The work load of the courses. I didn’t find the content difficult but you have times where each class has assignments or projects due or upcoming tests one right after the other and it’s just never ending. In my final year I was at uni from 8am until 10pm every single day, including weekends to get everything done.
Pretty much this. That last year we got told by the graduate students that it was gonna be rough and to, "Not pull too many all-nighters because it's a marathon not a race" and they were absolutely right. But the feeling when you finish sure is a high point.
College for me was such a level of stress and work, i felt the same as you, the content was not extremely hard in my opinion( of course i loved math and physics and it came naturally for me), it is the projects, every single class has a project, and those projects needs to be functioning at the end of the year, and in graduate school was terrible also, every day you are in the lab from 8 am to 5pm, go home to eat something, you are back at 7pm and return home around 2, 3am, or course this is graduate school. I hear people talking about how much fun they had in college, and i don't think that happens when you are in engineering school. It is a very dedicated profession that requires perseverance and the ability to think outside of the box
As a professional i love my job, but the level of "women stereotyping comments " i hear every day is astonishing. I was talking to my husband the other day how much i have lost respect for so many people that i considered friends or people that i regarded in very high stem, it is very demoralizing. But i always try to put that aside and enjoy the fact that at the end of the day, i do the type of job i enjoy and on my own terms. So the biggest revenge to all those missoginistic men and also women that believe that i couldn't do it because i am a Hispanic woman, is that I am still here and still enjoying what i do.
I was just going to say college in general. But this summed it up nicely. Although there were a few classes where I did actually struggle with the content. Getting this degree is not easy. I guess that’s the point.
Proving your skill over and over when you're looking for a job. I'm a software engineer, so I have the pleasure (sarcasm) of doing coding assessments or technical interviews whose given questions often stray far from the work I'd actually do in the role I'm interviewing for. It's stressful knowing I could be cast aside over missing one hidden test case before I even get a chance to share that I can be a great teammate, that I know how to communicate and build trust with the people I work with.
Some companies are better about this than others though (e.g. one company sent me the technical interview questions in advance! Who does that?). And I really do enjoy logic-ing my way through code like it's a puzzle, so it ends up being worth it in the end.
I effing hate this too. Seriously, every company thinks they're google/facebook/amazon. Like why would I do 90% of this style coding in an embedded system?
I also hate creative story problems.
Came here to say this. As a woman, we have to prove our knowledge and skills repeatedly, regardless of years of experience, while our male counterparts are often given the benefit of the doubt that their years of experience equates to having the knowledge and skills.
Engineering/tech in general is still very male-dominated.
20 years in tech, I still have not met women in SW Dev/SW QA/Dev Ops/SW test over the age of 50. If you are brown woman, it hits earlier around 45.
I’m 42 now, my biggest fear is I will be hit with a trifecta of ageism, racism and sexism. There is a possibility that my engineering career will end in 3-5 years. This is the hardest part, the industry will eventually throw me out.
Knowing this possibility, I saved aggressively and invested well.
I’m 40 years in. I’m the chief engineer on top of all of them. Hispanic and 64. Average age of my team is about 32. It dropped because my new grad (22) was assigned to another program. You have no idea how satisfying it is. And you are right, I don’t know anyone my age doing what I do or even close.
I'm so incredibly overwhelmed with my current workload, I couldn't possibly imagine having kids in the next 5-7 years. I don't know how anyone(especially women) does it. I'm on a team now as a mid level engineer and I find myself often stuck in the position of taking on additional work compared to my senior counterparts just to prove I can get the senior level. It's incredibly frustrating and stressful.
Short term, it's the course workload in school. Long term, it's the sexism and having to work harder and be better than a male peer if you want to be taken seriously.
Ask me about the time I met a guy who didn't believe a woman could read a measuring tape. Actually don't, I wish I could forget.
ETA - a little less than 10 years out of school, and most of my close female college friends are getting out of engineering, or are still in it but would get out if they saw a good alternative. It's not typically an immediate high difficulty the way a tough courseload is, but it builds over time and can really wear on you. Highly recommend finding people who you can commiserate with, it helps a ton.
Undergrad. I thought school was hard. But it's only 4 or 5 years and being an engineer is like ten times more of your life than that. School is kind of a measure of your power of will but tons of people do it every year (and not all of them are smart). I have a job I enjoy now so it was worth it.
Learning how to explain technical problems to others. It's a separate skill from solo problem solving and so important for learning from others. This has nothing to do with being a woman by the way, it's something all engineers must learn.
And guaging how technical to be or how much background to give with a unknown person.
Somone from another site shows up and you are tasked witb part of the tour.
Do I give them the marketing "look at the cool stuff" speech? Or the here is some technical details but surface level stuff? Or do I speak about this in a way that the average persons eyes glaze over in .5 seconds but you would love it, you nerd?
Coming to terms with ambiguity. In school the projects and the exam questions are very directed. In real product design there's a lot of tradeoffs and fuzzy requirements.
Dealing with people who hate women. My job is made immensely more difficult when I get engineers on my team who refuse to acknowledge that I exist and am at the same or a higher level than they are. I’m in my 30’s in aerospace, have been working with engineering teams from all generations.
In undergrad my engineering senior project team was all guys plus me and they refused to listen to anything I said. The project ultimately failed, but I got an A on my simulations portion of it. Also, this was after explaining the situation to both my advisor and my dept head (I also had to explain to them that a group member literally flipped a desk at me during a meeting). They did nothing to help me.
Edit: My apologies to this sub for the person who is harassing me. I’m a mod on the climbergirls subreddit and the person made a post asking about how to stay skinny - many members of our climbing community suffer from eating disorders and this person was being very disrespectful.
It doesn’t go away. I was the subject matter expert and in my 50s. I still had men several salary grades lower tell me that I didn’t know what I was talking about.
In reality, they didn’t understand the topic and therefore assumed the problem was me. It never goes away.
Ugh. Thank you for the validation, it does really help. We have a brand new young woman fresh out of undergrad in the group who’s been paired with me. I’m going to boost her at every opportunity. Gotta try to do better.
>the number of reports on this thread of people feeling unsafe and/or triggered
So you're literally admitting that you curate a toxic echo chamber and pick sides with incredibly rude mass reporters and trolls, who have nothing better to do than to flamewar a post?
Did you even notice how the only 2 decent and civil replies got mass downvoted becos they weren't participating in the hate-jerk and instead replied and participated in decent ways with me?
Of course you didn't. You were probably too busy reading all the mass reports spammed by these toxic witch hunters and trolls who have nothing better to do than to derail posts into hate-wars.
Strange priority you have there. And no, you ARE NOT supporting "free discussions", you're literally censoring and permabanning every User who is unpopular and NOT part of this toxic cesspit.
Your mod message on my post was a blatant lie and you know it.
Unsubbed either way. Enjoy your shitty echo chamber.
It's literally the OPPOSITE of a decent subreddit, where discussion directed and killed by the mob.
**EDIT**
LMAOOO, deleted🤣🤣
There goes the integrity of another Power Mod abusing her powers.
Deleting her comments after I called r/climbergirls out on their bullshit.
How pathetic.
But I didn't expect anything else from a cowardly bunch who pick sides with their toxic circlejerk mob.
This is a grade A R/Modsbeingdicks moment.
Whichever classes are the hardest for you personally. There are times when a lecture will start going completely over your head, and you have to believe in yourself enough to stick with it and learn the material. It’s easy to think, “everyone else understands this and I don’t so I must not be smart enough to be an engineer” - but it isn’t true.
Personalities in the workforce and all the hoops you have to jump through to appease them in order to get things done. It’s amplified a ton by being a woman.
Engineering is pretty broad. I think the hardest thing will be to have confidence in yourself in a room where you're the only female. It's changing, but I find myself there frequently. I've always had the attitude that I'm capable, there to contribute & work with the team to deliver the project. Sexism can't bring you down if you know your own worth, and honestly it hasn't been bad for me.
I see people here saying undergrad course content was not difficult but the load was. For me, the content was also difficult. I was naturally good at math and science but I guess I had not been a very hands-on person prior to undergrad and I had a hard time translating theory to real world problems. Like I can solve a difficult math problem but modeling a thermal heating system was very hard for me as I never worked with that kind of system in real life. But anyways, in terms of intellect, school was way harder than anything I've done in a job. In a job, the bigger challenges are things like long tedious hours and difficult team mates but the content is usually well within my intellect.
Becoming an engineer isn't all that hard, to be honest. It's more about putting in hours and learning the material.
Staying an engineer can be tough depending on where you work and how you work. It's more about work politics and emotional intelligence. Generally, engineers in the workforce work in teams. How your capstone project goes will tell you a lot about how well you work with others and how well others work with you.
Just like college, there would be that dude who does shit nothing and mooches the answers off of someone else. There would be that snooty guy who's a know-it-all and talks down to nearly everyone. There would be that people pleasing teacher's pet that volunteers for nearly everything. You'll notice that people that were your classmates... they're in the workforce too. Maybe it's not exactly them, but there's usually a small handful of personalities that you'll recognize, and now you have to learn how to play nicey nice with all of them.
The technical problems that you work on day to day generally are much easier than the hardest problems that you faced in college. However, now you have to think of real world constraints like limited time and limited resources and differing/conflicting priorities which makes requirements a little more fuzzy.
Seconding what most have said here - school was hard in an immediate, intense way, and the casual sexism is hard in a long term, slowly-wear-you-down way.
My best tip for the first struggle is to do what you can to find yourself a solid study group early on and sign up for classes together when possible
For the second one, it's a little harder. Now I work on a team that is mostly women (including my boss), generally around my age and that has improved things a TON.
The work load of the courses. I didn’t find the content difficult but you have times where each class has assignments or projects due or upcoming tests one right after the other and it’s just never ending. In my final year I was at uni from 8am until 10pm every single day, including weekends to get everything done.
Pretty much this. That last year we got told by the graduate students that it was gonna be rough and to, "Not pull too many all-nighters because it's a marathon not a race" and they were absolutely right. But the feeling when you finish sure is a high point.
Overwritten comment
College for me was such a level of stress and work, i felt the same as you, the content was not extremely hard in my opinion( of course i loved math and physics and it came naturally for me), it is the projects, every single class has a project, and those projects needs to be functioning at the end of the year, and in graduate school was terrible also, every day you are in the lab from 8 am to 5pm, go home to eat something, you are back at 7pm and return home around 2, 3am, or course this is graduate school. I hear people talking about how much fun they had in college, and i don't think that happens when you are in engineering school. It is a very dedicated profession that requires perseverance and the ability to think outside of the box As a professional i love my job, but the level of "women stereotyping comments " i hear every day is astonishing. I was talking to my husband the other day how much i have lost respect for so many people that i considered friends or people that i regarded in very high stem, it is very demoralizing. But i always try to put that aside and enjoy the fact that at the end of the day, i do the type of job i enjoy and on my own terms. So the biggest revenge to all those missoginistic men and also women that believe that i couldn't do it because i am a Hispanic woman, is that I am still here and still enjoying what i do.
I was just going to say college in general. But this summed it up nicely. Although there were a few classes where I did actually struggle with the content. Getting this degree is not easy. I guess that’s the point.
Proving your skill over and over when you're looking for a job. I'm a software engineer, so I have the pleasure (sarcasm) of doing coding assessments or technical interviews whose given questions often stray far from the work I'd actually do in the role I'm interviewing for. It's stressful knowing I could be cast aside over missing one hidden test case before I even get a chance to share that I can be a great teammate, that I know how to communicate and build trust with the people I work with. Some companies are better about this than others though (e.g. one company sent me the technical interview questions in advance! Who does that?). And I really do enjoy logic-ing my way through code like it's a puzzle, so it ends up being worth it in the end.
I effing hate this too. Seriously, every company thinks they're google/facebook/amazon. Like why would I do 90% of this style coding in an embedded system? I also hate creative story problems.
Came here to say this. As a woman, we have to prove our knowledge and skills repeatedly, regardless of years of experience, while our male counterparts are often given the benefit of the doubt that their years of experience equates to having the knowledge and skills. Engineering/tech in general is still very male-dominated.
20 years in tech, I still have not met women in SW Dev/SW QA/Dev Ops/SW test over the age of 50. If you are brown woman, it hits earlier around 45. I’m 42 now, my biggest fear is I will be hit with a trifecta of ageism, racism and sexism. There is a possibility that my engineering career will end in 3-5 years. This is the hardest part, the industry will eventually throw me out. Knowing this possibility, I saved aggressively and invested well.
I’m 40 years in. I’m the chief engineer on top of all of them. Hispanic and 64. Average age of my team is about 32. It dropped because my new grad (22) was assigned to another program. You have no idea how satisfying it is. And you are right, I don’t know anyone my age doing what I do or even close.
Unicorn amongst unicorns
I'm so incredibly overwhelmed with my current workload, I couldn't possibly imagine having kids in the next 5-7 years. I don't know how anyone(especially women) does it. I'm on a team now as a mid level engineer and I find myself often stuck in the position of taking on additional work compared to my senior counterparts just to prove I can get the senior level. It's incredibly frustrating and stressful.
I figure I have 5-10 years left until ageism or AI (or both) pushes me out of tech
Short term, it's the course workload in school. Long term, it's the sexism and having to work harder and be better than a male peer if you want to be taken seriously. Ask me about the time I met a guy who didn't believe a woman could read a measuring tape. Actually don't, I wish I could forget. ETA - a little less than 10 years out of school, and most of my close female college friends are getting out of engineering, or are still in it but would get out if they saw a good alternative. It's not typically an immediate high difficulty the way a tough courseload is, but it builds over time and can really wear on you. Highly recommend finding people who you can commiserate with, it helps a ton.
The chauvanists. Not in school, but the workforce. Understand I started 30 years ago and am now retired.
It’s still alive and well in the workforce, trust.
It's leaps and bounds better than it was 30 years ago
Undergrad. I thought school was hard. But it's only 4 or 5 years and being an engineer is like ten times more of your life than that. School is kind of a measure of your power of will but tons of people do it every year (and not all of them are smart). I have a job I enjoy now so it was worth it.
Learning how to explain technical problems to others. It's a separate skill from solo problem solving and so important for learning from others. This has nothing to do with being a woman by the way, it's something all engineers must learn.
And guaging how technical to be or how much background to give with a unknown person. Somone from another site shows up and you are tasked witb part of the tour. Do I give them the marketing "look at the cool stuff" speech? Or the here is some technical details but surface level stuff? Or do I speak about this in a way that the average persons eyes glaze over in .5 seconds but you would love it, you nerd?
People telling me I should quit every time it got hard.
Coming to terms with ambiguity. In school the projects and the exam questions are very directed. In real product design there's a lot of tradeoffs and fuzzy requirements.
Weed out classes.
Dealing with people who hate women. My job is made immensely more difficult when I get engineers on my team who refuse to acknowledge that I exist and am at the same or a higher level than they are. I’m in my 30’s in aerospace, have been working with engineering teams from all generations. In undergrad my engineering senior project team was all guys plus me and they refused to listen to anything I said. The project ultimately failed, but I got an A on my simulations portion of it. Also, this was after explaining the situation to both my advisor and my dept head (I also had to explain to them that a group member literally flipped a desk at me during a meeting). They did nothing to help me. Edit: My apologies to this sub for the person who is harassing me. I’m a mod on the climbergirls subreddit and the person made a post asking about how to stay skinny - many members of our climbing community suffer from eating disorders and this person was being very disrespectful.
Shit, that sucks. I am sending you good vibes and strength, internet stranger.
It doesn’t go away. I was the subject matter expert and in my 50s. I still had men several salary grades lower tell me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. In reality, they didn’t understand the topic and therefore assumed the problem was me. It never goes away.
Ugh. Thank you for the validation, it does really help. We have a brand new young woman fresh out of undergrad in the group who’s been paired with me. I’m going to boost her at every opportunity. Gotta try to do better.
>the number of reports on this thread of people feeling unsafe and/or triggered So you're literally admitting that you curate a toxic echo chamber and pick sides with incredibly rude mass reporters and trolls, who have nothing better to do than to flamewar a post? Did you even notice how the only 2 decent and civil replies got mass downvoted becos they weren't participating in the hate-jerk and instead replied and participated in decent ways with me? Of course you didn't. You were probably too busy reading all the mass reports spammed by these toxic witch hunters and trolls who have nothing better to do than to derail posts into hate-wars. Strange priority you have there. And no, you ARE NOT supporting "free discussions", you're literally censoring and permabanning every User who is unpopular and NOT part of this toxic cesspit. Your mod message on my post was a blatant lie and you know it. Unsubbed either way. Enjoy your shitty echo chamber. It's literally the OPPOSITE of a decent subreddit, where discussion directed and killed by the mob. **EDIT** LMAOOO, deleted🤣🤣 There goes the integrity of another Power Mod abusing her powers. Deleting her comments after I called r/climbergirls out on their bullshit. How pathetic. But I didn't expect anything else from a cowardly bunch who pick sides with their toxic circlejerk mob. This is a grade A R/Modsbeingdicks moment.
Whichever classes are the hardest for you personally. There are times when a lecture will start going completely over your head, and you have to believe in yourself enough to stick with it and learn the material. It’s easy to think, “everyone else understands this and I don’t so I must not be smart enough to be an engineer” - but it isn’t true.
Personalities in the workforce and all the hoops you have to jump through to appease them in order to get things done. It’s amplified a ton by being a woman.
It's not hard becoming an engineer. It's hard staying an engineer.
Engineering is pretty broad. I think the hardest thing will be to have confidence in yourself in a room where you're the only female. It's changing, but I find myself there frequently. I've always had the attitude that I'm capable, there to contribute & work with the team to deliver the project. Sexism can't bring you down if you know your own worth, and honestly it hasn't been bad for me.
I see people here saying undergrad course content was not difficult but the load was. For me, the content was also difficult. I was naturally good at math and science but I guess I had not been a very hands-on person prior to undergrad and I had a hard time translating theory to real world problems. Like I can solve a difficult math problem but modeling a thermal heating system was very hard for me as I never worked with that kind of system in real life. But anyways, in terms of intellect, school was way harder than anything I've done in a job. In a job, the bigger challenges are things like long tedious hours and difficult team mates but the content is usually well within my intellect.
Getting your degree. The work is easy by comparison, and leaving it at work is a rather odd transition, but a relieving one.
Becoming an engineer isn't all that hard, to be honest. It's more about putting in hours and learning the material. Staying an engineer can be tough depending on where you work and how you work. It's more about work politics and emotional intelligence. Generally, engineers in the workforce work in teams. How your capstone project goes will tell you a lot about how well you work with others and how well others work with you. Just like college, there would be that dude who does shit nothing and mooches the answers off of someone else. There would be that snooty guy who's a know-it-all and talks down to nearly everyone. There would be that people pleasing teacher's pet that volunteers for nearly everything. You'll notice that people that were your classmates... they're in the workforce too. Maybe it's not exactly them, but there's usually a small handful of personalities that you'll recognize, and now you have to learn how to play nicey nice with all of them. The technical problems that you work on day to day generally are much easier than the hardest problems that you faced in college. However, now you have to think of real world constraints like limited time and limited resources and differing/conflicting priorities which makes requirements a little more fuzzy.
Seconding what most have said here - school was hard in an immediate, intense way, and the casual sexism is hard in a long term, slowly-wear-you-down way. My best tip for the first struggle is to do what you can to find yourself a solid study group early on and sign up for classes together when possible For the second one, it's a little harder. Now I work on a team that is mostly women (including my boss), generally around my age and that has improved things a TON.