MIT vs U-Mich vs Caltech vs Cornell University? For engineering emphasized in automotive

turbo93
Fri, 11 Jul 2014 01:51:09 +0000

2009 would have been a really not so good year for the auto industry in general and the Big 3 in particular. U of M (and note I am a Purdue grad) has a lot of management type people at the Big 3, and that helps… In the Midwest in general there is a lot of ‘regional’ hiring, and we recruit from schools we know and love. That’s how it works. I don’t know how it is on the coasts.

The auto industry is global those days; GM does a lot of design work in Germany and Asia, so it’s not like ten guys working on a local project any more. Everyone does it. Everyone has design and engineering centers overseas.

There is a huge learning curve. I had some friends who worked for the automakers and it took years to get to work on anything remotely meaningful. A friend of mine spent years working on one automaker and his responsibility was the courtesy lighting *-:)… If anyone thinks that they will be given quick responsibility like in the computer industry, I kinda doubt it.

Also advanced degrees are sort of required for a lot of the higher positions. During my time in Detroit in the 80’s there was a lot of money spent on R&D that ultimately did not pan out.

ETA: the auto industry is also specialized to incredible extent. It’s not like the computer industry where skills coding C++ are quickly transferable to Objective C or what not. There are engineering rotations (or used to be when I was working in Detroit) but once you’re cubby holed it’s not always easy to try a different area.