Any (actually) employed engineers here? I've got a question...

Any (actually) employed engineers here? I've got a question. A friend of mine did both his undergraduate and Masters degree at Carnegie Mellon in mechanical engineering. He did everything he was supposed to do, he managed to keep a 3.8 his whole time, joined relevant clubs, joined an engineering fraternity and made connections.

He did side projects and showcased them all over social media, taught as a teaching assisstant / adjust professor during grad school, but after he graduated, the dude was unemployed for over 2 years and just recently found a job working MINIMUM WAGE at an engineering firm.

What the fuck gives? Does MechE just not pay off? Most engineering students, even the mediocre ones, can expect a job upon graduation, usually anywhere from $60k - 160k depending on field an location, but this guy just got buttfucked. What can I do in my time as undergrad to avoid this type of situation?

Granted I realize his case is special, and that a majority of engineering students find jobs that pay well, but it seems MechE is having a really rough time lately.

Also, for reference, I'm doing EE with a focus in CPU architecture, sometimes called CompE or ECE. So hopefully I'll have better outlooks.

>He thought engineering firms hired American graduates instead of importing H1Bs for a third of the cost
Enjoy being automated in 5 years

Did you even read the fuckin post?

This board is called "Science & Math". We have nothing but disdain for engineers.

>we have nothing but disdain for people who take science and math and apply it and build things

hmmmm

Did you get cucked by an engie while you shoved a bunsen burner up your ass?

U r very dumb

>I'm doing EE with a focus in CPU architecture, sometimes called CompE or ECE. So hopefully I'll have better outlooks.

You do have better outlooks. IF you don't get an EE or CompE job you can always fall back on computer programming or software engineering, a luxury that most MechE's don't have. Overall I'd say EE is the best engineering field because of this.

All of the engineers at my school are trying to hop on the machine learning/data science fad, because they know they won't find the jobs they actually want.

It's hilarious how every senior project has a deep neural net tacked on for no reason what so ever.

Engineering is not science or math. Go shit on your own face, piggot.

>Engineers think that this spergy retort is an effective comeback

Mechanical engineering LOL

Engineering is the opposite side of the coin of science. Engineers create while scientists study. Without the other then neither field would be anything. Every tool used by a scientist was created by an engineer/ In fact the 1st men on the moon were engineers which probably makes scientists mad.

he was an academic. he literally never left his school. you need industry experience to get into industry.

pretty sure he was being picky about what kind of work he was going to do. even 2.5 GPA shitters with no internships can get a job doing HVAC or plumbing. same thing with EE's doing power. they are staple jobs that are always in demand.

but nooo, you fags gotta do some churched up bullshit

Fuck those that code trigger me.

It's so stupid and pointless, I wonder if it was intentional.

Im a programmer, which is kind of an engineer, and I used to work in the engineering department of a car company. I also have a lot of machining tool and CAD experience.

GPA doesnt matter. School prestige doesnt matter. Having a degree matters, but its not sufficient. Engineering fraternity? Doesnt matter. "Having connections" is good. Actually working on engineering projects and building stuff is sorely lacking among engineering grads.

Last time I saw the numbers, there is a NEGATIVE return on income for higher engineering education. Real engineers like building things, and they dont like doing research projects or teaching. School filters IN bad engineers, because good engineers want to leave school faster than bad ones.

>Most engineering students, even the mediocre ones, can expect a job upon graduation

Wrong.

> usually anywhere from $60k - 160k depending on field an location

No way. Maybe 60k on average, but its average because half of people are lower than that. The lower half are doing minimum wage like your buddy.

what was his publication record in graduate school? did he get a phd (a masters in engineering is not very useful)?

>EE with a focus in CPU architecture, sometimes called CompE or ECE.
I had the same major. I got a job out of college, 67k starting salary with relatively low cost of living. Making 71k now. Follow industry trends, and pay attention to what companies are hiring. Certain hardware design jobs are being phased out for example, since it's usually cheaper to buy systems overseas or COTS instead of paying for R&D.

As for your friend, having an internship is more important than a Master's or TA experience. Having a graduate degree with no work experience is sort of a trap, because for most entry level jobs the extra education does nothing. Industry experience is different than school experience, you're basically just as qualified as someone with just a Bachelor's except they have to pay you more or else you'll leave.

Seconded. Or he couldn't write his resume for shit.

Documented achievements matter. Those engineering fraternities and relevant clubs damn well better have had projects in them wherein he played a quantifiable part. Circlejerks like ASME and NSPE are alright connection-builders if you actually make friends with people and keep in touch with them, but a lot of their chapters aren't terribly hands-on simply because they don't have access to enough capital for everyone to participate in a project.

As far as I'm aware, the only club at Carnegie Mellon that might impress an employer looking at your resume would be the CMU Robotics Club. Other than that, the guy just had no co-ops or internships and had to polish the turd when it came to his coursework like a new graduate might do in pic related. You know that the person who wrote this will have some notebooks or documentation that proves they did what they say they did. For the interview, they'll ideally want to bring said proof: CAD printouts, experiment logs, the engineering report itself if they're at liberty to share it, and especially anything that's handwritten because it proves that they did this specific part of the project. That's what the hiring manager values.

Employers don't care about academic success; employers care about whether or not you can do the job.

Can I ask how long it took to bridge 67k to 71k? That sounds like a one year bump to me.

To be fair, capstone projects are kind of the "sure, you did 4 years of hard maths and physics, but can you actually apply?" thing that universities dish out. I feel it's fair game to over-describe them.

I have literally never once heard of anyone making minimum wage at an engineering job unless they're a tradesman working there.

It was a 1 year bump. I got a pretty decent raise once I hit 12 months of service.

Do you plan to stick with that company or do the ol' engineer job-hop-for-massive-20-or-30-grand-raises thing?

I actually hate my job and wish I could go back to school, but right now I need money and industry experience so I'm making the most of it. I want to stay two or three years before I leave, since I'm relatively inexperienced, need money, and don't want to look like a job hopper.

This. I studied aerospace engineering. Most of my study crew had better grades than me and were involved in clubs and research, but I was constantly interning throughout school building my resume. I'm making more than any of them now, and some have decided to go back for their master's in the van hope of better prospects.

Don't focus on clubs and research unless you plan on become a professor or a postdoc

it wasnt, I posted that code months ago. Found it in software at work and the guy genuinely thought it was the correct way to do it. (you cant correct him because he thinks hes an amazing coder.)

>do the ol' engineer job-hop-for-massive-20-or-30-grand-raises thing?

not him, but i'm an engineer working in industry and i totally plan on doing this in two years. don't tell my boss.

I'm an embedded systems engineer. Did Comp E from a below average university here in the states. I am currently making 105k. I've had zero problems finding good work from the time I started looking in school to now, and I've jumped around a lot. Perhaps I'm jaded, but I really believe it's just what you put into your education. If a job is all you want, I can assure you your gpa is not that important.

Any tips on what I can do to polish my turd? I've only got pretty elementary microcontroller/controls projects, one unpaid webdev internship and a shit gpa as a CompE. I've got one year left.

Go engineer a way to shove your dick up your own ass even further than it already is.

If you can give more details that would be nice. If your ee project amounts to a traffic light on a bread board, your web dev wordpress, and your gpa less than a 3, then I'd consider spending some more time in school.

Webdev with Mongo/Express/Angular/Nodejs

Side projects basic bluetooth light control, a GBA emulator in C, and i'm trying to make some shitty servo thing to demonstrate mechanical knowledge

Oh also some basic IC design with xilinix shit and FPGAs

Push any code (and schematic/layout files) you can to github, make a personal site for your projects.

Im If you are sticking with web dev give up Angular. Its crap. No one will be using it soon. React is a good option and its popular.

I've already done these things, I try to make at least a few contributions a day to my own projects/open source

Is it a bad idea to try to do really well in school regardless of whether it's not necessary to get a job (c's get degrees) because i'm not sure if staying in academia is something I would want.

You'll get hired almost immediately with a literal 2.0 and a couple solid intern experiences whereas someone who sacrificed all their time, energy and mental health to maintain a 4.0 will be unemployed for quite some time, as demonstrated in OP's post.

I'm not him, but where would I host a personal project site? Are there any free domains that allow me to design the site myself, or do I have to put it on a blogging site?

Can you show? Can't really help otherwise.

Github has personal pages; you can also spin up a heroku app for free that just serves a static site. All of those things are on you for how you want to design it.

This. But I would recommend Surge over Heroku. Heroku can be difficult, and Surge is the easiest thing ever. Github pages is really good tho.

Do you anons do your own projects in US? Here its pretty much a must and usually conducted for a company

Basically in the U.S. you have to pretend you have a job building shit on your own in the hopes that you'll get a job with the feigned experience.