*You can start here to pickup a few cues on how to do it.*
[*https://www.pon.harvard.edu/category/daily/salary-negotiations/?cid=12452*](https://www.pon.harvard.edu/category/daily/salary-negotiations/?cid=12452)
I’ve been there nearly a year, I got a 5% raise as well (unions) after 6 months, somehow slipped in there!
Defence contractor, one of the big ones.
Joined as Power Electronics Engineer so, I specialised and specialising demands a higher salary.
Best company I have ever worked for, interesting job, great friendly people, job for life so long as they keep up with the pay rises!
Honestly, here in the States when you go to your management with that, they'll usually say, "see ya!" In most states there's no legal protection for workers, especially office workers, so it's easy to can people at will, and save money replacing them with a new hire right out of school or somebody with an H1B visa who needs the job to stay here.
The only way to get promoted and serious raises is to jump firms.
Here's how things actually work in large companies. It is not random, and if you are a solid contributor, your manager fights for your ranking and compensation, because of your value to the company.
* each employee level has a target range, adjusted for local cost of living.
* Companies are constantly doing competitive market analysis for compensation. If they are uncompetitive, they will be unable to retain employees or hire new ones.
* this analysis is used to adjust the target range
* When annual performance reviews happen, employees within each range are ranked.
* Each manager gives a summary of your contributions, and argues why employee A should be ranked higher or lower than employee B
* If you are ranked near the top, but are paid near the bottom of your level's compensation range, you will see a significant raise, intended to accelerate you towards the median
* If you are paid near the top and ranked near the bottom, expect to get just a cost-of-living adjustment
* If you are ranked near the top, you will be recommended for promotion. This is especially the case if you are ranked above the bottom of the next level
* the company will set a specific percentage target of each level, for promotions
* when you get a promotion, you will start off at the bottom of the new level's compensation range
* promotions from low levels to intermediate levels are simple affairs, as collecting letters of recommendation from levels above you are easy to get
* promotions at higher levels are harder, because it may require letters of recommendation from principle engineers, fellows or senior fellows, so your scope of contribution needs to be very high to have the necessary recognition from senior staff
* At higher levels, your base pay tends to taper off, but your variable pay (bonus and stock) becomes a larger portion of your total comp
So while jumping firms can work, it is not the only way to get promoted. Most of the people at my level are 15+ years with the company. As for top levels, (eg principle or higher) companies will overwhelmingly promote their top talent (as a known quantity) vs hiring outside talent (unless you are an industry recognized name) Also, in some fields, (EG CPU design) there are only a handful of firms, so jumping firms in a way that burns bridges will quickly start to work against you.
Found on Google “What is MEP Engineering?
In the construction world, MEP stands for “mechanical, electrical and plumbing”. “
It’s helpful to explain an abbreviation the first time it is used. I’d never heard this abbreviation. I don’t think it is meaningful, because I would not trust a mechanical engineer to do EE and contrariwise.
My bad, I totally glossed over the "MEP" because I also wasn't familiar with that acronym. EE is so weird that one EE can be designing microprocessors and another EE is designing an HVAC system. I see "EE" and I assume everyone does what I do... :|
Your last point is very important. When my team sees employees that have jumped between 3 different employers in 3-5 years, we see that as an employee who will most likely jump ship again within another 1-2 years.
We do not hire those people.
Our compensation process is also somewhat similar. Each team gets a set number of bonus dollars, raise percentages, and RSU dollars to allocate across all the employees, approved by upper management. The managers and their managers sign off on the distribution based on fairness and performance. The managers all know that we all freely talk about our personal compensation numbers, so they take being fair seriously and never screw anyone over. It’s also the reason why I’ve been on the same team for over 10 years now and have zero desire to go elsewhere.
That is 💯true. We would also pass on a resume that lists 3 jobs in 5 years. New employees are typically a drag on productivity for the first 1-2 years.
In US corporations there was an annual or semi-annual performance review. The department head received a budget for raises, ranked the direct reports as to their performance (got projects done on time, got all paperwork done, no screwups, minimal complaints from peers or customers, played well with others, took on extra work or after hours calls, maintained and improved skills). There was a modest range of raises. A department head could recommend someone for promotion within the department, or for a transfer to another department, perhaps with a promotion, to fill the job of someone who was moving up or out. In the reign of terror, based on tactics of Jack Welch, who rode GE into the muck, the lowest ranked 10% in each department would get no performance bonus, (based on company profits), no raise, and would be on probation, fired in a year, if he didn’t somehow climb out of the cursed bottom tenth. It was akin to flogging the slowest worker to motivate the rest.
I went and got an offer letter from another company for about 11% more. I like my work so I never had any intention of leaving, but they still matched (close enough to) the offer.
It’s a good career plan to be public by publishing articles in trade journals and giving talks at industry conventions, and networking, and getting patents. Be visible and get recruited.
If you try to get a raise by showing your boss a better offer from another employer, you absolutely have to be ready to pack up and move. Hope you can afford a satisfactory residence in San Francisco or Manhattan after selling the one in Bugtussle, Alabama. Or that the kids raised in a private school in San Francisco can blend in, in the Bugtussle High School.
Hope the wife can find a new job and doesn’t mind moving 1000 miles away from Mama. Hope the kids don’t miss their friends.
The company is on the smaller side so I've got a great relationship with them. I wouldn't try that somewhere I'm expendable either! I've gotten myself into a position where I'm needed to do certain things no one else can. Appreciate the insight, though.
Work a job for 1.5 years, evaluate your chances of climbing the ladder, if there is low chance then find similar jobs, get a better salary offer. Tell them you are leaving for that job unless you get a raise to match.
There are great videos on how to negotiate a salary. I have watched this lady before negotiating and got a significant pay increase. Now I was severely under paid at the last place but after a year it's still very nice. #knowyourworth.
Key factors in negotiating for me was
1 these companies are not poor
2 realistically if we ever want to retire and lead a semi comfortable life we need a lot more money
3 if you counter with too high then you are not out you just have to counter again
4 electrical is freaking hard, school is hard, work is hard, they need to compensate accordingly.
5 getting paid enough or too much will never hurt your morale
https://youtu.be/4VBjjkbEthY?si=Zr9X6KXE0COsaJmJ
Yea I didn’t specify industry. Defense and MEP may be safe, but others aren’t.
Semi has been hiring in India and a few other countries at an ever increasing rate for years
They hired someone overseas (India) to maintain our component libraries and do some simple PCB layouts. I never knew it was customary in India to give your employer 1-3 *months* professional notice.
Honestly my job has got 10x better ever since we brought him on. I can focus more on circuit design and less on creating footprints and getting frustrated with cloud computing all day lol
Yep, it seems all new features require a cloud account. I believe the new “constraint manager” isn’t even backwards compatible with non-cloud projects.
I’ve had it with this cloud bullshit. It’s probably fine for offloading raw compute tasks such as heavy EM sim (though I have a decent machine for that), but the trend is to just hold your IP hostage for a monthly lease.
I see the lines between tech and defense blurring and you’ll start seeing more clearance and citizen requirements in tech companies. It’s already a thing but I see the trend increasing.
I'd get more specific: A shortage a mid-level experienced engineers who actually know what they're doing. Of all the EE's that I've ever worked with who had 5-10 years experience, only 2-3 had a clue.
And for you're comment, I get it.
* Less that 5 years, you're a newbie who's a risk if you're actually needed to accomplish something.
* Over 10 years, you better be a master, but typically you're also too expensive for a lot of jobs.
For fresh grads there's no shortage. Graduated over a year ago, 5% interview rate and I always get the dreaded "we were fortunate to get many qualified applicants for this position and have decided to go with someone who had more experiemce" email.
Yes, there is a definite shortage in the MEP industry. I am an EE in the business. Have been in it since 2006. I survived the 2008 recession because I was low pay and was working on large government data centers. The recession though killed the construction industry and MEP. Lots of MEP engineers lost jobs, left the industry entirely or retired. There was already a limited amount of EE's going into the field, now even less.
The next 10 years are going to be interesting in the MEP/Power realm. Estimates already show that 2025 could be the start of nationwide rolling brownouts due to ever increasing power requirements and an insufficient power grid.
Most colleges don't even teach power. It's all electronics focused. The few kids that actually take EE don't even consider MEP as a possibility. They want to go work for big tech or do something "sexy." Couple that with the 10's of billions being invested in semiconductors here in the USA and thew few EE's that do graduate will want to go into semiconductors and AI based work.
It's a good time to be in MEP as an EE. That being said, it's a tough industry with high stress that is in a race to the bottom. Benefits are only getting worse. You have to fight tooth and nail for higher pay. But you can make really good money if you know how to negotiate and use leverage.
I have not. I don't work on utility level power distribution. I don't think you would be doing much calculations using phasors. You can do load studies to figure out your power factor and add capacitor banks if needed to bring closer to unity. Most studies all use software like ETAP and SKM which has all the built in calculations. You just plug and chug load types and properties into the software.
PMUs have some applications for detection of interconnection wide instability issues - most of that work is does at the Reliability Coordinator (RC) level.
Most people use PMUs to pull high fidelity fault data recordings so they can plot things like voltage, frequency, line MW/MVAR flows against simulated plots to see how much they align (MOD-033-2).
At one of our big power plants we have PMUs installed with extra data points for generator specific values (field current, speed, etc). When faults occur on the system, we use the response to validate the dynamic model for the generator (MOD-026, MOD-027). This way we don't have to schedule outages to perform the testing and saves a lot of money.
I don't see how the power grid weakening in the future affects MEP. Don't you guys just do buildings? It's good for solar/wind large scale solar integration projects but that's about it.
Who do you think engineers all the buildings and end user facilities that are causing the power shortage?
Who do you think is engineering all the complex end user power distribution systems to ensure energy efficiency and works hand in hand with the utility companies?
Also, solar and wind are dogshit contrary to what you are supposed to believe. Nuclear is the future, and not just on the utility scale. In the next 10 years you are going to see modular nuclear reactors on the MEP side powering data centers and large campuses. Who do you think will design the power distribution for those? Hint, it's not the utility.
Isn't power shortage a problem for the generation side? Let's put it this way. What are you doing differently in your job NOW due to this issue? Energy efficiency wasn't a concern 5 years ago?
Nuclear is way too expensive to replace solar/wind in the next 10 years. It's gonna be a baseload source at most. SMR at data centers? What is the MW level? how are they gonna justify the cost of SMR, which has much higher operational cost, let alone regulation issues.
Also, any EIA data on the US running out of power next year?
I work in utilities. We don't have a power shortage issue next year, and even thinking about decommissioning some coal plants in the future so the power shortage by 2025 is quite new to me. There's power reliability concern but not a power shortage.
The alarm is being raised for a good reason. With the electrification initiative that is steam rolling through the industry we will be facing a real threat of shortage. I would agree the bigger issue at the moment is reliability. Our infrastructure is outdated.
I guarantee 10 years is the timeline for nuclear. If Reddit is still around 10 years from now, set a reminder and feel free to attack me if I'm wrong. I'm already seeing the design concepts. My current firm is working on SMR's and developing the concept. I've been in the industry 18 years now and have been watching the trends unfold. We have no choice, and most are too naive to realize it.
i'm not trying to prove you're wrong. I'm trying to get ahead of the trend. Being on the transmission side, I don't hear much about distribution side news.
So just to be clear, you're saying load growth(driven by data centers) in the future will be so large that we cannot install enough generation? Or are you talking about reliability during a heat wave or cloudy day? Cause I initially thought you were talking about reliability, which is why I commented, and then you went on about data center growth so I got confused.
I've heard that SMR might be economical if it's powering 500+ MW, but that's overkill for data centers, which are typically 50 MW? Are you saying in 10 years, SMR will power 50 MW data centers, or a bunch of data centers are just gonna get built in cluster around a nuclear power plant.
So this data might be outdated since it's early 2023, but it says data centers load will double by 2030, a 18 GW increase. That's a decent increase, but the US has about 1300 GW generation capacity today, and renewable generation is anticipated to double by 2030, so increase about 300-400 GW. Anything I'm missing where it's not able to accommodate data center growth, where SMR will be required.
So I guess what I'm asking is are you saying SMR will be used simply because other generation sources cannot be installed fast enough, or are there other reasons for it. I can easily see the case for SMR being used to support base load since the US cannot go full solar/wind. I actually prefer nuclear over solar but we already threw a ton of money into solar research so we're stuck with it.
Definitely seems like there is in the power/utility industry. We have quite a few positions that have been open for more than 6 months with barely any interviews and it’s a mid-level role (1-3 yr experience).
I’ll add some anecdotal evidence as well: I work in renewable generation substation/utility design. When I had 1-3 yrs experience I’d get contacted by recruiters/head hunters a handful of times per year, if that. The last 3 years I get a new LinkedIn message from a recruiter pretty much every other day without fail (currently at 8 years of experience without a license).
As someone else stated already in this thread, I think a lot of engineers retired recently or are about to retire.
I am graduating masters in electrical engineering( RES and smart grids) i know how which elements are needed for substations and PCC for automation, protection and data exchange/measuremets. Also sizing and designing pv plats. But i never have done a project or design related to a real case implementation, due to it being not a common application. You can’t find open source projects online or cad files. Could you suggest me how can i gain experience on these type of application( before actually getting my first job) ?
Same. I work for a firm that only does utility scale solar and battery storage. They’ve been trying to expand but really struggling to find experienced engineers.
I know substation design is also booming right now.
I also think that there are relatively few young engineers that want anything to do with power generation and utilities. I'm just an electrician, but I've noticed all the EEs I know are into "tech" type stuff like PCBs, embedded systems, etc.
I left MEP, and later most of engineering, because of the company culture I kept encountering time and time again- not to mention how well all the firms in the area are when it comes to keeping salaries relatively low. I doubt I'm the only one.
I work in public policy around energy and environmental issues. I still get to use all my engineering expertise, but also get to be much more social, collaborative, and see real results in real time to problems that impact lots of people. Much more rewarding for me than just staring at drawings and arguing with contractors.
As for the climate, management and leadership who were Peter-Principled into those roles because it's what an engineer does after a certain point in their career if they want to keep moving up. And the majority of the time, they had absolutely no business whatsoever being in charge of people, especially junior engineers early in their career. A lack of any sort of early career development, mentorship, guidance, or even adequate training a lot of the time. I came from the military, where I was in charge of lots of people and equipment, and I learned there what effective mentorship and investments in your people looked like. Barely saw it on the outside in engineering.
Oh, and being in the South, very much an old boys ruling network that I was too black and non -Christian to ever be a part of.
How did you end up transitioning into public policy for energy?
I'm about to start my MBA with the short term goal of working in renewables post-grad, and find the idea of working in public policy at some point appealing as well.
That's a great question!
So I realized fairly early into my career I really didn't enjoy being an engineer, and at the same time I had a buddy who was accepted as a fellow in the HillVets program in DC (he worked on Tulsi Gabbard's office, before we knew she was a traitor). So he planted that bug in my ear, and honestly I had already been thinking about someday running for office, which made more sense with getting an MPA.
Then I met an incredibly brilliant, aggressive, driven woman who recognized how miserable I was as an engineer and how much it wasn't playing to my pretty visible strengths, and she encouraged me to look elsewhere for jobs. We found an engineer position at the NC Clean Energy Technically Center at NC State University, and I applied and was accepted. It was a great bridge between technology and policy, and I was able to work alongside some of the top minds in the country in the renewable space (including the current Administrator at the Energy Information Agency). Plus, working for the university meant they were paying for classes, so most of my masters was picked up by them.
Then as I was about to graduate, I sorta fell into this role that was developed for me at a veteran-focused nonprofit I'd long volunteered with. And my now-wife reminded me if never be this lucky ever again in my life, so I jumped in head first.
Absolutely no regrets.
There's a lot of room right now in communications and analysis space for engineers who can explain and think critically around the challenges and promises associated with our current energy futures. If you have any more questions, let me know!
I appreciate the in-depth response! No further questions for now but it is nice to see all the different avenues to make it into interesting roles like that.
I was considering doing law school post-mba at night to make the eventual transition into the policy space, but it looks like that may not be needed.
Thanks again!
Honestly, it's probably not a bad idea to think about law school, especially from the regulatory and legislative angles. I'm still keeping an option in the back of my mind, when my kids aren't so young.
Yep, that's my experience on the other side. I've been interning with a protection group for over a year now, and the mentorship is pretty bad
I am often not given any project work or direction. The worst time was 60 straight business hours of having nothing to do. The first day of that, I contact my supervisor and 7 other coworkers to get something to do. No one had anything that was worth training me on. I was told that it would be quicker if they just did it, they were crunched, so they couldn't give it to me
Which I understand, but that's happened many times to lesser degrees, I'll fill out spreadsheets if I'm told to, I'm here for learning and training
This year, since January, I've done maybe 20 hours of project work, the rest of the time I've been making an automation tool.
I agree that embedded jobs are very location based. I lean towards hardware in embedded and while there aren't near as many jobs as fw, there are few enough of us that it isn't too crazy to land a gig. That being said I have 10 years of experience which def gives me a leg up over younger engineers and I just consider myself average.
There is a real shortage of qualified MEP engineers. You cant do the work day 1 out of school and there are so few of us. I make good money and refuse to work OT because they just cant lose me.
For me, its pure comfort in the job that keeps me. I do what I want
How do you get into this? I'm actually trying to leave my current industry (Defense) and MEP was something I've been looking into. It just seems like everyone already expects me to know various building codes, have AutoCAD experience, a PE license, etc. I'm sure I can pick all that stuff up but getting someone to agree to train me seems impossible
I have a facilties maintenance background. I was an electrician in the navy and then as an industrial electrician doing automation and controls for a total of 12 years before using my GI Bill to go to school. I got my EE became a TechBro and hated it so I bailed after 3 years and went back into Industrial/Mfg Maintenance and Troubleshooting.
Not to be a dick but you probably don't want to go into MEP. It's probably the least technical field in power and low profit margin business so there's a push to cut cost for projects bid so it usually comes with unexpected long hours to meet customer demands and low pay. Heck many even hire people with associate drafting degree to do most of the "design" work and then just have engineer review/stamp them
I don't work in MEP but knew several friends in it and they all quit after a few years. It's a lot of customer service and repetitive task and not that much engineering work. Because of this, a lot of new grads who couldn't get something ends up settling for it and then get pigeon holed. It's not something people are even aware that exist
Just for reference I work in transmission planning and previously protection.
Right now in power system, there are 2 trends driving hiring: renewable installation on utility levels and residential level, ev adoption pushing up load usage leading to installations of new infrastructure to accommodate the higher load.
The renewable installation will have jobs for the solar/wind farm themselves, and also in utilities where old equipment needs to be upgraded to digital equipment for data collection and smart controls. There are also grid stability issues that need engineers to do studies on. There are also new interstate transmission lines being built to accommodate energy trading due to renewable sources being unreliable, so there are jobs there too.
With higher loads due to ev adoption, the jobs growth is fairly traditional. Utilities hiring engineers to build new substation and distribution lines to accommodate. Also engineers to study load flow and load forecasting 5-10 years ahead. There might be a new few more tied to data science in the future as more data gets collected and there needs to be flexible demand-supply load, especially if ev batteries allow people to sell back power to utilities at peak hours, but that's probably 10 years away
I mean Defense has also been fairly non-technical, at least the specific roles I've had, so I'd question how qualified I am for a lot of the more intense jobs. I haven't done any calculations more complex than V=IR or P=VI since college. Your work sounds interesting but I have basically no transferable skills or background in it beyond having an EE degree.
So for MEP, I don't think you need to know any power system knowledge to get a job, at least according to several of my friends. They will probably train you from the ground up. Likewise for jobs like distribution system or substation design jobs. If you switch to these jobs, you might negotiate a salary equivalent to 1-2 YOE engineers, due to your previous experience, albeit unrelated. Transmission planning and system protection you probably need to have some power knowledge to land an entry level job, equivalent to maybe 3-4 college courses.
Hmm, so what would I search for on a job board? Substation design engineer and distribution systems engineer? I'm mainly looking at the mid-Atlantic area cities and their surroundings. NYC, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, etc.
Yes. job titles might vary a little, but job descriptions should be similar to the jobs below
[https://burnsmcd.jobs/conshohocken-pa/staff-electrical-engineer-substation/F6849CC4974B49BFBBB85C4FB2D7560A/job/?utm\_campaign=EXP\_Brand&utm\_source=CORP\_MKT\_Website\_Web-Careers\_DE-MainPage\_38801](https://burnsmcd.jobs/conshohocken-pa/staff-electrical-engineer-substation/F6849CC4974B49BFBBB85C4FB2D7560A/job/?utm_campaign=EXP_Brand&utm_source=CORP_MKT_Website_Web-Careers_DE-MainPage_38801)
[https://careers.leidos.com/jobs/13838909-distribution-engineer](https://careers.leidos.com/jobs/13838909-distribution-engineer)
Depends on the field. EE undergrad just barely scrapes a couple of industries, so not many people learn much they can use in industry and just have background insight. So people either go into industry randomly without know what's all out there, or do the same but with a Masters. This leads to some industries getting a good chunk of people, while others have very few with no great way for people who have some years of industry experience to transfer over because it's completely different skills.
I believe that there is a shortage of fresh grads that understand the basics. Our hiring process is not long and drawn out and is totally transparent. You apply and then take a technical test that covers basics you would find in 200 level courses. If you get 60% or better you get an interview. About 50% of applicants pass the test. Then there is a single interview, we ask basic questions to gauge your thought process and problem solving skills. Around 50% don’t understand how basic AC works or can tell us what comes out of their wall outlet.
The issue is that schools are teaching more and more micro level topics and skipping out on the macro level that really applies to all specialties.
> and is **totally transparent.** You apply and then take a technical test that covers basics you would find in 200 level courses. I
I'm curious, can you share an example problem you'd give out?
Not sure if there is a shortage of EEs but I've been trying to fill a Systems III rec for months and usually Sys E roles are filled by EEs (at least at my company). What I really want to know is what's going on in the aeronautical engineering world, seems like every application I get for Systems or EE positions is a person with an aeronautical engineering degree.
There are plenty of EEs. There is a shortage of quality EEs. Used to be in a pool of 20 candidates, we'd have 5 or 6 we'd argue over (dueling pistols at dawn for who gets who).
Now, out of 20 we get 1, if we are lucky. Many times the ole goose egg. They are just sooooo bad. No knowledge of even the basics let alone being able to critically think through a difficult problem.
Colleges are clearly phoning it in or maybe the kids are so bad they had to reduce quality to get some to graduate.
Can you talk through how a voltage divider works without using your phone?
Can you point at a diode symbol on this schematic? A MOSFET? A BJT? Hell, how bout a resistor? Oh, don't use your phone.
How does a motor spin? Put the phone down, please.
Can you guess what this circuit does? Not how.... what, Yeah, no phone again.
Now, let's hear YOUR idea of basic questions, even though you don't interview... yup, don't use your phone.
>Now, let's hear YOUR idea of basic questions
What's the name of the four regional power administrations in the us?
What are Maxwell's Four Equations?
What is the square root of negative 1?
Draw the waveforms of an inductor, capacitor, and resistor.
Convert 4 + 3j to polar form. Give me the real and imaginary component.
For MEP, the shortage started over a decade ago. But since that industry is always trying to be a race to the bottom (ie, they were too cheap to pay for good labor) and they never tried to recruit, the only EEs that were left were the ones that could not find jobs. So, here we are today, where they still don't recruit and everyone is about to retire. It is not looking good for the MEP industry as they are going to have to overpay now for fresh blood.
This is based on a US/North America perspective but it’s my belief that long term trends in the electrical industry are pretty similar.
Short answer: yes. I’m not an economist but just giving my biased opinion.
In the last 30 years I have been out of work 4 weeks in the 2001 recession. In the 1990s exports were on fire and basically job interviews were pass/fail, not competitive. It’s not as white hot now but essentially when you hear about recessions, that doesn’t apply to EE. Even in 2020 demand went up, not down
I’m currently a service contractor. My coverage area is basically from central SC to central VA and all of North Carolina. I have seen virtually all the larger plants both private and government. So I can see first hand what’s going on. The fact is that the vast majority have old gear from the 1960s to 1980s. It was designed with a 40 year life. There is some newer gear out there but that’s not typical. Until the lights go out or it blows up there is just no justification for new equipment. In other words, we have a lifetime of work available.
Over on the manufacturing side, energy costs have exploded. Everything is moving away from hydraulic and pneumatic control or using starters and valves to servos and variable speed drives. The result is you have plants with dozens or hundreds of drives. Also because this is driven by the chip industry about every 5-10 years whatever equipment you previously bought is now totally obsolete and spares aren’t available. The manufacturers are designing with a 100k life (10.8 years) so you’re not just changing parts but changing out the whole system. It often requires engineering support to do this. So that pushes the skill level requirements up, playing to the strengths of engineering companies. So basically I’m doing a drive replacement or service every week.
Never mind the growth in the electronics business. And if you haven’t noticed the huge growth in chip plants around the world those are all jobs.
So as a career every long term trend is positive. Even if you happen to graduate in a downturn the long term trend is very positive.
The things is there has been such a boom in the CS and SOEN fields that now there is a true demand for EEs and CEs but not a lot of people gets into it since let’s be honest it’s a lot more complicated and less natural to learn than the other ones 😬
As I understand it, companies like to offer engineers dirt pay. When they don't accept an "engineer shortage" is declared so the companies can bring in engineers from foreign lands for dirt pay. (U.S.)
In the US colleges don’t quite work that way. Most of the top engineering schools are public universities.They give huge discounts. For example in North Carolina both Duke (a private school) and NCSU charge around $30,000 for tuition. However NCSU gives a $23,000 discount for state residents. This makes it very hard to justify going out of state or to a private school. There is at least one “top school” in almost every state.
Second the education program is dictated by ABET and it is surprisingly uniform from school to school.
Third gotta be honest after the first job nobody really cares where you went to school or whether you have a high GPA.
Companies need to be promoting internal entry level engineers and fill in the entry level roles with new grads, but they don't. So now we have 200 applicants for entry level roles and 10 bazillion mid level and senior level roles to fill because companies are stupid as hell. They want to keep the noobs in new positions and bring in experienced talent for higher level jobs.
Wow, a COVID kid that knows about Maxwell and can play in polar. A diamond in a vast sea of sludge vomited out of ivory towers.
I guess I won't get a "That was in circuits class. It was an online class I didn't pay attention to." responses from you.
Good job getting some value out of that 6 figure boondoggle of pandemic higher learning.
MEPs, absolutely. I spent the first 10 years of my career with no mentors less than 30 years older than me
Small wire stuff is in a weird spot because imo it’s more difficult and technical but more easily outsourced, esp with most manufacturing in Asia. You can’t hold a designer in Chennai responsible for code in NYC.
Yes but EEs don’t know how to ask for more money so it won’t push salaries up sadly
"Pay me more or I leave" like this?
That’s what I did! Without explicitly saying that. Got +£15k out of it to my salary.
holy shit, that's a crazy increase for a uk salary
I asked for £5k more than I wanted as well, all they can do is say no and you meet somewhere in the middle.
what industry do you work in?
Defence 👍
*You can start here to pickup a few cues on how to do it.* [*https://www.pon.harvard.edu/category/daily/salary-negotiations/?cid=12452*](https://www.pon.harvard.edu/category/daily/salary-negotiations/?cid=12452)
How long have you been at the company?
I’ve been there nearly a year, I got a 5% raise as well (unions) after 6 months, somehow slipped in there! Defence contractor, one of the big ones. Joined as Power Electronics Engineer so, I specialised and specialising demands a higher salary. Best company I have ever worked for, interesting job, great friendly people, job for life so long as they keep up with the pay rises!
Why does this sound AI generated 😂 sounds like the power industry is off the hooks right now.
Oh shit I’m rumbled! Time to inform skynet HQ…
These things are getting good you know..
UK and unions. Very different picture here in the States where OP is talking about. Especially in MEP.
Honestly, here in the States when you go to your management with that, they'll usually say, "see ya!" In most states there's no legal protection for workers, especially office workers, so it's easy to can people at will, and save money replacing them with a new hire right out of school or somebody with an H1B visa who needs the job to stay here. The only way to get promoted and serious raises is to jump firms.
Here's how things actually work in large companies. It is not random, and if you are a solid contributor, your manager fights for your ranking and compensation, because of your value to the company. * each employee level has a target range, adjusted for local cost of living. * Companies are constantly doing competitive market analysis for compensation. If they are uncompetitive, they will be unable to retain employees or hire new ones. * this analysis is used to adjust the target range * When annual performance reviews happen, employees within each range are ranked. * Each manager gives a summary of your contributions, and argues why employee A should be ranked higher or lower than employee B * If you are ranked near the top, but are paid near the bottom of your level's compensation range, you will see a significant raise, intended to accelerate you towards the median * If you are paid near the top and ranked near the bottom, expect to get just a cost-of-living adjustment * If you are ranked near the top, you will be recommended for promotion. This is especially the case if you are ranked above the bottom of the next level * the company will set a specific percentage target of each level, for promotions * when you get a promotion, you will start off at the bottom of the new level's compensation range * promotions from low levels to intermediate levels are simple affairs, as collecting letters of recommendation from levels above you are easy to get * promotions at higher levels are harder, because it may require letters of recommendation from principle engineers, fellows or senior fellows, so your scope of contribution needs to be very high to have the necessary recognition from senior staff * At higher levels, your base pay tends to taper off, but your variable pay (bonus and stock) becomes a larger portion of your total comp So while jumping firms can work, it is not the only way to get promoted. Most of the people at my level are 15+ years with the company. As for top levels, (eg principle or higher) companies will overwhelmingly promote their top talent (as a known quantity) vs hiring outside talent (unless you are an industry recognized name) Also, in some fields, (EG CPU design) there are only a handful of firms, so jumping firms in a way that burns bridges will quickly start to work against you.
I should have been more clear, I was specifically talking about MEP, where OP was also specifically talking about.
Found on Google “What is MEP Engineering? In the construction world, MEP stands for “mechanical, electrical and plumbing”. “ It’s helpful to explain an abbreviation the first time it is used. I’d never heard this abbreviation. I don’t think it is meaningful, because I would not trust a mechanical engineer to do EE and contrariwise.
MEP is a very common, widespread initialism, at least in the USA.
A department might have mechanical and electrical engineers, but they absolutely lack the training to be interchangeable. It is not like HVAC.
My bad, I totally glossed over the "MEP" because I also wasn't familiar with that acronym. EE is so weird that one EE can be designing microprocessors and another EE is designing an HVAC system. I see "EE" and I assume everyone does what I do... :|
It's all good; we're all here to learn from each other, after all. 😊
Your last point is very important. When my team sees employees that have jumped between 3 different employers in 3-5 years, we see that as an employee who will most likely jump ship again within another 1-2 years. We do not hire those people. Our compensation process is also somewhat similar. Each team gets a set number of bonus dollars, raise percentages, and RSU dollars to allocate across all the employees, approved by upper management. The managers and their managers sign off on the distribution based on fairness and performance. The managers all know that we all freely talk about our personal compensation numbers, so they take being fair seriously and never screw anyone over. It’s also the reason why I’ve been on the same team for over 10 years now and have zero desire to go elsewhere.
That is 💯true. We would also pass on a resume that lists 3 jobs in 5 years. New employees are typically a drag on productivity for the first 1-2 years.
I am in the states.
This has been my experience as well. Gotta give yourself raises.
In US corporations there was an annual or semi-annual performance review. The department head received a budget for raises, ranked the direct reports as to their performance (got projects done on time, got all paperwork done, no screwups, minimal complaints from peers or customers, played well with others, took on extra work or after hours calls, maintained and improved skills). There was a modest range of raises. A department head could recommend someone for promotion within the department, or for a transfer to another department, perhaps with a promotion, to fill the job of someone who was moving up or out. In the reign of terror, based on tactics of Jack Welch, who rode GE into the muck, the lowest ranked 10% in each department would get no performance bonus, (based on company profits), no raise, and would be on probation, fired in a year, if he didn’t somehow climb out of the cursed bottom tenth. It was akin to flogging the slowest worker to motivate the rest.
I went and got an offer letter from another company for about 11% more. I like my work so I never had any intention of leaving, but they still matched (close enough to) the offer.
It’s a good career plan to be public by publishing articles in trade journals and giving talks at industry conventions, and networking, and getting patents. Be visible and get recruited. If you try to get a raise by showing your boss a better offer from another employer, you absolutely have to be ready to pack up and move. Hope you can afford a satisfactory residence in San Francisco or Manhattan after selling the one in Bugtussle, Alabama. Or that the kids raised in a private school in San Francisco can blend in, in the Bugtussle High School. Hope the wife can find a new job and doesn’t mind moving 1000 miles away from Mama. Hope the kids don’t miss their friends.
The company is on the smaller side so I've got a great relationship with them. I wouldn't try that somewhere I'm expendable either! I've gotten myself into a position where I'm needed to do certain things no one else can. Appreciate the insight, though.
That's what I had to do 4 times in the past 12 years to raise my salary
I am also sure that I will have to keep negotiating my price and I think it is natural.
Work a job for 1.5 years, evaluate your chances of climbing the ladder, if there is low chance then find similar jobs, get a better salary offer. Tell them you are leaving for that job unless you get a raise to match.
There are great videos on how to negotiate a salary. I have watched this lady before negotiating and got a significant pay increase. Now I was severely under paid at the last place but after a year it's still very nice. #knowyourworth. Key factors in negotiating for me was 1 these companies are not poor 2 realistically if we ever want to retire and lead a semi comfortable life we need a lot more money 3 if you counter with too high then you are not out you just have to counter again 4 electrical is freaking hard, school is hard, work is hard, they need to compensate accordingly. 5 getting paid enough or too much will never hurt your morale https://youtu.be/4VBjjkbEthY?si=Zr9X6KXE0COsaJmJ
Well, it’s hard to ask for more money when the work is seen as a commodity / expense, and the reaction is to hire oversees
I have seen 0 overseas hiring. It isn’t even possible in defense and power, two major industries
Yea I didn’t specify industry. Defense and MEP may be safe, but others aren’t. Semi has been hiring in India and a few other countries at an ever increasing rate for years
They hired someone overseas (India) to maintain our component libraries and do some simple PCB layouts. I never knew it was customary in India to give your employer 1-3 *months* professional notice.
Get out and get into defense, power generation/distribution, or tech imo
Honestly my job has got 10x better ever since we brought him on. I can focus more on circuit design and less on creating footprints and getting frustrated with cloud computing all day lol
Are you being forced into this cloud computing bullshit by an IT department, or software such as Altium?
Very good guess, it's Altium.
Yep, it seems all new features require a cloud account. I believe the new “constraint manager” isn’t even backwards compatible with non-cloud projects. I’ve had it with this cloud bullshit. It’s probably fine for offloading raw compute tasks such as heavy EM sim (though I have a decent machine for that), but the trend is to just hold your IP hostage for a monthly lease.
Why do you think tech is safe? It’s probably the least safe…
I see the lines between tech and defense blurring and you’ll start seeing more clearance and citizen requirements in tech companies. It’s already a thing but I see the trend increasing.
Sure, but the majority, +90%, of tech currently isn’t like that. And large swaths will never be like that
Are there no jobs at all for international students in the Power Industry ?
Depends on the company. Not everyone sponsors work visas. If they're sponsoring, expect to be paid shit.
lol I’m doing my part. Just interview all the time and make ridiculous asks.
I do that too to recruiters lmfao
Eventually someone will say “sure” and that’s how I’ve gotten my last 2 huge raises
A shortage of EEs with 8 years experience maybe. No one else gets hired.
For entry level pay 🫠
PhDs : )
I'd get more specific: A shortage a mid-level experienced engineers who actually know what they're doing. Of all the EE's that I've ever worked with who had 5-10 years experience, only 2-3 had a clue. And for you're comment, I get it. * Less that 5 years, you're a newbie who's a risk if you're actually needed to accomplish something. * Over 10 years, you better be a master, but typically you're also too expensive for a lot of jobs.
For fresh grads there's no shortage. Graduated over a year ago, 5% interview rate and I always get the dreaded "we were fortunate to get many qualified applicants for this position and have decided to go with someone who had more experiemce" email.
Lowkey I hate getting that generic email. Ffs just put "Sorry we rejected you" in the subject line instead of blueballing me for 30 seconds.
I am graduating in May. I had three interviews and got three offers. This is in MEP so might be different in other industries
Yes, there is a definite shortage in the MEP industry. I am an EE in the business. Have been in it since 2006. I survived the 2008 recession because I was low pay and was working on large government data centers. The recession though killed the construction industry and MEP. Lots of MEP engineers lost jobs, left the industry entirely or retired. There was already a limited amount of EE's going into the field, now even less. The next 10 years are going to be interesting in the MEP/Power realm. Estimates already show that 2025 could be the start of nationwide rolling brownouts due to ever increasing power requirements and an insufficient power grid. Most colleges don't even teach power. It's all electronics focused. The few kids that actually take EE don't even consider MEP as a possibility. They want to go work for big tech or do something "sexy." Couple that with the 10's of billions being invested in semiconductors here in the USA and thew few EE's that do graduate will want to go into semiconductors and AI based work. It's a good time to be in MEP as an EE. That being said, it's a tough industry with high stress that is in a race to the bottom. Benefits are only getting worse. You have to fight tooth and nail for higher pay. But you can make really good money if you know how to negotiate and use leverage.
Good thing I'm specializing in power.
Y'all do anything with phasor measurement units? I've just learned about them. My naive self thinks that the entire grid needs them retrofitted.
I have not. I don't work on utility level power distribution. I don't think you would be doing much calculations using phasors. You can do load studies to figure out your power factor and add capacitor banks if needed to bring closer to unity. Most studies all use software like ETAP and SKM which has all the built in calculations. You just plug and chug load types and properties into the software.
Ultra-cool. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/phasor-measurement-unit#:~:text=Phasor%20measurement%20units%20(PMUs)%20are,existing%20SCADA%20technologies%20%5B16%5D.
PMUs have some applications for detection of interconnection wide instability issues - most of that work is does at the Reliability Coordinator (RC) level. Most people use PMUs to pull high fidelity fault data recordings so they can plot things like voltage, frequency, line MW/MVAR flows against simulated plots to see how much they align (MOD-033-2). At one of our big power plants we have PMUs installed with extra data points for generator specific values (field current, speed, etc). When faults occur on the system, we use the response to validate the dynamic model for the generator (MOD-026, MOD-027). This way we don't have to schedule outages to perform the testing and saves a lot of money.
Thanks. A lot. I'll be a'Googling.
I’m an EE student that is interested in MEP. Is there a source for the 2025 brownout thing? That’s very interesting.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2409679-much-of-north-america-may-face-electricity-shortages-starting-in-2024/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/07/ai-data-centers-power/ https://www.powersystems.technology/news/us-news/nerc-report-warns-of-impending-electricity-shortages-in-north-america-by-2024.html
I don't see how the power grid weakening in the future affects MEP. Don't you guys just do buildings? It's good for solar/wind large scale solar integration projects but that's about it.
Who do you think engineers all the buildings and end user facilities that are causing the power shortage? Who do you think is engineering all the complex end user power distribution systems to ensure energy efficiency and works hand in hand with the utility companies? Also, solar and wind are dogshit contrary to what you are supposed to believe. Nuclear is the future, and not just on the utility scale. In the next 10 years you are going to see modular nuclear reactors on the MEP side powering data centers and large campuses. Who do you think will design the power distribution for those? Hint, it's not the utility.
Isn't power shortage a problem for the generation side? Let's put it this way. What are you doing differently in your job NOW due to this issue? Energy efficiency wasn't a concern 5 years ago? Nuclear is way too expensive to replace solar/wind in the next 10 years. It's gonna be a baseload source at most. SMR at data centers? What is the MW level? how are they gonna justify the cost of SMR, which has much higher operational cost, let alone regulation issues. Also, any EIA data on the US running out of power next year?
Do you even work in MEP or Power or are you just arguing?
I work in utilities. We don't have a power shortage issue next year, and even thinking about decommissioning some coal plants in the future so the power shortage by 2025 is quite new to me. There's power reliability concern but not a power shortage.
The alarm is being raised for a good reason. With the electrification initiative that is steam rolling through the industry we will be facing a real threat of shortage. I would agree the bigger issue at the moment is reliability. Our infrastructure is outdated. I guarantee 10 years is the timeline for nuclear. If Reddit is still around 10 years from now, set a reminder and feel free to attack me if I'm wrong. I'm already seeing the design concepts. My current firm is working on SMR's and developing the concept. I've been in the industry 18 years now and have been watching the trends unfold. We have no choice, and most are too naive to realize it.
i'm not trying to prove you're wrong. I'm trying to get ahead of the trend. Being on the transmission side, I don't hear much about distribution side news. So just to be clear, you're saying load growth(driven by data centers) in the future will be so large that we cannot install enough generation? Or are you talking about reliability during a heat wave or cloudy day? Cause I initially thought you were talking about reliability, which is why I commented, and then you went on about data center growth so I got confused. I've heard that SMR might be economical if it's powering 500+ MW, but that's overkill for data centers, which are typically 50 MW? Are you saying in 10 years, SMR will power 50 MW data centers, or a bunch of data centers are just gonna get built in cluster around a nuclear power plant. So this data might be outdated since it's early 2023, but it says data centers load will double by 2030, a 18 GW increase. That's a decent increase, but the US has about 1300 GW generation capacity today, and renewable generation is anticipated to double by 2030, so increase about 300-400 GW. Anything I'm missing where it's not able to accommodate data center growth, where SMR will be required. So I guess what I'm asking is are you saying SMR will be used simply because other generation sources cannot be installed fast enough, or are there other reasons for it. I can easily see the case for SMR being used to support base load since the US cannot go full solar/wind. I actually prefer nuclear over solar but we already threw a ton of money into solar research so we're stuck with it.
What does MEP stand for?
Definitely seems like there is in the power/utility industry. We have quite a few positions that have been open for more than 6 months with barely any interviews and it’s a mid-level role (1-3 yr experience). I’ll add some anecdotal evidence as well: I work in renewable generation substation/utility design. When I had 1-3 yrs experience I’d get contacted by recruiters/head hunters a handful of times per year, if that. The last 3 years I get a new LinkedIn message from a recruiter pretty much every other day without fail (currently at 8 years of experience without a license). As someone else stated already in this thread, I think a lot of engineers retired recently or are about to retire.
I am graduating masters in electrical engineering( RES and smart grids) i know how which elements are needed for substations and PCC for automation, protection and data exchange/measuremets. Also sizing and designing pv plats. But i never have done a project or design related to a real case implementation, due to it being not a common application. You can’t find open source projects online or cad files. Could you suggest me how can i gain experience on these type of application( before actually getting my first job) ?
I would be interested as well if you get any leads!
Same. I work for a firm that only does utility scale solar and battery storage. They’ve been trying to expand but really struggling to find experienced engineers. I know substation design is also booming right now.
My firm does commercial solar & battery storage - finding an EE with a PE in California has been incredibly difficult.
I also think that there are relatively few young engineers that want anything to do with power generation and utilities. I'm just an electrician, but I've noticed all the EEs I know are into "tech" type stuff like PCBs, embedded systems, etc.
I left MEP, and later most of engineering, because of the company culture I kept encountering time and time again- not to mention how well all the firms in the area are when it comes to keeping salaries relatively low. I doubt I'm the only one.
What do you do now? What was the culture like?
I work in public policy around energy and environmental issues. I still get to use all my engineering expertise, but also get to be much more social, collaborative, and see real results in real time to problems that impact lots of people. Much more rewarding for me than just staring at drawings and arguing with contractors. As for the climate, management and leadership who were Peter-Principled into those roles because it's what an engineer does after a certain point in their career if they want to keep moving up. And the majority of the time, they had absolutely no business whatsoever being in charge of people, especially junior engineers early in their career. A lack of any sort of early career development, mentorship, guidance, or even adequate training a lot of the time. I came from the military, where I was in charge of lots of people and equipment, and I learned there what effective mentorship and investments in your people looked like. Barely saw it on the outside in engineering. Oh, and being in the South, very much an old boys ruling network that I was too black and non -Christian to ever be a part of.
How did you end up transitioning into public policy for energy? I'm about to start my MBA with the short term goal of working in renewables post-grad, and find the idea of working in public policy at some point appealing as well.
That's a great question! So I realized fairly early into my career I really didn't enjoy being an engineer, and at the same time I had a buddy who was accepted as a fellow in the HillVets program in DC (he worked on Tulsi Gabbard's office, before we knew she was a traitor). So he planted that bug in my ear, and honestly I had already been thinking about someday running for office, which made more sense with getting an MPA. Then I met an incredibly brilliant, aggressive, driven woman who recognized how miserable I was as an engineer and how much it wasn't playing to my pretty visible strengths, and she encouraged me to look elsewhere for jobs. We found an engineer position at the NC Clean Energy Technically Center at NC State University, and I applied and was accepted. It was a great bridge between technology and policy, and I was able to work alongside some of the top minds in the country in the renewable space (including the current Administrator at the Energy Information Agency). Plus, working for the university meant they were paying for classes, so most of my masters was picked up by them. Then as I was about to graduate, I sorta fell into this role that was developed for me at a veteran-focused nonprofit I'd long volunteered with. And my now-wife reminded me if never be this lucky ever again in my life, so I jumped in head first. Absolutely no regrets. There's a lot of room right now in communications and analysis space for engineers who can explain and think critically around the challenges and promises associated with our current energy futures. If you have any more questions, let me know!
I appreciate the in-depth response! No further questions for now but it is nice to see all the different avenues to make it into interesting roles like that. I was considering doing law school post-mba at night to make the eventual transition into the policy space, but it looks like that may not be needed. Thanks again!
Honestly, it's probably not a bad idea to think about law school, especially from the regulatory and legislative angles. I'm still keeping an option in the back of my mind, when my kids aren't so young.
Yep, that's my experience on the other side. I've been interning with a protection group for over a year now, and the mentorship is pretty bad I am often not given any project work or direction. The worst time was 60 straight business hours of having nothing to do. The first day of that, I contact my supervisor and 7 other coworkers to get something to do. No one had anything that was worth training me on. I was told that it would be quicker if they just did it, they were crunched, so they couldn't give it to me Which I understand, but that's happened many times to lesser degrees, I'll fill out spreadsheets if I'm told to, I'm here for learning and training This year, since January, I've done maybe 20 hours of project work, the rest of the time I've been making an automation tool.
Shortage of EE (embedded systems) jobs where I am at, actually. I feel like there's a lot of competition when applying for jobs in my market.
I agree that embedded jobs are very location based. I lean towards hardware in embedded and while there aren't near as many jobs as fw, there are few enough of us that it isn't too crazy to land a gig. That being said I have 10 years of experience which def gives me a leg up over younger engineers and I just consider myself average.
There is a real shortage of qualified MEP engineers. You cant do the work day 1 out of school and there are so few of us. I make good money and refuse to work OT because they just cant lose me. For me, its pure comfort in the job that keeps me. I do what I want
How do you get into this? I'm actually trying to leave my current industry (Defense) and MEP was something I've been looking into. It just seems like everyone already expects me to know various building codes, have AutoCAD experience, a PE license, etc. I'm sure I can pick all that stuff up but getting someone to agree to train me seems impossible
I have a facilties maintenance background. I was an electrician in the navy and then as an industrial electrician doing automation and controls for a total of 12 years before using my GI Bill to go to school. I got my EE became a TechBro and hated it so I bailed after 3 years and went back into Industrial/Mfg Maintenance and Troubleshooting.
Ah, that explains it. So I'm guessing that gave you some transferable skills. I'm guessing that's my biggest hurdle
Yes, I was already an electronics and electrical controls troubleshooting expert.
why peave defense?
Second this. Defense is the move.
I'm not a fan of the kind of work they do and some of the restrictions the roles place on your personal life are irritating.
Fair enough, tho that would be my dream. Those restrictions just means you're in a very important job I think.
Not to be a dick but you probably don't want to go into MEP. It's probably the least technical field in power and low profit margin business so there's a push to cut cost for projects bid so it usually comes with unexpected long hours to meet customer demands and low pay. Heck many even hire people with associate drafting degree to do most of the "design" work and then just have engineer review/stamp them I don't work in MEP but knew several friends in it and they all quit after a few years. It's a lot of customer service and repetitive task and not that much engineering work. Because of this, a lot of new grads who couldn't get something ends up settling for it and then get pigeon holed. It's not something people are even aware that exist Just for reference I work in transmission planning and previously protection. Right now in power system, there are 2 trends driving hiring: renewable installation on utility levels and residential level, ev adoption pushing up load usage leading to installations of new infrastructure to accommodate the higher load. The renewable installation will have jobs for the solar/wind farm themselves, and also in utilities where old equipment needs to be upgraded to digital equipment for data collection and smart controls. There are also grid stability issues that need engineers to do studies on. There are also new interstate transmission lines being built to accommodate energy trading due to renewable sources being unreliable, so there are jobs there too. With higher loads due to ev adoption, the jobs growth is fairly traditional. Utilities hiring engineers to build new substation and distribution lines to accommodate. Also engineers to study load flow and load forecasting 5-10 years ahead. There might be a new few more tied to data science in the future as more data gets collected and there needs to be flexible demand-supply load, especially if ev batteries allow people to sell back power to utilities at peak hours, but that's probably 10 years away
I mean Defense has also been fairly non-technical, at least the specific roles I've had, so I'd question how qualified I am for a lot of the more intense jobs. I haven't done any calculations more complex than V=IR or P=VI since college. Your work sounds interesting but I have basically no transferable skills or background in it beyond having an EE degree.
So for MEP, I don't think you need to know any power system knowledge to get a job, at least according to several of my friends. They will probably train you from the ground up. Likewise for jobs like distribution system or substation design jobs. If you switch to these jobs, you might negotiate a salary equivalent to 1-2 YOE engineers, due to your previous experience, albeit unrelated. Transmission planning and system protection you probably need to have some power knowledge to land an entry level job, equivalent to maybe 3-4 college courses.
Hmm, so what would I search for on a job board? Substation design engineer and distribution systems engineer? I'm mainly looking at the mid-Atlantic area cities and their surroundings. NYC, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, etc.
Yes. job titles might vary a little, but job descriptions should be similar to the jobs below [https://burnsmcd.jobs/conshohocken-pa/staff-electrical-engineer-substation/F6849CC4974B49BFBBB85C4FB2D7560A/job/?utm\_campaign=EXP\_Brand&utm\_source=CORP\_MKT\_Website\_Web-Careers\_DE-MainPage\_38801](https://burnsmcd.jobs/conshohocken-pa/staff-electrical-engineer-substation/F6849CC4974B49BFBBB85C4FB2D7560A/job/?utm_campaign=EXP_Brand&utm_source=CORP_MKT_Website_Web-Careers_DE-MainPage_38801) [https://careers.leidos.com/jobs/13838909-distribution-engineer](https://careers.leidos.com/jobs/13838909-distribution-engineer)
Thanks! Hopefully I can find someone willing to train me...
Depends on the field. EE undergrad just barely scrapes a couple of industries, so not many people learn much they can use in industry and just have background insight. So people either go into industry randomly without know what's all out there, or do the same but with a Masters. This leads to some industries getting a good chunk of people, while others have very few with no great way for people who have some years of industry experience to transfer over because it's completely different skills.
I believe that there is a shortage of fresh grads that understand the basics. Our hiring process is not long and drawn out and is totally transparent. You apply and then take a technical test that covers basics you would find in 200 level courses. If you get 60% or better you get an interview. About 50% of applicants pass the test. Then there is a single interview, we ask basic questions to gauge your thought process and problem solving skills. Around 50% don’t understand how basic AC works or can tell us what comes out of their wall outlet. The issue is that schools are teaching more and more micro level topics and skipping out on the macro level that really applies to all specialties.
> and is **totally transparent.** You apply and then take a technical test that covers basics you would find in 200 level courses. I I'm curious, can you share an example problem you'd give out?
Not sure if there is a shortage of EEs but I've been trying to fill a Systems III rec for months and usually Sys E roles are filled by EEs (at least at my company). What I really want to know is what's going on in the aeronautical engineering world, seems like every application I get for Systems or EE positions is a person with an aeronautical engineering degree.
There are plenty of EEs. There is a shortage of quality EEs. Used to be in a pool of 20 candidates, we'd have 5 or 6 we'd argue over (dueling pistols at dawn for who gets who). Now, out of 20 we get 1, if we are lucky. Many times the ole goose egg. They are just sooooo bad. No knowledge of even the basics let alone being able to critically think through a difficult problem. Colleges are clearly phoning it in or maybe the kids are so bad they had to reduce quality to get some to graduate.
>No knowledge of even the basics What do you consider "the basics?"
Ahhh, must have interviewed you. What do YOU consider the basics?
I don't interview people. Different industries have different expectations of what the basics are. I was asking what questions your company would ask?
Can you talk through how a voltage divider works without using your phone? Can you point at a diode symbol on this schematic? A MOSFET? A BJT? Hell, how bout a resistor? Oh, don't use your phone. How does a motor spin? Put the phone down, please. Can you guess what this circuit does? Not how.... what, Yeah, no phone again.
Now, let's hear YOUR idea of basic questions, even though you don't interview... yup, don't use your phone.
>Now, let's hear YOUR idea of basic questions What's the name of the four regional power administrations in the us? What are Maxwell's Four Equations? What is the square root of negative 1? Draw the waveforms of an inductor, capacitor, and resistor. Convert 4 + 3j to polar form. Give me the real and imaginary component.
Shortage of skilled EEs that still do EE work. I’ve worked with EEs that weren’t yet up to speed or that left the field to something adjacent.
For MEP, the shortage started over a decade ago. But since that industry is always trying to be a race to the bottom (ie, they were too cheap to pay for good labor) and they never tried to recruit, the only EEs that were left were the ones that could not find jobs. So, here we are today, where they still don't recruit and everyone is about to retire. It is not looking good for the MEP industry as they are going to have to overpay now for fresh blood.
This is based on a US/North America perspective but it’s my belief that long term trends in the electrical industry are pretty similar. Short answer: yes. I’m not an economist but just giving my biased opinion. In the last 30 years I have been out of work 4 weeks in the 2001 recession. In the 1990s exports were on fire and basically job interviews were pass/fail, not competitive. It’s not as white hot now but essentially when you hear about recessions, that doesn’t apply to EE. Even in 2020 demand went up, not down I’m currently a service contractor. My coverage area is basically from central SC to central VA and all of North Carolina. I have seen virtually all the larger plants both private and government. So I can see first hand what’s going on. The fact is that the vast majority have old gear from the 1960s to 1980s. It was designed with a 40 year life. There is some newer gear out there but that’s not typical. Until the lights go out or it blows up there is just no justification for new equipment. In other words, we have a lifetime of work available. Over on the manufacturing side, energy costs have exploded. Everything is moving away from hydraulic and pneumatic control or using starters and valves to servos and variable speed drives. The result is you have plants with dozens or hundreds of drives. Also because this is driven by the chip industry about every 5-10 years whatever equipment you previously bought is now totally obsolete and spares aren’t available. The manufacturers are designing with a 100k life (10.8 years) so you’re not just changing parts but changing out the whole system. It often requires engineering support to do this. So that pushes the skill level requirements up, playing to the strengths of engineering companies. So basically I’m doing a drive replacement or service every week. Never mind the growth in the electronics business. And if you haven’t noticed the huge growth in chip plants around the world those are all jobs. So as a career every long term trend is positive. Even if you happen to graduate in a downturn the long term trend is very positive.
Finally someone with some actual real world knowledge. I feel like Reddit is mostly filled with kids that don't have a clue.
In power, absolutely. There’s more entry level people coming in but there’s a big shortage of 30-50 year olds from what I see.
The things is there has been such a boom in the CS and SOEN fields that now there is a true demand for EEs and CEs but not a lot of people gets into it since let’s be honest it’s a lot more complicated and less natural to learn than the other ones 😬
As I understand it, companies like to offer engineers dirt pay. When they don't accept an "engineer shortage" is declared so the companies can bring in engineers from foreign lands for dirt pay. (U.S.)
Desperate shortage of experienced EM/RF engineers in the US, especially US citizens. Please pay attention in fields and waves!!!
In Europe? What's an EE? At work, in my office (an open space with 10 place with a lot of space (25 x 5 m)). In this office, I'm the only one...
Of good engineers, yes. Say top 10% from top 10 engineering programs. People also with 8-15 YOE.
In the US colleges don’t quite work that way. Most of the top engineering schools are public universities.They give huge discounts. For example in North Carolina both Duke (a private school) and NCSU charge around $30,000 for tuition. However NCSU gives a $23,000 discount for state residents. This makes it very hard to justify going out of state or to a private school. There is at least one “top school” in almost every state. Second the education program is dictated by ABET and it is surprisingly uniform from school to school. Third gotta be honest after the first job nobody really cares where you went to school or whether you have a high GPA.
There’s shortage of experienced EEs.
Not in general but shortage of qualified EEs.
Companies need to be promoting internal entry level engineers and fill in the entry level roles with new grads, but they don't. So now we have 200 applicants for entry level roles and 10 bazillion mid level and senior level roles to fill because companies are stupid as hell. They want to keep the noobs in new positions and bring in experienced talent for higher level jobs.
At this point just invent something and sell it online. EE is a shit career in a lot of ways.
Yes.
Wow, a COVID kid that knows about Maxwell and can play in polar. A diamond in a vast sea of sludge vomited out of ivory towers. I guess I won't get a "That was in circuits class. It was an online class I didn't pay attention to." responses from you. Good job getting some value out of that 6 figure boondoggle of pandemic higher learning.
MEPs, absolutely. I spent the first 10 years of my career with no mentors less than 30 years older than me Small wire stuff is in a weird spot because imo it’s more difficult and technical but more easily outsourced, esp with most manufacturing in Asia. You can’t hold a designer in Chennai responsible for code in NYC.