What's the average entry-level engineering job like?

PurdueEE
Wed, 20 May 2009 01:45:11 +0000

Don’t take my word for it, browse job search sites (like monster.com) and company sites directly. When you browse company sites you need to make sure you broaden your search beyond the obvious (Intel, AMD, Analog Devices, NVIDIA, etc.) and look at companies that manufacture consumer goods, steel mills, power plants, oil field services companies, and a lot more. A lot of companies hire electrical engineers to fill a wide array of positions.

The main reason I am posting on here is I believe that many students have a mostly incorrect view of electrical engineering (and most likely engineering in general) and I have often talked to prospective engineering students about what to really expect from engineering. They seem to believe they will have jobs sitting behind a desk with a TI-89 in hand solving problems. Or messing around with some design software on a computer. Or designing the next fighter jet. While there are, no doubt, those kind of jobs out there, they are not in the majority. There are many more jobs not involved in design, particularly to new graduates.

It’s also important to note that there will be always be that one person that does something really interesting or amazing. There will always be exceptions to the rule and while it can give you an idea of what you might end up doing, statistically speaking you probably won’t do something awesome. Not everyone will do something interesting or amazing, some engineers will perform mundane tasks for their entire careers. This is the reality of the working world as ultimately SOMEONE has to get it done and if everyone just sat around and designed things all day long nothing would ever get built.

I may come off as being a bit “negative” and it is not really my goal to scare people away from engineering. My goal is to present my honest opinion and observations of the engineering field from a recent graduate / new hire perspective. I spent a substantial amount of time looking for a job after graduation that I would be satisfied with and as a result spent countless hours searching for engineering jobs and going on interviews to a large number of diverse companies. You hear tons about how engineers will make good money, tons of companies want them, there is a shortage of qualified engineers, etc. so while I could continue to beat the dead horse, I’d rather just skip over that part and give the other side of the story.