Seems like the best board on this place to ask. Getting out of the military soon and deciding if i should pursue electronic/electrical engineering or get like an associates in like industrial electronics or robotics and stay a technician.
>Engineers have more career progression and make more money but idk if I have the brain power/creativity/intelligence.
On the other hand
>I like working on electronics, servo systems, radars, troubleshooting and all that cool jazz but from looking on indeed and LinkedIn it seems like dog shit pay and no forward momentum.
I'm stuck and would like some inputs from y'all's experience to see how both worlds operate.
I can't read all that
> greentext
cause my phone is in sun down mode, but
> engineer
then
> do all that hobby building of boutique systems in the offtime you accrue.
You DO NOT want to be channeling your career into something that requires manual labor. Manual labor is for the young. Even if you do something incredibly dangerous and stupid, as long as your brain is intact, you can engineer stuff.
An engineer that has practical knowledge is useful. Too many will not in that profession, and that will frustrate machinists trying to build said item. By being multidisciplinary in your off-time, you'll build value into your career, and that will inevitably make you a lead engineer and then into other places.
How hard is it getting a job as an electrical engineer? I get job offers(mostly field service) for being a technician. For engineering will I have to do interns and shit cause I'ma need stable income and can't afford to frick around.
> Engineer
> Work for defense contractor, lockheed, raytheon, boeing, northrup grumann
> Your bombs turn little paki kids into skeletons
> 100-150k/yr after 2 yrs
> Sip rum punch at disney
> Life is good
I really want to do this. I'm 33 and about to graduate with my BSME and get out of my shitty blue collar grind. The money will be the same, but the quality of life will be so much better.
You already have work experience, there's no reason to get an associates. Go for engineering
EE since you can always downgrade or do both. Your practical experience makes you more capable than some gay who never worked on actual hardware.
Can an engineer do both? Would be cool but I imagine there would be a catch like its more responsibilities and doesn't pay as much
You can get an engineering job with a healthy amount of field/lab work but only in an entry level position. Any upward movement in your career will chain you to a desk.
>Can an engineer do both?
Companies don't like to give their engineers jobs that a technician can do. It's a waste of time and money to have someone do work they're overpaid and overqualified for. I've seen EEs get hired into technician jobs, but they're paid and treated like technicians.
It really depends what kind of work you want to do. Engineering is almost office sitting in a cubicle coding, using CAD software, doing spreadsheets. It's highly complex work, but still kind of boring sometimes. Technicians will be carrying toolboxes around worksites, taking measurements, splicing wires, running tests, etc. It sounds more exciting but when you get to middle age you'll probably start wishing you had a comfy office job instead of being on your feet all day.
I work at a mine that refuses to employ an engineering technician even though they certainly could justify it. The geologists and metallurgists both have an army of technicians, but all the technician work for engineering gets done by engineers. I have had many shifts getting paid an engineer's salary to take UCS samples and inspect boreholes and report all the results back to myself. It's pretty comfy tbh. I've told the managers that we'd get more done if we had a full time technician but they were totally against the idea as if I was just saying it to get out of work.
be careful with this logic.
i got into chemical engineering because "they can do chemistry jobs but a chemist can't do chem E jobs"
but chem E is not chemistry and if you want to do chemistry, you don't really learn all that much about it in chem E.
look up what jobs you want to do, and look up what degrees they want for those jobs. pretend that you have the degree and are looking for jobs. are those jobs things you would like to do?
I make more as a field service engineer...which is more like a technician, than I did as an electrical engineer. It's probably not typical though for most jobs, but its possible.
my industrial automation teacher in college was an EE. He's never actually worked as an EE. Just as a high school and college instructor. Before that he worked at a test equipment shop repairing multimeters and other test equipment.
The only thing you'll get, anymore, with an associates in electronics is a job called "electromechanical technician" - meaning they need someone to do a moronic process job, but they have to be smart enough to do some basic electrical shit without destroying everything.
Im a little late OP, i hope you and others see this.
Get a bachelors in EET, make sure its ABET accredited. School is more down to earth, hands on focused, and its normally structured as a 2+ degree (meaning getting an associates in ENG tech is part of the bachelors in case you hit a wall). The ABET accreditation means you can become a PE with that degree if you want AKA a real engineering degree.
Source: have a EET degree, spent last five years traveling as a technician (if you're willing to travel you'll make 6 fig easy, ive made 100-120 every year since graduating. also EE nerds get paid more because there's less of them, ME dweebs throw off salary statistics). I just accepted a salaried job as a controls engineer, "pay cut" to 98k, but i have a lot less responsibility.
it will be hard to get the first job with the tech degree, every interviewer will say "so you went to tech school" and you tell them your school was ABET accredited and its a real engineering degree. Having the military background will help you too, my company hires vets and farm kids with 4yr degress at a higher rate than anyone for their traveling tech jobs. School is easy if you like it, i forgot to quit after my associates and got a bachelors because i was so interested in the shit. I was a dumb farm kid who was the first in his family to go to college.
You can do it OP