<p>Where do most engineers work at, specifically electrical/computer engineers? Are they more likely to work in offices in the CBD of large cities or in suburban/rural facilities? Does it really just depend on the job?</p>
<p>All those views but no response :(</p>
<p>Most of the places I’m familiar with tend to be in suburban areas. Mostly office parks or industrialized areas outside of the large cities. They tend to be in nicer neighborhoods. There are some jobs that involve you working downtown, but I think in general it’s not cost effective to have engineering staff in high rent office space.</p>
<p>Suburb, city, are ambiguous, and meaningless terms (if you have studied sociology… hahaha). I mean there are a number of cities located in sillicon valley, right??? </p>
<p>Well, here in NYC it is pretty hard to define what a city is. But I guess we could take the Manhattan as city. The computer engineers, EE people I know of usually work in suburb areas, which are outside Manhattan. The rental, estate are cheaper, no doubt. Usually. It isn’t to say there aren’t any EE/CpE companies in the city.</p>
<p>However, there are many software jobs in Manhattan, which many CpE are qualified for.</p>
<p>Anyhow, it all come down to the nature of the work, the estate expense of the area, the politics (very relevant!!!), and the economy of the time.</p>
<p>Aw that’s a bit unfortunate. I live in a really nice neighborhood close to downtown Chicago and thought it would be nice to work somewhere really close after I graduate so I wouldn’t have to commute or move or anything. I just can’t see myself moving to one of those suburban communities with all the mcmansions that look exactly alike.</p>
<p>One of my good friends got a job outside of Boston after graduating college. He lived in the town outside the city (one of the larger outlying towns with a lot of engineering companies), and hated the fact that almost everyone living in the town was significantly older than him, had families, and had the accent. He moved in to Boston near MIT/Harvard and commutes against traffic now. Last I heard from him he was a lot happier being around more college students/recent graduates, so it’s certainly possible to do.</p>
<p>Where do most engineers work??? Everywhere!! I’ve interviewed or worked at companies in major cities, and others in small towns. As a general rule engineering firms will not be located “downtown” anywhere you go, unless it is a consulting firm. But every city big or small has companies doing some type of engineering, and many towns also.</p>
<p>Now, you may find a few trends - for example, computer science obviously has a big concentration out in California, and defense contractors homebase in the DC area. Once you have picked a specialty and desired industry you may find that you are realistically limted to a handful of companies… but until you do so it is impossible to say where you might work.</p>
<p>Where do most fresh ChemE’s (those just leaving undergrad college) go (specifically for sustainable energy/biofuel or biotech)? Which companies offer the most lucrative opportunities?</p>
<p>Houston area</p>
<p>In Silcon Valley almost all companies are in suburbs. San Jose is the big-ish city in SV (~900K people). There are few technology firms in downtown. Adobe is the only tech firm in downtown I can think of. In this case Downtown= high concentration of buildings over 4 stories.</p>
<p>SV spans many cities: San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Los Gatos, Campbell, Mt. View, Milpitas Fremont, etc. There are no official boundaries to SV that I know of. All of those areas are suburbs, except as mentioned, downtown San Jose.</p>
<p>San Francisco has it’s share of tech firms, primariliy software, gaming, genetics, etc. Most of these are not in downtown SF either.</p>