[morpheuskafka]

> Plenty of cutting-edge science needs hobbyist-level EE, it's just not work in EE

But aren't there a lot of actual hardware products that are "simple circuit blocks connected to a microcontroller"? Like a toaster, shaver, keyboard, etc. If that's not "work in EE" then what is it classified under? It's not CS either.

[pkaye]

That would be Computer Engineering. Its somewhere between EE and CS.

[petsfed]

The actual electrical engineering involved there is the sort of thing that an early-career engineer could bang out in an afternoon. Maybe a day or so for the PCB designer. The more time consuming part might be managing the regulatory compliance testing.

Most of the orgs I worked in building simple circuit blocks connected to a microcontroller either farmed out the actual EE work to contractors or design houses or had 1 EE for like 20 different projects.

[pclmulqdq]

It would have been better phrased as "research in EE." There's no research involved in building a toaster.

Another commenter pointed this out, but those products take about 1-2 days of engineering time.

[buckle8017]

Computer engineering is the degree for that.