Useful qualifications to gain as a newbie engineer?

[chandin]

HI Everyone,

So i'm in need of some advice and this is one of the best places to get it so here I am .
I finished university with a power engineering degree a couple of years ago and now working in a consultancy company that deals with power engineering.

I am interested in gaining some qualifications part time as I work.
So i've got a few questions.

1) Is it worth doing a masters in power engineering? Is it going to give me much of an edge in the long term?
2) Are there any other qualifications that would better improve my career prospects in the future?


Thanks

[Bored@Work]

If you work in a consultancy, isn't a usual qualification an MBA or a PhD and then screw your customers even harder?

[KJDS]

Generally the technical side will come through on the job learning. There's little advantage to having a masters in real life.

What will make a difference are your soft skills, presentation, writing, people etc. If you can't communicate your ideas and persuade people about them then your influence on an organization is diminished.

[Telequipment]

I know the owner of a electronics repair company, if you went to him with an arm full of qualifications you wouldn't stand a chance, he always says , there is a world of difference , in having paper work to say you can do the job ,and actually doing it, his 4 engineers have no qualifications except real experience.

[don.r]

Big companies look for higher degrees, particularly in R&D. I have a MASc in EE and was the lowest qualified in my research group (all PhD's). Knowledge and experience count for more in my book, however.

[Dave]

The fact is you need both, theoretical knowledge and experience. If you lack either, you are a shitty engineer. Period.
Theory without experience is only good for 'paper engineers' (the ones that just talk all the time, but never really do anything).
Experience without theoretical knowledge is like stabbing in the dark - even if you do make a circuit work somehow, it's probably trial and error.

his 4 engineers have no qualifications except real experience.

An experienced 'engineer' may be good enough for repairs, but he's practically useless when it comes to R&D.

[Telequipment]

 Personally I'm just a hobbyist, and enjoy the success I'm getting with practical circuits, that I can use with my amateur radio station, yes I have failures, also I'm doing the theory, in bite size pieces, and learning pic programing as well, my present endeavour is a pic based frequency counter, and I'm learning so much from it, I have a couple of old radio's I have here and at some stage fault find. the 4 engineers, don't do digital stuff , there field seems to be tube amps, old TV's pre surface mount, and a awful lot of restoration work, so it's not the high tech, one of them as I recall does do video recorders and camcorders, none of it is digital though, if it is it's the early stuff.

[don.r]

The fact is you need both, theoretical knowledge and experience. If you lack either, you are a shitty engineer. Period.
Theory without experience is only good for 'paper engineers' (the ones that just talk all the time, but never really do anything).
Experience without theoretical knowledge is like stabbing in the dark - even if you do make a circuit work somehow, it's probably trial and error.

Indeed you need both but a qualification does not guarantee either, although its supposed to infer some kind of minimum standard on knowledge. I believe this is why large corps often rely on advanced degrees as there is some sort of implicit filtering going on there but I have personally found that its not always the case.

his 4 engineers have no qualifications except real experience.

An experienced 'engineer' may be good enough for repairs, but he's practically useless when it comes to R&D.

Difficult to say until you have worked with the person. I have met many undegree'd 'engineers' who are quite good at both.

[Dave]

I agree, a paper does not guarantee that the person actually knows stuff. There are always those, that manage to slide through the exams with barely sufficient grades. Their limited amount of knowledge on the subject often fades very rapidly after passing that certain exam.
But really, how many people are there, that manage to slide through a few years of college and get a degree, without picking up any knowledge along the way? I have yet to meet one.

And think about it this way, you are an employer, and someone sends you a resume, that says they have absolutely zero formal education on whatever it is you are doing in your company, but has 'tons of experience' from his hobby. Would you even bother to invite this person over for an interview? I really doubt it.

[IanB]

I know the owner of a electronics repair company, if you went to him with an arm full of qualifications you wouldn't stand a chance, he always says , there is a world of difference , in having paper work to say you can do the job ,and actually doing it, his 4 engineers have no qualifications except real experience.

You should understand the difference between an engineer and a technician. An engineer designs, invents and creates new products. A technician repairs, maintains, and keeps things working.

the 4 engineers, don't do digital stuff , there field seems to be tube amps, old TV's pre surface mount, and a awful lot of restoration work, so it's not the high tech, one of them as I recall does do video recorders and camcorders, none of it is digital though, if it is it's the early stuff.

Repairing and restoring things is a different skill from creating things. There are many people who expertly restore old and classic motor cars to an excellent condition, but that doesn't mean they are qualified to get a job as an automotive design engineer (nor do they need an engineering degree to do what they do).

[jpb]

It depends what country you're in.

In several countries professional bodies run accreditation schemes which are supposed to demonstrate that you've acquired suitable professional experience. In the UK
it is the IEE and to become a chartered engineer you need to jump through several hoops such as a.) have an accredited degree, b.) join the IEE, c.) have worked for n years in the right sort of job d.) get sponsorship from an existing chartered member etc.

In the US the IEEE I think takes a more relaxed approach.

I know becoming a chartered engineer is very important for civil engineers but much less so for electrical/electronic engineers. I never bothered and neither did most of my colleagues.

[IanB]

In several countries professional bodies run accreditation schemes which are supposed to demonstrate that you've acquired suitable professional experience. In the UK
it is the IEE and to become a chartered engineer you need to jump through several hoops such as a.) have an accredited degree, b.) join the IEE, c.) have worked for n years in the right sort of job d.) get sponsorship from an existing chartered member etc.

In the US the IEEE I think takes a more relaxed approach.

It's slightly different. In the UK the IEE assesses eligibility for CEng registration of electrical engineers on behalf of the Engineering Council.

In the USA the IEEE does not do this. Rather the individual states do the assessment and granting of the P.E. license for engineers in all branches under the umbrella of the NCEES. It is no less difficult to obtain a P.E. license in the USA as a CEng registration in the UK.

[AndyC_772]

I know the owner of a electronics repair company, if you went to him with an arm full of qualifications you wouldn't stand a chance, he always says , there is a world of difference , in having paper work to say you can do the job ,and actually doing it, his 4 engineers have no qualifications except real experience.

I completely agree with IanB's comment - it's his four technicians that have experience but not the qualifications. For some reason there seems to be a stigma around the use of the title "technician" which is a real pity.

If, for example, my car develops a fault, I'll take it to an automotive technician, or mechanic. A competent mechanic will have some knowledge of common faults on a given car, and will have the practical skills to remove, test and replace parts quickly and without causing damage. A good one will also have enough understanding of how the car works to be able to find and identify unusual problems that he's not come across before, and may even be able to come up with minor modifications to prevent them from happening again.

I don't, however, expect him to be able to carry out finite element analysis of the gas flow in the combustion chamber. He doesn't need to calculate the proper diameter of a gearbox shaft, or specify the correct grade of steel for a suspension component. These things are done by Engineers - who may or may not posess the skills to carry out an oil change by themselves.

[EEVblog]

The fact is you need both, theoretical knowledge and experience.

A Masters or PhD typically gains you very little in the way of broad theoretical skill. Unless you go for a job that is in a similar field you did your masters of PhD thesis on (which is the usual case you like to shoot for), then you aren't really bringing any extra theoretical skills to the job, just an extra bit of paper (which to some people hiring is important, rightly or wrongly).
A masters by coursework is going to be better than a masters by thesis in this respect.
But really, anyone who thinks you have a better broad theoretical knowledge because you have done post-graduate studies is pretty much kidding themselves. You might have gained some better research skills or some such, but usually not broad knowledge. More so PhD than Masters of course, but a masters by thesis is by it's very nature going to be a pretty narrow field of study, just like a PhD. That's the intent of most post graduate study.

[EEVblog]

And think about it this way, you are an employer, and someone sends you a resume, that says they have absolutely zero formal education on whatever it is you are doing in your company, but has 'tons of experience' from his hobby. Would you even bother to invite this person over for an interview? I really doubt it.

If it's an entry level job, yes, absolutely.
If it's an experienced job that requires experience in a particular field then in theory the hobbyist still gets an equal shot with the formally qualified person. i.e. I ask them to show me evidence of their projects, and the best match gets the job. Of course, hobbyist stuff is often not up to the same standard as professional work, just by the very nature of it, so it's a harder sell. But when I've interviewed people I have seen some very professional hobby projects, so yes, it's possible.

It goes back to the old adage, that once you get your first job, your qualifications become almost irrelevant.

[Dave]

A Masters or PhD typically gains you very little in the way of broad theoretical skill.

I was talking about a bachelor's degree, as opposed to no formal education at all. I think there is quite a lot of broad fundamental knowledge you are given in your first years of academic education. It's not just that, you are taught how to think like an engineer, you start seeing things you have never paid attention to before. At least that's how I see it.

But I agree with master's and doctoral degrees being only useful on a very specific field of work. That's exactly why many doctorates are awarded to people for researching stuff their employer needs.

[Telequipment]

And think about it this way, you are an employer, and someone sends you a resume, that says they have absolutely zero formal education on whatever it is you are doing in your company, but has 'tons of experience' from his hobby. Would you even bother to invite this person over for an interview? I really doubt it.

If it's an entry level job, yes, absolutely.
If it's an experienced job that requires experience in a particular field then in theory the hobbyist still gets an equal shot with the formally qualified person. i.e. I ask them to show me evidence of their projects, and the best match gets the job. Of course, hobbyist stuff is often not up to the same standard as professional work, just by the very nature of it, so it's a harder sell. But when I've interviewed people I have seen some very professional hobby projects, so yes, it's possible.

It goes back to the old adage, that once you get your first job, your qualifications become almost irrelevant.

I must be doing it right then hobbyist, a lot of practical , plus theory, all I need now is a retirement job to look forward to,say in 6 Years, hope I'll have learned enough job done

[Bored@Work]

The fact is you need both, theoretical knowledge and experience.

A Masters or PhD typically gains you very little in the way of broad theoretical skill.

This really depends on your local university system.

And we can argue what are broad theoretical skills. A university nearby loves to torture master students with advanced theory and calculation of electro-magnetic waves. Some might argue this is the base of all of EE, others might argue this is "only" good in some fields of EE. They also expect their students to publish at least one scientific paper in preparation for their master thesis. You can now argue this means they have to publish about some narrow theoretical subject, or you can argue this is part of teaching them to in general follow stricter scientific standards, and the subject doesn't matter, it is just training material.

Regarding PhD's in EE, they are typically full of insane math here. Is that a broad skill or a narrow skill? Broad, because it is math, narrow because the math is "just" used to drill down into a very specific subject. The thing with the EE PhDs I typically meet in the job, those who didn't become managers, is they typically don't work in the narrow field they did their PhD in. But they are pretty much capable to outthink you in a wimp. Because what they did learn when doing their very specific PhD, is to dig deeply into any subject. BTW, typically doing an EE PhD here takes five years.