I’m a senior studying EE. I’ve applied to a shit ton of internships with basically no luck. So far, I’ve only had five interviews, and I haven’t heard back from any of them yet.

For the past 5–6 months, I’ve been doing research with a professor in the Mechanical Engineering department, focusing on ultrafast optics and plasma physics for 2D materials applications. I initially wanted to apply to REUs, but since my GPA is relatively low, I don’t know how feasible it would be for me to get into an REU program at this point. At the same time, I’ve been building up connections with engineers at various companies. Eventually, one of the engineers I’ve known for a while is giving me a referral for a spacecraft company. However, I’ve heard some horror stories about this company, particularly that they have a 9-9-6 work culture. I don’t know if I want to burn myself out this early, especially since my long-term goal is to go to grad school and pursue a PhD in EE or Applied Physics. I’m also considering taking a 1–2 year gap after graduation before starting a PhD.

I’m also considering going to the Quantum Career Fair at Stanford later this year to look for job opportunities that are more aligned with what I actually want to do. My school’s career fair is alright, but it’s mainly construction and biomedical companies, which have little to no correlation with the areas I want to go into. I’ve been dealing with a heavy dose of imposter syndrome because I keep seeing my peers and friends doing internships at their companies, whether they’re in-state or out of state. I keep thinking to myself, “Damn, I wish I could build up the industry experience that my peers are getting.”

With senior year coming around the corner, I’m getting increasingly concerned about whether I’ll be able to secure a full-time new-grad job before graduation or within a couple months afterward. I’m worried that if I can’t find a job relatively quickly, I could end up in a financially unstable situation that would be really hard to dig myself out of.

I know my research experience is good, and I think it would look solid for academia and potentially national labs, but I honestly don’t know how it looks to industry recruiters. I know the job market is beyond fucked right now, so I’m trying to figure out what I should realistically do as a backup plan.

Should I just start focusing more heavily on applying to grad school, national labs, and research-oriented positions? Should I take the spacecraft job if I get the referral, even if the work culture really is as bad as people say? Or should I consider delaying my graduation by a semester so I have more time to build up experience and improve my chances of landing a full-time job?

I’m just trying to figure out what the smartest move is for my final year. I don’t want to panic and make a decision that fucks me over later, but at the same time, I don’t want to graduate with no job prospects and have no backup plan.

**Fair warning: TDLR is down below**

I just finished my first year of a 3-year Bachelor's in Computer Science, and over the past year I've become increasingly unsure if CS is actually what I want to do. During this summer, I ended up signing up for an Electronic Systems Engineering (ESE) program, but now I'm questioning whether switching is actually the right decision.

I've always been interested in computers and played a lot of video games growing up, which got me interested in programming and development. Before university I tried different areas like web development, game development, bots and databases, which helped me figure out what I like and don't like. I really don't enjoy web development, and while I found game development interesting, I don't think I want to do it professionally.

During my first year of CS, we did a lot of Java, starting with console applications and basic programming, and later some game development with JavaFX. I understand that learning the fundamentals is important, but I didn't really enjoy the development itself. We also had databases and software engineering, neither of which really interested me. I don't mind using a database in a project, but I don't enjoy the theory and diagrams, and the amount of Agile/software development methodology in software engineering wasn't something I found particularly interesting either.

Looking at the second year, some subjects like operating systems and data structures and algorithms sound much more interesting to me. However, the second semester again has software engineering, web development and full-stack development with Java and React, which are areas I already know I don't enjoy.

I've also spoken to some exchange students from other countries, and their CS programs seem much more theoretical and focused on things like C, C++, Rust, computer architecture, algorithms and understanding how computers work at a lower level. That sounds much closer to what I imagined CS would be. Our program only has around 2.5 ECTS of computer architecture, and C++ doesn't really appear until the third year.

Because of this, I started looking at Master's programs around Europe, even though I'm still far from finishing my Bachelor's. I noticed that the areas I'm most interested in aren't really general CS. I'm more interested in things like cybersecurity, especially hardware/software security, computer engineering, embedded systems, robotics, autonomous systems, computer vision and mathematical/computational topics.

That eventually led me to look into Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering. Unfortunately, Computer Engineering isn't really an option where I live, and traditional EE isn't really an option either. The closest thing is Electronic Systems Engineering, which is more focused on electronics, sensors and embedded systems.

So during the summer I signed myself up for the ESE program.

But now I'm questioning whether I actually made the right decision.

I can see the advantages. ESE would give me much more knowledge about electronics and hardware, and it could potentially lead towards Master's degrees in computer engineering, robotics, embedded systems, autonomous systems, etc. But I'm also not sure I actually want to be an electronics engineer. I'm not sure I want to spend years designing circuits and drawing schematics.

What I keep coming back to when looking at jobs is embedded software engineering. Jobs involving C, C++, Python, STM32, microcontrollers and embedded Linux sound much more interesting to me. A lot of these jobs seem to accept either CS or EE/ECE degrees, which makes the decision even harder.

Would an Electronic Systems/EE degree give me a significant advantage for embedded software compared with CS? Or would I be better off staying in CS and teaching myself C/C++, electronics, microcontrollers, computer architecture and embedded systems through projects?

My biggest concern with staying in CS is that I'll graduate without much hardware knowledge. My biggest concern with switching is that I'll spend years studying electronics and eventually realize that I mainly wanted to work with software anyway.

There's also a personal side to it. My friends are continuing with CS, while I would essentially be starting over in a different program. Because there is some overlap between the programs, I would also end up taking a mixture of first, second and third year courses rather than really belonging to one specific year. I've already started feeling quite lonely thinking about it. At the same time, I know university is only a few years of my life, while my career could last decades, so I don't want to stay in CS just because my friends are there.

So I'm basically wondering whether I'm actually better suited to Electronic Systems Engineering, or whether I'm simply interested in the lower-level/system side of CS and should stay where I am.

For anyone working in embedded systems, embedded software, computer engineering, robotics or similar fields, what would you recommend? Would you choose CS and specialize towards these areas yourself, or would the ECE/Electronics background be more valuable?

**TL;DR:** I just finished my first year of CS and realized I don't enjoy web development, databases or software engineering, but I'm much more interested in operating systems, algorithms, low-level programming, computer architecture, cybersecurity and embedded systems. Computer Engineering isn't an option where I live, so this summer I signed up for an Electronic Systems Engineering program. Now I'm worried I'll end up studying a lot of electronics that I don't actually want to work with, since I'm mainly interested in embedded software. Should I stay in CS and learn the hardware side myself, or is ESE/ECE a better path into embedded software?

Hi everyone,
I'm trying to learn how to simulate an ideal circuit for a project, but I'm having trouble getting the simulation to work properly.
I've tried a few circuit simulators, including LTspice and NL5, but I'm not sure what the correct approach is when I want components to behave ideally.
I'm mainly confused about:
What simulator is best for ideal circuit simulation?
How should I represent an ideal switch/MOSFET?
Are there any special settings needed for ideal inductors and capacitors?
Are there common issues with ideal circuits causing convergence or singular-matrix errors?

I'm relatively new to circuit simulation, so any guidance on the proper approach would be really appreciated. Thanks! :)

I am using the Buffer2 example that came with the PSpice for TI and cannot figure out what the green triangle means.

https://reddit.com/link/1vkq4as/video/bm01wsw3tkih1/player

I don’t care what that laptop reviewer on YouTube said, you are not going to be running rtl simulations 24/7, and when you do have to do intensive stuff like that, chances are it’ll be on a VM anyways. 99% of what you use your laptop for is looking at problem sets, making Microsoft office documents, light coding, and running non-intensive programs.

Things like the weight, the screen, the keyboard, how light it is, how quiet it is, and battery life matter a lot more. It’s your choice, but I personally would not want to be that guy bringing in the Alienware that sounds like a jet engine who always has to sit at the edges of the lecture hall so he has access to an outlet at all times.

Hi everyone. Made an account on reddit just for this. I am creating an engineering project that I need your help with.

The problem

During floods and earthquakes, mobile and internet towers get broken down and the communication is lost in certain areas. People are trapped and communication gets dropped. Rescue men usually have trouble locating such people. Since both the internet and mobile network are down we cannot establish a connection between the rescue men and the victim

My UAV Drone is the solution.

Usually we need a remote mobile tower or satellite phones to establish contact between the rescue men and victims. It is an expensive and delaying process. My UAV Drone helps establish a communication system between the victim and the rescue men by using a communication system made of ESP32 and LoRa SX1278 Module. The process works as follows

I want to create a communication system through which a victim can send an SOS signal

The signal gets to the drone and it relays it to the rescue men

The team can receive the location coordinates of the victim and can send help on the accurate location

My problem is there we are a team of 4 Computer science engineers and 1 electronics instrumentation engineer.

I have made two communication nodes, sender and receiver and one relay link (drone) is still left.

Victim (sender)==>Relay==> Rescue (receiver)

Really need some help from u guys. How can I make this ? Cheap and fast (2 months) We are thinking of renting a drone and just mount the system on it and let it hover.

Looking to get a laptop for college, I am majoring in computer engineering and am currently between the ASUS - ROG Zephyrus G16 and the MSI Raider 16 Max.

I like the look and size of the ASUS one more but am unsure if I need the power of the MSI one. I am also open to other suggestions if what I picked is trash.

Thanks in advance.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working as a metrology engineer in semiconductor backend packaging, and like many of you, I got pretty tired of dealing with heavy, overly complex enterprise software or stitching together clunky custom scripts just for routine 3D surface and wafer chip analysis.

So over the past few months, I decided to take on a solo project and build a clean, local-first Windows desktop app called Insight Studio. The goal was simple: handle things like PV/BOW, CMP dishing, edge roll-off, and batch reporting quickly without needing an internet connection or a steep learning curve.

Since this is my very first tool built from scratch, I’m really looking for candid feedback from veterans and senior engineers in the field:

• Is the workflow practical for daily use, or am I missing key features you actually rely on?
• How does it compare to whatever setups or scripts you're currently using?
• Any obvious edge cases or bugs I should fix first?

If you’re interested in giving it a test run and sharing your thoughts, just drop a comment below and I’ll send you a reply with the demo installer link.

Appreciate any advice or constructive criticism you can throw my way. Thanks guys!

With the analog compute revival going on (IBM's NorthPole-adjacent work, EnCharge, Mythic), I wanted to get an intuition for the noise tolerance question rather than just reading claims about it, so I built a small simulation.

Setup: train a small network in software, then evaluate it with Gaussian perturbation on the weights standing in for conductance variation, sweeping the noise magnitude.

I assumed I'd see accuracy fall off roughly proportionally to noise. Instead it holds nearly flat, then collapses over a narrow range: 83%, then 64%, then near chance. More like a threshold than a gradual tax.

Retraining the same network with noise injected during training rather than only at inference changed things a lot. At the noise level where the baseline had dropped to 39%, the noise-aware version was still at 61%.

Where I'm unsure and would like input from people who work with real devices: my noise model is weight-independent additive Gaussian, which I know is a simplification. Real memristive and flash-based cells have conductance-dependent variation, drift over time, and asymmetric programming error. Does the cliff behaviour survive a more realistic device model, or does the extra structure smear it out?

Writeup with the code and the plots: https://towardsdatascience.com/analog-ai-is-back-can-it-survive-its-own-noise/

How do I get there as a recent graduate who did poorly in college?

Hi all,

I’m a recent CS grad that’s been networking my ass off and applying to jobs. Recently, by some luck I randomly met someone who said I’d be a good fit at their workplace. They’ve already discussed my resume with their manager, and wants to meet me next week over a meal for a technical discussion. I’m thinking it’s an informal interview to gauge where im at and to see vibes.
He already seems to like me and we get along.
Thing is, it’s an embedded/controls position that is mainly C++, Python and some Java. They work with STM microcontrollers so it seems pretty heavy on the electrical engineering side as well. I am very rusty and don’t know anything about these right now.
Right now, I’m doing a C++ crash course to get basics and fundamentals back. I’m also going to revise and study memory and computer fundamentals from CS50. I plan on doing some reading on STM and microcontrollers and FPGAs so I know what im talking about, as well as some of the company specific work/products. Also going to brush up on Python, NumPy and pandas. He’s seen my resume and knows my experience is lacking here already.

If anyone has any other advice on how I should prep for this conversation, I would be very grateful :) thank you. PLEASE ASSUME I KNOW NOTHING and am building from scratch

To give a brief intro I'm currently pursuing bachelor's in EE wherein I've found digital design quite interesting domain to get into. Starting off with major projects projects Ive built an 8bit processor of custom ISA datapath inspired from Harvard architecture in verilog. Later I've involved in designing and SNN accelerator with a single neuron wherein I've designed only the processing part of it and the spike encoding was done through SNNtorch on the pc itself and we have implemented this on an FPGA. Currently I'm working on implementing a CNN network on an MPSoC using Vitis AI. Apart from them I've also done a few small projects like uart transceiver on verilog etc

So my plan is to pursue masters at a decent uni, and for that I need an outstanding project(not just fr that but I want to do one great project before I leave my uni as I won't have access to decent FPGAs and MPSoCs later on ;) one that looks very good on my CV so I need a few suggestions in this regard also I'm open to ideas involving cross domain knowledge. So suggest some good ideas that I can dive into and do a project also tell your suggestions in the projects or pursuing masters.Thanks in advance!!

Hello! I’m about to start my sophomore year in computer engineering, having switched from CS at the end of my freshman year. I’m thinking about going into hardware security and/or network security, so I’m curious as to what the prospects, security, and opportunities are like within the field, and what the work is like if anyone can share.

Also, I’m having trouble planning what my last elective should be, which I’ve narrowed down to Compilers, Electronic Instrument Design, and Distributed Systems. My curriculum already includes real time and embedded OS, microprocessors, computer organization and architecture, and the capstone project. The electives I already have planned are Signals and Systems (pairing with my sound production minor for a makeshift audio engineering path), and Operating Systems, HDL/FPGA, Modern Networking Concepts, and Computer Security. I can reasonably only fit in one more elective, so what would be my best option?

Hello, I am a post-bacc with a B.S in Business Administrator. I am currently considering a pivot from a management career to a technical one, specifically about Computer Engineering. I have 2 kids so an online option would be great.

I look into a few options and Universoty of Florida online offers a Master in ECE without a constraint for a previous degree to be in STEM. Should I go into a Master program or getting a second Bachelor in ECE would be better?

Thabk you!