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?"

Comments

Check on jobs in research institutes

[cerberusss]

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.

Re:Check on jobs in research institutes

[CastrTroy]

I took software engineering in university, and while I'm not yet a P. Eng. I find that there are very few companies out there who want to do real software engineering. I find that taking software engineering provided a good foundation to develop good software, and that I find I'm better off than those who took computer science, but I also find that a lot of my knowledge isn't doing me a lot of good, because companies don't want engineered software. They want something good that doesn't crash all the time, but they don't want something that's perfect, because they don't want to take the extra time necessary to do it right the first time.