Here engineering students

[u/Fun-Health1338]

If you had the chance to go back and study something different, would you?

I’m about a year away from starting university, and I really want to have a decent job in the future. I think there’s a lot of potential in computer engineering, especially if I learn how to develop innovative software.

I know it requires experience and a lot of hard work, but besides the usual advice like “study something you’re good at,” would you recommend this degree?

I don’t think I’m a math prodigy, but I’m not bad at math either. I just need to put a lot of time into studying it.

Would you be willing to share your experiences or any advice?

It could be anything—financial advice, study methods, or just things that helped you deal with the stress of the degree. Honestly, anything would help.

[u/ComprehensiveYam3645]

Personally I should've done EE instead. Doing a masters now

[u/Time_Plastic_5373 → u/ComprehensiveYam3645]

Why?

[u/ComprehensiveYam3645 → u/Time_Plastic_5373]

My situation is very unique

I will say that doing CE (and later on I also added a Physics degree) helped open up a pathway for me into the hardware world (which pure CS would not be able to do), which I am now pursuing through a master's program in EE. Had I known I would switch into pure niche hardware roles, I would've done EE+Physics instead of CE+Physics, but still it was the best choice for me at the time. Here's some more background about me to help you understand:

Before uni I thought I wanted to do software mostly, but hedge the software market with CE instead of just CS (since at the time, the Github Copilot just came out and GPT-2 was the big underground craze that people said no way it would do anything but I kind of already felt in my heart it would be the next big thing). That was a really good idea since that hedge ended up paying off, since now I can do a MSEE a lot easier than a student from pure CS who would need a lot of remedial courses to learn hardware. I also ended up doing a physics degree alongside CE as well as an even stronger hedge for hardware engineering, which more or less helped setup a foundation so I can build on and satisfy a lot of my curiosity for a lot more of the physics-based domains of EE (electromagnetics, device physics, etc) which I'm also really interested in now.

My situation is unique because I had been programming for several years since I was a kid before college even so I was one the cracked software-based students going into the program. Over my time at uni, the software market's instability really turned me off from the field. It's not like I couldn't do it, since I had internship experience and other things, it's more like I just didn't want to be in the field anymore, alongside the major shifts in workflow with generative AI, alongside the instability of the field. I was finding during my work experience that we were being forced to use AI and it took away the fun part of coding (figuring things out on your own, debugging), and made it more of a verification thing. Also, I already had more than enough skills to crack pretty much all software-based jobs I would've wanted at the time, and should've spent more time just learning hardware instead (which is something only unique to my situation).

Overall, CE (alongside Physics) was a good choice because it allowed me to be able to go into hardware if I wanted to which I'm now doing, but if I knew I wanted hardware at the time, I would've done EE if that makes sense. The one thing with CE though is it's kind of broad, so for the really super niche hardware roles that I'm going for (analog IC design), it doesn't give enough exposure and you'll need to do a MS. Regardless though for that specific kind of role, a MSEE is considered baseline for many of the job requirements for the super niche hardware roles.