Current Events > I feel like a dumbass engineer

(+) Yeah! (+)

I whipped the ever loving shit out of Mech E classes. Statics, dynamics, fluids, heat transfer, all that shit I fucking murdered it. But now in the real fucking world I realize I have zero real working knowledge. I can barely do routine maintenance on my car (the extent of what I know is changing wheels, brake pads, oil), I have zero knowledge of actual welding and construction. I can design a catwalk in CAD but I know fuck all of how it is actually cut from steel and assembled. I gotta keep our asking our welder "do we weld these joints or use a bolt," "do you want angle iron here or tubing." I just feel so God damn clueless, it is legitimate book smart but street dumb.

I wonder if EEs and other engineers feel this disconnect. Especially since MEs are assumed to be good with cars and building shit.

I'm EE and my first couple years were working on circuit design. Nothing innovative, but it was pretty much exactly what I was doing in my circuits class in school.

But that's definitely not every EE. Many EE in my company do mainly system level work and don't touch circuits or other more technical aspects of EE.

So no, I haven't really felt a disconnect from school yet. I feel like I will in the future if I stay in this company though, mainly because the design work is leaving the company
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Highwind07 posted...

You had no internships while in school?

Nope. And my senior project was basically straight EE/comp sci.

My past two jobs were pretty much exclusively AutoCAD too, no hands on working

emblem boy posted...

I'm EE and my first couple years were working on circuit design. Nothing innovative, but it was pretty much exactly what I was doing in my circuits class in school.

But that's definitely not every EE. Many EE in my company that do mainly system level work and don't touch circuits or other technical aspects of EE.

So no, I haven't really felt a disconnect from school yet. I feel like I will in the future if I stay in this company though, mainly because the design work is leaving the company

Yeah but the dudes doing system level work could work on circuits too, no?

Working with MEs have been interesting though. I feel stupid when they stay talking about mechanical aspects of what we use, or pwb design and thermal shit. Just screws and bolts can be complex
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At least with most types of engineers you need an engineering bachelor degree before you can even be hired. So people will understand that you need to learn the real world shit...as long as youre honest about it. But you have to pick shit up fast.
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clearaflagrantj posted...

emblem boy posted...

I'm EE and my first couple years were working on circuit design. Nothing innovative, but it was pretty much exactly what I was doing in my circuits class in school.

But that's definitely not every EE. Many EE in my company that do mainly system level work and don't touch circuits or other technical aspects of EE.

So no, I haven't really felt a disconnect from school yet. I feel like I will in the future if I stay in this company though, mainly because the design work is leaving the company

Yeah but the dudes doing system level work could work on circuits too, no?

They might understand it on a big level(which is no small feat, big level understanding is something I feel I'm bad at) and know what they overall circuit should be doing but they don't have to look deep into each specific part or troubleshoot specific parts of the circuit.
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I feel like the software guys are the ones that mostly use what they learned in school though
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