If you have degree's, how hard is it to find work from home EE jobs ?

[MathWizard]

I'm not thinking of if you had your own projects to make/sell, I mean doing some useful work for companies, maybe even on the other side of the world. Over the internet.

[jonpaul]

can your price compete with the Chinese or Indian, perhaps 2$/hr

[T3sl4co1l]

For what it's worth, in all my years I've never been asked to show my degrees.

Of course, I don't know whether my schools have ever been contacted to confirm the same.  They're welcome to, and will confirm it correctly of course (unless they tend not to give out that info because of privacy, I don't know honestly).

Yes, "other side of the world" probably isn't going to happen, at least economically speaking.  If you want to do it for fun I guess you could.

But yeah, there are people looking for that sort of thing.  You'll have a lot of sorting to do to to find good starting jobs to build a reputation (say on a freelance website), or for longer engagements / larger clients / more traditional contractor or employee relationships maybe the usual stuff (resume, references, networking..).

Tim

[MathWizard]

There's more EE jobs and tasks than I can imagine, but some would be like designing circuit X in simulators, and maybe making a prototype and testing it at home.

Or maybe someone just specializes in 1 field and has their own home lab and just always does whatever.

What about stuff where you never see or make circuits, but you just have to calculate stuff/go through equations all day ? I have a few math tools, I wish I lived in a time period when someone paid me to use them (I don't have degree's yet tho)

[SiliconWizard]

Degrees for "online" freelancing will not make your life much easier. While the demand for freelancers has grown a lot, there's even more competition, so that's tough. Sure, as you establish your reputation with provable experience and success, you'll relatively easily stand out, but when starting, it will be tough.

Your degrees won't help competing against literally thousands of young and well-educated engineers that will work for $10/hour. Those have degrees as well. That's a problem if you want to use one of those freelancing platforms.

Now if you do without those platforms, access to clients will be much tougher and you'll have to fully handle your marketing. And probably you'll target more local clients. But at least, you'll have much less competition.

[Weston]

It helps if you have an in demand niche.

I am doing my PhD in power electronics in the bay area and do some consulting EE work related to power electronics, where the demand outstrips supply right now. The company I consult for is a 30 minute drive away but I only have to physically visit every few weeks when they are having specific issues. The other two full time EE's that work for them are fully remote but fly to the office every few months. Everyone has a full hardware workbench of their own.

If you have the ability to visit the office occasionally I think remote work for EE is possible if you find a flexible company that wants to hire you. If you are targeting international work where no local connection is possible and doing generic embedded systems stuff you are going to face a lot of competition from counties where the cost of labor is a lot lower, as jonpaul stated.

[johnboxall]

Sooner or later you'll need to deal with hardware, and physically interact with it and other employees at the company. Perhaps go after high-value, narrow-niche custom work as your own business.

As others would have said, any "internet-only" work is pretty much scooped up by cheaper countries. There's a reason Altium has developers in Serbia, Poland, etc. Much cheaper brains.

[SiliconWizard]

Speaking of Altium, from ME, it looks like AD is widely used by most of those low-rate engineers. It's "interesting".
Over here, Altium licenses are very expensive. So how do they do it? Hypotheses:

- They are using cracked versions,
- Most of them are young engineers and still using their academic license from uni,
- Altium has cheapass deals for emerging countries - to the point of allowing independent workers at $10/h or so to afford licenses.

Of course, the two first would be strictly illegal.
Just curious, if someone happens to know which of the 3 it is. Or maybe something else yet.

[VK3DRB]

....There's a reason Altium has developers in Serbia, Poland, etc. Much cheaper brains.

Altium's subscription is becoming outrageously expensive.... increasing way above inflation year on year. They are getting too greedy. So much for low cost development labour. Other than Altium 365 which is a bit of a kludge, why are we paying a fortune for bug fixes? Even though I have rarely used their support, in recent years I have found support from their Sydney office is crap... they don't even answer the phone.

Altium 365 allows one to work from home or anywhere. But it is a royal pain in the arse to set up sometimes with clients, but once set up, it is OK. It is a kludge.

I get the feeling if Autocad had been successful in buying the Altium company, it might have been a good thing for users.

[Monkeh]

I get the feeling if Autocad had been successful in buying the Altium company, it might have been a good thing for users.

Remind me how Autodesk buying Eagle worked out for users. They're really not your friends.

[johnboxall]

I get the feeling if Autocad had been successful in buying the Altium company, it might have been a good thing for users.

Oh no, no. No. Nope.

[Black Phoenix]

I get the feeling if Autocad had been successful in buying the Altium company, it might have been a good thing for users.

As someone who have some friends deep into Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere and Dreamweaver not even in your wildest dreams that would be true.

It's considered the "EA" of the professional software world.

[Monkeh]

I get the feeling if Autocad had been successful in buying the Altium company, it might have been a good thing for users.

As someone who have some friends deep into Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere and Dreamweaver not even in your wildest dreams that would be true.

It's considered the "EA" of the professional software world.

Err, those are all Adobe products.

[jonpaul]

SW:

Got  old boxed SW long ago.

The ancient versions from Altium,  ACAD, Adobe, Microsoft still work fine, without all the online/cloud/subscription junk.

Only large firms and orgs need the latest SW with subscription junk like Office 360.

Be sure any "cracks" are jammed with malware and trojans, and highly illegal in most venues as well.

Jon

[AndyC_772]

Arguably one of the attractions of working for yourself (I presume that's what you have in mind...?) is that you don't necessarily need formal qualifications.

What you do need, though, is experience, and lots of it. Potential customers will expect you to have already worked on projects that are similar to whatever it is they do - even if, in fact, what they're doing isn't particularly specialised or demanding in electronics terms.

You need contacts too, otherwise you may indeed end up having to try and compete against on price against people living in low wage countries, and that's not something you should ever do. Don't join in that race to the bottom for price and quality.

My competition isn't $2/hr engineers in India, it's £100+/hr companies located within the same 100 mile radius of my customers, who would also be in a position to have someone physically on site whenever needed, and who will still be around to support projects that are still in production 10 years after the design has been completed.

Most of my work these days is in automotive, especially racing. Professional race teams aren't interested in saving a few pounds an hour by hiring a cheap design engineer - they're interested in hiring someone with proven experience in designing stuff that 'just works', reliably, in an extremely harsh environment, and which will be completed, assembled, calibrated and tested in time for a race in two weeks' time.

[tom66]

Hardware engineering still requires some physical presence.

I work mostly from home nowadays but I'm in the office about 1-2 days a week depending on what's needed. 

Fully remote for hardware is very difficult to imagine - software on the other hand seems to be going that way for good now.

[hans]

There are a few challenges I can imagine with doing EE work remotely.

First is an equipped lab. This has different meanings for every product. If you design general purpose HW, then a basic hobbyist lab can suffice these days. If you work on the latest and greatest PCIe standards with complicated RF signal chains, then you probably need something more than a 1k$ scope. For many employers, just buying 1 high-end measurement device can be a big deal as it needs to get enough usage to be worthwhile. And are they letting you borrow 30k$+ worth of equipment? Not all employers will I imagine..

Second is that design is often only 1 part of the job. Especially in smaller companies, you may also need to design for manufacIturing (and perhaps visit the production facility), put production/testing/QA jigs in place. Write manuals and train personnel how to use that tooling. Etc. Now a large part can be prepared at home, but at some point you'll need to get out the door. Flying all over the globe is not very nice for ad-hoc issues.

Third is time zone difference. A few hours is solvable. But let's say 6, 8 or 12hrs? It could work in theory, but both parties will need to be willing to do so. Are you willing to have project meetings at 9PM? Or get in the office early at 6AM? Or vice versa? Some people take their time schedule very strict w.r.t. family time and whatnot. They need to get out the office at 6 for other obligations.

Finally, not everyone likes having colleagues that work from home. It's just less easy to get in touch with them, find mutual time in the office, etc. Communication is always a crucial factor for work.

I think the first 2 points are what makes EE work remote a lot harder. The last 2 points are shared for any job. It doesn't have to be a show stopper, as long it's clear what the expectations and framework is within to operate.

[m98]

Over here, Altium licenses are very expensive. So how do they do it? Hypotheses:
- They are using cracked versions,

Personal experience from one Asian country: even the government uses cracked Windows and MS Office, never mind any business or freelancer. There are companies selling nothing but collections of software cracks.

[jonpaul]

Networks and computers from Chinese firms and government that use stolen ( cracked) SW licences, are contaminated with malware. We have messages or attachments from such sites that  are very risky.

Tons of spam after every contact.

J

 

[Black Phoenix]

I get the feeling if Autocad had been successful in buying the Altium company, it might have been a good thing for users.

As someone who have some friends deep into Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere and Dreamweaver not even in your wildest dreams that would be true.

It's considered the "EA" of the professional software world.

Err, those are all Adobe products.

Now they are, before they weren't. I gave the reference of "EA" because the practice is the same: aquire good companies and then assimilate them, turning into a shadow of what they were before acquisition.

Adobe could dream to be what Macromedia was...

[coppice]

Hardware engineering still requires some physical presence.

I work mostly from home nowadays but I'm in the office about 1-2 days a week depending on what's needed. 

Fully remote for hardware is very difficult to imagine - software on the other hand seems to be going that way for good now.

Full remote working is not uncommon for hardware projects. There are people doing development so remote, the customer is on another continent, and even the occasional physical presence is really tough to arrange. It does mean you have to be working on a whole product, or a well defined module of a product, and have sufficient facilities at home to work totally independently. It probably also means you need a solid track record for anyone to take you seriously, and offer you work. Keeping good local contacts can be tough. Maintaining distant relationships is harder. Ensuring you don't get ripped off at payment time can also be tough, too.

[TopQuark]

I find remote EE work to be quite abundant given you have a decent home lab setup. I work remotely 80% of the time for my full time EE job. And for my freelance consulting job, being on site isn't even an option, as the company paying me doesn't have any EE equipment or in-house EE expertise, being able to work remotely and bring my own lab/gear probably got me hired in the first place.

Regarding pirating software, my job actually requires me to specifically use open source tools like kicad, black magic probe and open source software toolchains. Though I think we are the exception, not the norm in our neck of the woods.

[Monkeh]

I get the feeling if Autocad had been successful in buying the Altium company, it might have been a good thing for users.

As someone who have some friends deep into Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere and Dreamweaver not even in your wildest dreams that would be true.

It's considered the "EA" of the professional software world.

Err, those are all Adobe products.

Now they are, before they weren't. I gave the reference of "EA" because the practice is the same: aquire good companies and then assimilate them, turning into a shadow of what they were before acquisition.

Adobe could dream to be what Macromedia was...

... Lightroom and Premiere are Adobe developed. Photoshop was sold to them 27 years ago and distributed by them from the get-go.

[jmelson]

Altium's subscription is becoming outrageously expensive.... increasing way above inflation year on year. They are getting too greedy. So much for low cost development labour. Other than Altium 365 which is a bit of a kludge, why are we paying a fortune for bug fixes? Even though I have rarely used their support, in recent years I have found support from their Sydney office is crap... they don't even answer the phone.

I've been using Protel 99 SE for 20+ years now, and never found a good reason to upgrade.  I think Altium does handle hierarchical schematic and multi-channel board design a bit better, but I have found ways to do that in Protel with a little more effort.  I now run P99 SE in a virtual machine under Linux using VirtualBox.
Jon

[SiliconWizard]

Hardware engineering still requires some physical presence.

I work mostly from home nowadays but I'm in the office about 1-2 days a week depending on what's needed. 

Fully remote for hardware is very difficult to imagine - software on the other hand seems to be going that way for good now.

Full remote working is not uncommon for hardware projects. There are people doing development so remote, the customer is on another continent, and even the occasional physical presence is really tough to arrange. It does mean you have to be working on a whole product, or a well defined module of a product, and have sufficient facilities at home to work totally independently. It probably also means you need a solid track record for anyone to take you seriously, and offer you work. Keeping good local contacts can be tough. Maintaining distant relationships is harder. Ensuring you don't get ripped off at payment time can also be tough, too.

Yup. Hardware projects are doable remotely. Certainly. There's a lot you can do remotely. But is it easy? Not always. Things start to get sour when you need to debug hardware, unless you can have *everything* you need in your own lab for this project, including all test equipment used by the client, any potential specific machines, etc.

But when you have no choice but debug things *remotely*, assisting people in a remote lab, that can be hell. It's like remote tech support in general, only even more of a pain. Can be a utterly frustrating experience unless you are lucky enough to work with highly-skilled people with no language barrier and no interest in ruining your work (yeah, employees sometimes see contractors as a threat...)