engineering graduate school question

I saw her video from a Stanford lecture. First of all, she's vastly overhyped. She didn't teach herself anything post-childhood. She in fact learned the best/easiest way of all, by spending lots of time around the best in her field.

---Matthew Hicks

It depends on your perspective; she's no more "over hyped" in the field she's in than Microsoft's Windows Vista is in the realm of operating systems.

Not true.

That certainly is true -- "learning on the job," right?

Jer i deserves a great deal of credit for being able to create a reasonably complex "product" starting out with no formal background in the field; many (perhaps even most) of the EEs coming out of today's university system don't demonstrate nearly the tenacity and work ethic that she did.

---Joel

So she has, "tenacity and work ethic." Applaude her for that, not some fallacy the she is SELF taught. Electronics is so complex nowdays that no one could teach themselves enough to do anything complex. Let's say that I have work ethic. I bet that if I had worked with the best in the CS/EE field on the job working like the food on my table depended on it I would be much better off. The only problem is there is no security in that path, it's either work hard and get good fast or starve.

---Matthew Hicks

I dropped out of college, and later (when I wanted to get married and running the service department in a Hi-Fi boutique didn't seem to have an adequate future) I got a technician certificate (T-3) from RCA institutes. Not only did I learn to design transmitters and class-B plate modulators, but harmonic analysis (both algebraically and graphically) and Laplace transforms. Schwartz-Christoffel transformation anyone? I carried a lot of credit with me when I went back to college.

Jerry

OK, I guess when I say, "self taught" I mean learning from experimentation, reading books, talking to other people informally, etc. -- Jeri did plenty of that.

You mean from "first principles?" Yeah, sure, I agree with you there, but its been hundreds of years since any significant number of people were then truly "self taught." I think my definition above is what most people now consider "self teaching," and there are many people out there today designing programmable logic devices, radios, software, etc. who took this route. I agree with you that it's generally not as "secure" of a "career path" as the traditional college route is.

I suppose I rant about this a little because I think parts of industry does itself a disservice by requiring a sheepskin just to get a job interview; many talented would-be designers remain underemployed due to this practice, and as a country it makes us less competitive.

---Joel

fg

Such eloquent words!

Sounds like an awful place to work. Did you try to explain to them the error of their ways? The folly of firing all the engineers and replacing them with business analysts? You should have told them, explained to them that the world _needs_ electrical engineers. Tell them, make them see that 1 engineer is worth a dozen--no, 100-- business analysts. We would still be living in the Middle Ages if it weren't for the electrical engineer, who harnessed the power of electricity for the comfort and convenience of man. Out of all 300 of those managers, surely there were some who would see the light! You should find one or two competent managers, and make a case for keeping those engineering jobs.

bg

And they will laugh at you - as you know full well. If a company is making something for 100GBP and selling it for 95GBP - it's being run by an engineer. Engineers invent something brilliant which sells in their millions - but 99.9% of the sales go to a cheap Chinese rip-off.

Give an engineer an engineering problem and he's as happy as Larry. Give him a financial and marketing one and he rolls over and falls asleep.

Engineers can go home happy that their ethics are respected. Financial and sales people know that their ethics are a luxury that they can't put on their expense sheet.

Even sewerage engineers don't live in the sewer and have to play footsie with the rats every day..unlike their management team..

As an engineer you can wear what you like, drive what you like, live where you like, eat what you like, befrieind who you like... but your salary is only there because of those in the scunge works..

The middle ages were long over before electricity was anything more than a drawing-room curiosity. The credit you wish to bestow probably belongs to millwrights.

Jerry

The invention of the printing press is also probably high on the list of developments that fostered the exit of the middle ages.

The development of printing was certainly important. The press itself had been in use for a long time as an artist's tool. Printing as we know it was made possible by the development of movable type, which in turn depended on the metallurgy of type metal. That alloy of lead, antimony, and tin was made possible by an extensive mining and transportation infrastructure. Its special properties include expanding upon cooling so as to make sharp castings in metal molds, being hard enough to make many impressions, and being soft enough to be planed with steel tools to uniform height. Although the press itself came to symbolize the process, Gutenberg's invention was the details of a type foundry. It seems probable that someone else invented the actual metal composition.

Jerry

If sales is run by engineering everything will work but nothing will be shipped.

If sales is run by marketing everything will ship but nothing will work.

Jim

-- "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today."

--James Dean

If a company is

That may be, but presumably a savvy salesman is well aware that he needs to be selling a decent product if he expects any *repeat* business... and I think that's really where the money is, in most industries (well, that and maintenance fees).

I don't think there's anything immoral about changing the model number of your product if you think it'll make it sell better. Sure, "10,000" might somehow imply that the unit is better than the "7,000" model, but I don't have much sympathy for anyone who would buy a product based on the name alone and doesn't look at the specs.

In most cases I think it's more a matter of they just don't care. :-) Many engineers are perfectly happy to be given puzzles to solve and proceeding to solve them -- what the marketing department does with those results is of little concern to them, as long as they get to keep solving new and interesting puzzles. Be glad you don't work at Initech!

Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. Bob Porter: Don't... don't care? Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now. Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon? Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses. Bob Slydell: Eight? Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

---Joel

Go to work for awhile (if you can), see what you like and don't like.

You might discover (like I did) that the money is in Project Management. Depends on the industry though... in interest of full disclosure, I'm a chemical engineer, not an EE.

Best wishes,

Michael

fg

According to Le Chaud Lapin, the company he was describing has $1 trillion under assets. Companies don't get that big if they are selling a dollar for 95 cents. The question to Le Chaud is, did this company get this big because of their engineering? Probably not. He said "$1 trillion under assets" as opposed to "$1 trillion in revenues" -- leading me to believe that he is describing a financial institution, say, a bank or investment firm. Those aren't engineering firms, like say, Boeing. In fact I'm not sure what a bank would need electrical engineers for, but Le Chaud didn't say they were electrical engineers, so I'll assume he's talking about MIS engineers. At best, those people play a support role. They are a cost center, not a profit center.

Again, I don't know what the relationship is between engineers and that company's profits, but if it is a bank or investment fund, then engineers are not that important. In all likelihood, they will only be needed until the current project is done. I can see the purpose of a "business analyst" in financial institutions -- they will find new markets and new ways to make money. Le Chaud sounds like he's grossy oversimplifying when he portrays the engineer as the true creative ones, and the business analysts as the idiots. I know plenty of sharp, intelligent "business analysts." and I've met plenty of idiots who are engineers. They usually get weeded out, once they show that they never produce anything but stupid ideas, like reinventing the wheel, only...rounder.

Engineers also roll over a fall asleep when you serve them warm milk and read them the bedtime story "The Little Circuit Board That Could."

Engineers can go home happy if at the end of the day, their jobs haven't been sent overseas...

• fisted stopped.

When my kids leave school I hope that will do something for a year before college. All the people I know who took a break between school and college got a lot more out of college. They had a much better perspective on why they were there.

Steve

It does rather depend on how they spend that time. Staying at home and working behind a counter all year, in order to buy a car/expensive holiday/etc may not alter their perspective on life very much at all.

I've known quite a few change their minds totally about what they wanted to study at Uni and what they wanted as a future career - after a few weeks experience of what the career (or a different one) involves.

IMHO - the gap year is an invaluable part of the education process and well worth a bit of effort getting it right. There is an unrepeatable opportunity.

Steve,

I think that it depends on the person. I started college (well, DeVry's 3-year program) two weeks out of high school and was finished and working at a Silicon Valley company (GTE Government Systems) at

1. I was the youngest engineer they had ever had. I thank my father for putting the boot up my ass (actually at a much earlier age than

I count myself lucky, however. Most kids that age don't know what they want to do. Even so, if a child of mine took some time off right after high school before going to college, I would want it to be productive, e.g., going into the military for a couple of years would be a great option, IMO.

Tick-tock - time is passing, even at 18.

No matter what we think or hope, they are going to do what they wish at that age. The best thing a parent can do is train them properly from 0 to 18.

Its not a matter of deciding what you want to do. Anyone who hasn't some kind of idea about that by 18 needs vigorous prodding until they wake up. That year break should be more about refining your goals, and working out how to achieve them.

I never met anyone who wait straight from school to college who worked nearly as hard as they could have (this was the route I took). I've never seen anyone who went to college after a break and sat around idling their time away. That break seems to focus the mind. A good part of it is no doubt seeing what life is like without a good degree, but I wouldn't presume I understood the whole picture. I just observe the outcome.

Steve

The fundamental fallacy that no-one can learn from books and acquaintances is too ridiculus to even be discussed. Walking is a very complex motion, and babies do it. Robots have only recently been created that can do it at all and then only in benign environments.

You ought to browse the web a bit more, there are too many shit sites designed by CONsultants who got paid for it. Some of the authors are high school kids and some have post-graduate degrees. Education does not seem to have any correspondence to quality of result.

And how many engineers in these NG are able to duplicate the product?

Just the same i would like to meet her.