Wanting to be a Computer Engineer

[Zelda007]

It's a career I've been heavily considering, but I have two questions.

What exactly does one do at their job? I've looked it up, but I can never really find a good answer.

And does Georgia Tech sound like a good school to become one? It's in-state and affordable to me, and it sounds like it will be a great college for me.

To give a little background info, I'm an upcoming high school senior. So I'm really having to consider this stuff now. I got a 1950 on my SAT (640s in Reading & Writing, 670 on Math) and have a perfect 4.0 GPA. I'll likely be salutatorian, maybe even valedictorian. So I'm not too, too worried about getting in.

I'm mostly just wanting some good info and advice.

[jmorgan3]

I'm a third-year Aerospace Engineering major at Georgia Tech. For thoughts about the school in general, please see this thread. I don't know much about CompE specifically, though. We have the #7 program in the country according to US News and World Report. CompEs from GT seem to have a higher starting salary than the average (scroll down to Table 3 on that second link).

[douglasm]

I don't know much about Computer Engineering specifically, but I graduated from GT with a Computer Science degree last year and I think their CS program was pretty good.

As I understand it, the main difference between CE and CS is that CE focuses more on hardware while CS focuses more on software. Designing, fixing, and improving computer* hardware is, I think, the main thing Computer Engineers do professionally. If you would prefer to be working on programs, Computer Science is what you want. Both majors have to take at least an introductory course or two in the other's area, and some computer engineers are probably responsible for writing software to use the hardware they design, but the hardware/software split is pretty big overall.

If you already have significant knowledge in the area, you should ask about the possibility of testing out of the introductory courses. I skipped both of the first two programming courses in my CS curriculum by taking one test each.

* In this context, the term "computer" includes many more things than the kind of machine you are browsing this forum on and its accessories. iPods, gps systems, and X-boxes are just the tip of the iceberg.

[Zelda007]

My biggest worry is that I don't know much in the area. I'm hoping that I will be able to go there and learn what I want. I have a great desire to learn the material, so that should help. There's no point in learning it if I don't want to. Although the difference between CS and CE does intrigue me.

Is either one significantly harder than the other?

[Seraph]

Computer engineering is basically the bastard-child of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. They tend to be a combination of low-level programing, and high-end electronics design. Things a Computer Engineer might be expected to do:
Design a circuit board
Design "complex" semiconductor chips
Program a microcontroller

To use a fairly crude analogy. If electronics were LEGO's:
Electrical Engineers would design the blocks to have a specific shape
Computer Engineers would combine these blocks into a finished design
Computer Scientists would play with the assembly

To use a better example of the differences. If given the physical layout of a simple transistor on a silicon wafer:
A CS doesn't need to know how the transitor works.
A CE should have a basic understanding of how it works. If the design is sound they could probably tell you it's basic properties.
A EE should not only be able to tell you how it works, they should be able to take the existing design for one and tell you how it would need to be modified to change how it worked. If there was a flaw in the design they should know enough to be able to catch it, and how to fix it.

In the grand scheme of things the reason you can't find a good definition of what they do it's a major that leaves a lot of room for possible futures. This probably makes it a good choice if you don't know what you want to do exactly, but are interested in the general programing/electrical design area.
Do you want to pure electrical design? They do that.
Do you want to do pure programming? They do that too.
Want to do something in-between? Go for it.

On the otherhand if your dream is to program for Microsoft or Oracle it's probably a bad choice.

As for which is harder. It's going to depend on what your good at. For example:
A CE degree should have a lot more physics then a CS degree.
A CS degree is going to go into a lot of higher-level programing topics. For example a CE would probably not take classes on things like AI, or Databases.

[Zelda007]

Wow Seraph. That helps a lot.

Anyone else want to comment?

[Ventanator]

My cousin is a computer engineer and he does just about everything that you can imagine. I went to work with him once, just to see how cool his computer thing was (he has it set up with a big black chair and three big screens making like a little bubble around him, it's awesome), and it looked pretty cool.

It's a lot of work though. He makes sure that the computers on tugboats work correctly and designs misc. crap to make the company lots of money. You'll need to know, judging off of his job and what he has to say about the subject, a lot about electronics, a lot about how computers and computer software works, and a lot about how to program a program. He doesn't do any really complex programming though, he has a program that makes a GUI for him and all he has to do is tell the program what he wants the thing to do (just pick a button, drop it in the 'Speed' box, label it 'Half Speed', and then make that button tell the computers to tell the engine to run at half speed).

He makes a good bit of money though, and has a lot of benefits (free truck, free house, and a few free computers).

Sorry if that didn't help a whole lot, but after that LEGO's statement I just had to say that I've never heard a better example and felt weird just saying that...

[Zelda007]

The LEGOs analogy almost single-handedly sealed the deal for me.

I'm starting to like this career more and more.

[Kaldra]

I'm going into this at North Dakota State University starting in a month. While I had a general idea of what a Computer Engineer does, this gave me far more information than I had. That said, I want to major in it even more.

[just-mark]

This may well be irrelevant as it's not about Computer Engineering as such but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway. I'm in the UK and during my first year of Computer Science it was suggested I changed to a 'Software Engineering' course. Although I have no doubt that this is again different to Computer Engineering I thought I'd add the distinction as they're all related.

The main differences between Computer Science and Software Engineering seem to be:

SE is slightly more focussed on the overall design of programs and CS slightly more focussed on the actual coding (big overlap of both though)
SE is slightly more career focussed and involves more working in teams/understanding the different roles
SE has more focus on programming methodologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_methodology
SE at my uni meant the course would be a year longer and that I'd end up with a Masters degree (MEng) rather than just a Bachelors degree (BSc)

[Dark567]

I am in my fifth year as a CompE at the University of Wisconsin, and, well, take my story/advice with a grain of salt:

I absolutely regret doing Computer Engineering as a major. If I could go back again I would do Comp Sci in a heart beat. I started off by taking basic circuits classes(Electrical Engineering) and programming(CS), and enjoyed both greatly. So I decided to become a CompE as it was a good combination of both, while still allowing me to go in whatever direction I wanted.(programming or hardware) As I continued the program the CS classes got a lot more fun, more involved and intellectually stimulating and the EE courses... well they got harder, more boring, and more based on busy work. They also started getting into some much more detailed math and physics that I didn't realized I had signed up for.(and this isn't the math and physics you get when you take math and physics courses, which are very theoretical and intellectually stimulating, it's applied math and physics, which going into the program I thought I would enjoy, but... no ) Even though I started to hate my hardware classes, I thought I might just be hating the classes and not hardware design, so I decided to take an internship doing single board computer design. When I got to my internship they assigned me to Signal Analysis. Well all those mathy applied classes I said I hated, well that was what I was doing, needless to say, no fun. In comparison, I now have an internship as a software developer and love it. So for me that settled it. CompE, also being a more specialized major, prevented me from taking more fun and interesting classes that the CS majors go to take. I love philosophy and econ, and would have liked to take more courses in those areas(maybe even a double major). I also would have got to take some of the cooler CS classes like graphics and networks. Now I don't want to scare you away from the CompE major, but I wouldn't suggest sticking with it if after the first few courses if you find you don't like the hardware side, and you feel like you don't enjoy non-theoretical math and physics.

And also this was just my experience at my university, the university you choose could always have better professors or a better department than I did.

[blue halax]

Whoa! Harsh! I had pretty much the opposite of Dark567's experience at Wisconsin. I dislike applied math and physics, too, which is why I didn't take any when majored in computer engineering. And I, too, would have hated doing single board computer design and signal analysis, so I've avoided jobs involving anything related to either of those things.

This was a few years ago, so perhaps things have changed, but pretty much no math was required for computer engineering while I was there, and none of the required courses were math intensive, either. EE required ECE 320 (E-mag II) and some sort differential equations course, but Comp E. just required the basic calculus sequence (which was required for every quantitative discipline anyway) and E-mag I (which was just a re-hash of stuff that was in the required introductory physics course, which was just AP physics).

Which advanced courses require busy work? I specialized in VLSI / architecture, so this might be different for other areas, but the core courses (551, 551, 552, 553, 554, 555, and 556 – Verilog design and synthesis, computer architecture, DFT, microprocessor design lab, VLSI design / layout, and EDA/CAD, for you non-Wisconsinites) had no busy work. The projects and exams were weighted heavily enough that you didn't even have to do the homework to get an A. Maybe you disliked the projects? I thought doing stuff like trying to make the smallest / fastest / lowest power multiplier, or putting together a P6-esque Sega emulator in an FPGA was a lot of fun, but YMMV. If you skipped class, each course was maybe 10-40 hours of work on a project (except for 554, which was more like 100-200 hours), plus 4 hours of exams. I think that’s not too bad compared to a lot of other majors, where you often to have show up for discussions, or there are weekly quizzes or homework assignments.

I also disagree with the assertion that computer engineering is so specialized that you don't have time for other things. At least at Wisconsin, if there’s some requirement you want to skip, you can probably talk somebody into letting you work around it. Personally, I was a huge slacker, and didn't even have the minimum GPA requirement to make it into the program, but the Dean let me in conditionally. I didn't want to take the boring required discrete math course, so I got a prof to sign off on letting me use one of my combinatorics courses towards that requirement (and I hear it's standard to allow that substitution now). There was an annoying rule that you had to get someone to sign off on it if you wanted to take more than 21 (or is it 23?) credits, but like most rules, it was just a formality, and it wasn’t too hard to get the right signature. I think it's easy to get stuck feeling like the system is some giant bureaucracy where no one cares, but most professors do actually care about their students. There are some notable exceptions, but those will exist everywhere, and you can avoid them if you ask around.

It’s funny that you mention being interested in econ and philosophy, since I had the same interests in undergrad. I would have easily had enough time to finish my additional major in econ if I hadn’t gotten an additional major in yet another area, and taken a bunch of random fun non-major courses, or if I’d stayed for a seventh semester. It’s true that there’s more required coursework for engineering than for other majors, but most majors at Wisconsin only require something like 40 credits, and most of my friends graduated with 150+ credits, so you could easily rack up three or four majors, including econ and philosophy, if you avoid taking non-required classes, but where’s the fun in that?

On the original topic, for reasons which seem pretty silly to me, it seems like a computer engineering degree gives you a lot more flexibility in terms of your career. Companies like MS and Google are perfectly willing to interview CEs for software positions, and companies like Intel and Lucent are happy to interview CEs for hardware positions, but it's and it's a little tougher to get a non-embedded software position with a pure EE degree, and it's really hard* to get a hardware position with a CS/SE degree.

*with the obvious exceptions, like specializing in computer architecture in a CS department, and then going after a computer architecture position.

[Dudleykins]

I agree with @ seraph, I just wanted to jump in and say that if you were interested in software engineer jobs as a career, check this out. I was doing some research trying to figure out weather I should stay with my current company, and what my competitors companies were offering associates who had the same job title and function as I. Can't help you earn a degree, but will absolutely let you know if you are being paid fairly with the McCurrent market. Hope this helps.

Please stop reporting this post. It's not spam. Zie really just does think it's a good place to look for info. Thanks. - Hammer

[Edwinem]

You will have no problems getting in to Tech. I am currently a freshmen there. Here the only difference between a CE and EE is 5 classes of material. So if you want to research the type of work that you want to do and compare it to CS just look at EE. While you do get to learn some programming doing either of those, both majors will focus on the hardware aspect in the later classes. In my opinion as a CE you would be doing a lot of computer architecture stuff and building microchips. So if you already have an understanding of things like x86, registers and processors and you like it then go for it. If not then research it a little and then decide. You get one free major change here, and during your first year at least, all you will be doing is getting rid of your core classes.

[Zelda007]

Wow. I never expected this to get dredged back up. I had even forgot I made this.

Well as an update, I am at Georgia Tech right now as a freshman, and I did declare CompE as my major. So far, I am liking it. It's taking some work to get programming to click with me, but I really enjoy learning it. I feel like I've actually accomplished something when I understand a concept. I feel that I'm in the right major, but it's going to take a little more work than I expected.

To use a fairly crude analogy. If electronics were LEGO's:
Electrical Engineers would design the blocks to have a specific shape
Computer Engineers would combine these blocks into a finished design
Computer Scientists would play with the assembly

In retrospect, this is quite hilarious. I'm taking an Intro to ECE Design class that revolves around the LEGO Mindstorm robot kits. And going by what we've done, the best part is actually putting the robot together, which is the CompE part Seraph listed. I spent almost a whole class period this week trying to build a claw using a single motor (we only get three motors, and two were for the wheels), and I never got frustrated. I finally got a design that I believe would have worked, but i didn't get to test it out because my group had taken over and built a very crude claw that would barely complete the assignment.

That said, I'm really considering going into robotics as my area of depth. Our teacher went over the various areas offered at Tech, and robotics is the one that interested me the most. I won't have to decide on that until probably my third year, but it will be something I'll look in to.

[Tock]

I'm currently a second year CompE student. It's pretty fun so far, but I do have worries about quantum or light computers making me obsolete.

[Dark567]

I'm currently a second year CompE student. It's pretty fun so far, but I do have worries about quantum or light computers making me obsolete.

I wouldn't worry about it. If that happens, you can always move into software. I did it anyway(software is more fun).

[torontoraptor]

I"m also currently a second year Comp Eng student. My school is a bit different in that the first year is general for all engineers, and you specialize in second year.
The majority of my courses are combined with the EE stream, which means I get to take lots of circuit analysis courses and the EE's get to take programming and digital logic courses. Apparently we get more specialized later on, but the way I'm seeing it right now, Computer Eng is simply a subset of Electrical Eng.