<p>I was troubled by a conversation that I was having at school today. I was talking with an EE student that I went to high school with. She said that she was in management training with Wal-Mart, and planned to work with them upon graduation. Does Wal-Mart really hire EE’s? If so, for their skills, or for something else because they cannot find a job? Why would an engineer take a job unrelated to their field of study upon graduation? Don’t they want to do something related to what they studied upon graduation? She claimed that EE prepares you to do a lot, but I am not so sure. If you want to be a manager at Wal-Mart, wouldn’t you do a business administration major? This is not the first time I have met people who did not want to actually be an engineer, WHEN THEY ARE IN SCHOOL FOR IT! I saw a guy in EE at a career fair interviewing with Aldi’s, a discount grocery chain! And I cannot tell you how many people are trying to be physicists! I am troubled by this. Doesn’t anyone actually want to be an engineer? The closest thing to an engineer that I have met is a girl who wants to do software engineering, and I’ve heard that you don’t have to go to school for it! Can someone comfort me about the fact that I am surrounded by people who don’t want to be engineers? It’s kind of depressing and demoralizing me about my future as an engineer.</p>
<p>I think that you need to do some research on Wal-mart as a company.Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is the worlds largest retailer, with $256.3 billion in sales in the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2004. The company employs 1.6 million associates worldwide through more than 3,600 facilities in the United States and more than 1,570 units in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, China, Korea, Germany and the United Kingdom. More than 138 million customers per week visit Wal-Mart stores worldwide. </p>
<p>Weve experienced international success through our ability to adapt Wal-Marts unique concepts to each new country. Our Associates are involved in local communities and cultures. They respond to customer needs, merchandise preferences and local suppliers. By serving each hometown in its own unique way, Wal-Mart International has realized significant growth with potential for much greater development worldwide.</p>
<p>Our global expansion was achieved through a combination of new store construction and acquisitions. This strategy has given us excellent market penetration and opportunities for future development. We view Wal-Marts expansion throughout North America, Latin America, Asia and Europe as a solid foundation with many promising areas for further growth. </p>
<p>International sales reached $47.5 billion in fiscal year ending 2004, a 16.6 percent increase over the previous year, and operating profits rose to $2.3 billion, an increase of 18.6 percent. In 2005, Wal-Mart International plans to open 155 to 165 new stores in existing markets. </p>
<p>Considering that this person would be working for a globalorganization, his/her Walmart experience could also be a building block for other things.</p>
<p>I can see someone working in a pharmacy or in the vision center in Wal-Mart who would have a college degree, but I cannot see electrical design being done by Wal-Mart themselves, which I feel is at the core of the EE major. Think about it, Wal-Mart would hire engineers from an engineering firm to design the electrical layout of their store. Their registers come from other companies who specialize in this kind of stuff. Wal-Mart is in the retail business, not in the engineering business, in my opinion.</p>
<p>I guess I am starting to have trouble with the fact that a person would want to be an employee for a large corporation. That is a terrible existence. My idea of engineering is to intern as an EIT for someone for 4 years, then become a PE and do real engineering work, especially design. Continue commenting on what I wrote above, but also comment on why someone would study something and do something else. I AM SURROUNDED BY MORONIC IDIOTS AT SCHOOL! GRRRRR!</p>
<p>Wal-Mart has one of the most sophisticated network and computer systems in the world, and it’s a model for the very best technical business solutions, but those things are on the side of the business that few outsiders get to see. There are some very sophisticated modeling programs that are constantly being calibrated with real-time data… There are complex systems engineering and network engineering problems that are constantly pushing the state of the art. I see no reason to be surprised that a EE would want go to work for Wal-Mart and work on continually changing, sophisticated, complex problems.</p>
<p>bio101, my husband works as an EE. His job initially was to test hardware. His company has since switched to software. His expertise is automated testing. He job description has changed numerous times. He has had to “reinvent” himself many times - as most American workers will. He will complete 25 years at his place of employment in a couple of months. It is a large corporation. Our life has been good. Even in times when others lost their jobs by the thousands, we were blessed that he remained employed. Corporate America is not the demon you invision. I find it funny that you would think so - with a major in bioengineering, you will most likely find a job with a huge conglomerate.</p>
<p>Also, when you talk about electrical engineers designing the electrical layout of the stores, that would fall into the category of electrician and electrical contractor. The EE’s will most likely work on computer systems if following their training. Large corporations have many areas that require management, and some of them are technical.</p>
<p>I think you will be happier if you only worry about plotting your own course. Your classmates will have to plot their own, and what you think they should do will not enter into their decisions.</p>
<p>Bio - for many people in engineering, the technical degree is a foundation or background for the business career that is their ultimate goal. Often for engineers there is no advancement in the company without that business experience, MBA. It seems that many engineers of my acquaintance (mostly chemical, a couple of electrical, one with an MS from Stanford in design engingeering) do a lot of “stuff” with computers, often far removed from their original notions of what their career would be like, as Alongfor indicated about her husband.
In fact only the design engineer is still even doing work similar to what he was originally trained to do. He has a job solving problems, which he enjoys, he has resisted advancement in the company because he’s not interested in managing people, “bossing”, and financially he doesn’t need the extra money.</p>
<p>Think about this, I and most of my friends are in our late 40s, our kids are off to college - when they got their high school and then engineer training, slide rules were still used by some and computers fit into a huge room - if there is as much change in the next 25 years, you won’t wvwn recognize your job description.</p>
<p>I think you need to recalibrate your definition of what a “real” EE does. As I said in your previous post regarding the need for a PE, the VAST majority of EEs work for large corporations (think IBM, Intel, Motorola, GE, HP, Cisco, etc.) Very, very few of them get a PE license and do what you call “design”. Most EE design work IS done in a corporate environment. I think you are getting confused by your dual major - civil engineers, very commonly get PE licenses and quite often work in smaller firms.</p>
<p>As others have said, there is no firm definition of what an EE does. The best definition that I heard after I got out of school was that “they solve problems”.</p>
<p>“Also, when you talk about electrical engineers designing the electrical layout of the stores, that would fall into the category of electrician and electrical contractor. The EE’s will most likely work on computer systems if following their training.”</p>
<p>I can’t speak for stores per se, but when I (thought I) was an electrical engineer I designed the “electric layout” for factories and power plants. I designed schematic diagrams that determined what size motors had to get connected to what size cable to drive what size motors, etc. everywhere in the plant. I designed and specified control devices to operate the electrical systems. I specified protection systems (circuit breakers)for the various devices. I determined the size and location of junction boxes to tie in the various pieces of equipment, and developed wiring diagrams to guide the proper connection of all these devices at the junction boxes. I developed the electrical specifications for equipment to be purchased via RFPs to subcontracters. I evaluated their bids from a technical standpoint. I reviewed the electrical design drawings of the subcontracted systems as they came in, and made sure their work was completed on time and to spec. I also developed common labeling nomenclature to tie in various subsystems provided by different vendors into the overall plant design, so that in the end we produced layouts of the whole plant that had a common labelling convention. There were other duties as well.</p>
<p>I certainly thought I was an electrical engineer, and that’s what it said on my business card.</p>
<p>After I was done with design, various other people helped implement it. For instance there were technicians who worked out the detailed scheme for how the cables would be gathered and physically routed throughout the plant.</p>
<p>For actual construction we bid the jobs to contractors, electrical and otherwise. The contractors actually implemented the designs we created. Engineers in my department helped select the contractors and monitored their work. </p>
<p>The contractors hired electricians to actually do the work for them. They had people who thought they were engineers on staff as well, usually, I believe.</p>
<p>I did not work on computer systems, because, following my own training in electrical engineering, I was not particularly expert in this area. Computers are a particular subspecialty which falls (partly) within the general field of electrical engineering, but there are various other sub-specialties within electrical engineering which have little or nothing to do with computer design.</p>
<p>Kind of OT, but my only direct experience with an EE was when I was suddenly put in charge of a volunteer project to install field lighting at a local park. The project had been started by others who had all left by the time the hardware was shipped. 20 80’ light poles, huge power demands, switches, big fat cables, etc. My first step was to try to get the plans for connecting it all together from the engineering firm who had been hired before I got there. The plans were “90% ready”. Next call. “90% ready” Next call - “The light poles have arrived - they’re stacked in the parking lot. What’s the status of the plans?” “90%” I finally just went and took the “90% ready” plans and had the contractor figure it out as we went along…</p>
<p>Maybe if we’d just bought the equipment from Wal-Mart…</p>
<p>THere is a class action suit against Walmart for discrimination against women…</p>
<p>"Wal-Mart employs 1.2m people in the US, two-thirds of whom are women. Only 14pc of the top managers are women, however.</p>
<p>The judge noted that statistics showing women are paid less than men and take longer to get promoted are “largely uncontested” by Wal-Mart, which owns Asda in the UK."</p>