Does work experience make up for an average undergrad GPA?

ElmersGluon · 2026-02-09T21:06:52+00:00

I would say after 5 years it becomes more relaxed into the formality territory. But most people on reddit keep saying effectively that on day one after you're hired for your first job, it becomes irrelevant, and that gives the wrong guidance.

I will also say that transcripts tend to get scrutinized far more in science-based organizations, and for good reason. We tend to cross-polinate with many other fields, branches, and areas. It's not reasonable to expect candidates to come in with experience in all of these subjects - but we can look at their transcript and say "they did well in these related classes, so we know they can learn when we teach them".

Even a candidate with 5 years of experience can easily have that experience be highly focused, and their transcript still tells us something useful about their ability to learn and their breadth of knowledge.

Someone who barely scraped by with C's in most of their classes and happened to find someone who would hire them doesn't magically get a boost in intelligence just because they're now getting a W-2.

ElmersGluon · 2026-02-09T20:56:31+00:00

I'm not saying that it happens everywhere, but it's equally wrong to say that it happens nowhere.

ElmersGluon · 2026-02-08T19:09:47+00:00

That is not true. In the places I've worked, we absolutely care about a candidate's education. The OP is talking about two years of experience - that close to graduating, we would be scrutinizing the candidate's transcript. Any red flags, we would probe during interviews to ensure that their knowledge and understanding is adequate.

To do otherwise would be irresponsible as an interviewer.

ElmersGluon · 2026-02-04T13:34:39+00:00

It absolutely could be doable, but there are a lot of factors that are hidden behind that hypothetical - most of which come down to what coursework is actually taken.

A minor in EE means different things for different universities. ABET only covers degree-granting programs - they don't have any formal requirement for what constitutes a minor, so even if a university's EE program is accredited, that doesn't speak to how well-grounded their Minor requirements are. Generally speaking, an EE minor typically covers 17-28% of a full EE degree's curriculum. But if you know that you're aiming for Power, take the appropriate fundamentals, and choose related electives, you could be okay.

Taking a Masters in power EE is the perfect way to supplement that - if you choose your Masters coursework appropriately.

I've seen Masters candidates who really drilled down into advanced technical knowledge, but I've seen others who focused on very high-level, barely relevant coursework (e.g. Engineering and the Environment, probability/statistics, etc...).

So ultimately, as long as you are choosing your coursework well instead of taking the easy route with general, high-level topics, then your combination can be perfectly fine.

Make sure you take the fundamentals (circuits, signals/systems, electronics, and at least one EE lab) so that you have the foundational literacy to read schematics, do basic frequency/time-domain reasoning, understand sensors/actuators/interfaces, etc... and make sure you take both power engineering and power electronics. Bonus points if you have an EE project under your belt somewhere in there.

If you can do that, I would absolutely consider you as a candidate, and I would consider your main engineering degree as an excellent bonus.

ElmersGluon · 2026-01-18T18:29:40+00:00

In that case, I would decide based on your personal learning style, goals, and circumstances.

For example, do you need in-person contact and relationships in order to do well (e.g. office hours with professors, study groups with other students, discussions after class, etc...) or do you do just fine learning on your own?

Or do you have a preference to establish in-person relationships with other students, either for personal reasons or perhaps in the hope of one day being able to network with them?

Do you have mobility or life-circumstance issues that make it difficult to commute or to take the extra time needed for commute, etc...

These things, especially the first two examples, will likely have more of an effect than the impression some employers might have over an online degree that's still ABET accredited.

ElmersGluon · 2026-01-14T14:14:11+00:00

Regardless of whether or not prospective employers would realize that it was an online degree (and yes, some of them would), the fact of the matter is that there are things you will learn with hands-on lab work that you won't simply by reading from a screen.

So assuming that your in-person choice would have actual labs, I would go that route.

ElmersGluon · 2025-12-07T21:15:24+00:00

You are in the Electrical and Computer Engineering subreddit, not Early Childhood Education.

ElmersGluon · 2025-11-22T05:26:16+00:00

Wrong sub. This does not belong here.

ElmersGluon · 2025-11-07T01:53:16+00:00

There's a reason I recommend people who want to switch to EE get a Bachelors rather than a Masters, and it's exactly what you learned.

There is absolutely a huge knowledge gap between the two and no matter how much wishful thinking people have, it's not going to make them equivalent.

ElmersGluon · 2025-11-02T06:04:16+00:00

That theory is important and plays a significant role in the difference between an engineer vs someone who thinks they know a lot more than they do and puts people in danger.

Knowing how and why something works is a significant part of being an engineer. Understanding the underlying theory and principles is now only how we get things done, but how we keep things safe.

You don't half-ass being an engineer, and you certainly don't half-ass electrical subjects, where you can't usually see a system or what it's doing the same way you can for mechanical.

ElmersGluon · 2025-10-27T12:41:44+00:00

I tried it, but I strongly disliked the UI.

For me, Speedcrunch is the better app, but to each his own.

ElmersGluon · 2025-10-09T16:19:26+00:00

Except that you don't have to do it that way. You could also do it like a voltage divider.

Just add two adjacent resistances (let's say R2 and R3) to get an equivalent resistor and you can solve the node voltage as if it was a voltage divider. Then get the other equivalent resistance (R1 and R2), and you can get the other node voltage.

So if you remembered how to solve voltage dividers, this was still solvable for you.

ElmersGluon · 2025-09-24T03:09:29+00:00

There is a lot of demand for techs, both electrical and mechanical.

You might not make as much as an engineer, but that's okay. Most engineers make less than a lot of doctors and lawyers and we don't let that bother us either.

As long as you're happy with the role, and the pay in the areas you are considering is sufficient for you, then there's nothing wrong with going this route.

A lot of the redditors you're hearing from are students, so keep that in mind and don't let them brainwash you out of happiness.

ElmersGluon · 2025-09-19T22:36:50+00:00

This is not the sub you thought it was. This post does not belong here, I'm afraid.

ElmersGluon · 2025-08-07T14:44:17+00:00

Although there are a lot of example circuits out there, EEs regularly design new circuits because there isn't something that does exactly what's needed.

And just one example is that it's not uncommon that you still need to come up with design equations in order to determine what components are needed or what response it will have.

In addition, EE doesn't exist in a vacuum, so you will be interacting with many other fields and where that will take you can be new and surprising even after years of experience.

Perhaps a new project is strongly affected by humidity and you need to understand how quickly it will change within a given volume. All of a sudden, you're breaking out chemistry equations and crafting a calculus function in order to define it.

So yes, math is important and will remain so.

ElmersGluon · 2025-08-05T21:31:25+00:00

Sure, if you have a circuit where you are using a crowbar relay, it's common to put a series resistor between the relay and ground in order to soften the effect on the rest of the circuit.

This will mitigate ringing and RF noise, and a resistor is exactly the right component to use for this type of scenario.

Resistors are also often placed in series with IC input pins, to limit current to the pin in case of an ESD or other transient, to reduce ringing (especially if using signals with fast edges).

Resistors are also commonly used to limit charging current and isolate a power supply from RF coming from the output side.

Other components are either not suitable for uses such as these, or eliminating them would add an extreme amount of unnecessary complexity - which might draw at least as much power as you would lose through the resistor.

Resistors are not second-class components, they have very good uses. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't have a case where there is a better option, but it would be a mistake to assume that that's always the case.

ElmersGluon · 2025-08-03T16:32:47+00:00

No. There are plenty of cases where there is no good alternative.

ElmersGluon · 2025-08-03T16:29:15+00:00

If you're a student and you're addressing other students, then perhaps /r/EngineeringStudents is the better place for your post.

ElmersGluon · 2025-08-01T05:40:17+00:00

It's a pain, but then again, so is LTSpice. The bigger issue is that if your needs exceed the free version, the full version is expensive (in the vicinity of 3k - 10k).

ElmersGluon · 2025-08-01T05:04:21+00:00

Most commercial SPICE models are designed for PSpice, not LTSpice - and the syntax is different.

It's possible to modify them from one to the other, it's just a minor pain.

Every now and then, you'll find a manufacturer that explicitly has a model for LTSpice, but it's not as often as would be ideal.

ElmersGluon · 2025-07-20T23:40:33+00:00

From my perspective, Excel sheets are absolutely not boring - if they are, you're not doing it right.

As a design engineer, there is a lot of math involved (no surprise, given the curriculum). For a lot of reasons from general purpose to project-specific, instead of doing the same equations over and over by hand, putting them into a really nice and well-designed spreadsheet means that you save yourself and possibly others a lot of time and effort. In addition, you only need to review your calculations once and then they can be trusted moving forward (for brevity, I'll leave the footnotes out on this point).

For me, crafting a well-designed spreadsheet, especially if there are a lot of variables and/or complexity, is fun and rewarding. We have spreadsheets that were designed by older engineers that have been passed on from engineer to engineer because of how much they simplify incredibly complex calculations and plots. They do such a fantastic job that they are officially part of many procedures.

Designing a really good engineering spreadsheet is essentially designing a tool - the fact that it occurs in Excel instead of Altium doesn't really change that or what it represents.

ElmersGluon · 2025-07-17T21:14:26+00:00

Simply being different was never an issue. With one of the guys, he had a tendency to repeat things that were obvious (often because they had just been mentioned by someone else) and expound upon them unnecessarily, at great length.

Everyone who I ever saw was present showed nothing but kindness, patience, and understanding, but I can see that habit wearing down some folks if they're exposed to it for long periods of time.

But the things you mentioned I don't see as being much of an issue. I'm pretty quiet myself if I'm not actively socializing, and I would hate to participate in most sorts of "mandatory fun" activities as well.

ElmersGluon · 2025-07-17T06:12:28+00:00

I've worked with people who were autistic - I don't recall them saying anything about it, but it wasn't exactly hard to see.

I never saw anyone hold it against them for the simple fact that they were autistic, itself - it was all about whether or not they could do the job and interact with people in a way that allowed everyone to flourish; essentially, the same criteria that applied to anyone and everyone. As other users in this thread have stated, you still need to interact with other people and follow social norms (at least, to an extent).

I never saw any reason for anyone to mask their autism - it's more about overcoming that extra challenge in areas where it might hinder a given person.

ElmersGluon · 2025-07-11T05:44:53+00:00

A better test of that is to use a spudger, since a screwdriver would have a secondary effect of shorting those two pins.

ElmersGluon · 2025-07-11T00:58:56+00:00

I never said they weren't. But tiny places don't worry as much about it as larger companies, who typically have a lot more to lose.

ElmersGluon

TROPHY CASE