furyshade

whenever i hear people talking about engineering on the PhD level they always say it is only worth it if you want to do research. what i don't get is how different research is from another job, isn't it all research? i thought the whole idea of engineering was researching new ways to build, operate and utilize technology, so what is the difference?

aibarr

If engineers are always busy finding new ways to build, operate, and utilize technology, then what would you do with the *old* ways?

You forgot 'implementation,' which is what a lot of engineering actually is. =)

furyshade

maybe i will understand it better when i have experience

ken285

The goals of the two are pretty different. In academia, it seems like everybody aims to get published, get funding, and use that funding to get published some more. In industry, you're looking for the most cost effective way to design something adequately. $$ is the bottom line and using cutting edge technology may or may not be part of the program.

As for what you actually do, in industry, you're developing products. In research, you're generally developing new methods or discovering new information to aid in the development of products.

jessiehl

Note that there is a middle ground - there are research-oriented companies in industry. I work at one. We write grant proposals, get funding (generally from the Department of Defense), and publish in journals and at conferences.

ken285

That's quite interesting jeesiehl. I had no idea. Since you work at one, how would you describe the atmosphere of companies like yours? And what would you say is the mission/goal of the company? Does it lean towards either direction? Or is it truly just middle ground?

aibarr

A lot of the think-tanks are like that. There are some federally-funded research and development centers parked around the country that do those sorts of things... Beware their interviews, though...

The day ends up being kind of like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but with finite element derivations, and more of you-sweating-a-lot...

jessiehl

I can't really speak for all of them. I really like my company - no serious complaints (I've been working there 9.5 months, since I graduated). The atmosphere feels hybrid academic/corporate. 55% of the technical staff have some sort of graduate degree (20% are PhDs or ABDs), and those of us who don't are encouraged to pursue them. There are "scientists" and "engineers", but it's more of a continuum than a binary - I like to say that I'm in the middle (or sometimes, "a closet scientist"). The engineers get to publish and present and write grant proposals too, if they want to.

Cribbing from our website, "Apply cutting-edge computational intelligence technologies to the difficult cognitive, vision, and decision problems facing our customers." Where "our customers" are nearly always the armed services, DARPA, and NASA. I think we've gotten a couple of DoE projects as well. Once the research is done, some of it gets turned into commercial products (many of which have a target audience of researchers, but we just got a Google Appliance).

I think it's pretty middle ground. You'd get different answers from different employees, depending on their own biases. To some extent, it depends on who you're working with. My old project felt more traditional corporate, because the PI (a term we get from academia) leans more in that direction. In my new project, the PI leans very much the other way, so it feels more academic.

Working there has made me decide that I want to get a PhD in CS or a related discipline someday and be a senior scientist in a similar sort of company. Got to get my master's first, though (I go to school part-time).