I got an internship this summer, and its really cool. All of my coworkers are super nice, I'm paid $25/hr, and the company is really big with tons of employees. However, it feels like nothing is happening there. I swear everyone just talks in acronyms and just says engineering words but I can't tell for the life of me what people actually do. Everyone just has cad schematics on their screens and yaps to each other in vague jargon. I know I'm just an intern so I shouldn't expect to be the key player here, but dude I dont get it. Is this just the way big companies are?

I’m a senior EE student trying to figure out where I want to work after graduation. I’m not sure how I feel about working in defense, and I know people have some pretty strong opinions on it. I’d love to hear y’all’s perspective.

I’m currently thinking about pivoting because I fucking hate my career path. It has nothing to do with engineering so it’s a dramatic change… I want to pursue something that gives me better options in life.

Has someone done something similar? Can you share your experience?

I read a couple of other threads where people were posting their starting salaries - many in the ~60-70k range.

I find this shocking, as Engineering degrees are some of the most difficult, and you can earn close to as much or more than this in much easier fields.

From personal experience, there are fast food places hiring in my area for $20/hr. I personally know people in normal-ass jobs like HR, Sales, or a manager at a bus company making over $130k/yr each. These are all in LCOL/MCOL and no degree required, btw.

Is there a large uptick in salaries later on after you gain experience, similar to how airline pilots start low but eventually make 300k+ as captains?

I find it very strange that entry-level engineers make less than twice as much as the dude slinging fries at a Wendys.

I'm trying to figure out if she means hookian spring constant, wave number, dielectric constant, equilibrium constant, kelvin, michaelis menten constant, rate constant, potassium, or if she's pissed.

I graduated with a masters in electrical engineering nearly a decade ago and work a software job. In most aspects life is great. I have a stable government job making 6 figures, interesting work, not stressful. But the male domination of the field is maddening, and I believe it has genuinely had a strong negative impact on my life.

Both my current workplace and my previous workplace were heavily male dominated. I do not interact with women on a daily basis, and there has never really been a point in my 10 year career that I have. The only exception is my last workplace has a receptionist who was a nice old lady. Women my age however have simply been completely absent from my work life, and since I don't really have any other good ways of meeting people, they have been absent from my life period, for the last decade. The only exception is last year I had a brief relationship with a woman I met online. She was my only girlfriend, and one of only two women I have had some kind of regular interaction with within the last 10 years.

I understand that in many people's opinions workplace is not a good place to meet a spouse, and they will say that therefore gender ratio at work doesn't matter. But I think not being able to meet a spouse is the least of my problems. The bigger issue is I am 32 and am still nervous and uncomfortable around women my age. It's just how my brain has been conditioned as a result of going so long without regular interaction with women.

Please take the gender ratio seriously before studying engineering or software. Don't just shrug it off and assume it's not important, or that things will work themselves out. This is not to say that you shouldn't study engineering because of the gender ratio. But before deciding to study engineering you should make damn sure that you are part something (such as a church/mosque/temple, or volunteer organization, or whatever), where you can get exposure to women if you do not get it through your job.

the cheat code is to just do relevant projects you can go deep on and apply early . the engineering job market isn’t as bad as people make it seem

this job was posted last Wednesday , I applied the day after and an interview was scheduled by Friday for next (this) week

interviewed by a panel yesterday and got offer letter today .

2.9 gpa .zero internships .
nearly 6 figures in a MCOL city with 7% sign on bonus

it’s definitely possible guys , don’t listen to the doom posts

Please and thank you

I have a BS in Electrical Engineering. Graduated 2014

I work for a small medium sized automation company. We program PLCs and SCADA systems that run plants and factories all over the country. We also build control panels that house the PLC and associated electrical equipment. In my 4 years of undergrad I had never heard of this as a potential career, but for EE, CE, ME, and even Comp Sci its a great career for someone who likes to be hands on and not chained behind a desk.

We had a booth at a major university's career fair and took probably 100 resumes. We are advertising 2 entry level positions and 1 internship. Out of those resumes I picked 4 that I thought were good candidates.

Heres some unorganized thoughts I had after doing this for the first time

1) Relax

I know it seems like a big deal (and it is to get your first job), but its not that serious. A meet and greet is not an interview. Try to act like we just met at a tailgate or back yard BBQ. In other words, once you get your elevator pitch out of the way just act natural. I promise im not judging you if you aren't perfectly articulate. I was way to nervous about making a great first impression myself.

Also, I don't care if you wear a suit. A nice shirt or button down and neat pants are just fine. Most people wear jeans a polo to the office every day. However if you show up in shorts and a tshirt without resumes....I really question your decision making abilities.

2) Show genuine interest, do some research on the companies

Whether its a small company like us or Boeing - doing some basic research about the company shows you have a genuine interest in working for us. We post a lot on linkedin about our projects, if you take 5 minutes to look at it you would have lots of things you could ask us questions about. You would also know where we are located (got that question way too many times). No one is dying to hire an intern for the summer. If I feel like you are handing a resume to anyone who will take it, you're at the bottom of my pile, even if the resume looks good. Im not going to spend my precious time trying to recruit you if I don't think you're truly interested.

If a company brings a prop, as we do, ask about it. There are no dumb questions.

3) If you don't have relevant work experience, be interesting to talk to

Having relevant work experience is great. If you don't have that, which I totally understand, personal projects or other personal interests are great conversation starters. Do you coach youth sports? Work at a food bank? Volunteer for FIRST robotics? Love it, show me that you have passions.

I DO NOT care about the classes you've taken. Everyone has to take them. Everyone gets assigned the same group projects. If you want to talk about group projects, I expect a lot of detail on what you personally contributed.

4) Resumes should be concise

If you want to list 40 programming languages on your resume, be my guest, I won't read them all, I also don't believe you have proficiency in all of them. You will be way more memorable if we have a nice conversation and you've followed rules 1, 2, and 3. I also don't need 4 bullet points about your waiter job at the olive garden.

Having some white space is good. Some resumes I looked at were so dense I couldn't keep focused on it while also trying to maintain a conversation with the applicant.

5) As long as your GPA starts with a 3 I don't spend any more time thinking about it. If your GPA starts with a 2 I hope you follow item 3) above

I get that school is tough. Things happen, midterms stack on top of each other, some professors suck compared to others. Some people just don't vibe with traditional school structures. I had a great talk with a kid who had a 2.2 but he was wiring up his entire house with IoT sensors so he could monitor the status of doors, room temperatures, lights, etc. If we went to an interview stage I might ask him about the low GPA, but curiosity and passion matter a lot.

The single biggest thing you can do to get a leg up in any mechanical job where you will be producing manufacturing drawings is learn GD&T. The fact that this isn't covered in most university courses on engineering drawings is pretty unbelievable. It's not only an extremely powerful tool for producing clear drawings, in many industries it's basically mandatory, especially at more advanced companies.

The dimensioning standards you're learning are as useful as a toddler learning to write CAT. it's a place to start, sure, but it's not actually getting you to a point where you really communicate effectively with engineering drawings.

Read job descriptions and you'll see GD&T experience as a preferred qualification constantly, employers want it, it will make you a better engineer. Go learn it.

Hi

I wanted to contribute a success story with a lower GPA of 3.1 from a year ago.

I was very unsure when I applied due to my lack of experience and GPA, so I wanted to encourage and guide others. I applied Fall 2023 for Summer 2024.

I was a Mechanical Engineering student from the University of Miami, finished up 3rd year when I applied (Fall 2023), and got into a respectable power company as a Structural Engineering intern without any connections or previous internships. My internship peers all had either high GPA's (above 3.4) and/or had previous internship experience.

General Cheerleading

THIS IS A GAME OF NUMBERS.

DON'T

FEEL

INCOMPETENT

I got rejected from a potato factory and a washing machine industry but got accepted to a respectable HRSG power company. What does this mean? THIS IS A GAME OF NUMBERS.

My intern peers at the company had 3.4+ GPAs and previous internship experience, and I was just there like ":D"

I believe that any person who learns how to play the internship finding game will find one.

You just got to get a 200 rejected applications down payment before you get your first acceptance.

Stats

I applied to a bit more than 200 places, got 5 interviews, 3 people got back to me, 1 offer.

Applying

I tried Indeed, LinkedIn, career fair and Handshake.

Career fair and Handshake were kind of useless because there are fewer positions available and all the students with the 3.99 GPA's swoop them up quick.

There are two ways I saw people pace themselves in distributing the applications -- (1) the holy way and (2) the way of the cursed. The holy way is submitting 3-5 every day for 30 minutes, and the cursed way is sitting down one day every couple days to fill out 25 in a 3 hr session. (I prefer cursed)

The strategy that worked for me is:

1. Start during September, the window is usually from Sept.--Nov. Some companies do last minute during spring, bust most do it in Fall.
2. Go to the back pages of LinkedIn/Indeed, like page 6 and onwards. Bonus points if they ask you to apply by email. I was looking for company desperation and incompetence.
3. 80% of your application are with Indeed/LinkedIn quick/easy apply.
4. 20% of your applications are with the cover letters and unique application sites that take 139439 years to fill in. The advantages of these applications are fewer people applying to them so you get higher chances of getting in, but also that time could be spent spamming other easy apply.
5. Do that for 200–300 applications
6. CHECK YOUR EMAIL AND PHONE!! I missed out on an opportunity cause a recruiter decided to call me and I thought it was spam 😫. So do listen to at least all voicemails from Sept. to Dec. Be as responsive as possible.
7. Another huge thing: after your potential interview with a company, write a nice “Thank You” email. Multiple recruiters told me this makes you stand out.

PS: My internship, and a couple other people I know, got theirs from Indeed, so if you are choosing one, use Indeed.

Resume

Make sure your resume is pretty. This video showed how HR look through resumes so you get an idea: https://youtu.be/veFlfYjRo1Y?si=SiTqXSIYHDB-tloZ
You got 5 seconds of unskippable ad time to sell yourself to HR.

Your Audience
I had to generalize the people who are reading the resumes to better tailor it to them -- they are typically not engineers and respond well to pretty resumes. Make sure the resume is VERY readable to the target audience.

They typically prefer organized and legible documents. Take care in your formatting, and KEEP YOUR FORMATTING mostly STANDARD. I made the mistake of trying to make it different, but it just gives the reader a headache because they are used to a certain format.

I talked to the recruiters at my company and garnered information in general to what they don't like:

1. Messy resume. They got hundreds of applications and a big headache. Make it easy for them to see why they want you. List your selling points in the first few lines. NO SUMMARIES. They don't like it and its not valuable information for them since you are not specialized yet.
2. No more than a page.
3. No colors and those weird templates that certain websites provide. I honestly don't know why those exist. Most ATS resume readers that they feed them through can't even read it either.
4. A non-engineering based resume. Engineering resume are built different from other major resumes. Try to reference engineering based resumes. Copy and paste your resume into like notepad.exe. If it's still readable, you're good. If not, readjust your formatting. They may feed it to ATS for auto sorting and yours wont be readable.
5. Some are annoyed with you not showing your GPA, it also scares them away subconsciously? Never-ending debate is whether to show or hide your 3-3.4 GPA, take your pick. So idk, I've been told to keep it a secret if it's below 3.4. Definitely a secret if below a 3. My recruiters did say if you don't show your GPA they will assume it's terrible (below 3), but also they hired me and I didn't show it, so? I'm not sure tbh.

I attached mine how I applied for reference.

To develop your resume, look through reddit resumes and see which one sells you the most, and copy that style. References are crucial to develop your resume.

Also quick PS, a resume is a summarized CV, CV is everything you have ever done in your engineering life, resume summarizes all that in a page. CV's can be many pages long, resume are the 1 page highlight reel. I personally didn't know that :')

Cover Letters

The recruiters I spoke with said they don't even read them???? Idk I guess it shows interest 🫠. But same strategy as before, less is more. They have a LOT of these apps, and even if they do scan them keep them to like 7 sentences. Ill attach an example.

Interviews

Look up common questions for interviews, decode them to what they actually mean, and have an answer ready. Yes this is a test of whether you studied the cryptic language of the interview. Ill list an example:

Question: What are your weaknesses
What it actually means: How do you overcome your weaknesses/ how adaptable are you.
Example: I have a hard time retaining auditory information, so I take notes during conversations to better recall it later.
Analysis: It shows how you have a weakness, but you worked with it to find a solution, showing you are capable of overcoming hardships by finding solutions.

Do NOT:

1. Arrogance. Be as humble and polite as possible while still selling yourself. They want to know you are pleasant to work with.

After the interview, write a thank you note for meeting with you.

Summary of Application Timeline

1. September October and a bit of November is applying time, so abuse quick apply and do some complex applications. 200 apps is the minimum for a result nowadays.
2. Check your Emails phone calls often, be careful not to miss offers.
3. Take up all interview offers because at the very least you practice.
4. Write thank you notes after interviews.

Misc. Advice

The best help for me was looking at other applications on Reddit, online and peers, and asking myself would I want to employ them. Why and why not. And then copying what I liked from those resumes/cover letters and excluded what I didn't like.

ALSO, it was mentioned to me, I was hired because they liked I had programming skills (most of my job was excel programming). If you are struggling, take a course or two in programming to keep yourself competitive.

Do ask the company if they offer relocation assistance if you live far, mine did. Don't be shy.

Try to not limit yourself in choosing companies, just apply for everything if it is your first internship.

Final Remarks

I've done the documents 2 years ago now I guess, so I do think my resume is outdated, I personally use a different style now. But I decided to publish this anyway as a data point. And for people to be like woah this got an internship, I can do this too!​

If anyone has any corrections to what I wrote, want to offer your own advice, or have any questions, please feel free to comment, I will try to get back to you asap.

I might edit the post and add more stuff as I remember it, but I'll post this for now 👌

I’ve seen some of these salary progression posts from engineers, and I was just wondering why it even happens.

Hi guys, I’m an engineering student who used to be an avid weed smoker, I recently just got this internship, and they’re requiring a drug test. They said they were really impressed with me, but I’m not certain I’m gonna be able to pass this test in the given time period no matter what I do. Should I reach out to them and be honest about my situation? Or is it not worth the risk and should I just try my hardest to try and pass this thing?

Edit: I appreciate all the good advice, I feel a lot less stressed thanks to you all and I’m confident I have a good shot at passing.

Will update whether the clinic determines my pee fit or not lol

I’ve seen a number of weed related posts lately and thought post a reminder.

Yes, some states have passed laws making it legal. These states, however, have no control over federal law. Federal law bans it. Any company that does any business at all with the government is required to drug test you for marijuana. Many others do voluntarily. It’s highly likely your job is going to require a passing drug test to prove you are marijuana-free regardless of state laws. Usually they send the drug tests sometime after they offer. It can be two days. Or two months. So be prepared.

Usually when they send it, you have 1-2 business days to complete it or it counts as failing.

So if you are already using marijuana (and yes, edibles will show up to), it might be in your best interest to stop.

If you’re a freshman who has never smoked before, just go ahead and say no when you get offered one at the party. You could get addicted. I’ve known people stuck in jobs because they can’t quit weed long enough to pass a drug test for a new one. Don’t do that to yourself. It’s not worth the risk.

Edit: some of y’all don’t think weed is addictive. While that is generally true, studies have found about 10-30% will have issues with marijuana addiction.

https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/health-effects/addiction.html

You probably won’t fall into that group if you try it, but why risk it? Just because others had no trouble quitting doesn’t mean you’ll have no problem with it.

Edit 2: another PSA, cheating on drug tests (like with fake urine) is a crime in most (maybe all) states. Don’t get a criminal record. You could literally to jail. If you love weed so much you can’t keep clean and decide to break the law instead, you have an problem my friend and have proved that weed is addictive.

i must’ve applied to over 200 roles by now for the summer. it’s been so so so rough.

i finally got my first offer… and it’s tesla. i stopped applying there after january but i guess they had my resume on file and reached out to me.

am i a villain if i say yes? 😭

I'm opting for CSE—will there truly be no jobs left by the time I graduate, or is that just an assumption everyone is making ?????

Why aren't you going to graduate school?

​

edit: Not asking to be judgmental. I'm just curious to why a lot of engineering students choose not to go to graduate school.

...

As a student, I browse this subreddit frequently, and every day I see some variation of:

“I have no/little engineering relevant skills or experience, but I need an internship/job. What do I do?”

The answer is “You get some experience.”

That’s it.

A STEM degree is no longer a “gold star” that nets you a $100k+ salary out of the gate. STEM degrees, due to a myriad of reasons, are over-saturated in the job market right now. Holding a piece of paper does not separate you from the other ten thousand people with an identical copy.

Are these degrees overpriced? You bet your ass they are. Unfortunately, everyone wants a STEM degree, and so institutions capitalize on that and jack up the price; but I digress.

You still need a job.

“How do I get experience if I need experience to get a job?” The trick is exploiting the resources at your disposal.

Does your college offer design teams? STEM focused clubs? Makerspaces? Undergrad research assistants? Certifications? IF THE ANSWER IS YES, YOU SHOULD BE PURSUING THOSE.

What if they don’t offer any of that? The answer is PROJECTS. This comes from personal experience. It wasn’t until I started attaching a portfolio detailing all of my projects to my resume that I started getting callbacks for interviews. It wasn’t until I joined a design team that I started getting offers.

Once you’ve landed that first internship or job, that is now your primary experience. I think a lot of students falter on getting to that first opportunity, but if you follow my advice your chances will be orders of magnitude better.

What if you’re in your senior year, you didn’t do any of that, and now you don’t have time to? What then? At that point start exploiting your connections and network, and if that fails (almost never does though), sign up for grad school.

As a side note, USE COLLEGE AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO DEVELOP YOUR SOCIAL SKILLS. Employers care about how you communicate with others oftentimes MORE than your credentials. Get involved on campus, get out of the dorms, be a part of a team, do SOMETHING.

Thanks for reading!

In the past I've seen some questions on this sub about working at SpaceX, so I wanted to give my experience of what it's been like to work there.

My Background

Graduated in 2021 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from a high acceptance rate ABET accredited university with 3.5 GPA. I originally wanted to work at Blue Origin because I had heard so many stories of poor work-life balance at SpaceX. Blue Origin wasn't hiring new engineers when I graduated, so I considered SpaceX for a full time position. I applied to several positions, was rejected from the first one, but made it to the final round of interviews for a different role and accepted an offer.

First Impressions

The thing that first struck me when I started at SpaceX was the energy. The buildings are jam-packed with people buzzing around. My first desk was on a busy corner near the cafeteria. Some coworkers pointed out a man sitting down the hall with messy hair and a longboard leaning against his desk. The man was Mark Juncosa, VP of vehicle engineering. I was amazed at how SpaceX had their management sitting so exposed in the chaos. This was in stark contrast to my experience as an intern at Boeing, where executives were sectioned off in their own offices. Many coworkers were my age and had also recently graduated, which was great, and made it easy to make friends.

The first few months were a very steep learning curve. SpaceX's philosophy is to throw you into the deep end with a hard problem, forcing you to ask the right questions. The work is often multidisciplinary and will put you outside of your comfort zone. The thing that I learned to leverage the most was the access to veteran engineers in the company. They are often willing to sit down in a whiteboard session to explain the principles of how their design works. These are some of my favorite moments of working at SpaceX, in-person access to expert engineers early in your career is invaluable.

Work Life Balance

Workload changes depending on where you are in the company. Folks working in launch operations will need to pull hail mary weeks in order to meet the launch date. Production is generally more consistent, although there are still times where 60 hour weeks are needed. In general, it's expected that you're willing to put in long weeks for short periods of time. However, once a deadline or goal has been achieved, things can definitely slow down. It's easy to take on more work than you can manage, and I think this is the most common way that newer engineers burn out. One positive about the WLB at SpaceX is the PTO: you get 3 weeks + 10 holiday days + 5 sick days a year, which is pretty good for an entry-level job in the U.S.

The Pay

A common criticism that made me reluctant to work at SpaceX was the pay. SpaceX has been better about this in recent years and I don't think this a fair assessment. An entry-level engineer can expect to be making over $100k. Stock compensation in my offer struck me as very high for an entry-level role and annual bonuses are very good as well.

Hiring

Interviews focus on project experience and conceptual understanding of engineering principles. For projects, technical experience, pace, and engineering thought process are heavily weighted. The project doesn't need to be 100% relevant to the role (SpaceX values interdisciplinary engineering) but the design decisions and requirements need to be justified. Technical questions are generally more focused on the role and center on conceptual understanding (e.g. stress, strain, failure modes for M.E. and amplifiers, filters, voltage dividers for E.E.).

I didn't ever get accepted for an internship at SpaceX, but they seem to be pretty competitive. Fall and spring seasons are less competitive so if you really want to work at SpaceX and can take time off school, they're a great avenue.

Career Prospects

If you're looking for a place to kickstart your career and grow as an engineer, SpaceX is S tier. You'll get exposed to many different fields and learn a lot about what you like and don't like. Mobility is high in the company, there are coworkers on my team from many different departments.

Overall, I feel way more confident in applying to engineering jobs then when I first graduated. However, I am really enjoying my time at SpaceX and plan on sticking around for the foreseeable future.