Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

If this was a resume, I would immediately discard it based on poor grammar. People judge you by the way you write, and rightly so. Take the time to clearly and correctly make your point.

I write software requirements for a living, and I've seen a tremendous amount of time and effort wasted as a result of poor writing skills.

Posted by at September 17, 2007 02:27 PM

Hi Rand,
If you like, you can send these replies to young Mr. Wilkinson.

- Tom

1) What is an average day's work routine is like. This is a difficult question as different engineers perform different duties. I am an integration and test engineer, working at GSFC. Typically, we meet in the morning to discuss the day's activities. I spend the rest of the day overseeing hardware development, chasing down parts, writing integration procedures, and (sadly) going to meetings to give updates to my boss and other managers.

2) What is your particular job duties. My duties are to do whatever I need to do to allow our hardware assembly and integration to proceed. I write assembly procedures, coordinate part manufacture, and oversee assembly. Soon, I will be in charge of pushing the hardware through environmental tests (writing test plans, instrumenting the assembly, overseeing the tests, writing test reports).

3) What were some of the more helpful college courses you took to prepare you. In my job, physics, dynamics, statics, and math (especially geometry and trig).

4) Do you have any regrets of things you wished you would have done diffrently education wise. Yes, I wish I would have taken my college studies more seriously. I graduated with a GPA around 2.8, but could have done much better had I studied properly and worked harder.

5) As someone straight out of college what is the average starting salary. I haven't worked with 'fresh-outs' recently, but I believe those that work in my field as engineers start around $40-50,000 per year.

6) What high school classes do you believe helped you the most. Any high level math and science classes will be of help for an aspiring engineer.

Good Luck.

Posted by Tom W. at September 17, 2007 03:24 PM

1)Check and answer e-mail and phone messages, go to a meeting with the program manager for updates and direction, dig out data, then sit in front of my computer juggling numbers in spreadsheets before using other software tools to crunch them further. Eat lunch, then more or less repeat the data-digging and juggling of numbers. Not quite as dull as it sounds, but you won’t be seeing my day dramatized in a major motion picture.

2) I build cost models to estimate the development costs of software and hardware systems. I used to do much more fun stuff (test engineering for radar and rockets) but the money side of the business is more secure. The old saying is that if you ask a new engineer what makes a rocket fly, he’ll start a spiel about thrust ratios and ISP. If you ask an old engineer what makes a rocket fly, he’ll simply answer “money”.

3) Probability/statistics, stress analysis, engineering economics, and all the computer stuff helped, but quite honestly, the degree just gets you in the door so you can begin the real learning on the job.

4) I dreamed of designing interesting things; this never happened. For the amount of effort required, other career choices would probably provide better payback. It might’ve been wiser for me to learn a skilled trade like a plumber, electrician, or master mechanic, or to go into a specialty field such as actuarial science instead. The money would have been as good or better, job more secure, and more choices of where to live than aerospace/defense offers. But of course, in those jobs you'll never slap a hand on something that's going to Mars.

5) I graduated many years ago so I don’t know anymore, but I think my company pays fresh engineers approx. $50,000/yr to start.

6) Algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry, and auto shop (seriously, it’s got a lot in common with lab work).

Posted by Chuck at September 17, 2007 03:50 PM

Rand,

Here are my answers for Harley.

Stan

Work Day: Always changes. Some days I sit at my desk all day working on paperwork, test plans ro writing scripts. Other days I am setting up tests, assembling/moving equipment, going to meetings, debugging HW/SW, or keeping up to date.

College: Take theory/fundamentals classes as they will not become out of date very fast. Get hands on experience with summer jobs.

High School: Get into AP Calculus so that you can skip most of calculus in college. It really helps to have had the calculus before when you use it in your engineering classes. Get hands on experience with building/fixing/debugging stuff by joining a robotics team or equivalent.

Do lots of stuff so you can figure out what you love doing.

Kill your TV.

Good Luck

Posted by Stan Witherspoon at September 17, 2007 04:14 PM

1) This varies greatly depending on specific positions; in general:

Office environment: 40hrs/wk, conducting engineering analyses, preparing reports, attending training, performing geometric design, preparing contract plans, specifications, and estimates.

Field environment: 40-60+hrs/wk, inspecting, testing, and documenting construction work performed by others. May be night work depending on traffic.

2) I am a civil engineer with WSDOT - currently a design/construction team leader. I spent the last several years designing a new $58 million interchange, and am now supervising the construction. Depending on the day's activities, I have 5-10 engineers and technicians working for me to inspect, test, and document the work performed by our contractor. I review documentation, check calculations, interpret plans and specifications and make changes or corrections in response to errors or changed conditions.

3) Land Surveying. Technical Writing and Public Speaking.

4) I was in ROTC, and went into the Army after college, so I didn't work as hard at my engineering classes as I could have. I should have put more effort into hydraulics, hydrology, and soil mechanics especially - those would be especially useful now. I'd also recommend a summer internship.

5) $40-50K, according to our recruitment page. Government jobs are much slower to respond to market changes than the private sector (we just got a raise in July to "catch up" to within 25% of the state average salary for similar positions). From my observations, engineering jobs (especially government engineering jobs) don't scale with cost of living very well either. In the construction industry, there's opportunity for a lot of overtime.

6) Math - as much as you get. I went through AP Calculus in high school, and still had almost 2 years of math in college. I use geometry and trigonometry every day.

Posted by Ben Vincent at September 17, 2007 04:20 PM

Hi Harley,

I am now a Technical Program Manager for a large avionics company. I started in Engineering as a technician with a 2 year technical degree (Associates degree in Electronics Technology) and eventually finished my Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering by taking “night classes” and working days as a non-degreed design engineer. That is the hard way to do it, but many engineers do it that way and become very successful.

A lot of my time now is spent working with engineers who work for me. Instead of only solving design problems, I help these people get things they need, find information or locate someone else who can help them. Often, I end up working with people on the production line or technicians servicing products in the field. Other times, I work with different levels of management to answer their questions, provide progress reports, or help them understand things that my people need. It has really surprised me how satisfying it is to help other people solve problems.

You are probably going to hear that your ability to work well with other people and communicate effectively is more important than specific technical ability, genius, or the nature of your degree! Well, it is true. You should take every opportunity to practice working with other people. These opportunities are writing and speech classes, but also group activities like band, Boy Scouts, or team events like football, baseball or soccer.

Most of your time as an engineer will be spent “learning by doing”. You will find that you rarely have the skills or knowledge required for a particular job. This may seem like it makes no sense, but is actually a lot of fun because you’re constantly learning about new things while you’re getting paid! And the most important place you will learn is not in school, but from coworkers (or bosses) who already have the knowledge you need.

Now don’t take that last part out of context.

Formal education is critically important, and as far as I can tell, none is wasted. It is important because you are exposed to a tremendously broad base of information, but more importantly, you pick up learning techniques and self discipline.

There have been key points in my career when I could remember seeing something in a textbook or article, but could not remember the details. Because I could remember the general details, I was able to find the book and solve a difficult problem. I once used an obscure, 400 year old mathematical technique to solve a really difficult engineering problem. That method is now used every day around the world! I was introduced to that concept in my Calculus 3 course, and I can tell you that the mathematician who developed the technique never dreamed how his theory would be used today.

So you can see that it is important for you to be exposed to lots of information, even if you don’t see a need for it right away. You never know where inspiration will come from, Harley.

Now an average day really depends on the type of engineering you pursue, where you are in your career, your specific role on the project, and "when" you are in the project. You might be surprised to find that development projects follow a cycle in the same way a book plot progresses through a story arc. Fundamentally, you are a problem solver (the hero of the story!). So your job follows the problem cycle in just the same way that a book follows the plot line.

Salary information can be found in a magazine called EE Times. They used to publish an annual salary survey that could be 30 pages or more(so very detailed). I haven’t looked for years.

The high school courses that helped me the most were band, astronomy, art and physics. I really struggled with math. I still play in an orchestra, 30 years later and look at the stars for hours. What does band, art or astronomy have to do with engineering? Maybe it allows me to see problems differently, or turns on different parts of my brain. Maybe it’s just a fun diversion, but I really think it helps me see things differently, feel the flow of a problem, sense the timing of an event.

But maybe, it’s just all fun.

Have a great life Harley. Grab all of it you can.

Posted by Gerry A. Parker at September 17, 2007 05:04 PM

Thank you guys. When he said that he was going to post a forum on his blog I was a little worried that I wouldn't get the info I needed in time. I didn't expect so many people to post so quickly. This info will help me very much, thank you. If anybody could post their knowledge of aerospace engineering in particular it would be greatly appreciated.

Posted by Harley Wilkinson at September 17, 2007 05:46 PM

Harley,
What do you mean by "knowledge of aerospace engineering in particular?" Do you mean where to go to school? What prep courses you need to take? What one does with an AE degree? Best place to have those questions answered is the career councilors at Embry-Riddle or Georgia Tech or U of Maryland or other engineering school where you can get an AE degree.

Posted by Aleta at September 17, 2007 06:11 PM

Since the item (7) responses are all shading heavily towards math and science, let me put in a plea for as much WRITING as he can schedule. (Sometimes you will have to read things in order to write about them. Sometimes very stupid things, like "A Mill on the Floss." Deal with it, as long as someone competent critiques your WRITING.)

Even as an entry level engineer, you'll do a lot of writing. If you move into management, you'll do a helluva lot more writing than you do math. Most engineers can't write worth a damn. If you can do it well, you will outshine your peer group -- and, quite possibly, get better results with your assigned tasks. At the limit, you might save someone's life. See Tufte on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

I'm a Georgia Tech graduate, but I was fortunate enough to take writing-heavy courses in both high school and college... meaning a minor in history, and even a quarter of General Semantics (Hayakawa's book, which was watered-down Korzybski). I wrote thousands of words per week, which came back to me with red ink all over them. I became a better writer as a result.

Competent writing skills (NOT my ability to do tensor calculus) led directly to my first several promotions (field engineer to lead engineer to engineering project manager to engineering group manager... then I went apostate and switched to product manager, after which it was downhill to marketing, sales, and finally finance. :-)

Now I'm in academia, and most of my math braincells are occupied making sure budget items total. But I still write thousands of words a day.

Posted by Stephen Fleming at September 17, 2007 06:40 PM

Now I'm in academia, and most of my math braincells are occupied making sure budget items total. But I still write thousands of words a day.

Posted by Stephen Fleming at September 17, 2007 06:41 PM

Sorry for the double-post. I don't see a way to remove it. Oops.

Posted by Stephen Fleming at September 17, 2007 06:42 PM

Sorry. What I meant was, can i get some answers to my posted questions at the top of the page answered about aerospace engineering.

Posted by Harley Wilkinson at September 17, 2007 06:48 PM

This will be a bit orthogonal. Disclaimer: none of what follows is intended to contradict any other respondents; I am not worthy to untie the thongs of their sandals, etc.

Harley -

What an average day's work routine is like:

My particular job duties:

people

PMBOK

What were the more helpful college courses I took to prepare me:

Any regrets regarding my education:

Average starting salary straight out of college:

High school classes that helped me the most:

Now to answer what you did not ask.

You may become an engineer. You must become a man; and not just any sort of man, but a Westerner, an Anglospherist, and an American. Even - if the term still has any meaning, and since I live, as you do, in the land of Twain, Truman, and Heinlein, I'd like to think it does - a Missourian. There are certain ideas you must internalize to properly fill those roles, and many more cultural elements you must acquaint yourself with, however tangential or irrelevant they may seem. Do not disparage them, at least not publicly; and never forget that "soft skills" are at least as important as "hard skills."

May the Lord bless you and keep you. I'm serious about that, too.

Posted by Jay Manifold at September 17, 2007 07:20 PM

"You may become an engineer. You _must_ become a man"

Agreed. And here is what you must do to become a man:

Work hard.

Treat women, small children, and animals with kindness.

Do not engage in onanism.

Upon your fifteenth birthday, go into the woods, strip off all your clothes and cover yourself with mud, sharpen a stick, and kill a bear. Preferably a black bear, but a koala will suffice.

May the Lord bless you and keep you. I'm serious about that, too.

Posted by at September 18, 2007 06:17 AM

I'm an economic engineer. I design and qualify auctions. My auctions bought electricity for 1% of the world's population this year.

1) What is an average day's work routine is like.

2) What is your particular job duties.

Small company so I do everything except contracting and programming. Especially
requirements, QA, proposals, marketing,
R&D and management.

3) What were some of the more helpful college courses you took to prepare you.

Environmental engineering for back of the envelope calculations. Experimental economics and statistics for framing and hypothesis testing. Programming for technical skills and logical thinking. Discrete math and stochastic processes for building practical models, finding useful and effective solutions and the tools for discovery of theorems and laws that are novel.

4) Do you have any regrets of things you wished you would have done diffrently education wise.

Law seems to pay better, but no.

5) As someone straight out of college what is the average starting salary.

With a new Ph.D., it was $80k in 1996.

6) What high school classes do you believe helped you the most.

Debate for scepticism, marketing, advocacy and toast mastering. Advanced composition for patent claims.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at September 18, 2007 09:36 AM

1) Weeks are more similar than days. Between missions, there are several tier 3 (individual subsystem) meetings. They last about 2 hours or more. There is usually one tier 2 (system level) meeting per week. Every flight has a couple tier 1 (program level) meeting. Essentially, you solve problems at the tier 3 level. This is like project work groups in school. For instance, what to do with OMS Pod blankets that lift during ascent. The solution is then brought up through tiers.

Missions are a essentially the same, but instead of having weeks or months to make decisions; you have hours and days. You hone your skills between missions to solve problems quickly during missions.

2) JSC S&MA Subsystem Engineer. I do fault tree analysis, review probability risk assessments, evaluate change proposals to subsystem risk, and support test and verification activities.

3) Thermo Dynamics, Materials, Computer modeling, and Fluid Dynamics.

4) If you want to move from technical to management, you'll need a Masters. Not a regret, because technical is often more enjoyable. You can also get a Masters later, and even get a company to pay for it.

5) Usually you don't talk salaries. You go by the recruiters and what colleges will say. Better to look at how to bolster your starting salary... Try to get a Co-op/Internship at the company you want to work for. That's good for about 10-25% increase starting out. To improve hiring potential, focus on projects and cooperative activities even more than grades. You need to show ability to do work and to do that work with others.

6) Math, Science, English.

Good luck. My company is hiring.

Posted by Leland at September 18, 2007 09:47 AM

1) What is an average day's work routine like?

-- Check email, handle requests that come in from overseas on older projects.
-- Check on overnight progress on existing layout jobs (if any are going on)
-- Alternate between meetings or conference calls with customers and working on schematics, parts selection, simulations, layouts, etc.

2) What are your particular job duties?

Electrical engineer at a small engineering consulting company that specializes in wireless, DSP, and FPGA work. My main duties include hardware design and test, architecture design on some projects, PCB design and layout (or overseeing such), and some software work. I should start doing some project management in the next few months.

3) What were some of the more helpful college courses you took to prepare you?

FPGA design in VHDL
Digital Signal Processing
Technical Writing

4) Do you have any regrets of things you wished you would have done differently education wise?

I don't feel too strongly about any of this (I'm doing OK), but I might have been better off if I did a 2+3-year degree (2-year Associates degree as a tech and then 3 years of college to get my BSEE) instead of co-oping. I also should have either gone for my MSEE right after my Bachelors or skipped it entirely.

5) As someone straight out of college, what is the average starting salary?

8 years ago it was around $40k for a BSEE in the upper midwest.

6) What high school classes do you believe helped you the most.

Physics and all writing courses, and anything that encourages you to read consistently (have to communicate effectively).

Posted by Steve G. at September 18, 2007 10:34 AM

First my degree is in Physics not AE

1) What is an average day's work routine is like.
Varries. I do night vision cockpit lgihting for the USAF. So lab work, writing reports, testing optical properties of various devices. Travel. climb over air force jets.

2) What is your particular job duties.
Mostly I put out whatever fire has popped up most recently. Otherwise I'm responsible for making certain the data is correct, verifiable, and meaningful.

3) What were some of the more helpful college courses you took to prepare you.

None really. Solid state physics maybe. The degree is mostly to get your foot in the door. Every company is going to have their own way of doing things.

4) Do you have any regrets of things you wished you would have done diffrently education wise.

Yeah, I wish I'd studied Mechanical Engineering or Comp Science instead of Physics. Both pay better and have better opertunities.

5) As someone straight out of college what is the average starting salary.

Engineering is generally between $40-45K these days.

6) What high school classes do you believe helped you the most.

Take AP calculus as others have mentioned. If you can keep a quarter (or semester) ahead of your peers in math you will do very well in university level science and engineering classes. AP physics is good as well.

The most important book I have ever read though, had only passing conection to science and engineering though. Go read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Seriously.

Posted by Mark Horning at September 18, 2007 12:10 PM

Harley you might want to ask what degree we all have. Most engineers here have aero or mechanical eng degrees but I have a degree in Engineering Physics. Now to engage your questions.
1) I not at liberty to discuss this. Other than to say I was hired to do Dynamic Structural Analysis and Test (Vibration, Shock, Temp)
2) I not at liberty to discuss this.
3) Physics, Math, Programming, Lab report writing.
4) not many just take your core classes and add a year (5 year plan) to expand into anything that you find you like. A mechanical engineer that worked his way through college as an electronics tech but only got 2.5 GPA is usually more valuable in the real world then someone who had money and got a 4.0.
5) no idea. Software seem to get more.
6) Shop class! (Machine, Wood, or Auto shop, Welding, or Electronics) If you don't know what way to turn a wrench you shouldn't be allowed near a drawing board. Get your hands dirty. Build RC models or high powered rockets, drive an old beater car and rebuild it on the weekends. I don't trust any engineer that doesn't have some "project" at home. I'm building another house in my backyard the guy across from me is building an airplane, one cube over is a motorcycle head and down in the lab is a guy that rebuilds 1950's tractors. If you don't feel the need to "Make Stuff Work" then you probably will be very disappointed with engineering in general.

Posted by ryan at September 18, 2007 05:06 PM

What is an aerage day's routine like?

Try reading a few Dilbert comics.

Posted by anonymous at September 18, 2007 05:39 PM

I can't emphasis enough doing projects now. I'd hire you fresh out of college with a background of taking toasters apart sooner than someone with just book learning. An engineer needs to be able to think about *how* a solution can be achieved.

You say you want aerospace. I get that. I do that. But, it's not at all about the movies :) We spend *alot* of time talking to customers and writing supporting documents. We do lots of email since our folks are spread across 4 states. We do phone meetings so speaking clearly is important (join toastmasters or drama or speech courses-No Really!). I can't tell you how many projects have failed because the engineer couldn't convince the money people that they had a good solution! (if you can't communicate your idea, it doesn't matter how good it is)

Also, don't do aerospace unless you love the topic. Explore other kinds of engineering and see what interests you. Do you like energy, communications, fluid dynamics (which also applies to wind), materials science, robotics, "math"/"physics" or some other research-based science? Aerospace is not as stable as it once was but is starting to grow again as the current engineers are aging.

Volunteer/intern to get some realworld experience and see what you like. When I was in school the first time, I dreamed of working for TRW. Now I have my own company and I'm working on projects I really love, not *just* doing grunt work and spreadsheets. :)

Coming here for help shows you can think outside the box which is often very important. But hit the library, too to see what others have done.

Good luck. Drop us a line when you're ready!

Posted by tchris at September 19, 2007 10:49 AM

One other item I'd like to point out (it showed up in almost everyone's responses): Be willing to do whatever you need to do in order to get the job accomplished correctly. I have a MSME and have been working for 17+ years, and last Thursday I spent 3 hours copying and organizing our Critical Design Review. I will pick up parts, drive to vendors to deliver drawings, and even get water for our techs. Heck, I'd even wash your car if it helped the project move better. Don't take yourself too seriously or think a necessary job is beneath you.

Posted by Tom W. at September 19, 2007 01:33 PM

Background:
Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics
Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering
I work on an Air Force base. We do space simulation—specifically, we provide pressures and radiation backgrounds that approximate Earth’s atmosphere at 200 miles. Our test customers vary, but you’ve heard of them all.

1) What is an average day's work routine?
During a test: monitor every aspect of the test process and make adjustments as necessary. Early on, we’re busy; by the end of the test period my day should be downright boring—if we haven’t gotten the bugs out, we’re in trouble.
When we’re not testing: maintenance and repair of all equipment, build-up for future tests, plenty of government paperwork.
As a note: my company is unionized, so I don’t get to do a lot of wrench-turning, but I work closely with the guys who do.

2) What are your job duties?
Making sure that a test is successful. (See Tom W. @ 01:33 PM, September 19) There is no job that we won’t do if it will make our customer’s test run smoothly. (And someone will pay for it. Heed all the advice about being able to communicate to others, especially when it comes to rounding up money.)

3) What were some of the more helpful college courses you took?
Any course that required me to think; mechatronics probably tops that list because we had to design, build, program, debug, run, and repair a robot. If you find a teacher that pushes you mentally, take every class they teach, even if it’s not part of your core curriculum.

4) Do you have any regrets of about your educational path?
Not enough hands-on work. I wish I could have built more, tinkered more, gotten my hands dirty more. Join a mini-Baja or Formula 1 team; build a submarine or a concrete canoe, etc. I heartily agree with ryan @ 05:06 PM, September 18. Having a home project doesn’t make you a competent engineer, but all the competent engineers I know have a home project.

5) As someone straight out of college, what is the average starting salary?
For BS in ME, just shy of 50k—I checked my company’s stats.

6) What high school classes do you believe helped you the most?
I had 7 AP courses in high school, so I was able to take the courses I wanted in college. I think that flexibility was more valuable than any particular course.

You’ll probably have to take a couple of programming courses—I’d recommend becoming comfortable with at least one programming language. You’ll probably need it at some point, and it helps you think in a mode that can be helpful when working on a problem. Be VERY comfortable with Excel.

Posted by MBrown at September 19, 2007 03:15 PM

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