. Real systems engineers are controlling large scale projects, and directors tend to be risk averse, looking for a track record of experience. Either find a smaller, more constrained project that you can persuade them to let you lose on, or act as a 'bag carrier' for a SE on a larger project. Building your rep there can be a stepping stone to bigger things.
And finally, when you get those 'challenges', be aware that a hell of a lot of worry and hassle go with them. You may end up yearning for the simpler life.
I find it surprising that you are facing no "technical challenges". Rarelly should any no experience engineer be performing management type activities, beyond what is sadly the norm for all engineers. System Engs. certinally have a higher tendency to go management, but it isn't always the case.
Have you considered that it's the company and not the profession that bother you? Any systems eng. should be able to get a job that someone with a EE degree would without "going back".
Also, a quick question: by "real engineering", do you designing a few things and mostly going to meetings, or actually building something? Because unfortunetally, the former is generally "real" engineering, and the later is technicians work. I don't know how many newb hires I've seen get upset over time at the difference.
If you have saved some scratch during your gig as a System Engineer I would recommend going back to school for a year or so to get your masters degree. Most EEs that I know(anecdote alert!) anyway say that pretty much a masters is essential, if not at the very least a career booster. Plus it would get you back in contact with some interesting technology and give you a "fresh start" in the eyes of companies.
Monstar L
The Peter Principle states, "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Although this isn't quite applicable, it is seen all too often that engineers and such who do well at their jobs are eventually promoted to management, where many don't want to be, regardless of whether or not they are good at doing it.
The good news is that this might be changing. I'm currently at the University of Illinois and have had the wonderful opportunity (sarcastic) to have just finished a class on CS Ethics and Professionalism here. The class was miserable, but that's not the point. There was a lot of focus on how to do job interviews and what to look for when you are trying to get into the workforce, and this topic of engineers getting promoted to management positions came up. Our professor, along with a guest lecturer who runs the Career Management Offices (or something like that), both said that many jobs now are offering contracts that will "promise" to allow for engineers to stay in engineering and not get bumped to management, while also getting continued pay raises and promotions, so they aren't just getting stuck in engineering with no chance for advancement. This is good news for others who are worried about having a choice between management with a promotion and engineering with no chance for advancement at some point.
I also have a friend who graduated with EE and started working as an engineer at some manufacturing plant I believe. He did well and within a couple years of graduating, got into what I think is an unorthodox managment position. He is more of a contractor; he manages the other engineers in the building while working with them to get projects done. When things go wrong, he's the first one there trying to fix things. He doesn't have to deal with a lot of paperwork and salaries or anything like that, so its not my idea of management. Maybe this is the direction you were looking for?
Either way, I realize neither of those are getting from Systems to EE, but if some recent graduates are starting to have these opportunities, then maybe you will to.
As someone who has made a "backwards" move in the past and is doing another one right now; I'd say that you need to be clear in your own mind what you intend to get out of it and make sure that in the big picture it is a forwards move. Otherwise you may just be putting off the inevitable. Like another poster said, you may find the job you think you want is nothing like your understanding of it.
If you had a specialism in area X, moved to systems work but now are thinking about going back to X then this does suggest you'll end up back in systems after a short time.
When I made my so-called backwards moves, I made sure there was also a change of direction and also a contingency if it wasn't all I expected it to be; usually just a backup plan about what I want to do next and some thought into how to do it. If your backup plan is "return to systems" then you clearly haven't thought things through. In 5 years time when you move on from the engineering job, a lot of people will be asking why your resume shows you left a much higher paying, more responsible, better job for a lower one. What happened that was so bad ? Were you fired ?...
Good luck!
collect your paycheck and look for your opportunity to increase the little numbers on it.
Or, ya know, join a startup and when the startup gets too big, quit and join another one. You'll have no problems finding challenges (typically impossible ones) being a startup junkie. And hey, if you're lucky, you might even accidently stay at one long enough for your shares to vest and blow it on a nice car.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'd like to suggest that you look for a job in a research institute. What you're asking is NEVER going to fly in a business environment. I'm currently working at SRON, a Dutch space research institute. My current project involves a supercooled instrument which receives waves in the 500-620 GHz range and will fly on a balloon somewhere next year. I'm the software guy for the project and it's great work. You get to work with very smart physics guys and the project has a bunch of custom-designed electronics which I'm reading out and controlling.
I'm under some pressure right now because we're going to fly april 2007, but normally, there is enough time to creatively do your job.
Check my website (for instance here) to see some stuff we're working on.
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It's easy, really. Act like an engineer. Think like an engineer. Constantly. Don't let yourself get sidetracked by manager speak or pper pressure. Especially in meetings.
Whenever you encounter a number look for the error bars, and be sure to include them when you give a number ("I'll be down in five plus or minus three minutes!"). Call out peo9ple for sloppy thinking, find ways to set bounds that rule out unworkable alternatives early, troubleshoot everything.
They'll get the hint real quickly.
--MarkusQ
Usually, company won't let you work in department in which they feel you are not well utilized (according to the company's needs) for what you are payed. If they can hire someone to fill position in engineering for less then you make, forget it.
If you threat to leave, they will formally agree to let you do what you want, as long as you do your present job (which you loath) too and your SE job has priority.
When you quit to find another job, it may happen that hiring staff in potential new employer company reject you as "too old for engineering" (meaning either you are not a "whiz kid" anymore and only young people can be geniuses, or you are not ready to work your ass out just to "prove yourself", or you may be asking for to much pay because you probably have family, or, having some experience, you may be upsetting or even endangering present project leader "primadonna" by talking back and having your own ideas).
Generally, people in your position and your intellectual needs ought to create their own startup business.
I was recently in a similar position: I wanted to work more scientifically instead of staying on the sales / project management route I was on since getting my BSEE. What I decided to do, since I am still young, is go back to university and get an MS. I'm planning to do a PhD after that, and am fairly confident that I will get some sort of technical R&D job when I'm finished.
Since I finished my degree in electrical engineering, I've been working in a consultancy, designing products, while watching my friends dissolve into large companies, moving away from actual engineering work.
To be honest, getting extra qualifications doesn't mean much. You have your qualifications as an electrical engineer, that is enough - what you need is a hands-on design job. So as i said, look for work in consultancies and RnD houses, there would be plenty around. What you get while working for such a company can never be given to you by a masters degree or a PhD. You are working on products for tomorrow, looking for better way to do things. You will learn a lot and gain lots of experience.
Thats my advice anyway - get yourself a job in a consultancy. Where are you from anyway? I could suggest a few.
You really don't know what it's like to be an engineer, do you?
At least, the examles you give sound like an engineer trying to move into management and not the other way around.
Real engineers ask lots of questions. Managers can often get away with nodding and smiling, or issuing edicts as you suggest, but an engineer (or someone who's thinking like one) won't be satisfied by that at all.
Management is about getting things done the way you want. Engineering is about understanding why you get what you get, and under what circumstance, and how it all interacts.
--MarkusQ
Open source software is a way to expose yourself and your skills to a huge audience: that way you can work in challenging and interesting projects while promoting yourself to better employers. ,an almost dead and powerful electrical simulator which allows the simulation of analog circuits along with PIC microcontrollers. The PIC code can be written also in a high level language or using flowchart logical blocks. Note that under linux currently the number of usable free compilers for small PICs (ie not the PIC18 series) is zero, so it's important that someone continues this project development.
There are tons of projects in search for mantainers/developers. An example is Ktechlab
I understand where your coming from. I've felt the same way, I have an undergraduate EE and wanted new challenges. I got a job that pays the bills and gives me enough to work on a few ideas of my own. I hope to form a company around them at some point.
"Join an OSS developers list and start hacking. "
I think he wants to remain in engineering.
Not all Masters programs are equivalent in terms of the demand for their graduates.
If you're not already a member, join the local IEEE and attend the meetings. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Find as many ways to network as you can think of.
I agree with the parent. Doing a Masters Degree is almost always viewed favorably by those doing the hiring. Where I work, you won't even get an interview unless you have a Masters. That wasn't the case when I graduated but we are seeing 'credential creep'. I'm grandfathered but the lack of a Masters means that I would have trouble even getting a lateral transfer within the organization.
Get a new job, if in the second job you end up in the same position, then it is probably you that is putting yourself there. So often you are your own worst enemy.
If after the second job you still aren't happy, get a job at a University and pay your way through a Masters program.
I started out as a civil engineer from an ivy league school in the 1960s.
... (hehe)" means someone who cares is so stupid that he actually cares about reality and progress, rather than about getting five to ten times the money like the cracker pretty boys who manage them ... in short, being by nature scientific and honest, an engineer will find there is no place for him in the great American financial apparition.
... but international competition will require that your salary be that of a construction inspector, who will ge a company car, a pension, and bonuses for filing vague reports at the right time. In short, as an honest engineer, by the end of your career, you will find yourself divorsed, broke, and have been the world's biggest fool. You will have "invested" more up-front hard-earned money of your parents in an education with a half-life of 3-5 years (and this is a non-deductable up-front personal "investment" which you will in effect donate for free, and then spend down for free, as a contribution to your employer's balance sheet -- and you will do this in exchange for the vague promise of at-will project employment -- with no continuity, pension or overtime -- and you will work more hours per day, farther away from family, children and home, under more duress of physical emergencies, and your boss' need for you to twist your words and sign falsified reports, than any of the other form of employee in your company. In short, you will take the fall, while your politically-connected boss counts the money. By comparison to the rewards offered a mail clerk, or to your bean-counter whip-thrashing boss, you are a fool.
Based on a comparison of incomes and profits, all forms of engineering are functionally disreputable as an occupation. By that, I mean socially and financially. After contributing the costs of your half-life education, and the non-deductable costs for its maintenance (average half-life of an engineering degree is maybe 3 to 6 years on the outside and declining), a taxi-cab driver will make better profits, and an intelligent and educated one arguably will have a better chance of raising a productive family, because he can spend more time with his family and children than the "working engineer" will ever be able to.
Setting aside the financial tom-follery of big salaries for engineers (which management will treat as some kind of joke) -- engineers are the biggest fools and therefore also one of the greatest dangers to society, based on the financial and social disrespect that they will receive from management and from society in general, in exchange for their loyalty and truthfulness (if they can file truthful reports and remain employed). Based on the comparative hours contributed to work, and on salary, benefits and bonuses received, associates who studied financial engineering or rhetorical engineering will in a short while move way ahead of you, and their up-front educational costs, which have to be contributed to 'get a job' are much lower.
Careerwise, once you've been branded with an engineering degree, you will find you have been "branded-a-fool" for life. Decoded, the phrase "... he's an engineer
Even if you have superlative interpersonal, communication and management skills, as a graduate engineer, you will find yourself "niched out of necessity" -- pigeonholed into an engineered corner because no one else in your company will be able do the required emergency engineering- mathematical- scientific tasks at hand
Learn to think of "real engineering" the way Cheney and Haliburton think of it. Create a financial apparation as a Potemkin storefront, behind which you operate an "engineering" sweatshop (average turnover or job life for an engineer is about 3-5 years -- look at the average of resumes for engineers -- it's a disaster), invest in joining a country club rather than an engineering education, buttlick for political-military contracts, and just steal the easy money! Look at Iraq. Take Billions i
You want challenges and some flexibility on the problems you work on? Go back to school and get the MS or Phd. Grad schools like people with real world experience. And they are starving for applicants right now.
And let's just face it. A B.S. degree means you will usually end up doing 'grundge' work in engineering. The interesting stuff is done by people with MS or Dr. degrees.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
4 years is nothing. It used to be that when you went in to a highly disciplined career that required a high level of education you still had to work as a flunky to learn the business and cut your teeth... this could take 8 even 12 years before you were considered seasoned enough to be given serious responsibility.
So you can either stick with your current gig and wait for your big break or go back to school to get your Masters or a PhD even... either way it will be 4 - 8 years before you do challenging work in the real world... if you need to illusion, go back to school (you'll be doing challenging work but all academic and you won't get paid).
If you want to get paid to learn, stick with it and ask to sit in on as many meetings as possible, talk with your managers about your need for challenging work... they may just have something for you eventually.
3rd option: take a pay cut and go looking for a crazy startup to join (preferably one that has been around for 2+ years, yes it's still a startup even at 4+ years).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Speaking engineer to engineer, it sounds like you need to find a job at a Small Engineering Company(TM pending). Seriously, if an engineer can be specialized into a "system engineer" at your company, then your job is too restrictive for the kind of variety of tasks you'd like to be working on.
This kind of reminds me of a joke I once heard...the limit of an engineer as t tends toward infinity is a manager.
I lucked out, I did Computer Engineering in college and I landed a job doing exactly what I wanted.
However, in my search for an engineering position, I noticed that most places want someone with an M.S. and five years of experience. Does your current employer have a tuition reimbursement plan? If so, get the M.S. while working there, and when you graduate, you'll have an M.S. and probably more than five years of experience. This should allow you to land a job that you actually want.
If, in the mean time, the limit above begins to apply to you, use that as cannon fodder in your interviews. "Yeah, my current employer decided to move me into management despite my pleas to stay in engineering. You guys aren't going to do that, are you?"
Good luck, man. Management is a fate I wouldn't want any engineer to have to suffer.
On a side note, one of my old roommates decided to go management willingly, after getting his degree in Mechanical Engineering. There's something to be said for having a brain-dead easy job, and you can make good use of your engineering skills as a tinkerer in your spare time. For instance, he likes to play with cars. I've found that after a long day of problem solving, debugging, and so forth, I have no desire to do anything mentally challenging; yet I have about four projects I would love to work on.
:(){
The smaller the company, the more hats you wear. You could find yourself doing both Systems Engineering and Electrical Engineering (and half a dozen other things to boot).
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At least as far as going from management back to engineering is concerned, I think a lot of engineers face this dilemma, and so folks in management (at least the good ones) are often aware and supportive. I don't think you should have to justify the move, except to say you expect to find the work far more fulfilling. If you feel you need to make a case, you could also point out that you will therefore also be much better at it. :-)
My related story:
I'm a software guy, but spent 3 years as a manager recently. Everyone thought I was a great manager, and I learned & grew quite a bit, but I found that it was making me miserable. I was busy all the time, but not with anything particularly interesting. On Monday mornings I was basically just waiting for Friday afternoon. So, I spoke with my boss about going back to software engineering. He was supportive, although sorry to see me "step down". They made a great position for me, and I've been much happier ever since (about a year now). Now on Sunday nights, I'm still sorry to see the end of my weekend, but I also don't mind going to work. I'm glad I was in management for awhile (and perhaps I'll try it again sometime in a different environment), but I'm very glad I went back to engineering.
HTH,
Jesse
Seriously. No 'fun' engineering can really be done with a bachelors degree for the most part. All you can really do is stick parts together that other people built and yes it gets boring and no its not all that valuable of a skill. To do anything advanced requiring research and going where someone else hasnt already gone you need a masters or phd. At my job a masters was required to even function at a basic level of knowledge of what we do. Think microprocessor theory & fab, antennas, RF circuits, IC design, comm-system design (as in being trusted to design one end to end), radars, space craft bla bla bla all these require a specialized masters degree really. And your department probly doesnt do any of these so go somewhere else. To stay out of management you need to be a master in something technical that most other engineers cant do. Hobbknobbing around and wearing alot of hats and being a general EE is usually a luxury only for fresh outs or small small companies. Good luck!
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No matter how thin you slice it, its still baloney.
If they're promising you things and not delivering them, you need to take them to task for it... unless you are satisfied with the fact that they will continue to promise things and not deliver.
It's really that simple.
You justify it by saying, "This is what I want. And I'm willing to pay the associated costs with making it happen."
That means losing out on some salary and possibly some perks. Is it worth it to you? Then very simply, find another job -- in the company or out -- that makes it happen.
If you're not willing to pay the costs, then dammit, don't do it.
As far as *how* to make it happen, either find someone willing to make it happen, start your own company where you can make it happen...
Or go back, get your PhD, and sign on at a research institution. You'll get plenty of technical challenges
of the dark side!
This is one of the most insightful, accurate comments I've ever read.
:(
I just wish you hadn't posted anonymously. I could use some advice