I’m not in EE but I’m an engineer and I like my job most days, love it some days and dread it once in a while. But for me the good days greatly outnumber the bad and that’s what’s important. No job will be 100% perfect. I also have been dealing with my first work related crisis lately and I haven’t run screaming yet so I take that as a good sign.
Being able to take on highly stressful work situations without a visible meltdown is beyond many and it makes you look very impressive if you can pull it off. So I’ve seen.
Sometimes I fee like my work is a constant crisis.
I run development teams now but I’m not that far away from being an engineer. I love both and can’t believe they pay me to do what I do. That said, I live in a terrific area (PNW), work for a company that gets awards for its work environment and build products that lead their market segment.
if Junior decides to become an engineer, I would probably recommend industrial/manufacturing, computer science (not necessarily a computer engineering) or some sort of applied math. I worry that electrical and mechanical are saturated with electrical having some particularly strong headwinds due to the homogenized architectures caused by the rush to the cloud. I can’t really comment on other disciplines–civil, chemical, materials science and nuclear–as we don’t hire them. Personally, I suspect civil engineering should be a growing discipline as we need to invest in infrastructure but I think economic and political concerns make that unlikely.
Petroleum engineering? I’d bet it’s as popular as a TTT law school right now.
Worry not. Your professors are not giving you a typical view fo the engineering field. There are lots of interesting jobs. Yea, some non-academic jobs (engineering or not) requiring getting up at 6am… especially if there is a commute involved. But just today I read that some software engineering companies tend to not have any meetings before 9am. (I am a MechE, now more of an analyst, I have some 6am calls with other timezones but I take them from home)>
"Working with engineers is fine on a professional day-to-day basis, but I find that too many of them are just not particularly likable people (especially software “engineers”/programmers).: That has not been my experience. Everybody has different preferences, but personally I’ve liked almost all my techie coworkers. (Sometimes it took time to find the best interface methods - for one shy software engineer I learned that if I slipped a code trace diskette and a note under his office door on the way home I’d have a code fix by morning.) Occasionally there have been some sales/marketing reps that annoyed me, but no big deal. I realize that companies needs a variety of strengths / personalities. Somebody has to sell those better mousetraps 
In my experience (and I am generalizing quite strongly here), they’re not bad people to work with, but they are also a far cry from the kind of people I would choose to build lasting friendships with or invite as guests to my house. My experiences don’t differ much from what you say here; almost all of the technical coworkers I had are good to work with once you figure out what they do and do not respond to. Work is more than about just getting the job done though; people get miserable if there’s no meaningful social interaction in the long-term. Even most introverts aren’t complete shut-ins and enjoy human interaction once in a while.
Other than for the few people for whom it “clicks” and they just love being salesmen, sales is a miserable job. Anyone who has ever been in a rut and forced to get by by getting a sales job can attest to this fact.
I am an engineer married to an engineer… so not the usual situation. The majority of our close friends and house guests have been techie work friends (or their spouses / kids… some actually in the neighborhood). I’m not saying we don’t like a ride range of people. It’s just that we spent many years working at the same workplace, so it’s been convenient and pleasant to hang around with this crowd.
I do. I can wait to go back to work tomorrow instead of hanging around CC now. Sometimes I work during my sleep and some solutions pop up in my head too.
I legitimately didn’t sleep well Friday night because my mind was still trying to solve a particular problem at work. Still haven’t figured it out.
I mildly disliked my first few months as an engineer (an ill-fitting assignment), but have loved everything since.
edit:
LOL! I get paid a lot of money to do work I’d want to do anyway. Sometimes I’m working on a hard problem and I can’t turn it off for weeks. Then I solve it. Euphoria! It’s so good!
OP, you can become one of the fortunate who never has to grow up and gets to play for a living.
Thanks everyone for your input. I am very interested in electronics, have already built a few dozen circuits and built many, many Arduino projects (I want to start a YouTube channel to show people how to make these) and so I think I will enjoy EE. Honestly, the professor I mentioned in the original post seems like a very lazy person who does not even know the material he is lecturing!! Like, students will ask him a question and he gives a roundabout answer which does not address the key concern of the student. Being a very direct, efficiency-driven kind of person, this is very distasteful to me, and he sometimes write out fundamental equations TOTALLY WRONG which drives me crazy!!! I respect this stuff very much and he just craps all over it, so now I understand why he would have such a poor perspective of the possibilities offered to passionate engineers.
@boneh3ad The professor mentioned on the first day that he originally intended to get his BS degree and work as an engineer, but after 3 years in the industry he was unhappy and decided to become a professor so he could stay in academia, as you said. This bothers me immensely because he has NO passion for teaching, and simply ended up there for lack of a better option. It is obvious from his lectures that he doesn’t give two shits about understanding the material, and we have to correct him regularly on even basic concepts. He also admitted on the first class day that he cheated on many of the take home tests in order to make it through school. See, to be honest, engineering was not my dream job, it is simply a practical dream job, given that I do enjoy electronics and math and could think of a hell of a lot worse jobs to have (of course, engineering seems like a very flexible career path and one where I’m likely to find satisfaction.) Given the direction in which I have chosen to take my life, I have become extremely dedicated to school, and already only a month into this semester I feel like I have established myself as one of the students who “gets it,” even though I don’t a lot of the time but I work my ass off until I understand it enough.
Originally, I wanted to be a musician and composer (and still have this dream, although it seems unattainable and I don’t work toward it as much as I should.) I used to stay at home and practice voice exercises, took voice and acting classes, played live and in several bands, and even recorded my own CD all on my own, which several friends of mine truly, truly enjoy listening to. I’m not trying to sound like a whiny sissy, but ever since I went back to school to pursue engineering (I am 29 now) I feel like I have traded off my dream and life’s purpose for a plan B (albeit, a very worthwhile plan B but one that leaves me doubting myself every day.) I still play music and I believe I have what it takes to succeed, if not making it famous, then at least turning out some great music that people will love and will benefit at least some people. Also my mom passed away during my first semester back, the summer of 2013 I was taking Calculus I and would bring my homework to the hospital and sleep there next to her hospital bed. She died of cancer and I never even stopped my studies, I just powered through that shit because I am not the kind of person who gives up easily. Having gone through all that has given me immense respect for engineering and math, I think because I HAD to develop that respect in order to keep it important to me, and to succeed at it. Given, I have not succeeded yet since I am still working on it, but unless a major tragedy happens (universe willing, it won’t) I am going to graduate and understand a lot more than this faux-professor who doesn’t give a shit about engineering or any of the hard work which has gone into the many technologies we take for granted today.
Sorry to go on a rant but that’s my life story. I just respect this stuff a lot and hate to have to answer to someone who does not properly respect this stuff. The dilemma of being an intj, haha. Good luck everyone!!
You seem very passionate. Gook luck!
That’s all well and good, but my point this whole time has been that you can’t just assume that this professor hates all of forms of engineering based on the fact that he did not like being a practicing engineer in industry. You also can’t assume that he is terrible at engineering just because he is a bad teacher.
The bottom line is that the hiring process for engineering faculty is very… thorough. It’s difficult for someone who is incompetent or who hates the job to slip through that, and if this professor is tenured, then it is even less likely that he’s totally incompetent… at research. Most engineering faculty are quite good at engineering in the form of research, and a large portion of them (maybe the majority?) are there primarily to do research and teaching is just something they are forced to do as part of the job. That’s perhaps unfortunate in some ways, but it’s the way the world operates.
In other words, this professor may still be a very good at his job and really enjoy it (and I’d be willing to bet that he does, as there are far more lucrative and less stressful ways to hate what you are doing). You just may not be able to see it since your only experience with him is with his teaching, which definitely sounds pretty awful.
I’m going to become an engineering student. Part of the reason I picked engineering is because my entire family are engineers, and they all use the same word to explain their job. That word is fun. From my super conservative idaho great great uncle mechanical engineer to my super hippy cousin aerospace engineer (and manager at boeing) they all love their job. There are over 45 engineers in my family. If I’m to become an engineer, I will be 12th generation of engineers. Obviously I also picked engineering because it interests me and I love math and science but I love the idea of a job that I can describe as fun.
Thank you all so much… your replies have been helpful and inspiring. I have been going at this semester with 110% ferocity and am happy to report that I am doing very well in all my classes. I am also learning a lot and somehow have the free time to be improving myself by working out, quitting caffeine etc.
I guess my main fear was that as an engineer, I would end up being like those guys you see driving super nice cars, but when you talk to them they are complete a-holes, impatient with other people and very obviously not satisfied with some fundamental element of their life. Obviously this has a lot to do with the individual, but I feel that a lot of these people work hard their whole lives sort of “in the wrong direction.” And I’m talking more about super powerful, high-paying jobs like lawyers, some doctors, and CEO’s and stuff. I guess that’s just a stereotype that lives in my head and shouldn’t apply to the real world. Also I am a musician and want to have a big chunk of free time to devote myself to making music, practicing, and playing live, so I guess I was also afraid that engineering would cut into this with late night work sessions (like my study sessions nowadays) and just general lack of time. Thanks again for all your replies.
And boneh3ad, just fyi, that professor and I kind of see eye to eye on a lot of stuff and he’s a really funny dude and probably my favorite of all my teachers this semester, haha. But he does make a lot of mistakes, but his students are always willing to help him with that ;D
Generally people who choose their profession purely for the money are not the most likable fellows. That has a lot to do with what you’re describing.