How can I call myself an electrical engineer? 7

[kchida]

Also, how do my coworkers call themselves electrical engineers? I hired into a large(the biggest) aerospace company about 6 months ago, as a college-hire. I'm concurrently continuing my education in engineering as well.

So far, I've been amazed at how much paper-pushing I've been doing. Some tell me that this is only because I'm new, but this is absolutely untrue. The senior engineers here pretty much do the same things that I do(although with much more efficiency and greater speed). I was expecting a work environment that at least somewhat resembled an electronics lab or at least some test equipment and design software. Now, I'm not sure if you guys have seen the movie Office Space, but I feel like I'm stuck in that movie. For crying out loud, I don't even have a simple DMM here (or the need for one)! Basically, all we do is farm out contracts to other vendors to make us our parts and we are just here to support the logistics process. We only output engineering requirements to ensure conformity to FAA regulations and industry practices, but we hardly ever provide any technical input. Also, looking around my corporate campus, I've observed that most engineers here do the same things. And sure, I'm technically in the electrical design group; we do neither documentation or drafting, but I have yet to apply any of my skills nor am I presented with an opportunity to learn. Now I understand why so many engineers here got laid-off during financial hardships; they have no real technical skills and I'm sure they had a hard time re-entering the workforce.

Now here are my questions: Is this how it is for most engineering professionals? Or perhaps it's because I'm working for such a large organization? Do I need to leave the company or did I just stumble into a bad position? BTW, the pay is still competetive (slightly above market for me). I just feel like I'm not learning anything valuable and I'm not developing my skill sets. The only skills I'm aquiring is the ability to navigate through a whole lotta red tape and to cover my rear with a bunch of BS! Help. Please advise and thank you very much.

 

[wes616]

Just like everything. You get out of it what you put into it.


Wes C.
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There are no engineers in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a 'hottest part' implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent engineer would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible.

 

[GregLocock]

The design offices of large OEMs tend to become systems engineering and integration offices. It's a different skill set, but a necessary one.

The trick is to find out which department is doing the interesting stuff, and then make sure that in two (quick) moves time you are there.





Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[wes616]

I'm sorry, but your post has upset me quite a bit. Did you even have any idea what you were doing when you enrolled that first day of engineering school. Probablly not. (And honestly it wasn't your fault. It is an error in the system.) You have been allowed, by many people, to believe that ALL engineers design things. This is just simply not true. The job of an engineer is to create product. A big part of this job is writing reports, reviewing test plans, overseeing tests (not actually performing the tests but reviewing the results). I mean did you honestly thing you'd be designing mission critical avionics fresh out of the box?

Only a few people (this is more true in manufacturing of systems, which an airplane is) get to actually design. With the vast amount of technology necessary to fly a new commercial aircraft it is impossible for an OEM to do it all themselves. Actually, it is a fiscally responsible manufacturer that subcontracts the actual design to smaller companies (otherwise the capital investement would be in the trillions for 787). They have less overhead, and can generally afford to take their time (relative) to figure it out and get it right.

Pay attention. Get into as many presentations and design reviews that you can... being a fly on the wall is a great way to pick up bits.

Learn the job of the OEM is to integrate the systems, and get them to function correctly. Learn you are there to answer questions when they come up. Find a mentor. SOMEONE is doing SOMETHING you will like. LATCH ONTO THEM LIKE GLUE.

Understand that when the OEM's actually designed things IN HOUSE, when these prject ended people got laid off & started their own companies. The ones that could design, found it more lucritive to sell the design back than to come back on payroll.

Sorry.... but it's true.

Wes C.
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There are no engineers in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a 'hottest part' implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent engineer would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible.

 

[zcp]

kchida,
I was once where you are. Took a job at a large aerospace company because of all the technical stuff I thought I would be doing. WRONG. I am handed my first project, looks okay. I tell the boss it should take me about 2 months. He says it will take 18. I say, no I should be done in 2 months. He says, stretch it out. Then I begin to look around and it was exactly as you describe. Boring, no one doing anything, and nothing exciting on the horizon. Well, I finished my project (16 months later), got my 1% raise after being reviewed by someone I had never met, and said ENOUGH. Two weeks later I was working for a consulting company for a 15% cut in pay and loving every minute of it. The hours were long, the pay was low, but I loved every minute of it. Over time I replaced that lost pay (and more), got a LOT of experience, got my PE license and nowadays (years later) I have my own consulting business. My advice to you is hit the job ads and find somewhere that excites you. At the aerospace company, the hardest thing about the day was getting out of bed and going in, now the hardest thing is finding enough time to do all the work that I can't wait to do. Good luck from someone who has been there.

ZCP

http://www.phoenix-engineer.com

 

[kchida]

wes616,
I apologize if I have offended you and I definitely didn't want to come off sounding like a naive engineering newbie. However, that is essentially what I am, a naive engineering newbie. In retrospect, I was definitley too brash and lacking tact in my previous post. I suppose I jumped the gun and figured that I was in a unique situation (again, a naive assumption). I was really very upset and frustrated at the time because a coworker of mine(ironically we're friends and we get along fine) had suggested that people in academia are too analytical and theoretical. He said, "It'll take a while for these new-hires to become useful, they try to turn everything into a science project. That's why we have industry standards." (Or something to that effect) BTW, this person has no formal engineering education (not a big deal) and was hired in sometime ago (before HR had better control), based on recommendations from his 'buddies' on the inside. I don't know...to me that's a bit unethical. Of course, I just laughed it off and tossed in a little self-deprecating joke. However, his comment really got my blood boiling because I already have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I'm from a lower-middle class, blue collar, immigrant family and I had to pay and work my way through school. I took 5 years to finish my BS because of this and I felt that my grades were slightly below my expectations because of my life circumstances. Even today, I'm working and doing my Masters, at the same time. At 24, I already have a mortgage in SoCal (I was very close to being priced-out) and I'm helping my younger brother get through Berkeley. Well, one day, when the sun comes out and the violin stops playing for me, I really hope I am able to reap what I've sowed. I love my parents and they sure have taught me well, but I still consider myself a self-made man. Although I am very professional, keep my head up high and project a good attitude on the outside, occasionally this internal fire of mine wants to lash out (and so in this instance, Eng-tips.org is the avenue I have chosen and you are all the victims!). But as always...I digress.

(Back to the point) I should have realized that what I do everyday is exactly what some (if not most) engineers do as well. I also agree, GregLocock, that it is a very important role and that these/we are the people that really make the clock tick. Wes616, you are 100% right...I had absolutely no idea, going into school, that this is the type of work I'll be doing as an engineer. I think the title 'engineer' is used so broadly, that sometimes people (even engineers ourselves) get confused as to what we actually do everyday. For example, in medicine you have the following titles: surgeon, pediatrician, gynecologist, urologist, plastic surgeon, R&D PhD/MD personnel, etc. In this case, a young student that's sensitive to handling blood and cutting flesh(such as myself), would not accidentally enter a surgical field; whereas the engineering profession encompasses a wide range of completely different job responsibilities.

So, I'll give this profession a chance to see if it'll grow on me (as it does pay the bills) and I'll continue on with my 'tinkering' at my own leisure. Maybe someday I'll become a different kind of engineer that I can truely be passionate about. Or maybe I'll win the Lotto. I'll take both.

Good night all and thank you for letting me vent!

 

[SomptingGuy]

Most kids embarking on an engineering degree don't really know what an engineer does 9 to 5. I didn't. The careers people all looked at my liking of and abilities in maths & physics and wrote down "Engineering" on their forms. The course content looked interesting (apart from those boring-sounding manufacturing, production and business classes), so I took it.

During my pre-university and summer vacation work experience placements I saw huge differences in what the graduate engineers actually did: Some ran production lines; some tested things; some played with equations; some drew pictures; some made things; some seemed to spend all day in meetings or on the telephone. In short, something for everyone.

kchida, doesn't your company have some kind of graduate induction scheme that lets new hires get around a bit before settling? If it does, get on it and do your tour. YOu'll find there's more to engineering than what you've described.

 

[moltenmetal]

kchida: your story is one of the best reasons to convert all engineering university programs to co-op programs immediately.

Yes, there's great diversity in what engineers actually do for a living. A great many don't do engineering of any description. Some of them by choice, some of them because they're responding to marketplace demand. And one engineer's passion is another engineers sh!t job. Thank God for that, because it all needs to get done by somebody.

Life is far too short to hate your job.

If design is your passion, find yourself a design job. If you can't find it in aerospace, find it in another industry. You want design exposure early in your career? Find yourself a SMALL COMPANY to work for. Don't waste another moment being business machine fodder in some huge company.

You're young enough that your specialization in university isn't worth anything really. Honestly- you may think you've just graduated from five hard years of intensive education and study and have something to show for it, but in real terms you pretty much know squat at this point.

Don't try to sell the knowledge that you have only just started to gain- sell that passion that you have for engineering design. Don't wait until it's been burnt out of you by your present "work" environment. There's someone else out there who shares your passion and who won't mind teaching you as long as you bust your butt to be helpful, even with the dull stuff.

Best of luck to you.

 

[epoisses]

Yep...
In a large engineering organisation, well any organisation, a major part of your job is organisational stuff, getting information from a to b to make the big machine that your part of do its job. So you have to produce paper to have Purchasing buy things for you, to make the HR people pay you the right amount, to make the safety people tell you whether your procedure is kosher, to enable management to do their jobs.... Of course not all of this organisational stuff is effective and efficient so you'll often find yourself reading or producing paperwork or attending meetings that are completely irrelevant. That's too bad but the organisational bit of your job is simply essential to being a part of an organisation.

The smaller the company the less organisational stuff but the more other "low level" work you get to do because there is no "specialist" to do it. The other day we spent half an hour with the local office furniture saleswoman to design our new furniture, and in December one of the engineers gets to design this year's X-mas cards as one of his urgent projects. Some people are allergic to that kind of work even more than to organisational stuff and I would advise those to stay in the bigger companies.

 

[rb1957]

i second epoisses opinion ...

large companies do large projects, and individuals are very small cogs within a very large machine. these days large companies tend to offload the engineering and tend to "manage" the work, without really doing it. i may be biased but i think promotion in a large company has more to do with what they perceive is their business "managing projects" (rather than engineering airplanes).

small companies do small projects, but individuals tend to occupy a larger space within the smaller machine. these days smaller companies will often be doing a piece of a large project. there is obviously less "organisation", potentially a lot more "hands on", and many fewer places to hide.

and then there are the specialist companies (engines, ...) which make a component (rather than an airframe).

i doubt that co-op programs are the answer. how much can you be exposed to (as a student) in a few months ? the most you can do is look around and say this is what i want to do. for how long ? it's a somewhat unhappy fact that paper is very important to airplanes ... there's a lot of paper and alot of detail.

enough rambling ...

 

[RDK]

All large businesses start to become like government organizations.

This is because the actual production is removed from the bottom line that no one can really say who contributes and how much they contribute.

Management becomes by committee because that way blame for any failures can be spread out.

Run don’t walk to the nearest job interview that you can get with a small consulting firm if you want to do some hard engineering. Hard engineering is simply not done any more in government or large businesses, it is almost all contracted out to consultants. They tend to pay less to start because you cannot contribute as much, once you are actually pulling your weight then the pay becomes more than the government or large organization and the work remains much more interesting and rewarding.


Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[TheTick]

I once heard a quote attributed to Orson Wells...

If you want to act, you need to be where people act. No one gets discovered in Iowa.

Likewise with design. If you want to design, go to places where design is happening. Your best bet is with smaller companies that get the design work from larger companies.

I could be the world's greatest underachiever, if I could just learn to apply myself.

http://www.EsoxRepublic.com

-SolidWorks API VB programming help

 

[kchida]

Thank you all for responding with great advice. I feel much better already; it just required some time and a change in perspective. Again, my original intent was not to stir up the pot and start arguments on engineering idealism. The criteria used to define the 'ideal' (or 'real') job is largely subjective and varies greatly. I've already understood this phenomenon, which is particularly strong in our profession, and I accept the fact that it will never change (or at least not anytime soon). I think I was judging my organization from a very narrow perspective. I consider myself a highly motivated individual and am used to a faster pace. In particular, I highly value forward-movement, progressiveness and innovation (neither of which I DIRECTLY observe or experience here, at least from a design standpoint). But now I accept this fact and realize that there is a reason behind all of this......Cost. As a techie, I tend to be quite myopic at times and I neglect the other facets of this business.

I now understand that every engineer cannot afford to have 100%, up-to-date and up-to-par technical knowledge, at all times. This is simply unrealistic and impossible, considering all the other engineering responsibilities out there on our plates. HOWEVER (and this is a big 'however'), I'm still very amazed at how easily people "fly under the radar" here. Some of my engineering/technical superiors have some dangerous deficiencies in their knowledge of basic EE theory (or lack thereof). As in my first post, I hope I'm not coming off sounding like an arrogant or naive new engineer, so I'll provide you with some concrete examples: Regarding over-current protection devices, I was informed (or preached to) that the transmitted power to the device is i^2*t. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this simple formula (for let-through current) should only serve as a metric for trip-curve and calibration purposes. The power (as defined in physics) should be i^2*r and should not be anything new. Another example: I've encountered a couple situations where some of my coworkers (superiors again) get confused with some fundamentals regarding RMS voltage, power factor, 3-phase, etc. Some very commonly asked question are, "What's the difference between kVA and kW?" or "Why can't I use 3-phase RMS voltage formulas for my home improvement project at home?" (Don't ask me why they even need to calculate an RMS voltage at home as a simple DMM will give them the RMS voltage, not p-p.) or "What the heck is an active component (as opposed to passive components)".

NOTE: I'm not implying that everyone I work with is like this, but rather approx. half of them. Also, on a personal level I really enjoy working with these people and they are very knowledgable about the organizational procedures. They have fun personalities, are generally very good people and have good communication skills. I just wonder sometimes how they manage to elude criticism or questioning. One thing for sure is that they're good at talking their way out of precarious situations. I wouldn't necessarily call is BSing, but they just somehow project an air of confidence (and the managers sure eat it up like candy!)

 

[Comcokid]

kchida - as Morpheus said to Neo "Welcome to the real world."

You've indicated that you are working at a big aerospace company, and that your job involves something with engineering data for FAA conformance. In-other-words - this is a paper work position in a paper work group for a industry known for paper work. The purpose for everything is to insure conformance, compliance, and tracability with documentation and filing of that data - ultimately for the purposes of safety and liability. Aircraft don't fly until the weight of the paper exceeds the combined weight of the plane, support equipment, and tooling involved.

If many of your co-workers seem to know little of simple technical issues, it's because it's not required of them. Their skill is moving paper within the organization according to the rules. And, if sometimes there seems to be A-covering, spin, or BS-ing it's because (probably unconsciously) they are scared - they don't have an active skill that can translate to another company and position. You may be a highly motivated individual, but be careful to avoid challenging or embarrassing any coworker - that could get you on the wrong side of the politics.

If you want to be challenged, find a small organization or group. I've worked at with some small groups within big corporations, and in small companies. I wish I was 100% on everyting, but sometimes being 50% up-to-par and being able to recognize the 50% that you don't know is still enough to find the answer.

 

[kchida]

comcokid,

Yes, I agree. The last thing I'll ever do is to burn bridges just to feed my ego. I make it a point to step back every once in a while and look at the big picture. Where does work fall into my life? Is it worth risking my livelihood just to prove a point? Of course not. Although I reveal my true feelings here, I would never bring it to work for "show and tell". It just not good for workplace morale and it's really not worth it in the end. I think all this frustration and flustering comes from the abrupt change in pace and level of difficulty, in the transition from school to work. In retrospect, I'm just glad that I'm making a living now and I shouldn't take it for granted.

 

[bigTomHanks]

Just remember, many of the people who are doing the "exciting/interesting" work were in your position at one point in time. Take it easy at work, build a life outside work, and ask people how they got in their position. If you desire to make decisions, an MBA might be your path. If you want to be the technical guru, get a masters and stay at a company you like for around 5-10 years. Before you know it you will be in a position of seniority and will have considerable influence. You may be in an organization that you will never be able to get where you want to be. Then a move to a different company may be necessary.

 

[Jabberwocky]

One newb to the other: I feel ya buddy.

I actually don't think I have it as bad as you say, I'm in a small company (~25 people) in medical devices. When I interviewed my boss (now friend (bonus!)) told me that a lot of what we do would actually be considered project management. He was right. With a title of Design Engineer, there are only a few things I could say I actually designed.

The upside is that our R&D department does triple duty as both Quality and Regulatory departments. They are of course their own special brand of paper-pushing, but it gives you a feel for why different departments want things certain ways - good experience I think.

I want to get my hands a bit dirtier eventually, but as was stated above, you get what you make of things. Put your time in (say, 18-24months?) and then move on down the road.

 

[Tobalcane]

Some where in your company there is a department or section that is designing and building the smaller stuff that has to be done in-house. These are the departments that you have to keep your eyes and ears open for, because some companies are so big one group does not really know what the other group does. I’m not sure what you do as an electrical, but if you are power look for the interconnection and power people, if you are electronics look for the electronic packaging people, if you do a lot of RF or Microwave stuff look for the communication people. Check out your organization chart and try to figure out who is actually doing some engineering work that you like. You may have to dig a little because some org charts can be a few layers deep.

Actually I think you ended up at a great spot where you can get the big picture of the company of how it works. Especially the paper work, one half of the battle is design and the other half is paper work. You can not get anything designed, bough, built, tested,…etc with out going through forms. Jut to do an engineering change order, you have to read the company’s ECO procedure so you can fill out the ECO form.

The first year at work after college is usually the honeymoon period so enjoy it and learn how your company works.

Good luck!


Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcane

 

[kchida]

At times, I also worry about the transferability of my skills. I understand that initially (right out of school and in the context of employment), it's all about having the right attitude. However, I also understand that as I get more experienced, I'll need to maintain a set of skills that provides utility in other positions. This is where I beging to worry, as organizational procedures are unique to a particular org. I need to develop tech skills that are capable of transcending these bounds. Sometimes I wish I could be in a field like medicine, where I can change locations and organizations on a whim (not to say that I'm a job-hopper or anything). I actually prefer the way things were done in the old days, where long term employment at fewer companies was the norm. At heart, I strongly value (and desire) a work climate that facilitates company loyalty, but in this day and age, it's somewhat nieve to adopt this philosophy, to ensure a stable and rewarding career. And hence, my concerns regarding skill transferability.

 

[wes616]

don't worry so much about developing your technical skills. As a craftsman, you develop these over a lifetime. I have actually found that in big organizations you have an easier time "job-hoping".

Also, as an EE at a big aero company (and after reading your previous posts and your interests) try to keep an eye out for the instrumentation group. This is often a place where design can happen "in house" and you can get to "design" (or at least use labview).

Wes C.
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