r/ElectricalEngineering

How in the heck do I get back into E.E. or something more technical? Did I ruin my career?

Hello everybody, I am here to ask about some career advice. First of all, I am from the Vancouver BC area. I am graduating this month with my bachelors of applied science degree in electrical engineering (in reality it was more electronics focused), with an upper year gpa of around 3.85/4.33. I previously held a quality engineer internship at a power electronics company for about a year. I have some electronics design and PCB projects such as a PID robot and also a piezo energy harvesting system during university and my own time.

I applied throughout my final year to many positions, had an unsuccessful process engineer interview at a semiconductor company and another unsuccessful interview for a quality engineer position at the company I interned at.

I know Vancouver isn’t exactly great for electronics, but would love to stay here if possible because of family reasons, but I will also be looking outside. In the last 2 months I decided to also apply for some technician jobs because I wasn’t getting much from my applications and ended up landing interviews really quickly and received an offer for a quality assurance technician role at an aerospace company which I accepted for financial reasons.

I would love to work in some sort of electronics or electrical design role (I think), but I feel my internship has almost locked me in as a quality guy as I never had much success landing any interviews for other roles.

I plan on continuing to work on building my portfolio, but would appreciate advice for wanting to transition out of technician/quality eventually into engineering. And I would love suggestions for projects worth doing that are not just to stand out, but for my own learning that wouldn’t kill my wallet.

TLDR; about to graduate with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and quality internship experience, but landed a technician job which I need for income, asking advice for how to transition eventually out of technician/quality into engineering.

Howdy; looking for some career advice here, any input is welcome!

A year ago I left a large semiconductor company to try out the startup culture. I'm 3 years total post undergrad so im still very much in my foundational years.

I now work as a 1 of 2 total EE's at a robotics company and I love what I do - I get to design custom PCBs, develop firmware, work alongside smart mech E's, and I like having full ownership in my designs and hardware.

As far as my actual work goes, it is fulfilling and I genuinly enjoy it. It's tough work and pretty much all self-taught... which leads me to the caveat.

I work under a 'senior' EE; hard air quotes because quite frankly his PCB schematics are sloppy at best and are obviously uncertifiable and not up to any solid standard. I find it ironic and concerning that as a robotics company we are shipping electronics products that have so many obvious flaws and reliability issues...

My boss is very egotistic: he will task me with reviewing his designs, and I will often point out a laundry list of errors in his design (and I try to tell him in a very polite and professional manner) but his ego gets the best of him and he argues constantly.

As far as mentorship goes, I virtually have none at the moment. I hate going to him for any questions as i simply don't trust his 'expertise' and his attitude when communicating.

I often leave work feeling very frustrated, not with my actual work, but with my interactions with this boss. I am coming up on my one year mark and I am worried about any chances of a pay raise, etc. I currently make right around $100k which is enough for me but I am definitely over worked and under appreciated.

Has anyone been in my shoes? Even if you havent, do you have any advice?

Should I look for better mentorship during the early years in my career or should I stick it out and learn things the hard way by grinding by myself?

Hello, before anything i main spanish :)

I wanna ask what is the average Salary for an EE, im from Argentina and i only see EE as an option for the kind of live i want, being an 19year old Electrial Technician and a Superior Technician in Renowable Energy isnt enough here to get a good salary

Btw another question, EE has pretty integration with Renowable energy, right?, because thats the sector where i wanna work

23M here. Have been working for ~3 years as an EE. I have done 1 yr in MEP consulting for instrumentation and controls, and have done 2 yrs (coinciding with MEP employment) at a startup where I basically do most R&D stuff.

I’ve done a tad bit of Power Electronic design (MV), heaps of PCB design and circ simulations, heaps of coding in trying to develop industrial engineering tools, and of course heaps of design (and grunt work) for MEP.

Thing is though.. I seem to realize early in my career that fr where I’m from (NZ), doesn’t seem to have much of a ceiling. I also am not completely feeling the whole MEP culture of spending at least 5 yrs before you’re even treated as an engineer and then spend 10 more before you get treated as an adult. I like doing work that matters and pushes me to learn and forces me to have creativity in what I do. Something like power electronic design or maybe semiconductors? I know it’s early in my career so basically, I’m just a bit lost, my gut feeling is telling me what I have now is shit but I just don’t know how to find where I wanna go.

Something that pays good (or at least has a nice ceiling) and does something cool, but is achievable and won’t need to be an ultra-unicorn to get.

Sorry for the long post. Tl;dr, young engineer second-guessing career moves

Hey guys! Recently accepted my offer for Waterloo EE! But I’ve been talking to people and I heard that CE AND SWE are often better at making boat loads of money, especially during coop terms. My question is, should I stick to EE if I want to maximize the ratio of job security to money, or attempt to switch to CE/SWE? At Waterloo, EE and CE have essentially all the same courses up until 2nd semester 2nd year, so I doubt it’d be all that challenging to swap. SWE would be a little harder but I’m sure I could manage. I don’t really have a preference for curriculum.

What do you guys think? Thought I’d ask the pros lol

As far as I know esp spi can be up to 3.3V and 40ma max with around a 50% duty cycle. 3.3 x .04 = 0.132 / 2 = 0.066W. I want to use 0201 1/20W .05W series termination resistors, but according to the math, they could get too hot.

I know I dont understand something about this because I see designs with 0201 on spi all the time. Can somebody please explain this to me, thank you.

First of all, by "Power Transformer" I am not necessarily referring to transformer with high power capacity, I mean transformer used to step-up the voltage from generator for transmission/distribution. I have heard that transformers in such applications are required to have wye-delta connections. What is the purpose of having wye connection at HV side since it gets connected to three lines of transmission or distribution network and neutral from HV side is just grounded?

Say for the purposes of this demonstration I have a brand new install of a very large set of solid state electronics that when under load will draw 2 MW from the transmission grid with almost instantaneous notice (no battery bank).

Let’s further say that I’ve had a phone call from the on site grid engineers who’ve told me I’ve not only started to make the lights in the building dim but engineers a few miles away have noticed a harmonic phenomena in the electrical grid. What on earth does this mean and is it really a harmonic?

Experienced and new electrical engineers working in power: what does a typical work day look like for you? I am an EE student and trying to decide if this specific field in EE is for me.

If possible could you also say which country or region you work in!

Hello , in a perfect world I would love to get a degree in both, but in reality I doubt it’s possible. So considering factors like job growth rate, salary floor and ceiling and demand, which career do you think would be better in the long run? Thanks for all advice.

Yo, recently I had the opportunity to learn more about power systems, particularly power electronics. I really enjoyed how it involves so many different fields: electric machines, electronics, control systems, and physics (like electromagnetic interference, shielding, etc.).

But there is one key aspect I need in my work, I want to do technical, hands on stuff rather than just sitting at a desk designing converters all day, which is what I'm afraid of. My ideal job would be a 50/50 split between desk work and field work.

Also, I’d love to work across all three aspects of the system not just the converter itself, but also the connection to the grid and the power flowing into the converter. Is that actually possible, or do you usually have to focus on just one thing?

That’s all, thanks for the input guys!

I fried two brushed motors within 30 miles. One lasted 5, the other 25. Overvolted the first one 48V/36V at max throttle and it severely overheated within 30 seconds to the point that black wire plastic housing was dripping out of the bottom of the motor's shell. I was used to brushless motors that are MUCH more reliable and this brushed meltdown came as quite a shock. So I put on a fan and a temperature sensor for the 2nd motor. But 25 miles in, somehow the throttle wires crossed the motor wires and the rpm's ramped up to max all of a sudden unless I immediately shut off the battery. After only about 20 seconds total of turning on/off the battery, the 2nd motor is fried!

I swore I'd never go back to brushed, but the replacement motor is only $65 vs $500+ for a brushless kit. The question I have is: if I don't do max throttle and for example only do 2/3 of it, that throttle is proportional to current (amps), correct? So if the controller is rated for 30A, but I have a cutoff fuse of 20A between the battery and controller, then 48V battery x 20A = 720W max before the fuse blows. If I run 20A or less, then 48V on a 36V motor should be fine, correct? Or will that extra 12V of pressure prematurely weaken the brushed wires and I'm not going to get even 100 miles out of this 3rd motor? The way I think of it is that if you are aiming for a certain amount of max watts (720 in this case), then a higher starting voltage will result in LESS amps for a fixed watt amount. Less amps = less chance to overheat.

Other people online have done 720 watts with a 24V version of this motor, I have no idea how it did not overheat because that's 30A on a cheap brushed motor. I thought this was tied to amps overheating a motor but according to them it's all about the voltage input. Dunno why they had good luck and I had super bad luck, besides my battery being 48V and the motor is rated at 24/36V.

Hi everyone,

Has anyone here recently received an offer from Skyworks Solutions in Hillsboro, OR, or is anyone currently working/interning there?

I’ll be moving to Hillsboro around June 2026 and wanted to connect with current interns, employees, or others who may also be joining Skyworks around the same time.

Feel free to comment or message me.

Thanks!

hello I am currently at a community college getting started in my electrical engineering degree. I still have some time left but have been looking into what schools to transfer to once I complete my associates and go for my bachelors. Ive even seeing ASU has the top choice for online programs and stony brooks. Is this pretty accurate and any other choices people suggest? thank you

Genuine question. Do you, as an Electrical Engineer, fear for the loss of your job? How common are mass layoffs in Electrical Engineering (US/Canada) ?

I'm in the middle of the EE grind at a uni and the only thing that keeps me going is somewhat of a hope in a cushiony and stable life after graduation.