<p>Nevermind. I’m not going to get worked up over a ■■■■■.</p>
<p><strong><em>reads while eating Crunch-N-Munch</em></strong></p>
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<p>Very wise!</p>
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Nice cop-out, this is what people typically say on forums when they know full well that they will be ripped to shreds in a debate, which is why one would opt for the “■■■■■ card”.</p>
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If a physicist can understand the underlying physical concepts on how a car works, then they should be able to pick up design and applications very quickly. </p>
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Exactly. Those posting in this thread are trying to say that those who are part of the profession that formulated and perfected the fields and theories they only have a basic rudimentary understanding of to do their work, such as classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, thermodynamics, etc. are not capable of working as engineers. If Isaac Newton or James Maxwell were alive today, engineering firms would refuse to hire them and tell them to go back to school for four years and get an engineering degree. What a joke.</p>
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I doubt that, or the OP would have an internship by now and wouldn’t have posted this thread in the first place. If you don’t have an engineering degree, you have just about as much as a high school dropout to get a job with them as a physics or chemistry major, even if you took many engineering electives and did well in all of them.</p>
<p>You can’t win an argument based on “engineers are stupid” based on the apparently axiomatic belief of “because I said so.”</p>
<p>The argument reeks of someone who has low self confidence and needs to put down others in order to have some level of self worth. In order to do this, that person has to invent a belief about others based on little to no knowledge of what he’s talking about.</p>
<p>When you grow up, you’ll realize that this childish approach to developing a sense of worth does nothing but create antagonism and further separates you from a connection with others. In effect, your strategy to “win at life” is in reality a pathetic way to actually “lose at life.”</p>
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<p>The fundamental argument that you’re missing is that Newton wouldn’t be hired by an engineering field not because Newton was stupid, but because Newton was a physicist interested in Physics. Why would a person interested in Physics apply for an Engineering position? The most likely reasons are either money or because of limited options in his field of choice. Either way you run into a situation where that person has a higher percentage chance of leaving in a few years. Since most employees don’t truly start to pay back their salary for a few years (the first few years are a loss while the person gets up to speed and goes through training), that’s a bad gamble. Hiring someone who has historically shown an interested in Engineering is a safer bet. Sometimes this means that you give up a chance at a highly capable student and you lose the bet, but more often than not you win the bet by avoiding students only interested in a few years of experience.</p>
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The whole nanotech/superconductor/materials science industry has been in shambles with no visible progress because engineers have been working in them rather than physicists and chemists. Sure, I have no problem for some engineer designing a product or making a process more efficient, but taking the R&D jobs that have historically belonged to physicists? That is why the U.S will never make any breakthroughs in these industries, or any other area of R&D that has replaced scientists with engineers. Engineers are not trained to take on the big R&D jobs and solve those types of problems that are definitely beyond the scope of their capabilities, they are trained to work for some firm designing a pipe or a furnace, for example. And yet, the majority of “researchers” in this field only have undergraduate degrees in engineering, while the physicists and chemists who should be working in this field have been marginalized.</p>
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The government has been slashing research funding and continues to do so ever since the 1970’s. Physicists find themselves with less and less money to come up with breakthroughs, while the extremely less capable engineers have money thrown at them by companies while they fail to make any significant progress. Do you know how much money was allocated for research on electric cars, which was mostly done by engineers? Yet, it is considered a major dead-end due to the laws of thermodynamics. Either engineers willingly know this and choose to dishonestly flounder such resources that could be put to better use in other R&D endeavors, or they don’t and they shouldn’t even be doing the work in the first place.</p>
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I would agree with this if the person applying for the job has a PhD in physics, but a student with only a bachelors degree in physics and that has taken many engineering courses and has done well in those classes is not a suitable applicant for the job? Do you really think that based on the simple fact they didn’t major in engineering that one can reasonably assume they aren’t interested in engineering and will leave at any openings of a “physics” job? Firstly, there aren’t any physics jobs that would take someone with only a bachelors degree in physics. A graduate with a physics degree who has taken many engineering courses shows just as much interest in engineering, because the only other option they would have is to quit and return to graduate school. If they weren’t interested in graduate school in the first place, what makes you think they would be 10 years after working for a firm when they have a family to feed and bills to pay? I think it is rather safe to assume that a physics student who doesn’t go off to graduate school just isn’t that interested in physics, and the fact they took engineering courses should be indicative that they are more interested in engineering rather than physics.</p>
<p>f you read Sakky’s posts, engineering already has a very high turnover. Engineering graduates with engineering degrees do not stay in the field for too long. So I don’t know why non-engineering majors should not be given the job on the basis that they will most likely leave within a few years, when many engineering graduates have done that.</p>
<p>Don’t look at it on a person-by-person level. Engineering companies look at students at an aggregate level. </p>
<p>If you get 5000 resumes, you can’t possibly review all 5000. So you need ways to cut that list down to a manageable number. Companies don’t guess at these cut-offs. As students are hired, their performance is measured throughout their career and this information is frequently shared among trade group members to form very large databases. Empirical analysis of these employees lead to certain characteristics that are shown to have a statistically significant impact on undesirable outcomes (people who quit in 5 years or less, people who have poor performance evaluations, etc). If a company finds that people from University X have a 95% chance of being a poor performer, they cut University X applicants despite the potential to lose out on 5% of potentially valuable employees. If they find that 90% of students from Major Y tend to under perform, they don’t hire major Y. If students with GPAs below Z tend to under perform, they don’t hire people with GPAs below Z. It’s one way to get the number of resumes to review down with an acceptably small loss of qualified applicants.</p>
<p>Unless you’re performing doctoral level research at and the company is seeking someone for R&D in that field, no student a unique and irreplaceable. The goal is to have a good average hiring class, not to grab a couple of superstars.</p>
<p>Hiring a new graduate requires a significant investment of time and money before they are productive. I want a positive return on that investment. I want to invest my time in people that really want to be engineers. Getting a degree in engineering and doing well is a really strong signal that you really want to be one. </p>
<p>While physics grads tend to be really smart, getting a physics degree does not send that same signal. That just means it’s harder to signal to an employer that you really want to be an engineer. It can be done though, but you have to understand, that an employer needs to be convinced that you’re worth investing in. </p>
<p>To be honest, I prefer engineering grads who went into engineering because they want to solve my problems over a physics grad who probably CAN solve my problems. If I can’t find engineers, I might settle for a physics grad. I can usually find engineers. </p>
<p>BTW, an engineering degree filled with quantitative finance electives sends me a signal that you really want to work on wall street and that I’m “your safety”.</p>
<p>Speaking as a physicist, the only option for physicists and those who hold a bachelors degree in physics is to leave this country altogether. I have an Msc in physics, and my research specialization was more industry oriented than theoretical, and I’ve been unemployed ever since. The mindsets and prejudices of Banjohitter and ClassicRockerDad against physicist and physics graduates are ubiquitous in industry. Just reading the post above, especially “who probably CAN solve my problems” is further indication of this. I’m quite sure most who have the aptitude to get through a physics program can solve just about any engineering problem and they can easily learn any deficiencies in design and application on the job. Thus, this is clearly not about who is most capable of doing the job anymore, but is rather just about politics and HR officials coming up with excuses not to hire very capable applicants. </p>
<p>However, if you are looking to leave the U.S, you are very valued as an American physicist in other parts around the world and can actually earn a very decent salary. In such countries, prejudices against physicists in industry are nonexistent and companies value physicists and employ them in roles that are exclusive to engineers in the U.S. The only problem is might arise in spending the time to learn the language of the country and adapting to a new lifestyle/culture, which is the main reason why I haven’t yet left.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is a huge “bias” against physicists. But if there is, maybe its because of their sense of entitlement.</p>
<p>ie. As a physics graduate, I understand everything much more deeply than everyone else and could easily do their job. </p>
<p>Most engineering jobs are not so complicated anyway, any highly motivated person with a decent grasp of the fundamentals could get up to speed in a few months. But, I’d rather hire someone who will hit the ground running.</p>
<p>My H is a physics major with a masters in Civil Eng and a law degree. He does energy law and says the education mix has added great value to his career.</p>
<p>Or you can just forget about all this Physics vs Engineering stuff and become a chess master.</p>
<p>lol it’s funny that physicists think they are entitled to an engineering position and should be chosen over an engineering grad just because they are theoretically ‘smarter’. I had a TA for a statics course at Michigan. This TA had a BS in physics from GTech, pursuing a ME PhD, but she for the life of her cannot answer my questions on moments and other fundamental concepts. She would look at the problem solution, and bs her way through, which makes no sense at all. I gave up. To this day I’m still scratching my head as to why Michigan even took her into its PhD programs. That’s just my experience with a physics student.</p>
<p>And as far as ‘groundbreaking’ research goes, show us some facts on what’s actually produced in 1950 vs today, then we’ll talk. </p>
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I indirectly answered this in my first paragraph. Having an average in the C range doesnt mean anything. The average can be a 20/100 and still be a C, or an A depending on how a professor desires. If the class is curved to a C (which I doubt, usually it’s a B-, so even a 70 is a B-), then that just mean there’s less A’s and more F’s, nothing more, nothing less. I bet I can say the same thing about physics student. You make an exam that’s difficult enough, half of them will fail, but are they necessarily dumb?
btw, I don’t know what school you go to that a physics TA can do engineering problems. I am certain that most schools use engineering TAs; having physics TA would be absurd. I rather read the book or search online to understand than to consult a physicist.</p>
<p>Instead of attacking which major has less or more math, could someone provide the undergraduate math requirement for both physiscs and engineering of some typical colleges for comparison?</p>
<p>At Georgia Tech, the Physics students and Engineering students take the same Math courses. In fact, the only difference between the programs are the major classes (Engineering and Physics).</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter who takes the most math or who is “theoretically” smarter for an engineering or computer science position. What matters is who is the best candidate for the position with the added constraints of position need, available resources, turnover risk and employer cost.</p>
<p>Any non-engineering major or non-computer science major applying for engineering positions and software positions that need a computer SCIENCE background (not I.T. only, not I.S. only) should know that without pressing need and/or enough engineering/CS candidates, the employer will choose the engineering/CS grad. I knew that as a Math undergrad major and understood the risks. I will say this though, a non-engineering/non-CS major still has to “look” like an engineer when applying for jobs. While is true that I was a math major, there were some additional traits that helped me in getting into the software industry:</p>
<p>1) I was a COMPUTATIONAL math major, so the employers (who I didn’t have to explain the definition of the major to) knew that I had at least some required CS courses.</p>
<p>2) I took the CS core. I looked at several schools’ CS major (not just Michigan State’s) and saw which additional CS courses I needed to take. Some semesters, it took elbow-rubbing with the CS department head to get approval but thanks to upper-level CS courses never being totally filled, I was able to take them.</p>
<p>3) I was not able to obtain an internship (didn’t have a knockout GPA) but I took a less than part-time job to support the database system of one of the departments within Michigan State’s College of Medicine. Now I may have stretched the truth on the number of hours a week I worked to potential employers/recruiters but we are not here to discuss that, LOL. The point is that I also did some sort of software work as an undergrad.</p>
<p>4) Pick and choose your battles…I mean employers and grad school. I pretty much targeted employers who SPECIFIED we hire CompSci, CompE, Math or Physics. If I didn’t see/read the “…and Math or Physics” then I did not apply there. If the grad school (which I attended 8-9 years later) did not say “we also admit math majors” or said “only ABET degree majors” then I looked elsewhere.</p>
<p>Let’s be honest, there is a GREAT chance that someone high in the hiring chain will have an academic background and experience in your professional area that you are applying to. They may/may not have the final say but they have a heavy influence. I say that because let’s say you are applying for a software engineering position (not that web-developer stuff). The technical person interviewing you will feel better if they know you had to stay up most of the night doing your project for your database course or operating systems course or your theory of programming languages course. It may have no technical relation to the job you are applying to, but that interviewer wants to know that you endured what THEY did. They may also respect that I probably know more details about combinatorics, graph theory and computational complexity than most CS grads but those are not core CS courses. You need to have a connection with the courses that your hiring engineers have taken.</p>
<p>Same for grad school. This thread outlines the MAIN reason why I decided to do Engineering graduate program instead of a Math/CS grad program. After about 9 years of doing software engineering and knowing that I had a non-engineering degree to start with, I went for a masters in engineering. Now sure, I don’t have a detailed major and the degree is interdisciplinary (it actually read M.S. in Engineering…nothing else), but hell it is on my resume for other hiring engineers to see.</p>
<p>Now when it comes to research projects or IR&D projects (also called IRAD) at engineering firms, those projects flourish when the firm has enough extra money but the MAIN source of income is having engineers billing clients. Clients pay for solutions being created that helps the client NOW so the need is more for employees who will find and create a solution quick, fast and in a hurry…not the researcher.</p>
<p>For non-engineering and non-CS majors, I say keep trying but it is NOT an automatic hiring process. And engineering/CS major will ALWAYS be first choice but if your targeted technical area has a shortage of available candidates, then attack those areas.</p>