<p>You are right ME is the broadest of all the engineering disciplines close second by IE. Electrical not so broad</p>
<p>Electrical is broader than most people realize. They are needed in just abou every major industry.</p>
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<p>You must have no experience with electrical engineering.</p>
<p>I would actually argue that there are more positions applicable to IE grads than ME or EE simply because IE grads are hired for supply chain and business analysis positions. Strictly looking at engineering, ME would have more positions than the other two. However, there are also many more ME and EE programs than IE programs.</p>
<p>I’ve seen ME students do IE-like internships.</p>
<p>I’ve seen communications majors hired to do engineering work. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea (or wide spread).</p>
<p>I don’t buy that Banjo. If it is truly an engineering position, I don’t see any way that a communications major would be remotely qualified or even considered for the position. I don’t even see how a communications major could even get an interview for an engineering position.</p>
<p>Yeah, there’s no way.</p>
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<p>You’d be amazed how many unqualified people there are in the world. Not so much in “obvious” engineering positions (designing a bridge, designing an airplane, etc), but in other positions (supply chain design, process management, demand forecasting, etc.)</p>
<p>How does a Communications Major get hired to an engineering position? They’re hired by an HR rep that doesn’t understand what engineering is and/or what the position is. Meanwhile, similarly unqualified graduates (business, communications, etc.) rise through the company and are placed in management roles over that person, so that the inefficiency can’t be identified.</p>
<p>“Technology” consulting companies have invented an entire industry around the idea of finding obvious inefficiencies and fixing them. Of course, these companies tend to be some of the largest hiring groups of communications and soft-science majors (because they just want bodies to do work, not necessarily talent), so the cycle starts all over.</p>
<p>I can only speak for my area which is mechanical, but I can assure you that I have never seen, heard of, or probably will ever see a communications major getting hired into or even interviewing for a mechanical engineering position. I don’t know what experience you are drawing from to make such claims but from my experience this does not happen. My guess is that if you know of a communication major that has told you this, they are probably not truly working in engineering positions.</p>
<p>At every company I know of, the resume of a communications graduate applying for an engineering position would go straight into the trash.</p>
<p>Perhaps it’s a position as a programmer rather than an engineer?</p>
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<p>Evidently, you don’t have much experience.</p>
<p>Banjo, I have a BS and MS in mechanical engineering from a top 20 research institution as well as work experience at several large companies. You are foolish to question somone’s experience when you know nothing about them. I am telling you that someone with a communications degree will not be considered for a mechanical engineering position. I don’t know what is so earth shaking about this idea. It is comical that you would even question this.</p>
<p>What is your experience? Do you have an engineering degree? Please enlighten us all as to your credentials and your vast experiences that have given you the idea that communications majors get hired for engineering positions. Your comments lead me to believe that you are the one lacking experience and evidently anything to back up your claims. This is obvious because instead of saying what experiences you do have to support your assertion, you insult me by claiming that I lack experience. Grow up.</p>
<p>^word
10char</p>
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<p>I have more education and experience than you, but I don’t need to flash my credentials to make a point.</p>
<p>In the last month, I’ve met with representatives of two Fortune 100 companies (both of which you know very well and that each have more than 250,000 employees) to consult specifically on projects where non-engineers created inoptimal solutions to engineering problems because the company didn’t immediately identify that the problem was an engineering problem. They need someone to create a new solution and change the culture (i.e. show to the first level workers that it is in an engineering problem and needs to be treated as such). This is very typical for companies that come to me for help.</p>
<p>You see two cases where these things happen. The most common is when you have a problem that’s an engineering issue, but people don’t realize it. So, not necessarily “design a compressor” or “design a bridge” (obvious engineering problems), but maybe something like “layout my plant” (something people might think is more common sense than engineering, leading to inefficient design and layout) or “manage this inventory”. In non-complicated manufacturing (e.g. simple food) vs. complex manufacturing (e.g. O&G), you’ll even see the phenomenon extend to manufacturing where agriculture majors design and operate processes. If you don’t believe me, walk into any company and ask them who does their quantitative forecasting.</p>
<p>The other case is more common in traditional manufacturing roles, where technicians/operators are “promoted” to “engineer” because management doesn’t understand the difference between between an engineer and an experienced operator. That’s actually very common in plant operation.</p>
<p>Banjo, if you are so much more educated than me, why don’t you say what degrees you have? You must have a PhD in engineering or multiple master’s degrees then. Please share with us what your education is instead of just saying how educated you are. You never answered my question. Do you even have an engineering degree?</p>
<p>The only reason I “flashed” my credentials is because you arrogantly accused me of having no experience. I would not have done this if you didn’t provoke me.</p>
<p>I am talking about communications majors getting hired into true engineering positions. A technician with years of experience that gets promoted into an engineering type of position is a completely different case. Most technicians have engineering technology degrees. I have never seen a technician with a communications degree. The only point I am making is that you will never see a communications major get hired as a mechanical engineer. The only thing I said was that I don’t know what experiences you are drawing from. Instead of insulting me, why didn’t you just tell me your experiences? The fact that you had to insult me doesn’t make you look very credible.</p>
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<p>Yes, to both. From Top 5 schools. </p>
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<p>I’ve never seen a communications major working as a mechanical engineer, but I have seen unqualified science majors, statistics majors, accountants, IT, and even business majors working in fluid dynamics (to some people, a business major is considered “technical” any anyone with a technical degree is automatically qualified to work on “calculation” jobs, which is apparently any job that might require the use of a calculator). The communications majors are more often found in process engineering roles that would normally be filled by industrial engineers or electrical engineers (control systems). </p>
<p>You come in, build a simple stochastic programming model that takes a week to setup and another week to calculate the parameters, then you let that model save millions of dollars per year over the guessing approach that the non-engineers used. Of course, you stretch out that out to 6 months (you’ve got to convince the managers that it works and the employees to use it, then build a fancy interface since most people just care about how impressive the interface looks) and charge a hefty fee. Then when some young know-it-all type tinkers with your software and messes it up, you charge another fee to come in and fix it.</p>
<p>That’s the way the business world works. If you want to get ahead quickly, look for situations where unqualified people are working over their head, correct it, and repeat that several times. As long as you’re not a jerk about it, you’ll make a lot of friends (people will call you to consult on issues), and you’ll make a name for yourself as being a “problem solver” to managers. Many engineering techniques are pretty straight forward to you and I, but they seem like magic to someone who has never seen them before.</p>
<p>Are you being serious? So you have at least 4 engineering degrees? PhD in what type of engineering and what master’s degrees?</p>
<p>He may just have BS/MS/MBA/PhD you know…</p>
<p>At any rate, assuming no one is lying, then both of you have credentials and both are right from how I look at it.</p>
<p>The original point of contention is whether or not communications majors are hired as engineers, so the part about experienced technicians being promoted is irrelevant (and most people won’t dispute that anyway).</p>
<p>However, what I gather here is that technically speaking, even by BanjoHitter’s account, is that communications majors aren’t hired as engineers. They are hired into positions that turn out to be ngoneering at times, but the hiring manager didn’t realize it at the time. In other words, communications majors aren’t KNOWINGLY hired as engineers, but sometimes fall into it through the ignorance of HR employees who don’t realize a position is engineering in nature.</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, both of you have valid points and are, in some sense, correct.</p>
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<p>No, there’s more than that. But along those lines. My degrees cover three different engineering fields, as well. </p>
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<p>Exactly. You end up with communications majors in engineering positions because the hiring manager and HR rep don’t realize that a particular position is an engineering position. This often happens when the hiring manager is not an engineer, but sometimes happens when the hiring manager is an engineer, but myopic to other fields (i.e. an ME that knows nothing about IE, and hires non-engineers to do IE work.</p>
<p>But that still doesn’t mean they were hired as engineers, which is where I think ME76 has a point. They we not hired as engineers on purpose because it wasn’t clear that an engineer was required. I would argue that a communications major would never be hired as an engineer as long ad the hiring manager knows that it is an engineering position. I think that is sort of the point ME76 was trying to make before this became a mud slinging match.</p>