I have a BSME from Drexel University in Philadelphia. I graduated in 2000 and was actually working as an ME 3 years before that with the co-op program that Drexel runs.
I have worked in several industries, and I took a while to really find my place. I worked in manufacturing plants making timing chain twice as a co-op, then I worked in chemical plants doing reliability studies on pump seals for my third co-op.
Got my first “real” job working in a nuclear power plant and hated it. Went back to pump seals and liked it, but it was a nowhere position. Switched companies 2 more times, and now I run all of the mechanical engineering projects and programs for a chemical company. I have 15 sites in the US and South America that I am responsible for.
I love what I do. I make good money at it, the company takes good care of me, and I am well respected by my peers. I’m known for pulling solutions out of thin air on demand----and that in itself keeps my salary climbing.
I’m not anywhere near the typical engineer. Most people don’t believe I am an engineer when I tell them. I’m 6’3", 380 (and working my way down), tattoos all over my arms, and I’m a top ranked bench press competitor (best lift of 905 pounds).
Almost all of my co-workers are a mess. There are maybe 3 or 4 people who are skinny-fat runners and run marathons and whatnot. 1 Chem E is in shape and fairly built. That’s it.
My first year was the hardest because my highschool didn’t really prepare me for going to college for mechanical engineering. I failed my statistics course and nearly failed a few others. But after getting some more math under my belt things shaped up.
Hardest ME classes:
Physics 2 & 3
Chemistry
Differential Equations (had a D going into the final; got an 89 on the final, whew!)
It took me way too long to really put my social life in 2nd place behind my courses…but I had fun
Your missile targeting/positioning, cool homing devices using cameras, communication, etc. wouldnt work without us computer engineers. So we’re joining you on the fun part (destruction, not building).
PonceDeLeon wrote:
Ok, since we have so many engineers chiming in:
What class(es) really knocked you on your ass in your undergrad?
For me, it was physics E&M. I had to retake that class several times. It’s been the only class to really mess me up and, looking back, I have no clue why it really did that to me, but it did.
Circuit analysis roughed me up some but E&M really made me talk to God.
My first year was the hardest because my highschool didn’t really prepare me for going to college for mechanical engineering. I failed my statistics course and nearly failed a few others. But after getting some more math under my belt things shaped up.
Hardest ME classes:
Physics 2 & 3
Chemistry
Differential Equations (had a D going into the final; got an 89 on the final, whew!)
It took me way too long to really put my social life in 2nd place behind my courses…but I had fun ;)[/quote]
I had similar issues, but chem and diff eq were the worst. To this day I don’t understand diff eq, and thankfully I don’t need to. Passed Diff EQ 1 and 2 with D’s, and I was ok with that. Still graduated with a 3.15.
I think the distinction between engineering and software development is very much there. Software development is enormously more complex than structural, mechanical, or chemical engineering because it involves inordinately many more “moving parts”, is almost always constantly in flux with ever-changing requirements, and is far less “provable”. This also has the effect of introducing N bugs per kloc, whereas modern bridges and buildings usually don’t fall down N times per floor. It has been likened to half art, half science, half craft, and I tend to agree with that sentiment.
Anyway, on topic, I am cs/cse, and currently work as a software architect. I actually started off life as a huge computer nerd, and only discovered iron about 6 years ago as an adult.
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Project requirements change all the time, regardless of the field. Stop whining… lol. Also, I don’t know how you can make such a blanket statement that program design is enormously more complex than other engineering disciplines.
I design downhole tools for oil and gas. We are talking 60 foot assemblies that travel miles into the earth with multiple sub-systems some of which sense tension/compression, pressure, temperature, some are positional locators, some have gamma rays, some are tractors which pull the tool because the well is horizontal at the ends and u can’t use gravity anymore. There are even tools which go down, drill a hole in the side of the casing (keeps the well structured and seperated from the formation), seal around the hole so as not to contaminate the sample, take the sample and seal it hermetically so that it remains in its initial environment, then seals the casing wiht a plug. It can do this multiple times. Oh by the way, it all has to work at 25,000psi+ and 400F. If your work is “enormously more complex” than that, I don’t see how it would ever get finished.
I’ll be getting a degree in Industrial Engineering this December, and I think you could argue our field can be the most diverse. IE’s have opportunities to go into safety, process, quality, systems, efficiency, healthcare, etc, and typically have a lot of management skills.
We likely won’t be able to match the technical detail of an ME or ChemE, but we look at a bigger picture.
B. Eng in materials engineering here, working now as a Metallurgical Engineer. In Canada, I think the P. Eng. is more common than in the US, since there’s no real point in being an engineer without one, and I’m still working towards that. For those of you going into studies right now, the most important thing to keep in mind is that working as an engineer is nothing at all like studying engineering. You should definitely be taking a Co-op program or looking for internships while you’re in school, because 8 months on the job will teach you more than twice that amount of time in class, and you’ll actually know what you’re getting into.
And I’ll change things up and say that Mining Engineers are the most productive in terms of delivering the goods to society. They’re the first step in making pretty much everything.
I got a MSc in Computer Engineering but I set my foci in Computer Science related areas.
I actually have a penchant for picking up languages (grown up speaking three languages) and have great innate memorization skills.
In contrast, during school I had been bad and very uninterested in maths. People kept telling me that I had no talent for it and should be content with barely passing the exams. So I took up an engineering discipline in university, just out of pride. And came to like it and excel at it.
[quote]debraD wrote:
I have a diploma in Applied Electronics and wanted to carry on with an Electronics Engineering degree but at the time there were very few university’s offering applied science degrees with the diploma so I went for a degree in Comp. Sci. It ends up half of the programmers (or Software Engineers Ponce :D)) I work with have their degrees in Electronics Engineering, and no CS education.
I do actually use my electronics background quite a bit, but that’s because of the nature of the programming I do.[/quote]
Gawd, hot AND armed with a diploma in electronics? Let me be your biasing resistor baby. You’ll be my transistor :)in potential divider bias. So yeah I’m open to multiple resistors while the circuit is being operated. How Kinky and romantic eh?
[quote]blaque.ops wrote:
Anyone here engineered their own squat rack or other homemade gym equipment?[/quote]
Eh, kinda. I had a lat pull down bar from my old cable stack/ rack, so I screwed some bicycle hooks to the rafters in the laundry room and hung that from them. Made a very nice chin up bar.
Tried making a dip belt out of an old power belt with some chains and carabiners, but ended up blowing the buckles apart.
