targeting mostly aero roles and ended up getting an offer from my #1 company

to the sophomores out there, theres hope 🙏

Let's say that I have a DC motor rated for 6V and 150A. If I keep the current constant via heavier resistors, why does it matter what voltage I pass through the DC motor to get it to spin? I've heard that a higher voltage has a higher tendency to damage it. Is it similar to how you can have the same amount of linear acceleration on an object, but it'll wear more if there's more friction pushing it back? It would make sense, but I'm having a hard time visualizing what exactly is getting damaged or worn down under higher voltage.

No formulas to explain this question. I already understand that we can use power P = IV to describe this all but I want to know what happens intuitively on the electron / particular level. Thank you!

$89.6k + $5k relocation, rent ~1.4k+ (MCOL)

$82k, live with parents, commute 1 hour to job

$75k, live with parents, 30 minute commute to job

What is the average entry level EE salary for big prime defense contractors out of college? In MCOL area like philly

Does anyone have PDF copies of IEC 60909-0, IEC 60909-1, IEC 60909-2, and IEC 60909-3? I would be very grateful if you could share them. Thank you in advance!

Hi I’m a first year electrical engineering student and I’m wondering what the best study method is to study for your maths/calc classes. In high school I would write entire notebooks full only to get very average grades. I would put a lot of effort into it, but still not get good grades. I dont want to make the same mistake again. Is there a fast and efficient way to study maths/calc? I’m willing to put a lot of effort in but I just want to make sure I’m using the best study method possible.

I’ve got the chance to go to an open-house for a company I’m trying to get an internship with where I can talk to the engineers and ask them questions What are some interesting questions I could ask the engineers? The company makes traffic detection systems and it covers a lot of the subfields I’m interested in (signals and systems, RF, embedded).

Hello, I am a freshman prospective electrical engineering student at Pitt. I have an english paper that requires that I interview an electrical engineer and was wondering if anyone would be willing to answer a list of questions I would dm. It will be about 10-15 medium length questions.

I built an arcade game that was used outside all night in a heavy humidity area. Specifically when it got cold at night everything seemed to get wet. My PCB got a bunch of water on it and it was causing shorts. I'm not clear how to fix this. Sealing all the components (arduino, relays, buck converter) would be challenging and I assume I would have to worry about heat on hot days. Does anyone have suggestions? I'm a complete newbie with this.

Hi people, I am currently a sophomore and I have applied internships lately. But I don't have such skills like soldering, coding, auto-cad or etc. What should I prioritize first ? I have the arduino starter kit but I have not done much with that.

i’m a current sophomore who’s lost. i failed two classes my first year (intro to chem & programming). retook chem over the summer and got an A and i’m currently retaking the programming class now. i don’t know what the hell im doing.
i’m so scared. my gpa is a 2.14.
i got Cs in all my stem classes and i worked so hard to get into college but i don’t know why i can’t bring myself to do anything in college. i’ve even considered dropping out but i know that’s not an option. im a fgli student and i have two younger siblings. my parents have so much hope for me. no one knows how bad im doing in school because it’s so embarrassing.
i do good in one class and then i bomb another. i’m taking circuits and physics 2 right now.
i got an 89 on my circuits exam but then i got a 10% on my physics midterm. what is wrong with me. i literally got a 4/40. i got the lowest grade on the final for physics 1 last sem but i didnt even care because i still passed the class. i want to have at least a 3.0 gpa but i cant even pass my classes. i’m afraid of everything but i dont do anything about it. i feel like im paralyzed. all i do is sleep, go to class, go to work. i’ve cut out all my friends because im just ashamed of my academic progress. all my peers seem to have it all together and i couldn’t even pass an introductory course? what’s wrong with me. sorry tbjs is more like a vent but ya
i just hope future me powers through i guess because i cant just drop everything and disappear off the face of the earth

edit: i’ve got some private messages saying that i should drop out/take a break from school.. and that really isn’t an option for me. the university i attend gave me a four year scholarship and im attending the school for free. i would lose my scholarship if i took a gap semester because one of the things is that i need to attend the school eight semesters consecutively. and the school i attend right now it’s extremely expensive ($90k/yr) i would have no way to make that up financially
+ thank you for the encouraging words and i hope i can power through the next three years

Hey guys, I’ve been lurking in this sub for a few months and I really appreciate all the insight. I am looking to leave the tech industry as I got in right during the boom with a CE degree. I don’t like how the industry has looked in the past few years and am looking to get out and go into something more stable. I minored in math and have an ABET accredited engineering degree and worked as an embedded SWE before going into regular SWE. How feasible is this for me? Thanks.

Has anyone done a video interview with Lutron? What kind of questions did they ask?

I'm almost 50 and I still have the recurring dream that i need to drop a class that I never attended but the cut off date has passed. To make matters more ridiculous is that my college still uses the same 1990s phone system to take and drop classes and I can't find the number.

Looking at beginning to produce a product that involves a pair of small wiring harnesses.

What's the industry standard or best practice for when you want to run two wires to one pin/socket. The pins and sockets of the connectors don't seem to fit two wires and i'd like to move away from the scotchlok wire tap that I used on the prototype.

I'll start this off with saying I'm very new to electronics, so don't flame me too hard. Im making a small esp32 wifi controller which shorts a 5v connection on a circuit with high voltage, so i decided to separate it from the esp32 with an optocoupler, but the phototransistor pins 3>4 connection wasn't low enough resistance, so I've tried to use a npn transistor, but whenever i connect the collector and emitter it always seems to let a bit through. am i making any obvious mistakes? i haven't worked much with these components. thanks!

Hello everyone!

I've been working on a project for a while called EngifyHub, a CAD tool for industrial

electrical design that runs in the browser.

https://engifyhub.com

The idea is that you draw a device once and everything else comes from it: the BOM,

wire list, terminal plan, PLC I/O list and the 3D panel layout. You can also run short

circuit and load flow on the one-line you already drew, and export everything to PDF

and DXF.

If you want to look around without signing up, I put together a full example project,

a water treatment plant with 106 sheets:

https://engifyhub.com/share/TD7yjNmh4IZjoRNmawNPDdzoDd_nyOP-wbEos_016cc?page=E-002

It's free while in beta. There's still a lot I want to add, so I'd love to hear your

thoughts and any feedback you might have!

So my university didn't have a powers emphasis. I was told to go down the controls and robotics course work, as it would be the next best thing. However, they released a powers course late into the year and I was too late to take that. But my friend who took it gave me the course material and all.

Anyways, I graduated and still applying for jobs non-stop for these past 4 months. I want to ask, how should I move forward? These months gave me time to decide that I want to get into power. I like the idea of bringing power to building, the idea that power is needed everywhere, and potential to work in renewable energy.

I am studying quite a lot for my FE exam and plan to take it within the next two months. From there, what should I look for on job boards? Should I look up power analyst jobs on linkedin or utilities or renewables? It's a tad bit confusing for me so help here would be appreciated.

Also, I'm located in the U.S. btw.

Hi all,

I’m a second-year Electrical Engineering student at an HBO (university of applied sciences) in the Netherlands. In a few weeks I have to pick a specialization for next semester, which includes a project and related courses. I’m choosing between Analog Electronics and Embedded Systems.

I also have to pick one extra course: C++ or Filters & Amplifiers.

My thinking so far:

I originally leaned toward Analog because I wanted to do more PCB design. But the more I think about it, the more Embedded seems like a better fit. It involves microcontrollers and PCB design, and it would give me room to learn 3D modeling and programming, so I’d pick up a broader set of skills.

For the extra course, my plan is to take Filters & Amplifiers. That way I get the embedded project experience and still build a solid analog foundation.

My questions:

1. Is embedded systems a good path if I want to end up in an R&D role?
2. How much demand is there for embedded/electrical engineers in the Netherlands, especially with an HBO degree?
3. If I go the embedded route, will I still do hands-on hardware work? I know programming is part of the job, but I don’t want to end up coding full-time. Ideally I’d split my time between hardware (PCB design, prototyping, measuring/debugging) and software.

For the past few months, in our free time, a colleague and I have been building a tool for hardware designers. It’s called ACE, and before moving forward, we’d like to see if it actually makes sense.

The idea stems from a personal frustration. If you ask ChatGPT for the noise figure of an amplifier, it responds with absolute confidence. But it’s not actually reading the datasheet: it just hallucinates the most likely number based on its training data. As a result, you get a value measured at a different frequency, or from a similar model, or a "typical" value presented as guaranteed—and nobody tells you where it came from. It also does math "by eye": one mistake in an RF chain calculation, and the whole result is wrong, written with the exact same confidence as a correct one. You only notice it when the board arrives.

ACE, on the other hand, answers strictly based on datasheets. Every value displays the exact page and measurement conditions right next to it, so you can double-check it in ten seconds. The code handles the calculations using transparent formulas, not the AI model. If a data point isn't there, it tells you instead of making it up.

Right now, it's a prototype: it includes about 1,500 datasheets, mostly RF, and some features shown in the video are still in the early stages.

To the hardware designers out there: would you use this? And what would it take for you to truly trust the numbers? We are especially looking for critical feedback.

Licensed EE (29M) here and I was exploring a new certification to progress my knowledge in data center designs. I have worked on data center projects in the past (maybe 12 total jobs) and that’s the field that peaks my interest. Does anyone have or know if the Uptime Institute ATD certification would help me get into a position where I could work on data center designs more frequently?

I would love to find a position where my day to day is working on these mission critical projects.

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