My husband is mechanical engineer. Our DD is good at math, gets all "A"s at AP Calculus including 5 on the test, but it is not something she would like to do outside of the classroom. She really likes and good at sciences and programming. Now here is the dilemma: she will be applying to many engineering schools in a few months. As of now her intended major is CS or CS EE. She likes programming and really good at physics. My husband thinks that EE is not a good path for a girl. He thinks that it will be difficult for a girl to be taken seriously and make a good career in this field. CS on the other hand is suitable for a girl. We both have no doubt that female engineers can do the job at least as good as male engineer. The question we have is is it easier for females to make successful career in CS? Does she really need the EE component of this degree? Will it help to have engineering degree vs. BS in CS? Will hardware component be something that will be outsourced first?
I think your husband is wrong and slightly biased. I have an EE for undergraduate, frankly I used to look down on CS as a lighter weight major but I did most CS/CE work. I have a Master in CE/CS. My husband has a PhD in EE and he has been doing mostly system software and research in the last 10-20 years. The simple fact is there is less work in EE and explosive work in CS. That’s the part I missed out. While my knowledge was not wasted but it was not used properly. You deal with computer regardless of your major.
I have to agree with @DrGoogle. My dd is an EECS grad. She’s only been working for 2 years (as a software engineer) and they are grooming her for management by training her and paying for her grad degree. You dd can do that as well.
Thank you @DrGoogle and @“aunt bea”
If I understand correctly you have degree in both EECS but only use CS part for employment. Looking back now would you still take EECS path?
I have BS in EE. I have MS in CE/CS. There was no EE work at the time. I got into top notch engineering company in the East coast. Most of people I’ve worked with were MIT and top school graduates. So the work was top notch. I was lucky to get the job. But it was building computers and there is some EE but mostly CE. My first boss is now a professor at Princeton in CS. At the time only defense companies had pure EE jobs that I was aware off. I didn’t want to work in defense so I went OOS. The only other EE related job that I did was building some digital signal processing hardware at JPL. They are part of the Deep Space Network that is still operated today.
My husband did RF for his PhD but eventually had to move also to Computer Engineering work and now software. Back in the late 70s and 80s computer field was hot with the inventing of microprocessor. You take the jobs that the market offered you and I’m glad I did. What kind of EE jobs your husband is referring to? Between my husband and I, we covered a lot of work experience in EE. I mean I took Power, Control system, analog design but there were no jobs in those areas.
I was considered highly paid too. I got hired because people for some freak reason thought I graduated from Caltech. I must looked really smart.
Is the question about whether to go for Computer Science or Computer Engineering? I don’t think the fact that she’s a girl has anything to do with the decision. And it sounds like she wants to do primarily programming, which is fine with either degree. One difference is with CE is that she can also do firmware design (FPGAs etc.), where you need to understand what the hardware being described is doing, in addition to the software constructs. They are both great fields, which interests her more? Look at the courses to be taken for each major - which set of courses does she like better? A CE can always get a more programming based job. Personally, I also think there can be more boys-club type nonsense in CS than CE, but I have nothing to back that up. Woman in CS peaked in the 80s, unfortunately.
Thank @DrGoogle
Very good point about firmware design. What type of employers usually hiring for those jobs? If we look at CS and CE job market today, what is the distribution among different fields? I am clueless in CS field so my questions might be silly.
It’s hard to know what companies are hiring firmware, but in my mind firmware is a sort of software job, but these are the following hardware companies: Intel, Nvidia, Nest, Broadcom, Qualcomm, etc…
All have software jobs but do have hardware end product for delivery.
Some software companies like Facebook, Google, Oracle, have some divisions that do mostly hardware like build the servers or what’s not. One of my boss has a PhD in EE from Stanford, he is VP of some hardware group for Google.
There are a lot of small companies that do firmware design as well. It is a software job that requires hardware knowledge to do well. And the list of companies above is a good one.
The thing is, it’s impossible to predict exactly where anyone will end up career-wise. A EE or CE degree does not rule out a primarily programming job. My husband has a PhD in ECE - he was EE undergrad, more of a CE grad . He spends his days programming. But he has to understand the hardware he is developing to do it well. My career - I started as a EE - has been all over the place. She should study what she finds interesting, can always move around the CE/CS field - while in school and out. She may find a part of EE that is closer to physics that she loves.
I don’t think you can predict at this point what she’ll be doing in 10 years. Look at the course descriptions and the curriculum. See what appeals to her.
I agree with small companies do firmware. I did do board level design, EMC/EMI testing for a small wireless company, that’s considered hardware.
But I think those jobs are long gone now.
Even defense companies are 80% software, very few hardware positions.