Where are the engineers now?

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>Hello, I am new to this forum and sure wish I had this information when I was making career choices. I am a EE graduate with a masters, and have been working 7 years in the industry.</p>

<p>I thought this might be a good place to collect information about people who are already in the workforce, so that undergrads have an idea of what they are getting into. If there is already such a thread, please merge.</p>

<p>I work in the automation branch, which I think is probably the cushiest area of EE. Most EE positions these days require programming, and in contrast to most programming, PLC programming is much more rudimentary than high level languages. The company I work for is a very large enterprise, and they have already set programming guidelines and have lots of standard software to pool from. Most of what I program are series machines, meaning that I don't have to do much else besides configuring the software. It's not very exciting, and almost no real development takes place except by a select few. The rest of us handle all the orders. It pays well though, and has little stress involved. </p>

<p>Of course, it did take a while to learn all the protocols for self management like the capacity planning, SAP transactions, and all the other tools my company has created.</p>

<p>So I am curious about other EEs and other disciplines of engineering. If others would like to weigh in on what they do, I and I am sure many others would appreciate it.</p>

<p>-dmbartender</p>

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<p>Did you take any classes (grad or undergrad) related to your current job? If so, which ones?
What was your first job after graduation?</p>

<p>I like this thread idea and hope others are able to contribute.</p>

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<p>Hello, there was only one automaton course available at my college. The rest of what I learned is not really relevant to what I do to earn money. I think this is often the case in industry however. Companies have their structures and protocols, which eat up a lot of the work day. </p>

<p>Plus, the bigger the company is, the more segmented it becomes. What I mean by this is the departments are assigned more pinpointed tasks as software and other designs become standardized. Then, it’s mainly these standardized solutions which are sold to customers. They require little to no further engineering but rather maintenance.</p>

<p>My first job out of college was also an automaton gig, but at a smaller company. Some real engineering work was available there.</p>