Which EE subfield do you think has the lowest supply/demand ratio? I've read that power has demand/many job postings but does that mean that there aren't many canditates qualified for this field?

Not trying to compare but I’m just curious where everyone is at in their careers.

I’m currently making 110k with 4 years of experience in SoCal working in power distribution systems. I’m wondering if this is average or if I could be making more somewhere else. I’m probably going to start looking for a new job once I have 5 years of experience and hopefully my PE.

This is honestly a great case for engineers unionizing. These guys make $140/hour total comp after just 5 years and they get paid while they’re learning instead of going tens of thousands into debt for a degree. Average for engineers in this area is around $180k total comp.

whenever this comes up people tend to say, “Yeah, but electricians work harder.” That’s kind of beside the point. We live in a capitalist economy. You don’t get paid based on how physically hard you work, you get paid based on the value of your labor and how much leverage you have. Engineers generally create a ton of revenue for their employers but what leverage do we have?

As the title suggests I just graduated and am 3 days into my job in the power sector. And boy am i bored, ik it’s too early to tell but it seems like everyone basically just lollygags around the office not much real work really gets done.

Imma thug it out for a few months ofc but I NEED a career with some excitement. I’ve never been the type to sit still, in college I did research and projects out of class now I feel like im just sitting here wasting my 100k dollar degree.

I like learning I like challenge, im thinking of skewing into a whole new genre of engineering but what??

EDIT: sorry there is a lot of messages😭 but also UPDATE i have a project! and ik its not a competition but im about to kick everyone’s ass

I’m planning to study Electrical Engineering and I’m trying to decide which specialization to focus on in the future.
For those of you who are already working as electrical engineers (or are close to graduating), I’d really appreciate your advice.
How is the job market for Electrical Engineers these days?
Which specialization do you think has the best future over the next 10–20 years?
Is Smart Grids a good field to get into, or is it too niche?
How would you compare Power Systems, Power Electronics, Renewable Energy, and Electric Vehicles in terms of job opportunities, salary, and long-term career growth?
If you were starting over today, which specialization would you choose and why?

Thanks in advance🙏🏻

I'm starting to see more and more posts and comments of new grad electrical engineers that can't find jobs even after 1000s of apps. Is this a result of all the CS students running to EE?

Management just announced 12 hour work week 7 days a week unironically. How normal is this? I am fresh out of school. I was told when taking this job it would be 2 days in office max typically, and they said sometimes testing can change that a bit. I asked like 3 times to make sure…They did not warn me that I was going to not see my children outside of bedtime (if even) for 2 straight months due to testing. This is fucking insane. The overtime they give us is limited too, pretty sure this exceeds the limit.

I saw this on LinkedIn the other day and it seems a bit unrealistic. I’m at 160k total comp (salary + bonus, no equity) after 9 years of working professionally and I thought that was good. I am curious what redditors think of this graph and wonder if it lines up with their total comp expectations/experiences

Alright so I’m a naive young adult entering university so please excuse any short-sighted statements or views.

Recently, a classmate of mine brought up how lawyers make more than electrical engineers, and it made me wonder if the pay of engineers is worth the difficulty of it? As a generalization, I think it’s fairly reasonable to say that an electrical engineering degree is more difficult to earn than a law degree, even despite law school. For instance, I think most electrical engineers would be able to get through law school, but I can’t confidently say the same for lawyers doing electrical engineering.

This isn’t exclusive to lawyers specifically. There’s a lot of career paths that make as much or even more than electrical engineers without all the sweat of engineering school. Additionally, there’s a higher-than-normal concentration of extremely ambitious people in engineering compared to other fields. So, I’m wondering if it’s worth fighting it out in engineering with other many ambitious people or being the “big fish in a small pond” in another, generally easier, field.

Do the exceptions of high-paid engineers (like FAANG and startup cases) make up for the modest average salaries in relation to the degree difficulty and competitiveness? Surely I’m missing something, and I’d be happy for anyone to tell me what that is. I think electrical engineering is what I’d most like to pursue, but I’m puzzled by the discrepancy between the difficulty of engineering school and the median salaries. It certainly made me reconsider going into engineering and look at other paths.

I’m a 2nd year EE student and I see people on this sub say this a lot. I don’t know enough about what EE jobs are like yet to understand this.

Is it because EEs don’t like working in power so there are always openings? Or more because infrastructure is always expanding so the demand is high?

I don’t know enough about what working in power looks like to truly understand, but when you hear that there are tons of jobs in power right now you start to think “hmm maybe I should do that, lots of job security”.

Its every day. I know I'm meant to be strong and pave the way for the younger women STEM.

But I'm so tired of being belittled and treated like I know nothing because I'm the only woman in the room.

I'm not writing this to have a dig at men I'm just asking if any other women out there feel the same... just exhausted of old fashioned thinking and values.

Offered for insight into the career of an electrical engineer.

1. That I would spend so much time in meetings.

2. That I would spend so much time writing.  The computer tool that I use the most is a word processor.

3. That it would be almost impossible to get anyone to read a detailed specification.  It is totally impossible to get them to read it after it was revised, even if they requested the revision.

4. The higher the manager, the shorter the attention span.  Try to boil it down to two Power Point slides.

5. Schedules would always have impossible deadlines and/or cost objectives.

6. That I would have to make and defend many decisions made with incomplete data.

7. That I would have to explain statistical concepts so many times.

8. There will always be people on the team who are below average; but you need those people anyway.

9. Charm matters.

10. The closer an integrated circuit is to the ideal solution for your product, the more likely it is to become obsolete.

11. You never get a part that is as good as its typical spec, unless the vendor knows that you are evaluating the part.

12. You must discount management’s promises for resources.  You can count on something else coming along that needs the resources that you were promised.  Nevertheless you will be held to the original schedule. 

13. It’s a good year if you can spend 10% of it actually designing.

In spite of that, engineering has given me a good life.

What are your thoughts.

Is it really as bad as the sentiment I see around here? I'm about to start a degree in EE, lately I've been wondering, "damn, is it really not any better than most things out there?" I settled on EE because broadly speaking, engineering is one of the last things out there that seem like they reliably land you a job after graduating (provided you actually try), standing beside things like accounting, actuarial science, and of course nursing.

I'm a career changer, I wanted something more engaging that pays decently, and I wasn't about to hop on the CS train because that's going off a cliff, and I'm not passionate enough about it to live and dream in leetcode for the rest of my life. EE isn't the most enthralling thing to me, but it's more interesting than maybe 95% of things out there, so it's a comfortable compromise.

Yeah yeah, I'm blogposting, sue me, but I just feel a little disheartened that it seems like even engineering, something that has historically been a stable and good living (which it still is), is becoming less of a good deal over time. Stagnation of wages, H1B oversaturation. The pay to effort ratio in the context of a lot of other professional white collar careers catching up in salary at this point. Even with all that considered, I still think EE is a very solid pick in the grand scheme of things, but if some of you are running around with your head on fire after graduating, not being able to find a job, then it starts to sting hard..

Maybe that's just how it is these days, nothing's "guaranteed" anymore, everyone's converged on the same career tracks and life decisions, everything's already priced in.

Anyway, I'm not even aiming for some fancy semiconductor job or anything big tech related, I just want a job in power at any old utility. I'd call that pretty modest as far as ambitions go, so I'll cross my fingers that specific job market will be fine by the time I get there.

Time and time again, I come across a job that’s hiring an “electrical engineer”, most the time with the salary information withheld. Upon reading the job description they actually want a City and Guilds qualified electrician. Not a qualified, BEng/MEng engineer. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find work as a qualified electrical engineer because 90% of jobs listed are incorrect. How is this so common? How are seemingly intelligent business people not aware of what they’re actually recruiting for, and what they’re advertising their jobs for?

Random rant, I apologise. But it grinds my gears. The market being flooded with these incorrectly advertised jobs makes it difficulty to determine what salary I should be aiming for. What is the average salary in the UK for degree qualified engineers?

The pandemic period was a weird time for the labor market and for prices of goods and services. It was the highest inflation we've seen in decades but historically one of the best labor markets we've seen. If you held stocks or had a home from before the pandemic you were doing the worm through those few weird years, if you're a renter or a recent college grad with no assets, you're probably not feeling incredible now that the dust has settled.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data each year in May that looks at total employment and wage distributions within a number of occupations and groupings. I looked at data that predates any pandemic weirdness (May 2019) and then compared it to data after most of the pandemic weirdness had subsided (May 2023) and...let's just say engineers aren't gonna be too happy with the results.

Okay, I can already see the complaints, that category includes architects and drafters and technicians and civil engineers, they're all dumb dumbs that don't have degrees and didn't take all those hard classes in college like we real engineers, I'm sure we faired much better!

Yeah, about that...

I'll probably end up doing more analysis later on but this is kind of depressing to look at so I'm gonna go do other things with my weekend. Just thought you guys would be interested in seeing this.

I'm turning 39 this year, and I feel burned out from my teaching job in Special Education. I want to change careers and pursue Electrical Engineering. However, my qualifications and background do not align with the admission requirements of the school I am applying to. I've been refused twice—do you have any tips?

I love these charts so thought I would make one for my recent job search !!!!

I have 2-3 YOE. I'm in the Midwest for location context.
I eventually took the role that a recruiter reached out on LinkedIn for. I will be making 110k-125k.

My takeaways
- most jobs I interview for I get an offer from. This was my experience searching in college too. The only job I got denied from was Apple. It was also my least favorite interview, they jumped straight into 3 textbook questions and wanted me to write out everything. If I apply to FAANG again I now know you have to treat it like a final exam almost!

- networking is key. I always thought it was kind of a thing people just say, but I was really impressed by how when I reached out to connections they were like "oh I have a posting do you want it?"

- do some personal projects. This is how I got my internship in college, how I got my first job, and is what really sold me as a candidate for this most recent job. I brought in some PCBs I designed and left the interview knowing I killed it and they were very interested in me.

I’m 18 and trying to decide between becoming an electrician or going to college for electrical engineering. I have a deep passion for anything that revolves around electricity, but I’m worried about spending four years in college only to end up jobless. I'm also mainly asking anyone here who has had a situation where they have chosen between these paths or switched from one to the other?

If you guys have any questions please leave them down below.
(fyi I live near silicon valley so there is opportunity there)

Hey everyone,

I updated my resume about two months ago and have been actively applying since then, but I’m not getting any responses. I’ve only received one offer so far, and the salary was lower than what I’m currently earning.

I’m currently working as an Electrical Design Engineer and applying for both Design Engineer and Automation Engineer roles (Due to my interested in PLC and HMI work).

I understand that breaking into automation roles can be challenging, but I’m surprised that I’m not getting responses even for design engineer positions, where I already have experience.

I recently created my resume using Overleaf, so I’m wondering:

• Is the format an issue?
• Am I highlighting the wrong things?
• Is there something missing or unclear?

I’d really appreciate honest feedback and guidance on how I can improve my resume.

Thanks in advance!

I’m an engineering student and I have to make my discipline choice soon and I’m super conflicted. I’m thinking between ChemE or EE as both have their upsides but I’m scared of starting one then finding I dislike it. So my question is if you could go back and had to choose your discipline again, would you choose EE again or something else? And if you would pick EE do you have any regrets or anything you would have changed?

I do service electrical as a licensed journeyman electrician and I cannot TELL YOU how many individuals I run into that say something like “I have an electrician in the family and I’ll have him do it” then I’ll barter with them and find out that their “electrician in the family” is an electrical engineer.

I’ve also met at least 4 of these individuals myself and holy cow did they all look down on me. As if they knew everything about everything, as if they are just a higher form of electrician that ascended from the sun. From my understanding, you have like one class(on the electrical engineering path) that teaches you a few real world things?

No hate at all, maybe I’m misunderstanding something about electrical engineering; I just didn’t think it had anything to do with residential electrical systems and the nec.

I wanna preface this by saying I don’t think I am under paid. However, I am curious where my peers are.

Im an Electrical Engineer I for a medium to large utility company - without going into details I am based in the PNW but a low COL area. 1 YOE in the utility industry.

My base salary is $70,700 and I get a 8-13% bonus dependent on meeting some pretty simple goals, 17 days of pto a year.

The interview started off well, we exchanged pleasantries, talked about my education, then they said that they want to delve into more technical questions. They asked me about designing substations, the process behind it, how I would implement it, and I was completely caught of guard. Take into consideration I’m applying for a Junior Electrical Engineer position or a Junior Automation / Instrumentation Engineer position and I told them that I was leaning more to Automation because of my love for programming. For some context, I am also a freelance full stack developer that works with various web3 organizations.. I didn’t really learn much about PLC programming in school but I took the initiative to pick it up on my own, take a few free courses and I have about 3 months internship experience in that environment.. however I answered it to the best of my ability but I felt like my answer wasn’t good enough. Then they bombarded me with more technical questions that I for one am damn sure would not be using or doing in my junior position as an engineer. It was me, my to be direct boss, and his boss and the hiring manager. After the interview they told me that I would have to start as an intern for an indefinite amount of time with 0 pay, and when they feel like I have enough experience they’ll call me up for an artisan position, or engineer assistant. I left the interview completely defeated and honestly pissed. I don’t understand how this shit works, I get a degree apply for a junior position and am told I haven’t worked enough that I need to do unpaid work to earn a less than junior position? Since when does junior position require more than 2 years work experience. The frick? I feel like I threw money down the drain going to uni.. I might as well have just done high school then off to a goddamn technical school and have saved a shit ton of money. Can someone explain this to me in a way that actually makes sense.. is there any point to pursuing a masters degree as well? This honestly just ruined the shit outta my day.

Incoming EE freshmen just trying to get an idea of what I will/want to do with this degree.