[wormer]

I feel like people who say that "it's so much money, so try and get something out of it" are people who have never had the experience of being a "bad student" and have an immense passion for learning. I really can't say the same.

I'm currently in undergrad for electrical engineering, and I do not give a single fuck about the classes I'm in. I have no passion for electrical engineering - I don't wake up excited to make schematics or lay out a PCB. I do it because it's a good job and I want money, and I know that I need to get a good GPA to get a good job. I don't really care about how I got that GPA or if I learned anything from college, I just want money.

I pay a fuckton of money of classes that I'm forced to take on subjects that I learned in the freshman year of my highschool that I really do not care about (and aren't related to my major) and yet I'm supposed to feel incredibly enthralled showing up to class everyday and doing the assignments? No, I'm just going to cheat to save time and effort. I don't care about the subject at all, I just care about the GPA that I get at the end of the semester.

And employers check your GPA now. I often hear (usually from older people who have been in the industry before computerized background checks) that you can just lie on your resume and bullshit your way in, but that doesn't fly anymore as an entry level. They just type in your credentials into a database and have your info, and universities are part of that database. It's true that after your first job no one looks at your GPA, but how are you going to get that first job if your GPA isn't actually good to begin with?

[WalterBright]

My experience was the complete opposite. I loved learning that stuff. It was like somebody turned the lights on. Like I was handed the keys to the universe. In my mind I could see the electrons flowing. With the math I could figure out how and why.

I am sad for you. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make money. But there are endless ways to make money, pick something you actually like.

I've counseled many kids: Draw two circles, one around what you like, the other around what makes money. Do the things in the intersection.

[dreamcompiler]

My EE experience was like yours. Especially the day I learned Laplace transforms. I felt like I'd found a magic wand.

Except I never thought about money until I graduated. "Holy hell!" I realized. "They want to pay me a ton of money for this? I'd do it for free!"

Fortunately I was smart enough not to say that last part out loud.

[Sirened]

> They want to pay me a ton of money for this? I'd do it for free!

Happy to see that other's found this too :) This was my experience with CS—I always loved it and I am, to this day, still surprised that they pay me so much because I used to do this exact same stuff at home for fun. I feel like I got exceptionally lucky that my passion just so happens to be something exceptionally profitable because I have no idea what I'd do otherwise.

[WalterBright]

Reminds me of many accounts by fighter pilots in WW2. "I can't believe they pay me to fly these things!"

Can you imagine flying a P-51? I splurged and bought a 30 minute ride in the back seat. Sigh. Holy Crap! Pure heaven! I was smiling for the next week.

[imtringued]

The German Bundeswehr solved that problem by not letting their pilots fly and instead promote them to some managerial office jobs. That is still cheaper than paying for real flight hours.

[selimthegrim]

Did you actually learn how they work or how to just use them out of a table?

[dreamcompiler]

I learned them. They changed nasty* differential equations into simple algebra problems. Oh boy did I learn them.

*Or rather I thought at the time they were nasty. Later I learned about nonlinear differential equations, where Laplace transforms don't help.

[wormer]

It's so frustrating for me to read things like "I am sad for you". I don't have the option to do what I want; someone has to pay to feed the children and keep the lights on at my village back home. Another commenter said something like "I would do this for free!". Great, you did it for the love of doing it and had the privilege of coming from a background where you can go through college without thinking of money, but I can't, and being talked down to condescendingly about it is infuriating.

[WalterBright]

> I don't have the option to do what I want

I was replying to a college student. Someone going to college does have the option of which major.

I am also referring to people in America. I understand that Americans have a lot more opportunities than people in other countries.

[ThrowawayR2]

You're trapping yourself into a 30-40 year career that you clearly can't make yourself care before you've even started. What exactly do you think is going to happen to you 10-20 years into your career? Growth and advancement are continually expected for an engineer over the course of their career. And the engineering professions aren't large communities; get a reputation as "that mediocre guy that doesn't care about his profession" and it's game over.

And the worst part is that you're doing this to yourself. You won't have anyone else to blame for it.

[strken]

What do you want to do? If I put together a list of things it'd be hundreds of lines long and at least some of them would be profitable.

I think people aren't baffled by you choosing a high-paying career, but by you not having anything that's both high-paying and interesting. Why electrical engineering and not CS or nuclear or something? Is there nothing at all that both interests you and pays well?

[wormer]

This is the thing that I have the most passion for. I like computers and electronics. But it's dwarfed by other passions that I have that I would much rather be doing. No bills are being paid by me wanting to bike or write in my journal.

And I know it's a sentiment that isn't unique to me, since a lot of my friends from similar backgrounds share this feeling. You choose the major that you can tolerate and also pays well.

[WalterBright]

So you do like it. That is unlike the poster I was responding to.

[barry-cotter]

The poster you are responding to here and the one you responded to first are the same person.

[honkler]

you are absolutely right, and I understand you completely.

[grog454]

> someone has to pay to feed the children and keep the lights on at my village back home.

Why are you solely responsible for this?

[wormer]

Because I have access to education and wealth opportunities that they don't.

[grog454]

>I don't wake up excited to make schematics or lay out a PCB. I do it because it's a good job and I want money,

I see this a lot in computer science / SWE too. I realize you don't have the life experience to answer these questions well so maybe they're just rhetorical: do you think you will be successful when you get a job laying out PCBs and designing schematics? What will your competence level be given that you cheated your way through the relevant schooling? How long until you burn out?

Part of the reason colleges force you to take a lot of courses irrelevant to your major is so the students like you have a slightly higher chance of finding something they ARE passionate about.

[paulpauper]

And employers check your GPA now. I often hear (usually from older people who have been in the industry before computerized background checks) that you can just lie on your resume and bullshit your way in, but that doesn't fly anymore as an entry level. They just type in your credentials into a database and have your info, and universities are part of that database. It's true that after your first job no one looks at your GPA, but how are you going to get that first job if your GPA isn't actually good to begin with?

Yup...this is not the 80s or the 90s. Employers got burned enough times, and now check that shit closely..lot's of screening.

I'm currently in undergrad for electrical engineering, and I do not give a single fuck about the classes I'm in. I have no passion for electrical engineering - I don't wake up excited to make schematics or lay out a PCB. I do it because it's a good job and I want money, and I know that I need to get a good GPA to get a good job. I don't really care about how I got that GPA or if I learned anything from college, I just want money.

Agree..ppl just want that certificate which acts as a ticket to the middle class lifestyle. they don't care about knowledge for its own sake. Those who care more go on to get a masters or doctorate.

[pclmulqdq]

When I was in school, I inadvertently realized that the biggest cheat code was not cheating. Professors will open doors wide open for you if you are honest with them and engage with them, and it's actually usually easier than going to all that effort to cheat and not get caught.

During college, I focused on learning a ton from the few courses that I found interesting (and where I learned new material), and I passed the rest with a B- average. As a result, I got to work with several professors on research and as a TA, and that totally overshadowed my low-3's GPA in the job market. "Research courses" with no requirements other than work I found interesting let me pad my GPA. I graduated in the bottom 30% of the class having done two years of research and taught a course (as the instructor, not a TA). I left for a position with the highest salary of anyone in my class, and I had a company literally begging for me to interview after I turned them down for asking about my GPA.

These are opportunities which you cannot get if you do not engage honestly with the material you are learning. Professors usually know when you are cheating, and professors talk - they may know that you are a cheater the moment you step foot in their classroom. They don't want to report it, though, because it's a lot of work to gather evidence and go through the process.

Some professors of required courses are happy to help you if you are honestly not very engaged with the material in their course. Some have egos that are too big for that, but a lot of them don't. They understand that the course is required, so you're going to get a B or a C if you don't cheat and you want to focus on other things. All they want is for you to learn something from them, and you will still learn a thing or two by doing half their homework honestly.

The back door in the job market is a lot bigger than the front door - a lot of people get jobs from referrals rather than the traditional application process, and most of the really great jobs are found that way. Cheating at school almost completely shuts the back door in the entry level job market, since your professors and fellow students will know you are doing it. Don't underestimate what you're giving up.

[bumby]

>I'm just going to cheat to save time and effort.

I totally understand the pressure, and the idea that these choices are a means to an end. And this isn't meant to sound condescending so please don't take it that way, but please PLEASE do not take this attitude into industry. Especially into a safety-critical industry. Believe it or not, it's more prevalent than you may think and humans are always good at rationalizing taking the easy way out.

I know the knee-jerk reaction will be "yeah, I won't do it when it matters" but these types of choices tend to become habits, and as the saying goes, habits become one's character and character becomes one's fate.

[Sirened]

This might be a dumb question, but what does this even look like in industry? I'm honestly not sure how I could "cheat" my way through my job. I have to design features, argue why they're good/worthwhile tradeoffs, and then implement them. Sure, I can steal features from competitors but I can't lie about their impact or fake implementing them because people will surely notice when the feature ships and simply doesn't work. Like, you can't cheat at design verification of a chip. If the chip ships and doesn't work, your ass is getting canned so fast.

[bumby]

There are all kinds of ways to cheat verification and validation. In my personal experience, it usually comes down to "cheating" to avoid missing a schedule milestone. It usually comes down to misrepresenting a system. One example that comes to mind was a programmer who created an artificial flag to avoid static analysis tools reporting some errors; passing static analysis was a requirement for their system to be cleared for use. When confronted, the team's reply said they did so because if the report identified issues, they'd be forced to fix them and they needed to meet schedule. I have lots of other examples, some more egregious, some less. Sometimes they border on being silly, such as when a team said they didn't need to validate their software because, since the system operation required a human to turn it on, it wasn't considered "software" in their definition of the word.

For context, these were a safety-critical systems. A lot of times when something went wrong on a research effort, people can cover their tracks by calling it an "anomaly" and avoid further digging to press forward. But a lot of the "anomalies" can be traced back to avoiding requirements or equivalently lying about test outcomes, most of the time due to schedule pressure or just a simple lack of expertise. And because many safety issues are low probability events, people can get lulled into complacency where this behavior becomes normal since it's still rare for something bad to happen.

Another example further down in the discussion was VW's cheating of emission tests by changing their vehicles operation when it was connected to a test stand.

[wincy]

I don't know what to tell you, except that I just read some guides on how to code on the internet and make 6 figures now. I'm a high school dropout. This seems like a profound waste of your time and money, and people are lying to you about what you need to get a good, easy job. I doubt some stranger on the internet is going to persuade you of anything, but there are definitely other ways to make money if that's all you care about.

[jmull]

> I do it because it's a good job and I want money

I wonder what you think will happen after you get that job?

(Either go in a different direction now, or else you might as well start learning how to keep your head above water in your EE career now.)

edit: I should add: I posted the comment you’re replying to and in regard to this:

> …are people who have never had the experience of being a "bad student"

Nah… I’ve been a bad student — just based on averages, likely worse than you. My only “special” skill is that after multiple crushing failures I realized, “hey.. maybe I should think more than zero steps ahead” when considering my many pressing life problems. In retrospect, I’ve found it’s like a superpower because it seems like almost no one bothers to do it, so you can get ahead in almost any circumstance.

[syntheweave]

From everything I've seen in having spent about as many years out of school as in it, it's way more likely that you make it a few years in and then burn out without fully paying off the debts. Is your plan really to spend the next 30+ years hating your workday, then bringing the bad mood to the dinner table?

I say that having also been the cheater who hated the material and got the grade. Why did I do that? Parents wanted me in a "good career," same as everyone else. They saw a script and they kept pushing in that direction. So I convinced myself into it, at least for a while. It was phony baloney given that in my actual career the majority of my money has been made by crypto speculation and miscellaneous random opportunities, not anything that ever needed a credential. Fortunately I pushed myself onto a path that actually worked for me along the way and graduated right when I was actually starting to appreciate the coursework. Some people make it all the way through medical or law school and then immediately quit the field.

My advice is this, basically - don't try to win at your career, just try to survive; winning is a temporary thing that you can get by pushing harder for a short period, but surviving is a matter of doing everything at a viable level, forever. If you really think this is the best shot you have under the circumstances to achieve a decent life for everyone concerned, then sure, by all means. But aim to exit towards something that actually fits you as soon as possible, even if it's a "simple" move like going from IC into management.

[imtringued]

I designed my own PCB and I must tell you, analog electronics are brain melting. Software development is literally baby shit. You better learn as much as you can because theory actually matters here unlike in computer science which is just a math degree and is supposed to have no relation to any physical world you have experience with.

[glowingly]

My boss was gleeful at getting someone with a 3.9 GPA recently. It counts for something, I can say that much.

[WalterBright]

Yeah, well, in my experience the ones with the high GPAs were better at designing circuits, too. They'd use math to derive the optimal values for the components. The ones with low GPAs would spend a great deal of time randomly trying different component values until the circuit kinda sorta almost worked.

[CrendKing]

One thing I want to tell you is that, if you don't like what you do every day for decades, the extra money you make by taking that job won't make you happy. I have friend who took EE and CS major in college, got job in SV, making 300k annually, and feels depressed every day because he needs to work on things he has absolutely no interest in. You might think 300k/yr is good, but it's SV so the cost is also high. Many times he regrets that he should have chosen photography and film making when he had the chance. Unfortunately we are not longer young, so there is no easy way back.

I'm not sure how many young people made the choice to study what they study in college by themselves. But if you did, ask yourself if you are willing to make the sacrifice.

[seunosewa]

He can pursue photography and film-making as a hobby. Lots of people work to get paid and spend their spare time pursuing hobbies which might not be profitable.

[afarrell]

> I don't wake up excited to make schematics or lay out a PCB.

How on earth would an electrical engineering degree help you get a good job?

[Sirened]

eh, for digital circuits/RTL it's largely been my experience that they will simply not look at you unless you have an EE/CompE degree It's bizarre but not exactly a novel problem

[afarrell]

Right, but why would getting hired to do work you hate result in having a good job?

[bumby]

Because some people look at a job as merely a means to an end. That end being a paycheck. Their quality of work often reflects this value system.