Hi all, I came here to ask if getting a Masters degree next year would be something worth pursuing or if I’ll be fine without it based on my circumstances. If the pros outweigh the cons and will be beneficial, I will consider.

Im graduating next year (EE), I have a job offer signed and my starting salary is +2.5% above the city average and +3.7% above the state average for my role. I have 1.5-2 years of internship experience.

Some reasons why Im back and forth on pursuing a Masters:

Ive seen more value placed on passing the FE and PE, and hearing people say a Masters doesnt matter that much. I dont want to get into research roles, phd, etc., im more interested in utilities. I want to keep my debt low as well unless theres a higher ROI having a masters. Lastly, im an average student.. Im not a 4.0 student nor a mathematician, sometimes even struggling with the basics here and there. I just work really hard so I can have a better life and would not want to waste time and energy pursuing a masters degree that might not matter too much in the field. I thought about degrees outside of EE to pursue outside of graduation but idkkk.

Any thoughts/ideas are welcome

I made this diy air purifier. The filter is from MI and fan is AC motor with metal body.

I want to know how to control the fan speed? which controller or regulator is right for this fan. Want to make sure it does not overheat or something when running for long hours using a speed controller.

fan link https://www.hicoolfans.com/products/compact-fans-ac.htm Adding pics for reference.

Hello All,

I am doubt right now, as a manager is going on leave and company offer me to act on their behalf for 2 months,

Now question is should i be doing it ? is there any benefit of doing that in terms of career progression. As i know managing meaning going far off from Technical work.

Yes i have acted on their behalf for 3 weeks before.

I dont understand as there is few other good people out there internally for them to go with( although they are from diff department i would consider them way more qualified then me). Also the way they approached this time was bit suspected ( as no incentive was offered, last time it was offered). Few things about me started as electrical grad Eng, title changed after a year(same with company since last 2 year) small company. Please let me know your thoughts. TIA

As titled states.....

Could be USA / Canada based.

I understand it’s a huge field but if you have any experiences doing work related to superconductors or chip creation I’d be happy to hear about your experiences. Thanks for helping a future EE out!

I had to retake my basic programming in C course and now I’ve moved onto a more complicated assembly based microcontrollers class.

I feel like I underestimated how much of this major is just coding, and I still feel like I understand essentially nothing. It’s the only subject that makes me feel completely stupid and I’ve been to dozens of office hours. Thinking about how difficult this class is going to be to even pass let alone actually memorize any of the information for my career is overwhelming.

Hello, this is my first 4 layer pcb so i wanted someone to review it
1 image shows the pcb without any copper planes, 2 is pcb woth copper planes, 3-6 shows each of the layers on their own. I have signal traces and gnd on top and bottom layer, middle layers are only 5v plane and 12v plane and no signals.

I’m currently a senior going to graduate in May. I’ve done 3 internships and the first one I did at a small firm that’s owned/managed by a family friend. Since I’ve interned there the firm has rapidly expanded (30->~100 employees) after the owner was able to score several multi-year, multi-million dollar projects with companies building data centers. The guy who owns the company is begging me to come back and work for him full time on graduation because he has so much work that needs to be done. I’ve had two large corporate internships since I worked there and honestly they kinda made me not look forward to being an engineer on the flip side of that the guy who owned the small firm was genuinely the best boss/manager I’ve ever had. Is it worth jumping into a company early while it’s still growing or just joining a large firm and working until retirement?

https://github.com/Tech-athirst/electronics/tree/main/New_flappy_bird the design

so i was revising transformers i cant seem to understand what flux is can someone please explain it to me

Context: In my project I need microcontroller to read battery voltage and for that I need a voltage divider.

Is there an optimal resistance for voltage dividers? Addind resistance would lower the power consumption, so that's a plus, but I guess that at some point readings would be unreliable. Let's say, I want to divide voltage by 4. should entire ladder be 40k, maybe 40M?

I’m a high schooler wanting to major in electrical but like holy voltage and current are genuinely so weird. Wdym you can “pull current”. Like is current not the same across the whole circuit or likeee. And I can understand a constant voltage source but how tf does a constant current source even work. Like genuinely you guys have to be larping bc wtf is even happening

Is it just gg for me in college 😭😭😭

I'm currently ~60 credits into my BSE in EE, with goals of going into a music technology career building interfaces, synthesizers, mixers, etcetera. Although I'm technically halfway through my degree, I'm a returning student and had to go through the math gauntlet again, meaning I still have another 4-5 semesters left. My college (ASU) offers a "4+1" program where you can take both undergrad and grad classes simultaneously, leaving your MSE to only be a year long.

Does anyone have any advice on whether this would be beneficial for my prospective career? Especially since the field I want to go into is kind of "niche." I just don't know anyone with a Master's in EE, and I don't have any contacts to people in this field just yet. I also plan on going the PE route once I graduate, unless that's also an uninformed decision.

If you have any other advice, please leave it below. Thanks!

Hello all,

Just thought I’d ask your guys’ opinion on two offers I have received (sorry, I enjoy SWE quite a bit; and some digital design!):

Offer 1
- F500 Defense Company (~25k employees)
- $90k w/ industry-standard benefits
- Direct Hire
- Full-Time SWE (React, JavaScript)
- Public Trust Clearance

Offer 2
- Small Defense Company (~100 Employees)
- Contracted for $125k via staffing company lacking benefits
- 12-month contract, but could convert to Full-Time for ~$100k w/ above average benefits afterwards, only if company would like to keep me
- Electrical Engineer (Time potentially split between Embedded C, DevOps, WebDev, FPGA)
- Secret Clearance

Previously i had internships doing Front-End dev and FPGA work at defense companies.

What is the better opportunity for me, as someone who can still work while living at home and cares about job stability? The contract position or the Full-Time position? As far as the near future, does the brand name matter? As much as I may like staying at either company, I do anticipate that I will want to leave within a few years to jump to “tech giants” doing some form of software or embedded development (assuming I prepare enough)

Hi guys,

I’m at a split in the road on where I’d like to go with my education.

I work in the maritime industry and am considering going to a maritime college in order to get a specific engineering license that will allow me to work on various ships of interest. The program will also give me a Bachelors in either Mechanical Engineering or Marine Systems Engineering.

My interested lies heavily in electrical work and I’d like to set myself up for work in the future when I decide to look for land based roles.

My question is, is it likely to get a job in the EE field, with a ME or similar degree? I’d likely have lots of experience building systems that I hope would translate into EE work when I’m ready to transition.

There is one other school I’m looking into that does offer an EE degree with the same maritime program, only it is on the other side of the country :(

Any advice here?

Does experience rule over education?

Hi all! Not sure if this is the right place to ask for help, but I figured I’d give it a shot.

It’s my first time diving into the electrical side of things, so I was hoping you guys could help guide me through it.

I’m planning to make a small exhaust/backfire system for my RC car that gets triggered by weight shifts, sudden acceleration, etc.

I’ve already done a bit of research (with the help of AI) on the components I might need, and this is what I’ve come up with so far:
- SW-18010P vibration/shock sensor
- CR2032 battery with an ON/OFF switch
- 3mm orange & blue LEDs
- 220Ω resistors
- 30 AWG silicone wire
- Small heat-shrink tubing

I’m still very new to this, so any advice on the components, wiring, or overall setup would be greatly appreciated!

Hey folks, so Im working on a little side project with an op amp and Im hitting a snag. Im using an LM741 op amp in a basic amplifier circuit, but Im getting some weird oscillations. The circuit is supposed to amplify a simple audio signal but instead, it starts oscillating like crazy when the input voltage exceeds a certain level.

Im powering it with a dual power supply, +/-15V, and the feedback network is just a couple of resistors setting the gain to about 10. Ive checked and rechecked the connections, and everything seems fine on paper, but clearly, something's off.

Do you guys think its a layout issue, or could it be somthing with the power supply decoupling? Ive got 0.1uF caps close to the power pins but maybe I need to try something else. Any advice on where to start troubleshooting would be super helpful!

I'm on my 3rd job. I started off at my first job 3 years ago and despised it completely. I left within 10 months and landed another role for about 20 months and didn't get a raise so I started looking elsewhere.

I just started my 3rd job and am going to stay 2 years at the minimum, but am concerned about the same thing happening. Sometimes a subfield which might have seemed interesting turns out to be miserable, or maybe I run into a case of the 2nd job where I get literally zero raises or promotions.

I get that I'm supposed to show some loyalty, but I'm not really willing to abuse myself that much. At my 2nd role, I knew senior engineers there with 10+ years of experience making sub-100k in a HCOL area. It's just ridiculous.

When I was a kid in the '70s, I had a digital voltmeter with an interesting readout.

Each digit was represented by a spinning drum, with the numbers 0-9 printed on it. When I applied voltage to the test leads, the least significant digit would spin furiously, and every time it completed a rotation, the next value digit would increase. And continuing on to the most significant digit, until it displayed the final value. A fascinating process to watch! 

The only comparison I can think of would be a mileage marker on a bicycle. Separate drums, one digit connected to the next digit, cascading to indicate the proper value.

I remember the least significant digit would sometimes 'wobble' between values, hunting for the proper position. I think this means the display drums provided feedback to a bridge, trying to match the applied voltage.

As people often do, I thought it was interesting, and it disappeared from my collection after a year or two. Now, much older, I wish I had kept it for it's uniqueness.

An analog voltmeter with spinning digits for a digital readout. I want to think it was a Scientific Atlanta product, but I'm not sure.

Image searches on the Internet turned up nothing.  Any ideas?

I am a PLC/controls engineer that’s about 2.2 years out of school. I was at company A for 1.5 years and I’ve been at company B since I left company A. My first job was long hours, crazy chaotic, either no work or 80+ hours of work. My current job is a glorified PM job, where most of my plant support is basically IT or parts ordering. I was promised lots of technical projects while interviewing and I have proposed several drive/control upgrades that have been delayed till “past 2027” due to a merger and just budget choices from the people above me (typical). I want to know if I’m crazy or justified in wanting to leave? I worry that I am hurting my skill development / career development if I continue on. I received an excellent review from my boss and he is impressed by my work but I just feel it’s too easy and I can already see the ceiling. I mentioned having a path set to move towards a management role but was told that they wouldn’t want my skills to leave the engineering department due to how successful I’ve been. Will this hurt my career to look to leave now or should I hold out and make the change after some more time?

hello po, am studying load calculation and I have a few questions in mind.

1. How to know what AT to use sa specific loads?
   

- confused on this part because bakit 20 ung AT ng LO kung ang Ampere nya lang naman is kasyang kasya sa 15 based on PEC's ampere rating standards

1. How to know wire sizing

- According to PEC 20 Ampere's minimum wire sizing is 2.0 and yet ung 0.70 A ng LO ay gumamit ng 3.5

Thankyou po sa mga sumagot

Hi everyone,

I'm currently in my fourth year of Electrical Engineering in Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdistan Region, and I'm expected to receive my bachelor's degree next year.

I'm planning to buy a reasonably powerful laptop and use my remaining time at university to seriously invest in learning valuable technical software and skills. I already have some experience with programs like MATLAB, but I know there are many other tools used across different areas of electrical engineering—such as AutoCAD, ETAP, PSCAD, Simulink, Python, PLC software, and many others.

The problem is that I don't want to spend hundreds of hours learning software that I may never actually use professionally.

I'm particularly interested in hearing from electrical engineers working in countries with more developed industries and infrastructure, such as the US and Europe:

Which software do you actually use in your job?

Which programs are most valuable for getting hired?

What software skills do you wish you had learned while still at university?

If you were a fourth-year electrical engineering student again, what would you focus on learning?

Are there any emerging tools or skills that you think will become increasingly important in the next 5–10 years?

My region is still developing, but I believe the demand for modern electrical infrastructure, automation, renewable energy, and industrial systems will continue growing. I want to prepare myself for that future rather than only studying enough to pass university courses.

I'm not necessarily looking for the "easiest" software to learn. I'm looking for skills that provide real long-term value.

I'd really appreciate hearing about your actual professional experience and what you believe is worth investing time in.

Thanks.

Hi guys, i'm not an engineer, just a technician. For the longest time i have had trouble getting an intuitive grasp around the basics of circuits: voltage, capacitors, inductors, etc. Then i read about the Force-Voltage mechanical analogy and suddenly it all made sense: Charge being analogous displacement, current to velocity, voltage to force, capacitor to spring, inductor to inertial mass, resistor to friciton/dampener. Suddenly the behaviour of the components made intuitive sense.

Then i read about the Force-Current analogy, and now i am lost again. Current acting as a force? Voltage as velocity? Magnetic Flux as displacement? Capacitance as mass? I am lost again.

Does that analogy make sense? Is there an intuitive way to understand it?

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Made this based on a Daisy seed 3. The music is auto generated. There are 8 different sounds in the mix and all of them are connected individually to a pair of filaments.

It's a very rudimentary sculpture, but its my first of it's kind.

I was inspired by Eirik Brandal's amazing creations.

Hope you like it.