<p>Hi, I'm wondering if a degree in Computer Engineering can help get a job in telecommunications (central office engineer, network engineer, etc.)</p>
<p>EE’s are what are preferred. However, it depends on the electives you choose but most CpE’s based on career surveys, end up in Software due to the lack of demand for hardware related people(at least here in the tri-state area).</p>
<p>I’ve studied about 10 recent career surveys(posted by UCBALUMNUS), and I’ve concluded that they end up doing what CS majors do. Most end up as Software Engineers, and if you have the proper courses(think RF related course)then you might have a chance, although those oldie EE’s might have a huge advantage over you.</p>
<p>damn lol, I live in the tri-state area as well (willing to move out to CA if there are better job opportunities though). I’m interested in the aforementioned telecommunications topics as well as computer hardware (computer power supplies look like an interesting topic) so I’m pretty much torn between CpE and EE as of now.</p>
<p>I go to Stony Brook, have you heard of it? Nearly every single one of our CpE’s end up as a banker here. Reason being is the curriculum is really geared towards EE, so they don’t qualify as Software Engineering related jobs, and EE jobs rarely exist(when there is an opening, the oldies hop on it). I was CpE major, and I’ve taken a couple of CpE courses, but I’m not trying to leave the tri-state area.</p>
<p>Anyways, if you want to stay in the tri-state area, try to take as many CSE courses as you can dude, a quick check on indeed.com or monster, will show there are rarely any ‘hardware’ related jobs here in the tri-state for CpE’s. Even my friends at CCNY had to relocate to find a job as a firmware Engineer. VHDL, VLSI, those are all helpful but in practicality the positions just don’t exist in NY unfortunately. </p>
<p>I can tell you from direct experience that most telecommunication companies use a software where it autoscreens EE’s for RF related jobs. A company like ATT, or T-mobile, wants an ABET accredited EE* under their wing. Get my drift?</p>
<p>Cali might be better, but I can’t speak on behalf of that region.</p>
<p>*EE’s aren’t doing that well either here in NY. Monster.com, or indeed.com or two sites you might want to visit. Act like you just graduated, and search for openings. That’s why I did for CpE(I too, like software and hardware) but I opted for the CSE degree at SBU.</p>
<p>yeah, I know SBU real well. I was either gonna go Stony or Buffalo and chose Buffalo. From prior research, I knew that hardware-related jobs were mostly on the West Coast and NYC isn’t exactly Silicon Valley. On the telecommunications end, I’m hoping there’ll be jobs in NYC.</p>
<p>If you are interested in telecommunications, go EE. Or, take those RF or signal related courses that the EE’s take.</p>
<p>Hey DXT. I work in a well known wireless telecom company (hint: “Quality Communications”). Yeah, we have a lot of people with computer engineering backgrounds. As a CE major, you can become a systems engineer, a software engineer, test engineer, etc. However, I believe network engineers are more likely to have traditional EE (mostly in RF) backgrounds. Still, I don’t think a network engineer position is out of the question for CE majors if they take plenty of core EE courses.</p>
<p>BTW, I’ve never head anyone ever mention ABET accreditation. I doubt anyone in telecom cares.</p>
<p>I also want to add that, even though my company is a wireless communications company, the software group is by far the largest engineering group in the company – meaning we employ far more software engineers than any other type of engineer.</p>
<p>I’m not really sure that I would be the best software engineer. After my HS experience in compsci with Scheme and Netlogo, I’m don’t know if working with computer languages full-time would be the best. Landline and wireless communications are topics that interesting though. Learning about DSL, SONET, Metro Ethernet, LTE, GSM would be a fun experience though I also have an affinity for learning about CPUs, CPUs, and computer power supplies so I’m not sure whether to decide on Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering.</p>
<p>Well, I would urge you to take a college level computer science course before concluding that it’s not your cup of tea. A single high school cs course isn’t enough. Scheme is a cool language, but not very representative of the type of programming you will be doing in telecom. Scheme is a high level, functional language (though not a “pure” functional language) which can be very useful for software engineers to learn – I believe functional programming techniques can be used to find elegant solutions to complex problems – but software engineers in telecom typically deal with low-level systems code written mostly in C and sometimes C++. I’ve never heard of Netlogo.</p>
<p>I know several guys who earned their bachelor’s in CE and their master’s in EE. It’s probably too early for you to start planning for grad school, but that would be a good route for getting into a company like mine. We have our hands in a lot of the interests you listed (wifi, cellular, mobile CPU/GPU design, etc.) If you start taking CE and you find that you really hate the CS courses, you can switch majors to EE without too much fuss or time lost (as long as you switch within your first 2 years).</p>
<p>"Learning about DSL, SONET, Metro Ethernet, LTE, GSM would be a fun experience though "</p>
<p>maybe a computer networking program would be better for you</p>
<p>“If you start taking CE and you find that you really hate the CS courses, you can switch majors to EE without too much fuss or time lost (as long as you switch within your first 2 years).”</p>
<p>the problem is that i already finished one yr in college on the pre-med sequence so i would have a little less than a yr for error.</p>
<p>"maybe a computer networking program would be better for you’</p>
<p>my school doesn’t offer computer networking i believe. i did take a CCNA background course in my high school a few years back so I’m not completely in the dark.</p>