Paying the EE dues

[Mark Amundson]

A couple of things. An engineering education is ment to be a broad spectrum
experiance so that your specialty is complemented by a general knowledge of
engineering. As licensed professional electrical engineer, there are two 8
hour exams for licensure. The first is generally given after four years of
accredited college and is called the Fundementals of Engineering (FE) exam.
This exam is given to all engineers, regardless of speciality, so that
everyone has a basic grasp of the fundementals. The second exam is a
Principles of Practice (PP) exam where 8 one hour long questions are
answered in your specialty. This gets you the license. The reason colleges
have broad engineering curricula for all specialties is accreditation.
Accreditation is for licensure.

The second thing is that new hire BSEE's make $40k to $50k now days. Myself,
I have a six figure salary after 17 years in this business plus several
hundred shares of stock options granted per year. On top of that we have
nominally 20% corporate growth with 20% profit sharing bonuses each year.
Warning: I am in the Biotech field and the company only hires 3.7 to 4.0 GPA
grads from schools that specialize Biotech EE's. Is worth it to be a EE to
understand synth technology? No, but your day job can fund your night time
synth fun....