🤯 A few days ago one of my acquaintances was surprised that I don’t work with any kind of hardware as an electrical engineer and my work completely revolves around machine learning and programming. My dad also sometimes asks me about why me and my brother who is a software engineer, pretty much work on similar things. And that’s a dad of three engineers.
✅ So I decided to write this blogpost and even make a video about what the heck is it that electrical engineers actually do?
⚠️ Spoiler alert, I was super confused about it too in my first year of electrical engineering. I had some peers who were building cool robots, but that seemed more like the job of a mechatronics engineer. I also had some seniors who were always just programming stuff, and that seems like an appropriate job for computer engineers or software engineers. Only some of my seniors were working with power engineering, which made more sense to me.
💣 Fast forward 10 years now I work with machine learning and my husband is constantly worried that I might accidentally make Skynet and destroy the world.
🤖 AI Engineers
So who makes Jarvis, Ultron, vision, or Skynet? Or more specifically who writes the code that makes them work? Well, electrical engineers! The most popular subdomain of electrical engineering right now is data, science and artificial intelligence. The first two years of electrical engineering degree at most universities normally doesn’t have any elective courses but the third and fourth year courses usually determine the type of electrical engineer you will become. To become a data scientist or an AI engineer you will study the following courses in your third and fourth year of engineering.
- Machine Learning
- Neural Networks
- Signal Processing
- Digital Image Processing
- Other Software Programming Courses (This is different from hardware programming like Verilog and VHDL, and embedded systems, system on chip etc)
🦾 Robotics Engineers
This is the category Tony Stark falls into. So if you want to design an iron man suit, you’ll need the knowledge of a robotics engineer. You’ll be an electrical engineer but in your third and fourth year courses, you can choose courses like following
- Control Systems
- Robotics
- Digital Control
- Electives from Mechatronics Department
🔋 Power Systems Engineers
To work for a power company like Hydro Quebec, or hypothetically, to design an arc reactor to power the iron man suit, you’ll need to study power generation and power storage technologies. This is what hardcore electrical engineers do. You can take courses like
- Power systems
- Fundamentals of power engineering
- Relaying and communication
- Power system protection
- Power system economics
📡 RF Engineers
Electrical engineers also design, communication systems, both hardware, and software part of it. RF engineers design the hardware part of any communication system such as antennas and base stations and other hardware. For this you can take electives like
- Electromagnetic Field Theory
- Antenna Design
- Microwave Systems
🕸 Network Engineers
Electrical engineers also design, develop, and maintain the software part of any communication system, such as the 5G communication on earth, as well as satellite communication between earth and satellites. for this day study subjects like radio communications. You can select electives like
- Wireless Networks
- Communication Systems
- Telecommunication Networks
🍪 Electronics Engineers
If you’ve seen the news in the last couple of months, then you know that United States is subsidizing local chip manufacturing. Currently Taiwan and South Korea dominate the world in chip manufacturing and United States doesn’t like that. Electrical engineers, who choose the electronics stream can help with that by taking courses like
- Electronics I, II, and III
- Semiconductors
- Embedded Systems
- Digital Logic Design
- Digital Systems
- Microelectronics
🪛 Instrumentation Engineers
A lot of the jobs for electrical engineers at Tesla are actually Instrumentation Engineers jobs where you design, develop, and implement sensor networks, monitoring systems, and calibrate precision equipment. You can take courses like
- Instrumentation and Measurements
- Instrumentation, Control and Electrical Systems
- Sensor Networks
- Electrical Machines
Hope this cleared the image of someone climbing the pole to reach a power transformer from your head if that’s how you pictured electrical engineers before. We come in many shapes, colors, and form factors!
Peace ✌️
Sadia
❤My Favourite Things
🎬YouTube Video:
I also documented these thoughts in a video form, so check it out here.
📕Book:
I listened to The coldest case: A black Book Audio Drama by James Patterson, Aaron Tracy, and Ryan Silbert on audible. It was pretty awesome. You should check it out.
📝Quote:
“It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” Neil Young sang
🎶Music:
I’m still obsessed with Imagine Dragons Album Mercury Acts 1 and 2. The new songs are awesome. I have been listening to it in shower every day.
🖥 Tech:
I bought iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch Series 8, Apple TV 4k 64GB, and another HomePod mini (this time other than white or black), MacBook Air M2, Mac Studio M1, Apple Keyboard with touch ID and Numeric Keypad this year and now I’m feeling like that’s too much Apple tech. Let me know if you would like a review for any of these.
🔍I’m Learning:
I want to start learning digital art, like drawing and painting on my iPad. Let me know what apps should I use and what YouTube tutorials should I follow?
I see that you’ve made it to the end. If you liked this blogpost, check out the other stuff I talk about on my YouTube Channel. Don’t forget to subscribe!😉