<p>How much is the job like school? Does any of the stuff learned in school apply? I feel like a lot of this analysis and stuff is not useful.</p>
<p>On the job you need soft skills to negotiate for things to be done. You wont be able to do everything you need, so youll have to talk with people well. On the job stuff is soo much more important so I get motivated to get it done.</p>
<p>Engineers are problem solvers. Few graduates apply all of their specific coursework on the job. But they usually rely heavily on their general problem solving abilities.</p>
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The answer varies tremendously depending on your field of study and your job. A few differences I noted after starting my first full time EE-related job after graduating are below. I could list many more.</p>
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<li><p>The vast majority of my college classes were not relevant to my job at all. A few classes fit exactly, and I’d use a few topics covered in others, but I have not used >90% of the information from my college classes (I am not including general abilities used in all eng classes, like problem solving). Instead I learned most of what I needed to know through experience on the job.</p></li>
<li><p>The types of problems solved are very different. In college, that vast majority of problems could be solved quickly, and I knew that the problem was set up in such a way that it could be solved quickly using information from the textbook. At my job, problems were more likely to be a part of a large project that takes months to complete. Solving some problems may require background knowledge that you, as a new grad, do not have. You may need to find a new and original approach that has not been done before. Some problems may not have an acceptable solution at all. </p></li>
<li><p>My workload on the job was much lighter than in college, with different hours. My college work was spread out in brief periods throughout the day and night on both weekdays and weekends, while my job was limited to specific hours on M-F. </p></li>
<li><p>The motivation and reward system is different. In college, there are usually simple and straightforward goals and measures, with predictable feedback and benefits – for example take specific classes, get specific grades, then apply to grad school or job. If you put in extra time and effort, you can easily predict and see the benefits. In work, it’s more maybe you might get a benefit in the future if you put in a lot of extra effort, or maybe you won’t, or maybe you’ll only get a benefit if you talk with your manager, …</p></li>
<li><p>In work there is wider distribution of backgrounds and skill sets who all must work together on a project, instead of a college class where the people working on group projects usually all have a similar background. The group dynamics and chain of command also differs.</p></li>
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<p>Agree with data10 100%.</p>
<p>What I found is in school you learn something new everyday whereas in work you do similar stuff everyday (and no I am not a robot at work, I am actually in an engineering group that problem solves whenever there is crap happens, but the crap events are usually similar). </p>
<p>Also you can skip courses but you can’t skip work…</p>
<p>Work is totally different from school and it’s actually hard to predict whether you’ll like a job as an engineer based on whether you like/dislike engineering school.</p>
<p>One big split is whether you’re doing design work or more maintenance/support work. For design work you have projects that last months/years and are working with a team of diverse skills. Sometimes the engineering aspect is a small piece as you or the team leader are coordinating many involved departments like quality/ manufacturing/ marketing/ etc. For support engineering, it’s more of day-to-day troubleshooting and problem solving. Usually you’re not working with other engineers but production or other operations staff.</p>
<p>As phaser stated, soft skills are incredibility important and probably the area where engineer school does the poorest job. It is odd how misaligned engineering school and practice actually are, unless you’re planning to be an academic.</p>
<p>This may be too CS specific, but in school, pretty code and elegant solutions were how you were judged. At work, what matters is getting working code out the door as soon as possible. </p>
<p>What causes software managers grief is having programmers who can’t break out of the academic mindset into the business mindset.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, when I was in a coding position 2 years ago I was required to put more effort into documenting and organizing the code to make sure it is readable by other teams.</p>
<p>School and work are totally different!</p>
<p>I know this guy who got an IE degree from Georgia Tech- he told me he hates Math. He was able to get through Calculus and Differential Equations, mostly with the help of tutors and some luck, according to him.</p>
<p>Today, he is a very successful Industrial Engineer, working for a Fortune 500 company and just got promoted- he works mostly with simulations and obviously, all he had to do is learn the simulation software, he is not doing integrals and derivatives all day.</p>
<p>Last time I saw him, he told me he is sick and tired of sitting in front of a computer 8 hours a day- so now he wants to find a management position related to IE where he gets to talk and interact with more people.</p>
<p>If he had come to CC, and posted something about struggling with Math, I am sure a lot of the CC “experts” here would have told him to change his major :)</p>
<p>My point is: How good you do in school or how much you like your courses is not necessarily an indicator of how good of an Engineer you are going to be or how much you are going to like the job.</p>
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<p>Agree 100%. It’s strange how unrelated the two (work/school) are as it discourages many who would be good practicing engineers.</p>
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This applies to all fields.</p>