Electrical Engineering Employment Declines Nearly 10%, But Developers Up 12%

dcblogs writes The number of people working as electrical engineers declined by 29,000 last year, continuing a long-standing trend, according to government data. But the number of software developers, the largest IT occupational category, increased by nearly 12%,or a gain of 132,000 jobs. There were 1.235 million people working as software developers last year, and 271,000 electrical engineers, according U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Comments

The profession is in decline

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's be honest about this. Electrical engineering can now be outsourced fully, as companies do not see the value in EE or more importantly that the skills are transferable to other areas such as programming. Furthermore, ageism is rampant in most of the technical field now, as HR types will want to hire someone their own age.

Re:The profession is in decline

[Austerity Empowers]

Electrical Engineering is still in demand, if you're willing to travel a lot and be a manager/"architect" type. It is not, however, sustainable as a career, you will forget almost everything important about the field within the first 5 years after leaving college, and then just be another faceless middle manager pushing spreadsheets around. There are a few companies that still want EEs: like em or hate em, Apple hires them and they do actual EE work. Defense still wants them, and signal integrity/RF guys are still in heavy demand (although they must fight the push I note above).

If you want an engineering degree just to get a job and be a corporate drone, it's still a great degree to get. But don't pay a lot of money, your wages will not justify it and you'll end up paying college loans the rest of your life. If you want to be a real engineer, analyze your chances of being in the top 10%, if you don't think you can be or won't work hard enough for it, get out, find something else you enjoy more.

Re:The profession is in decline

[Bill Dog]

Furthermore, ageism is rampant in most of the technical field now, as HR types will want to hire someone their own age.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I've seen older people in HR in my career so far (and I'm later in my career) so maybe ageism is rampant in HR as well.

Ageism is probably rampant in every job function except top management, because age is thought to correlate somewhat with compensation, and upper management wants to keep a lid on expanding costs to the business everywhere but their ranks, of course.

(That is, everyone in every job function is keenly aware of the value they and their peers bring, so nothing different about the suits in this regard, where the only unique part is that they have the power to set expenditures policy.)

Re:The profession is in decline

[ShanghaiBill]

Electrical Engineering is still in demand

Sure, but there are many areas of EE where demand has fallen. Programmable logic has drastically reduced the need for boards full of TTL chips. FPGAs, and even many ASICs, are designed with fully synchronous digital logic, that requires zero knowledge of most EE concepts, and can be done by any kid bright enough to master Verilog/VHDL. My company has done several successful FPGA projects, none of which involved anyone with an EE degree. ADCs, DACs, PWM, and DSPs come built into many microcontrollers, which themselves increasingly come on standard PCBs, with free downloadable libraries to handle all the interfacing.

Re:The profession is in decline

[Austerity Empowers]

I'm a working Electrical Engineer. I know at least the domain I have worked in (Systems, PCB, IC package design, Signal Integrity), and i know the reasons I've been trying to recreate myself as a something else, and why doing that that jacked my salary by 30%, in spite of not being qualified for that move.

If I discourage anyone from pursuing this degree, I have done both them a favor, and those who really love this and will do it anyway. Once upon a time I wanted to be an Aerospace Engineer, and at career day someone explained the situation almost exactly as I have. I was angry, thought bad things of them, but they were right, and I listened and did well for myself. In truth, Aerospace Engineering was neat, and I probably would have done fine, but I didn't really love it like my friend who works at (big helo company) loves it and who endures the interminable layoffs and uncertainty.

If you have the intellectual capacity to succeed in this field, chances are you enjoy many things and can succeed in ANY field, you just need the intel to know what the smart decisions are. If you're flexible, then you should exercise that flexibility carefully.

In terms of that article, that's just about placement rate. That doesn't mean you'll get a job you want, or that explains to you why you dealt with years of differential equations, phasors, and the 15th different explanation of the Fourier Transform just so that you can create a spreadsheet that lists outstanding manufacturing defects that Foxconn is responsible for, almost certainly because they insisted on using local part sources rather than those from Western companies that still design things right (what few still exist). The highlight of your career may be creating a powerpoint explaining how to create an engineering model that maximally leverages your western designers to train their replacements in asia, in a fashion that guarantees timely product delivery. This isn't bitterness, this is real life.

Re: The profession is in decline

[Phillyboy82]

Sounds like you went into the wrong area with your anecdotal evidence. I'll give mine then. I started off I the utility sector working with controls (production engineer, then a system engineer) and now work in manufacturing in controls. Salary was at $90k after six years and I'm on track to pay off all of my loans early (half were paid off in less than five). That was with $55k in student loan debt. I get contacted by recruiters every one-two weeks about jobs either working at power or manufacturing plants or doing design work/contract work. Some of those jobs would be travel, but not all. I can see your point about losing some of your college experience, as I do not do heavy math anymore and work on PLC and Visual Basic programming, along with some power work. The core concepts still get used but in a qualitative way, especially when having to troubleshoot system issues. I love what I actually do, as I get to do some small-scale design work and get time out in the field pulling wire, troubleshooting with a fluke meter, messing with PLCs and robotics. Anyways, I'm sorry you feel like you got a bad wrap, but based on the peers I worked with in the nuclear industry and now in manufacturing not every electrical engineer is doomed to middle management. Some of us actually like what we do or have no desire to head up that way. Also a lot of us cannot be easily outsourced. If I worked in automotive, then that would be another story salary and enjoyment-wise : )

Re: The profession is in decline

[Phillyboy82]

Apparently slashdot mobile didn't like the enter keys I put in. Sorry for the run-on...

Re:The profession is in decline

[postmortem]

I remember during first dot-com bubble programmers were in high demand and many EEs shifted to programing, and ever since... I was EE myself and didn't want to do coding... but I had to eventually, and many of my coworkers are programmers with EE background. There's some work for EEs in engineering firms, but programmers are needed by pretty much everyone.

EEs have became what mechanical engineers were before them: not obsolete, but kind of niche profession.

Re: The profession is in decline

[Bengie]

Average and even median pay can be deceptive. Without knowing where those people live or what kind of working environments they have to put up with, it's hard to gauge the value of that $200k.

Re:The profession is in decline

[Euler]

True, you may not need an EE degree. But if you can't draw a K-map and cover glitch cases, just as one example, then you are not qualified to develop programmable logic. While the FPGAs and micros come with a lot built-in, you still have to understand circuit principles when designing the surrounding support components and proper interfacing of signals, ratings, timing specs, etc. We need to understand power consumption in components to best manage it from software. So typically, the requisite skills are taught in EE, computer engineering, or something closely related. Kudos if a CS program teaches that, but I'm not sure if that is consistent.

   

Re:The profession is in decline

[Man On Pink Corner]

But if you can't draw a K-map and cover glitch cases, just as one example, then you are not qualified to develop programmable logic.

Of course you are. That's what the tools are for. Nobody writing HDL needs to mess with Karnaugh maps, and once the tools get a bit smarter, they won't have to worry about domain-crossing glitches either.

Re:The profession is in decline

[Anonymous Coward]

That and the digital design world has made it so most EE knowledge isn't valuable on a day to day basis. The software guys get the object oriented nature of system verilog and the newer stuff like UVM. We were working on an asic design about 2 years ago when they brought a software guy in to "help". Granted he was pretty comfortable (driver background and smart as hell) but he stood up a whole mostly-generated UVM verification environment, implemented a co-simulation environment, and fixed a bunch of bugs in various verilog blocks. He probably did the work of 3 of us. God help us if HLS/SystemC catches on, I'll just end up writing tests for him and hoping I can keep up.

Re:The profession is in decline

[dbIII]

you will forget almost everything important about the field within the first 5 years after leaving college

The other day I was corresponding with a retired EE about the dram rowhammer bug, and he's an EE that didn't get to see a transistor until after he graduated.
He worked in power distribution but when minicomputers came out he had to assemble and run a few under adverse conditions, then he kept up with the field from then onwards.

and then just be another faceless middle manager pushing spreadsheets around

That happens in bloated orgs with more money than they know what to do with and a bunch of departmental empire builders on the top rung who measure their worth by headcount. Not so common as it used to be. There's a lot of places that are not run like Enron.

Re:The profession is in decline

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a load of crap. Yes, nobody writing HDL needs to mess with Karnaugh maps, but they need to understand to some degree what synthesis tools are doing under the hood. Even if you're implementing ECOs, you still need to need to know what gate(s) to insert for the fixes and minimize the logic as needed to minimize impact if it's on a timing critical path. Don't call yourself an RTL designer if you don't know what/where the fuck your clock domain crossings are either. You're not going to put a bloody synchronize cell through your entire design, are you? If you're relying on tools to do it, there would either be user constraints or the outputs will need to be reviewed. Somebody has to do that work still, right?

Re:The profession is in decline

[SuricouRaven]

I grew up in the bubble, and knew I'd be good with computers - but I assumed that with programming being such a glamorous role, everyone would be getting into it. I aimed for a duller tangential field in networking.

My career still flopped, though. I'm too risk-averse, refuse to leave my very stable but low-paying entry-level job and try to move up the ranks because I fear I'd screw up horribly somehow.

Re:The profession is in decline

[geoskd]

True, you may not need an EE degree. But if you can't draw a K-map and cover glitch cases, just as one example, then you are not qualified to develop programmable logic. While the FPGAs and micros come with a lot built-in, you still have to understand circuit principles when designing the surrounding support components and proper interfacing of signals, ratings, timing specs, etc. We need to understand power consumption in components to best manage it from software. So typically, the requisite skills are taught in EE, computer engineering, or something closely related. Kudos if a CS program teaches that, but I'm not sure if that is consistent.

Exactly. Just because you know enough VHDL to program an FPGA to do what you want does not make you qualified to do so. Mostly any bright programmer could build FPGA or ASIC designs, but where you need the actual Engineering background is in avoiding the gotchas that get many amateurs. Simple things like trying to implement a divider as combinational logic, or skipping a ground plane to reduce the cost of your system. Sometimes you can get away with it, sometimes not. Knowing what the symptoms of inadequate grounding looks like can save you mountains of debugging time. Another amateur mistake is not having bypass caps on all of your supply pins. This can cause intermittent failures that are a royal pain to debug. Probably the biggest killer is not understanding the limitations of I/O on common uControllers. Trying to pull half an amp from a 20mA pin, or trying to use a simple voltage divider circuit on an input pin that has an internal pull resistor. Electrical Engineering is all about the details, and a non EE will take longer to "discover" the details than an EE will.

Re: The profession is in decline

[50000BTU_barbecue]

You just need to follow some simple recipes and follow the datasheet. EE is mostly solved problems, with known solutions that can be applied by anyone.

Re:The profession is in decline

[LifesABeach]

Aren't the point of the tools to help reduce the required knowledge base? So the some PHB can drowl out a design and say, "what a good boy am I!"

Re:The profession is in decline

[epwpixieqneg1]

A ecllage degree in EE is one thing, and work in Electrical Engineering (not an office/paper/sofware pusher work) is totally different potencial all together. Working on with low power systems is one and working with high power systems, where probably most of the still original/fundamental work currently exists, is a tottaly dfferent thing. Working for joy (sort of hobby) is one thing and working for pay is another, in the EE unlimited field, of course if one is lucky to have both of them in one that is the best, but in reallity these are very selective jobs. Knowing how to solve differencial equestion, does not make one a good engineer, especaially an electrical one (as going through a medical school, and having high grades, does not make one a good medical doctor) these are the basic building blocks that are good to know (altough who knows, and with a sufficient intelligence and good funamentals one can easily pick them online, these days), but as with every knowledge knowing it (whatever that means in ones mind) does not translate to a good practical usage and even lesser to a original one. In addition, the "knowledge" pushed in the EE education, is highly tailored for maintance/support and development work a narrow direction of a vast field. The most intersting and practilcally useful work one does not learn at school but in the field, by making, blowing up and testing stuff. So, EE should be chosen because one enjoys it and not because, one needs to have a job. Technically with a good analythical skills one can get into many jobs, that requires high level of analticial thinking, but not much predefined field knowledge, after he has been in the EE field. As disclosure, I am coming from the high power EE field, although in my high school years, back in Estern Europe was designing and builidng transistor schemas, but for the past 13 or so years, I working on massively scalable software (HPC) systems, but continue doing my highly enjoyable experimental work, in the field of high power (di)electro/magneto-dynamics as a hobby. This work, although not paid ( in the standard sense), brings a lot of joy and substential amount of real savings (some times of several thousands, as off-the-grid systems design and setup) , in anything that has to do with electrical systems to me and a good number of my friends.

Re:The profession is in decline

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

And who exactly do you think does the physical design implementation and fabrication?

Re:The profession is in decline

[Euler]

If you know for a fact that your toolchain covers every case for you, that is great. I have worked on one project where someone took some really great synchronous design from the tool's libraries and put "just a simple set of logic gates" on the output signals to convert the output to gray code. That was fun.

So of course it would be a waste of time to whip out a K-map for everything. But the point is, could you? Or does a designer at least know why glitch cases happen, and what specific actions the tool is taking to avoid them?

I will say that this sort of understanding is helpful in software too for nested if statements, state machines, etc. where you can determine if state changes can be reduced, or if they are covered properly.

Re:The profession is in decline

[tlhIngan]

Sure, but there are many areas of EE where demand has fallen. Programmable logic has drastically reduced the need for boards full of TTL chips. FPGAs, and even many ASICs, are designed with fully synchronous digital logic, that requires zero knowledge of most EE concepts, and can be done by any kid bright enough to master Verilog/VHDL. My company has done several successful FPGA projects, none of which involved anyone with an EE degree. ADCs, DACs, PWM, and DSPs come built into many microcontrollers, which themselves increasingly come on standard PCBs, with free downloadable libraries to handle all the interfacing.

And who do you think designs those things?

EEs are very much in demand, however they're not in demand for the old "computer engineer" or "programmer" style jobs.

Digital logic design still commands a small premium because it involves a LOT of advanced technology.

Though if you want to be in a field that's in resurgence, analog IC design is in. Even in the digital world - high speed digital signals behave in very basic analog ways that if your experience is in HDLs, you're not going to be able to figure out easily. Analog designers can command 6 figures easy, especially as modern PHYs are analog in nature, so you have to do mixed-signal ICs. Just because joe end user doesn't have to worry about it doesn't mean someone doesn't.

Then there's plenty of analog designs out there. A popular field is power engineering - you know, utility scale. Utilities all over the world are hurting because there really are only a handful of graduates in power engineering, not enough to replace the growing crowd that is retiring. (Yes, the flashy nature of computers and technologies have sapped the talent pool for other sub disciplines). Enough so that starting salaries are close to, if not above, 6 figures. Even those who want to retire are often asked to hang on because there's no one to replace them, or pass the institutional knowledge to.

There's plenty of RF work as well - WiFi and the like are easy to use, but that's because the RF guys made it simple enough to do. Even so, goof the design and you'll be wondering why you have limited range.

Re:The profession is in decline

[Man On Pink Corner]

That's like saying to a software developer that he/she doesn't need to understand what memory leaks and segfault exceptions are, and how to prevent/fix them, because it's the job of the compiler to compile code in a way such that software never crashes.

And in a sandboxed, garbage-collected language, that would be exactly correct.

It's time for HDL developers to hold their tool vendors to the same standards that software developers expect.

Re:The profession is in decline

[LifesABeach]

To be outsourced and having to train the 10 cents per hour replacement?

But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[taharvey]

However, while this might be true for the work roles people are performing, the article at the end shows that EEs have lower unemployment than CSs.

This is my experience: When interviewing EEs and CS degreed employees, I'll chose the EE over CS 9 out of 10 times for a software job. In general they have a stronger grasp of the big picture, hardware, software & firmware. In fact I've been downright disappointed with the level of CS expertise by CS grads lately. It is as if the universities are training them for javascript, web site production, and IT support as apposed to a deep understanding of the CS field.

What we can say about this article is: there are more software than hardware jobs, but EEs are dual purpose, and overall have lower unemployment.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Brett Buck]

If I was hiring programmers, I would be very inclined to hire real engineers (of any stripe) than degreed "computer scientists"

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[OzPeter]

This is my experience: When interviewing EEs and CS degreed employees, I'll chose the EE over CS 9 out of 10 times for a software job.

The trouble is that as a dyed-in-the wool EE with experience in lots of software, I hate working on websites and business systems. And that's my only real choice if there is no manufacturing jobs around.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[taharvey]

The question is why.

There are lots of really interesting and hard problems in CS. But very rarely do I interview a CS grad that has any experience in them, or more frustrating, doesn't even know the nomenclature (e.g. define "heuristics").

They can't even address simple on-the-spot software solutions (e.g. write a simple C function that flips the order of a link-list). All that time spent doing stuff in java has rotted their brains.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[blind biker]

As a graduate electrical engineer... I thank you for the kind words. I have, indeed, worked in IT after graduating, but I always longed for a more advanced, scientifically more challenging job. So I ended up going back to academia, getting a PhD and am now working on microtechnologies for drug analysis and biochemistry.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Bill Dog]

How do you know you could get any "real engineers" to work as programmers?

I consider good programmers to have deep interest in software engineering principles and techniques. My experience has been that it's a real crapshoot to find this in CS degreed people, and almost impossible in other degreed people. (YMMV.)

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Jane Q. Public]

If I was hiring programmers, I would be very inclined to hire real engineers (of any stripe) than degreed "computer scientists"

When I started college, only a few Universities in the country even offered CS degrees. Most of my education was in engineering.

Having said that, I am employed as a software engineer, not as EE or Computer Engineer, as I had originally planned. Even so, I don't think many engineers would automatically make good programmers. Even today, despite claims to the contrary, much of programming is still as much art as science.

"Flipping the order of a linked list" might show that someone has rudimentary skill, but it doesn't demonstrate any degree of mastery.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[dAzED1]

in all other engineering since the dawn of time, the engineer was presented a set of requirements, they then drafted a design they felt described the fulfillment of those requirements and presented it to the interested parties. Those parties agreed to it, then the engineer set to work completing the design documentation. Then junior engineers and workers would fulfill that design documentation. Then someone would make sure that the finished product still met the original requirements. Then everyone would go home.

Nowadays, CS grads are told that code writers are the only people who need to know anything about the product - they can start their own products, imagine new requirements along the way, document little to nothing, and never actually release something - just have snapshots of the code base they at a whim bequeath to the mere mortals scrambling at their feet.

Whenever I'm in the hiring seat, I give *substantial* preference to those who have done real things in their lives - things where communicating and meeting expectations were key, and where your efforts would be judged and evaluated. Anything from bar-tending to construction, really. Or maybe organized team sports, acting, music...? But a person that has done nothing other than flit around SF after a CS degree? No way in hell. So an EE over a CS? Heck yeah. Easier to teach a couple languages to a person who understands how to design things, than it is to un-teach stuff.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[gweihir]

I have a CS PhD done in a mixed EE/CS group and I agree: While some CS people have a better understanding of fundamental and advanced concepts of CS than EE people, the EE people actually have an _engineering_ education, while most CS people do not. (Engineers are people that can get technical things to work reliably and cost-efficiently.) In addition, most EE students these days realize that they will somehow work with software and make sure they can actually program. That is another thing: Many CS graduates cannot program well, some not at all. In addition, EEs are really put though the wringer in many Universities and have to develop some real skills. CS graduates used to have that too in some places, but with the industry screaming for cheap coders, that is mainly a thing of the past.

That said, if you can get a good CS graduate (not talking about grades...), take that one. If you have the choice from more mediocre people (as is the standard situation), the EEs have a definite edge with their engineering credentials and general ability to learn and adapt. In my experience, not more than about 10% or all CS graduates are really good, so the 1 CS to 9 EE ratio makes a lot of sense to me.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[laffer1]

I have the opposite opinion. I have interviewed quite a few EE and CS people for programming jobs. I currently work at a university and while the EE people seem proficient in their favorite language, they don't know anything about design patterns. Trying to get one of them to use a MVC framework is hard enough, but to actually understand what is going on is impossible.

Quite a few of them have limited database experience and they don't know how to use any ORMs either.

No thanks.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[phantomfive]

(e.g. write a simple C function that flips the order of a link-list).

Is there any way to do that faster than O(n)? (besides having a doubly-linked list, of course). I can't think of one.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[ShanghaiBill]

"Flipping the order of a linked list" might show that someone has rudimentary skill, but it doesn't demonstrate any degree of mastery.

But inability to do it demonstrates that they have neither skill nor mastery.

I would not hire someone just because they can reverse a linked list. But I would not hire someone who can't do it.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Bill Dog]

I get that you can't unteach laziness and lack of follow-through, but you also can't teach a passion for doing software well. If you're satisfied with people whose interest is elsewhere but can easily learn a couple of languages, that's fine, but I sure wouldn't want to work with them.

tl;dr: "Someone who learns how to design can design anything" is about as true as MBA schools' "someone who learns how to manage can manage anything".

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Gr8Apes]

The question is why....All that time spent doing stuff in java has rotted their brains.

It has nothing to do with Java, it does, however, have everything to do with the laziness and absolute incompetency of what schools are teaching their students. Any engineer in my day that dealt with computers learned about algorithms, memory management, and how to optimize problems for the hardware you were running on, which included understanding what hardware you were targeting. I swear they don't teach any of that anymore, especially to CS majors. I think their text books must be Sam's How to learn PHP in 21 days, followed by how to learn Java in 21 days. Since PHP was first, they never learn part 2 well, and that explains the incredible lack of competent younger programmers, especially any with "computer" in their degree titles. What amazes me more is that most can't navigate an OS either, and asking them to deal with one outside their "known" one is met with a look like you asked them something in martian.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Gr8Apes]

How do you know you could get any "real engineers" to work as programmers?

I consider good programmers to have deep interest in software engineering principles and techniques. My experience has been that it's a real crapshoot to find this in CS degreed people, and almost impossible in other degreed people. (YMMV.)

Because every single programmer I have worked with that I respect over the years have invariably turned out to have at least 1 real engineering degree. This is probably highly likely due to the drop in engineers required since roughly 85 compared with relatively high graduation rates for a while. Since ME/EE/CE/ChemE/etc are all relatively much harder to obtain than CS/Comp E degrees at the time, it doesn't take a rocket scientist (another real engineer btw) to figure out that all these disciplines used computers, generally those underpowered VAX, SGI, Cray, etc simplistic machines, to run relatively simple and small parallelized solutions on. So I suppose none of those folks, in a shrinking market and declining wage growth would consider falling back on a well paying and high demand job that required 1/10th of their training and had large upside potential. Nope, not at all.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Gr8Apes]

tl;dr: "Someone who learns how to design can design anything" is about as true as MBA schools' "someone who learns how to manage can manage anything".

tl: "Someone who has a superset of skills can do the subset easily"

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Gr8Apes]

Even today, despite claims to the contrary, much of programming is still as much art as science.

programming is almost 0 art unless you're working in C or some other language that deals with direct memory access. Then you can get artsy. Java, C#, PHP, Go, Dart, JavaScript etc, they're all pretty much putting pieces together. If you don't understand that, then you probably don't have a good enough understanding of your field, or you're trying to be clever. In general, business plans don't succeed on clever code. Even game engines don't seem to really need that anymore as they get commoditized.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Bill Dog]

While "software engineering" isn't "engineering" per se (it's a lot of art(isanship)), consider that it's not all just a bunch of phony stuff that doesn't matter a hill of beans. And that those who strive to do software well in languages including C#, Java, and JavaScript would be as adverse to working on a development team with you as you would be with us.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Jane Q. Public]

Well, that makes sense.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Jane Q. Public]

programming is almost 0 art unless you're working in C or some other language that deals with direct memory access.

This is only true if your talking about relatively simple tasks. When you have a large, complex software project, often using several different components and languages, yes it's as much art as science. It isn't all just quicksort vs insertion sort and data structures and the like. You learn tricks, and you use them. And sometimes they're language-specific.

If you don't understand that, then you probably haven't been doing any of that kind of software project.

In general, business plans don't succeed on clever code.

Correct. It's the clever things you DO with the code. Just ask Google.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[lgw]

In real production code these days, "maintainable code" is what matters. Sure, on very rare occasions you'll google some algorithm you vaguely remember form college that's not already in your library, but most code just isn't performance sensitive (in an algorithmic sense) or even algorithmically interesting.

What matters is living with that code for many years after writing it, and not hating life. And that is still as much art as science. Sure, best practices continue to be formalized, but the field is still young in that respect, and I don't expect maintainability to settle down into "a set of rules to follow" before my career ends.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[dAzED1]

I'm not seeing people with a passion for doing software well, I'm seeing people who want to be superstars and want to be part of the Next Big Thing.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[beelsebob]

Of course not - that's trivially provable by the fact that for a list of length n, n pointers must be rewritten.

Re: But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Anonymous Coward]

I have early seen EE embedded code that was better than disorganized spagetti. The one C course they took seems to be all they needed to know. Sad to see that CS is also failing.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Drethon]

This is why I took the Computer Engineering track when I had embedded development in mind. Though I don't think EEs have lower employment as we have a lot of EEs in my company working "CS" positions. Could be wrong though.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Euler]

Exactly. Maybe the trend is that CS simply builds on the existing languages and solutions so that underlying principals are less relevant. There are new and higher-level concepts being taught in CS. However, prospective students should carefully weight this against their career goals and what is employable vs. academic study. Employers will care more about the domain knowledge first, and programming ability second. i.e. a math or physics major that can follow good programming practices and has a rough understanding of computability theory.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[BlackHawk-666]

I'd rather stab myself repeatedly in the thigh with a fork than write web site software or boring old business apps. Web software is a particular kind of super dull hell, and business apps tend to be the same old thing every time, but without the added crap of having to triple handle all the data to get it from the database onto the screen.

These days I work with the CRYENGINE game engine and are working on making my own RPG game with it. There's a *lot* more challenge, and always something new and interesting to learn. I feel like I stagnated while writing all that business software, and am finally getting to grow as a programmer again.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[dbIII]

A lot of engineering education is about developing a "systems approach" and also dividing large problems into solvable chunks. I think CS could benefit from that also being part of the degree, since it's also really another branch of applied mathematics. People like me that have shifted from engineering to IT seem to cope better with real software projects than recent CS graduates which is a bit of a worry - they were taught C yet a bunch that were taught FORTRAN can end up with better results in C after a bit of reading and playing about. It shouldn't happen like that. The CS guys should be the ones with the head start. That problem is probably just due to not being informed about how to look at things in terms of systems instead of a pile of parts with complex interactions.
A bit more mathematics would be useful too. A CS graduate with less than high school level calculus is likely to be out of their depth as soon as the project has more relationship with physical objects than a photo of something on a web page.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[dbIII]

Change it to "Someone who learns how to design can learn how to design anything" - suddenly it becomes far more realistic and you've probably met a few people that are examples of that.
It's nothing like the MBA that comes in and thinks they can run a flugle horn factory without even knowing anything about music or even manufacturing. It's about someone who knows the complexites of one field being fully aware that when they take on another there is going to be a learning curve.
I think the problem is just a hole in most CS education versus engineering - where is the equivalent of year long group project (a few hours a week) making an electric motorbike or whatever? A software based project on hardware that's not difficult to assemble means they could still have a physical item that achieves a goal without more than their CS student background provides.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[geoskd]

This is only true if your talking about relatively simple tasks. When you have a large, complex software project, often using several different components and languages, yes it's as much art as science. It isn't all just quicksort vs insertion sort and data structures and the like. You learn tricks, and you use them. And sometimes they're language-specific.

I have to agree with the GP on this. There is a process to be followed when designing software. Those "tricks" are the worst kinds of crap you see in modern software. The more clever a piece of code is, the worse it is. That is because all code eventually has to be read and understood by someone, usually doing maintenance, and often under severe time pressure. The more clever your code is, the harder it is for that other person to glean what they need to know from it. In general, it is extremely rare that performance needs outweigh maintenance needs, and your clever tricks are costing the company more than they are saving. That effectively amounts to you failing to provide the best value for your salary that you can.

Before I ever use any programming structure that is abnormal or uncommon, the first question is: Is there a common way to do this, and if so, why am I not using it? Early in my career, the answer to those questions were: yes and because I didn’t know the common way existed. Later in my career, Most times I ask that question, I switch to the common way of doing things.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[dAzED1]

without saying the words, I was describing waterfall versus agile. If you come in from another field, you'll be doing waterfall. Then you haven't been corrupted by agile, thus you're still able to be a functional member of a team.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Kagato]

If you needed someone to write device drivers or interact with low level hardware I could see that. If you need someone to write a web application or service based API, not so much.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Jane Q. Public]

Those "tricks" are the worst kinds of crap you see in modern software.

You're assuming an awful lot here, about what kind of "tricks" I meant.

Readable code is a very high priority.

Re:But if you look at unemployment... EEs beat CS

[Gr8Apes]

programming is almost 0 art unless you're working in C or some other language that deals with direct memory access.

This is only true if your talking about relatively simple tasks. When you have a large, complex software project, often using several different components and languages, yes it's as much art as science.

I disagree. It's precisely in the heterogeneous systems that a very patterned procedural approach is the only thing that works in the long term, something understood by database vendors for decades now. Based on your next statement, I believe you've confused the architecture with the actual code.

In general, business plans don't succeed on clever code.

Correct. It's the clever things you DO with the code. Just ask Google.

I believe we agree here, it's the clever things you do with code, the code itself is generally not clever. That is where the art lies. Coding itself is pretty much putting blocks together to build a bridge. The blocks are mostly uninteresting, but the full bridge can certainly be a work of art, or not.

This statistic is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an electrical engineer myself and the BLS statistics for this profession are misleading. The government categorizes electrical engineers into several sub-categories: electronic engineers, electrical engineers, fabrication engineers (silicon folks) and there is another for power engineers (the guys who work for the power company). I'd be hesitant to take this headline seriously without looking into it further.

Re:This statistic is misleading

[__aaltlg1547]

That's not bullshit. They really are to some extent different occupations. The guy that designs power grids for a city can't necessarily design an IC and doesn't need to. To him, ICs are components that are on circuit assemblies that are inside systems that he cares about. The IC designer likewise doesn't need to know how to design a power grid. He doesn't even need to know when to use a Y vs. a delta transformer. In fact, he never uses transformers, except to couple RF signals onto the test boards for the ICs he's designing. Power comes from a regulator chip for him, not from a gas-fired generator.

But you get the same nominal degree to do both jobs.

Here's actual data from the BLS:
17-2060 Computer Hardware Engineers broad 77,670
17-2070 Electrical and Electronics Engineers broad 303,450

But the 17-2060 and 17-2070 categories mostly have BSEE degrees, some of them also holding MSEE and PhD's.

Then there's the software folks:
15-1130 Software Developers and Programmers broad 1,442,500
15-1140 Database and Systems Administrators and Network Architects broad 618,480
15-1150 Computer Support Specialists broad 706,360
15-1190 Miscellaneous Computer Occupations broad 196,280

So yeah, there are a lot more people doing software. It figures. A relatively few people are required to figure out how to make electrical and electronic hardware. A lot of that hardware consists of programmable machines that can in principle be programmed to do anything. Naturally there are more things to do with computer hardware than there are needs for different kinds of electronic hardware.

Perspective: I'm an electronics engineer and manager of several of the same. We're staying busy.

Re:This statistic is misleading

[thegarbz]

The guy that designs power grids for a city can't necessarily design an IC and doesn't need to.

The difference between them is a tiny bit of experience and maybe reading one short design book. If you made it all the way though university and you can't design both of those as part of your electrical engineering degree then you did something very wrong. The fundamental principles of the two are no different. HV transmission lines have the same issues has high frequency data busses. One just deals with high currents, low frequency and power losses, and the other the opposite.

Likewise the earthing system of a HV substation is very similar to the earthing system of an eletronics project, just that one is focused on providing clean earth return currents and low impedance for high frequency transients while the other is designed to limit step potential.

They are different only in name and the speed and quantity at which you fling around electrons.

Re:This statistic is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like someone who graduated with an EE degree in the early 1900s who lacks an appreciation for how broad and diverse modern electrical engineering really is. Suggesting that an IC designer should be able switch places with a power engineer is absurd. Each subfield is incredibly complex, and it takes years of specialization to sufficiently understand it and become competent.

Re:This statistic is misleading

[Cassini2]

The sub-fields of electrical engineering are not that different. Electrical engineering is about two things:
a) Maxwell's equations.
b) Mathematical Methods to use those equations.
This can be clearly seen if you do a course in Microwave Engineering, and if the course covers Maxwell's equations, capacitance, inductance, and how they are related in transmission line and waveguide theory.

After covering Microwave engineering, it becomes obvious that a significant crossover exists between the following electrical engineering specialities:
1. High Power - Transcontinental power transmission lines follow the same rules as microwave transmission lines. It is just the geometry and wavelengths are far longer.
2. Motor Drives - Same inductance and capacitance problems, particularly when dealing with high-frequency switching power supplies driving much slower motors through cables. Ferromagnetism shows up in motor drives.
3. Power Supplies - Same as motor drives. Strong resemblance to AC/DC and DC/AC power conversion in high power electrical grid systems.
4. Circuit board design - Modern high-frequency circuit boards are all about transmission line theory.
5. IC design - Change the materials. All the theory is back again. Now you are applying Maxwell's equations at much smaller scales.
6. RF design - This is exactly what the microwave theory course is about.
7. Laser and Opto-electronic design - Maxwell's equations are back again. Frequencies, electron voltage changes, etc.

Electrical engineering is about two "simple" subjects: Maxwell's equations, and mathematical methods. Most electrical engineering projects devolve into a combination of:
a) something involving electro-magnetic theory and/or it's formal mathematical solutions, like Laplace, z-transform, Fourier Theory, and Wavelet theory, and
b) something involving Boolean logic, and/or implementations of Turing machines.

Electrical engineering is different from the rest of the engineering fields. In Electrical, there is only the four Maxwell equations, tons of mathematical abstractions, simplifications, solutions, methods and techiques, and all of the implementations and ramifications of the them. For Mechanical engineers, there is no set of unifying equations. Chemical engineers have VESPR and thermo-dynamics, but that only goes so far. Aerospace engineers have a set of CFD assumptions, but those assumptions only hold in gases, and get strange when chemical reactions and/or phase changes are involved. Civil engineers have a basic set of equations to cover the simple stuff, but the complex problems involve sophisticated mechanical engineering. In Engineering Physics, they cover the electrical stuff, plus the quantum equations (which are a mess.) Electrical engineering is the only field of engineering with only 4 equations, and tons and tons of math to simplify their solutions.

Proper designations?

[jklovanc]

Maybe a number of Electrical Engineers have been re-designated Computer Engineers. By Computer Engineers I mean the people who design computer hardware.

verilog killed the EE star

[Anonymous Coward]

i find the opposite, some of the EEs coming over to software struggle with change & new ways of doing things. I'm not even talking about bleeding edge, but basic CSS knowledge. They had portfolios stuffed with successful windows apps, but couldn't seem to grasp web stuff.

I play around with FPGAs & microcontrollers as a hobby, and ask what they think; Most of them comment that's why they changed career direction.

Heart's out to my fellow EEs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Got hosed soon after 9/11. I survived though barely (and even in between jobs now), but you'll survive too. Sad situation and sometimes life is a b&tch, but life will go on.

This is about the right ratio...

[Iconoc]

It only takes one good EE to keep about five software types busy. Been that way for years.

Hardware problems?

[PPH]

No sweat. We'll just fix it in software.

How many of those positions are 1HB visa holders?

[Required Snark]

Just wondering.

EEs in Industrial Plant Design

[pipingguy]

People in the plant design business have been suffering from offshoring and increasingly-automated data-centric design software.

Expensive, sophisticated, software run over the internet by people earning 1/10 to 1/3 "western" hourly rates means that as older, more experienced workers retire, they are not replaced (or at least not on a 1:1 basis).

Most of the problems with offshoring are miscommunication, time zones and cultural.

Tasks that were formerly performed by younger people entering the field are now done by the software (eg., cable routing, single-line diagrams). Offshoring and automation are great for cost reduction but this does not bode well for people looking to enter the discipline.

Ooooo, college

[fyngyrz]

you will forget almost everything important about the field within the first 5 years after leaving college

You will know almost nothing important about the field when you leave college. If you manage to work for about five-ten years actually doing engineering -- as opposed to being mired in meetings, committees, half-finished projects, retreats, and seminars -- you'll probably pick up enough to actually feel like you own that degree. Related, you run into an engineer who has real chops right out of college, and you'll realize that what you have is no more than a ghostly, incomplete outline of the real tasks you face.

When you leave college, prepare to do a *lot* more bookwork, ask a lot of questions, figure out the ebb and flow of things like (for an EE) parts availability and longevity and market cycle, FCC and UL certifications, how to actually work with mechanical engineers, manage all manner of varied computer toolchains -- pcb layout, device programming, cpu programming, source code repositories, BOM managment, project planning tools, and so on... and math. You're going to have to get very, very comfortable with at least a moderate level of math. Any cribbing and cramming done in college will have to be replaced with a concerted effort to actually wrap your head around the subject.

And then we get into the many, many specialized areas that will affect just what you need to learn. RF? Microwave (not the same as RF, trust me on this)? uP system design? Signal processing? Embedded systems? Automotive, aircraft, military, space systems? Batteries? High power systems like transmission lines? Neural designs? Medical, with its myriad sub-sub specialties, some of which are more art than science? Networking? Household? Process control? AI? Robotics? Toys and Games? Probability? Test instruments? Antenna systems (it's like RF but with with a dose of magic and a dose of art and a dose of luck and the constant interference / interaction of everything with what you're trying to accomplish)? CNC? Will you need to learn about hardening? Sonar? Radar? Beam weaponry? EMP? I guarantee you'll learn quite a bit about ESD, probably first hand if you work in a dry region...

Oh, and the reality of commercial drives and deadlines, those usually come as quite the nasty shock, too. You haven't lived until the words "ship it!" send a nasty shiver down your spine because you know more testing / characterization / documentation / special casing / something else is called for.

As my boss at Can-American Electronics back in the day told a prospective hire when he announced he had a PhD: "Well, I won't hold that against you."

Re:Electrical engineers are not IT

[__aaltlg1547]

True. Electrical engineers usually know more about information technology.

decline of uni into financial scam

[fyngyrz]

Decline? It's been like that for decades now. That, and a means for otherwise arbitrary classing:

Job: Keeping 20 or so PCs running.
Requirement: 2-year degree
Reason: [crickets]

etc.

Re:decline of uni into financial scam

[tepples]

I'll give HR the benefit of the doubt and say HR is trying to use a degree as a proxy for the ability to see a project through to completion.

Re:decline of uni into financial scam

[fyngyrz]

I'm just going to go ahead and call you a raging optimist. :)

Re:decline of uni into financial scam

[LifesABeach]

I'm still trying to swallow the part where Joe Billionare says, "I need the best and brightest minds, to work on my new web page." Translation, I'm going to India to bring over me some 10 cents on the dollar code monkeys.

It doesn't say there are 10% less employees EE's

[Registered Coward v2]

One of the key parts of the story point out one of the realities of engineering; many engineers work in jobs that are outside of their degree field:P>

Electrical engineers have likely moved into other fields, such as software engineering, or to other engineering areas such as aerospace, or to Wall Street, among other occupations.

While it goes on to say some are no longer employed; with a 2% unemployment rate chances are if you are an EE, looking for an EE job, you have a job.

One of the challenges firms looking to hire engineers, at least a few years back, was competing with non-engineering firms for workers. I remember engineering companies complaining about Wall Street hiring engineers (and scientists) and how horrible that was; well pay salaries like on the Street and you can get all the engineers you want. Shortages of employees is usually from an unwillingness to pay what it takes to get the employees you want rather than a true shortage. That's not always the case but withe employees having had a buyer's market over the last fews years it's usually a safe bet that it is the case.

Offshoring created an apprenticeship gap

[Moof123]

15-20 years ago there were plenty of manufacturing jobs for EE's. It was a great way to learn how things were really put together, and in many cases it was the foundation of a good design engineering career. Places like HP/Agilent did a lot of their test an measurement RF/microwave career paths this way. A few years of keeping a production line that making RF/microwave widgets was a great way to learn the ropes and see how to (or not) make a good manufacturable design. Virtually all of that type of work is now offshored to Malaysia, China, and similar.

Much of the design work has been eaten up by better ADC's and DAC with gobs of FPGA's doing what used to be an art form. So now the minimum level of skill needed to work as a decently paid EE doing actual EE work is very very high.

Large numbers lost their jobs as the manufacturing went elsewhere and the engineers scurried to other jobs like programming, IT, etc to be able to feed themselves. There is a vacuum now between the EE graduates and the companies who need to hire more EE's. Companies want 5 years experience minimum to make sure you aren't a buffoon (and because they often simply have no entry level work to do), but there are very few entry level jobs to get that experience. So lots of fresh graduates find other work outside their EE degree. So lots of graduates, lots of job openings, and no good way to span the apprenticeship gap.

Re:Offshoring created an apprenticeship gap

[pipingguy]

"Apprenticeship gap" is the term I was looking for in my other post, good one. I've worked on a couple of already-published articles about offshoring and engineering and I'll use your term for Part 3. If you have any recommendations for insightful resources on the subject I'd appreciate it.

Re:Offshoring created an apprenticeship gap

[Moof123]

EE is a career to avoid. The center of activity has moved to Asia, and will not be coming back anytime soon. It is fricking hard work for decent pay with poor job security. You end up as a nomad going from on dying company to the next, hoping the next job isn't going to wind up at a defense contractor in some crappy town in Texas. You can find better paying jobs that are not nearly as hard, and with a longer half life for you knowledge and skills.

It is fun work if you can get on a decent project, but those are getting harder and harder to find, and the choices of venue are getting fewer every year.

Old CS programs look like CE today

[perpenso]

I'm a computer engineer. So on paper I'm both an EE and a CS. Most EE's are doing the same thing. CS majors, nope, you're just CS.

Its not that simple. If you compare the curricula of some CS programs you will find that they are exactly the same as many CE programs, Also you will find some CE programs a bit light on engineering and more like a mediocre CS program. If you are looking only at the title of the degree you are clueless. You need to look at the classes that comprise the program at that university to get a clue.

And if you are old like me look at the curricula of a current CS program, even at your old university. Things may no longer be as you remember. My old CS program from the 80s looks like a CE program today. To be fair my old university greatly expanded the engineering department since I left and it now has separate CS and CE programs.

If you judge on degree name you are clueless ...

[perpenso]

If I was hiring programmers, I would be very inclined to hire real engineers (of any stripe) than degreed "computer scientists"

If you had a clue you might know that Computer Information System, Computer Science and Computer Engineering programs vary greatly from one university to another. CIS at one university may be in the business school and the program oriented towards internal corporate applications, while at another university CIS may be part of the engineering school and be what many would expect a CE program to be. Similarly some CS programs are what many would expect a CE program to be, while some CE programs are pretty much mediocre CS programs.

The degree title is fairly useless info. You have to look at what the classes are in that program, if its a recent grad. If not a recent grad you have to ask them what they took. My ancient CS degree is pretty much what you see in a good solid CE program today. The modern CS degree offered by my old university is quite different. To be fair they greatly expanded the engineering department since I left and now offer separate CS and CE degrees.

yes, avoid rogue programmers^Wemployees if you can

[Bill Dog]

Attitudes are different outside of Silicon Valley. The worst I've seen along these lines is a few of my peers who've done things blatantly towards adding to their resume vice being a professional at their current gig.

Hired for not answering question during interview

[perpenso]

They can't even address simple on-the-spot software solutions

I was once hired because I did not answer an interview question. In the written eval there was a question with 8-10 sorting algorithms listed and I was asked to state the run time complexities. My answer was that I purchased Knuth vol 3: Sorting and Searching so that I would not have to memorize such things.

Busy here

[rfengr]

I have been doing RF/Microwave/Antenna design for 20 years and plan on doing it until I drop dead. Never had a lack of work.

The funny thing is ...

[dbIII]

The funny thing is every electrical engineer I know under the age of 80 is now developing software. That's only a sample size of around a dozen, but still that anecdote does seem to be pointing towards a trend.

Re:The funny thing is ...

[monkeyxpress]

I held out for quite a few years, but eventually realised most of my time (and job security) came from my C abilities. In the end I bit the bullet and just became a software dev. It pays a whole lot better, is much easier, and there seems to be plenty of demand for good devs for the foreseeable future. Most of my classmates either moved over long ago, or are doing management now. Still really miss EE. Was some good times. Personally I blame Apple for killing hardware with their one product to rule them all.

Pity Slashdot doesn't have any good devs anymore..

[Wraithlyn]

Anybody else enjoying the 100,000px wide horizontal scroll bar on Slashdot now?

Some genius put text-indent: 99999px on the Prefs link. Any junior developer that knows how to test their work (or use Google for that matter) knows you need to use a negative text-indent to avoid a scrollbar when hiding text like that.

Maybe they should hire some electrical engineers.

</rant>

astronomer / radio astronomer

[globaljustin]

Electrical engineering is not in decline.

As tech advances we will need more engineers than ever. Outsourcing is not a solution here...it's low quality work that hurts your home market.

Here's the problem: ontology.

The distinctions between "electrical engineering" and "software engineering" are breaking down because so much of engineering work is software.

Look at astronomy. All astronomers are radio astronomers now. That doesn't mean we still don't need 'old-fashioned' regular-light astronomy skills...just that today's astronomer needs different skills than before.

It's still astronomy.

It's still engineering.

Kind of makes me wonder...

[CoriolisSTORM]

As a guy currently doing a job that normally requires an electrical engineering degree job in a factory, this kind of makes me wonder... My employer wants me to go and get my ee degree, and they will pay for it, since I'm already in the job, should I go ahead and do so? I have absolutely no college credits of any kind, I went through an apprenticeship with a well respected manufacturer here, went to work for my current employer as an electrician, and was promoted to the position I'm in now. I enjoy the work far more than being an electrician. Is there any way I can hurry the process up? It is suggested that I do one class a semester until I complete it, which seems like it'll take forever!