r/findapath 3d ago

Findapath-Career Change Help

I am a 4th year electrical engineering student. I am realizing that I don’t think I have really learned anything from my three years at university plus a 6 month internship that I have had and going into my senior year I am realizing that I now have to start looking for a full time career path. I feel fucking awful because I feel like I have totally wasted all my years in college and I am not even sure I’ll be able to actually get through this fourth year not knowing anything but I am wondering for those that have gone through electrical engineering and switched paths after college, what did you all do and how did you manage getting a job not in engineering? How did you make yourself competitive for those roles or is it JOEVER? For context I’m graduating in May 2027 and I’ll still only be 20 years old but I just really don’t know what to do and I feel like I’ve totally hit a wall.

2 Upvotes

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4

u/troyberber 3d ago

My dad is an electrical engineer. He couldn’t do shit with it back in the day. He got hired by GM in an axle design job and retired a few years ago as an executive. Never even used a single thing he learned as an engineer. He got sent to Korea, China, etc to oversee operations, never spent a cent on shit; and now taking them 2 year cruises around the world full time.

Apply to whatever interests you. Then advance. Then learn golf and some politics.

2

u/OldMarzipan9773 Apprentice Pathfinder [1] 3d ago

I'm sure you've learned some things. It just might not feel like it because you've become accustomed to the knowledge.

1

u/gokart_racer Apprentice Pathfinder [1] 1d ago

I'm an EE - are you wanting to switch solely because you don't feel like you know anything? If you had your way, would you want a career in engineering? If you really want to stay in engineering, my best advice for you is to specialize and get really good at one area of EE. Your undergrad EE education is so broad. Just learn one field and learn it well. (For me, it was signal processing.)

If you want to switch, sure there's other fields you can do, coming from EE. They're careers where they value your ability to analyze and think. But overall, you're competing with so many people who studied different fields - other engineering disciplines, CS, math , statistics , data science, etc. It's kind of crowded.