Electronics Or Electrical Engineering?

[Arcus Diabolus]

Hey guys, I'm looking for some advice on which of these two I should take. I'm currently enrolled in Electronics Engineering. I'm not sure if Electronics engineering is offered in some countries (particularly western countries) and if there are any career oppurtunities for Electronics Engineers as well, I think most of them are Electrical and I'm not even sure what an Electronics Engineer does. I'm hoping to find work abroad immigrate after I gruduate.

 

[SmurfTacular]

I'm also debating on my college major. I think i'm going to go with electrical engineering. Next semester I'm going to be taking DC circuitry for the first time.

 

[HarryN]

Hi, electrical engineering is an excellent major. As you progress through, there are often somewhat specialty aspects in the training, such as electrical power transmission, microelectronics, etc. Some Universities combine computer science into EE as well.

Make sure you have strong algebra skills and take as much math as possible before starting an EE program, as it depends heavily on math based solutions.

 

[Arcus Diabolus]

Thanks for the replies, but are there any career oppurtunities for countries like the US and UK for an Electronics Engineer or can I take a career thats for an Electrical Engineer in those countries since Electronics and Communications Engineering is kind of a branch of Electrical. As much as I would like to change courses, it would still be alright if I can get some jobs an Electrical engineer has since they are nearly the same anyway.

 

[badtziscool]

woohoo! nand gates. nor gates. J-K flip flops! Ahhhh brings back memories!

I'm not sure what an electronics engineer entails, but I was a CS major and I had to take a few EE (electrical engineer) courses and man you REALLY get into the nitty gritty of electrical design and engineering. Lots of binary math, circuit design, etc. One of the cool things that we had to design as a project (as simple as it is for actual EEs) was to design the logic for a digital counter where you press a momentary button and the counter would count up. but it wasn't really that simple. You had to design the circuit so what ever number you wanted to display, it had to light up the correct segments in a 7 segment led display.

 

[ama230]

This is a definite field that is needed around the world and whatever the notion is in this country you can forget it. All continents need this profession as this is the head electrical profession but as with anywhere right not its hard to find a job, especially here in Arizona.

Being a EET ASU Polytechnic with tons of experience and knowledge, there is nobody biting for job leads. This as far as my experience will give you a heads up in Alternative energies, communications, computer science and materials science so you basically get the ultimate combination of knowledge in this field. I wouldn't have changed a thing as it was challenging and life changing.

Even though im broke and cant find a job, Im still very very happy!:twothumbs

 

[Steve K]

"electrical" and "electronic" engineer are typically used interchangably.... i.e. not many people know the difference. "Electrical" really means stuff using wires or wire-based things like transformers. "Electronic" refers to anything involving semiconductors or vacuum tubes/valves. The early electrical engineers dealt primarily with the generation and transmission of electrical power, and their tools were motors, generators, transformers, etc.

EE's do a lot of stuff. I've been involved mostly with design work, by choice. It can include almost anything, though. I've spent some time managing suppliers, where I had to develop a specification for the gadget that the supplier was supposed to build for my company, review their design, review a lot of their manufacturing processes and facilities, test and validate the gadget once they had designed it, and then make sure that they don't forget how to build them.

If you want to do design work, I would recommend working for a company who's primary product is electronic. I've worked for two companies (very, very big companies) who use electronics in their vehicles, and it has been a struggle to do detailed design work. They would much rather have a supplier do the work.

You might check some of the professional magazines to see what fields exist. I regularly read Electronic Design and Electronic Design News (EDN). EE Times is another big one. A buddy (and CPF member) works for EE Weekly in the UK, so I certainly recommend checking them out.

good luck,

Steve K.
BSEE, MSEE

 

[geepondy]

As far as the US is concerned, I've been in the business now for 25 years plus. I hope to somehow make it another 20 or so till retirement but no way would I recommend any form of electrical engineering or technology as a career unless you had a true passion for the job. I work in a high tech belt with quite a bit of job networking amongst my peers and whether it be hardware engineers, software engineers or technicians alike, none of my fellow brethren feels very secure about our jobs. Those of us that have jobs are being beat to death being assigned to do the work for those that no longer do. Those that no longer do are not finding jobs. My former roommate who was a senior level $100k software engineer is now repairing health club equipment in order to put some food on the table. He's been out of work for two plus years. Yes, it's a bad economy and perhaps a lot of job fields are experiencing the same thing but I don't ever see the industry bouncing back the way it was during the Reagan and Clinton administration.

I think electrical engineering technology has largely become a "mature" market with a lot of the labor, not just manufacturing but engineering labor as well, being farmed out overseas at lower costs. The only ones I really see in the industry that have good job security are the ones with specialized engineering talents in specific niche areas that there is still a demand for.

 

[Steve K]

Like Geepondy, I've been doing this engineering stuff since the mid 80's. If I was smarter, I would have pursued the more typical career path of project management, supervisor, etc. Unfortunately, I like doing detailed engineering work, and that is very career limiting.

My current employer did hire a lot of foreign engineers using the H1-B visa program. Then they got smarter and worked on ways to simply contract out the engineering to countries with cheap labor. I'm still employed because I have a lot of experience and have been useful when it comes time to fix the problems in the outsourced designs.

This progression of outsourcing increasing sophisticated parts of the business doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. It reminds me of the Schwinn bicycle company. They farmed out more and more work until the subcontractors figured out that they really didn't need Schwinn anymore. These subcontractors, such as Giant bicycle, are now major competitors with Trek and Specialized, while Schwinn is just a brand name that is slapped on the really awful bikes sold in Wal-Mart. There is still a Schwinn building bikes, though... Richard Schwinn runs Waterford in Wisconsin, where truly wonderful custom bikes are built.

I do think something needs to be done to encourage more R&D in the USA, and move away from the Get Rich Quick mentality of the 90's that generated a lot of quick cash but failed to invest in companies and education.

regards,
Steve K.

 

[Arcus Diabolus]

Wow, I guess the economy really is messed up. I can't really feel it as a student. These posts made me realise how difficult it is to maintain a job. But what exactly do you mean by specialized fields? The people at my school tell me Electronics Engineering is a specialized field of EE but I'm not if were talking about the same thing.:shrug:

 

[Steve K]

Wow, I guess the economy really is messed up. I can't really feel it as a student. These posts made me realise how difficult it is to maintain a job. But what exactly do you mean by specialized fields? The people at my school tell me Electronics Engineering is a specialized field of EE but I'm not if were talking about the same thing.:shrug:

there are a lot of areas that could be considered as being specialized.... a few examples:

1. RF work. Designing transmitters and receivers and signal processing circuits that operate at frequencies where plain wire just doesn't work as a method of getting a signal moved around. Not sure where this starts... 100MHz?

2. semiconductor work. Designing semiconductors requires ... well, I'm not entirely sure. I've had some basic classes and understand the general idea, as well as reading some articles by Bob Pease. If you like getting into the transistor level of circuit design, this could be the place to be. Or... at my previous employer, they built a semiconductor fab facility where they played around with making laser diodes for their satellite communications projects. Lots of fun to play with, but it never panned out (as far as I know).

3. high power work. My employer is doing some work with electric drivetrains on our big yellow machines. This means that the diesel engine turns a generator, the generator feeds hundreds of amps (at a thousand volts or so) into a piece of electronics that chops up the current and feeds it into the motors that move the machine. The voltages are very lethal, the currents can weld metal, and controlling that current and voltage is not so easy!

4. EMC work (EMC = electromagnetic compatibility). This is what I'm dabbling in now, after years of work fixing EMC problems in the sensors that I designed (and then fixing the EMC problems in the sensors that my suppliers designed). This involves electical and mechanical design to keep the electronics from being affected by electrical noise, as well as keeping the electronics from making electrical noise. There's no shortage of EMC problems, and not that many people who have developed these skills.

5. analog circuits. This used to be common knowledge, but is getting more specialized as more circuitry becomes digital.

6. radar cross section engineer: I had a buddy in the aviation business who did work on radar cross section calculations & design. i.e. he worked on stealth aircraft. A very interesting vocation, but there are only a couple of companies in the USA who might hire you. Very limiting in terms of employment options.

As a EE, you could end up getting involved in almost anything. When I started with my current employer, I was writing assembler software for engine controllers. Very interesting, since I'd been wanting to do some microcontroller work for a while. Ended up writing code for an engine that could run from either diesel or natural gas, got a bunch of systems installed on truck fleets on the west coast, went out there a few times to troubleshoot some problems, etc. A few years later, I was in Berlin doing a design review on a supplier's joystick (and finding a lot of things in the design that I didn't really like). Recently, I was helping fix EMC problems on a laser radar gadget that costs $70,000! So much fun.

There are all sorts of jobs out there. I benefited from being in a co-op program with a company where I spent five semesters working in different parts of the company. I got to know what sorts of jobs existed, they got to know me, and I ended up working for them after graduation.

regards,
Steve K.

 

[geepondy]

Hey Steve, the compliance and regulatory engineers (not really EE I know) seem to have good job security. With all the new rules and regulations, going green, lead-free, etc., they seem busier then ever and that is one area of our company where employees have actually left for other companies in these difficult times.

Touching upon what you said above, one of things our company does is make RF amplifiers for MRI machines. Sometimes getting those circuits tuned and working correctly takes a form of witch doctory and there a few engineers I think that can feel secure about their job.