Is electrical engineering a good major for entrepreneurship?

[juan917]

It's in the 7-figures...not buying an island or a Lear jet anytime soon, but enough that I can focus my life on my family and "fun business endeavors"...

Alright. OP consider all opinions then make your best informed decision. I will stop arguing here tho lol

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[juan917]

And btw, you'll notice that I don't respond in many threads here anymore. Not because I don't have plenty of opinions (trust me, I do), but because I tend to only respond about things where I honestly believe I know as much, or more, than most anyone else here. There aren't many of those times, but the question posed by the OP in this thread was one of them...

I do the same thing. If anything, I'm sure the OP could relate to me more than someone in your position. Most people simply do not have the time to do basic things such as spending time with the family. I speak from a position of (hmm okay I'm still working to live. What do I need to do to have something separate from me that's making money so I don't have to work anymore). Next to things like Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, embedded systems is one of the hardest types of software out there to do.

 

[Frushe]

I was in the same position as the OP before I started college. I didn't grow up with money and was trying to pick a major that would allow me to make a nice living. At the time I wasn't looking for a path to financial freedom, just a big paycheck every couple weeks. Fast forward 15 years later, I was able to look back and realize that, while EE was a good major to make a good salary, it also gave me an opportunity to earn a big payday -- which was good, because by that time, I realized that I didn't want to work for anyone else anymore.

Looking around, I realized that many of my friends had gone down the same path and were able to score a decent sized payday using the same formula -- school, working hard to build some experience/skills/network, strategically picking a startup and then getting an exit. It's not a sure-fire formula, it takes time, hard work and some strategy, and it's certainly not for everyone. But, from what I've seen for many people it's the least-risky path to earning 7-figures before you're 35 years old. Even if you the plan doesn't go perfectly, you should still have a net-worth in the upper-six-figures by the time you're 35.

I would never suggest anyone do it if they aren't interested in that line of work and the lifestyle that comes with it. But, for those that show interest in those things, I'm happy to point it out so that they can decide if it's a path they want to follow.

And btw, it doesn't have to be engineering. My wife was a business/marketing major and she followed the same strategy I did -- she did a better job picking a startup (eBay, back in the early days) and did even better than I did...

I need your advice on something. My college has electronics engineering and electrical engineering. As well as computer engineering. Electronics has tons of electives and orientations, one of them has a lot of computer science classes. Electrical seems kind of an older curriculum. It has less electives more focused on bigger stuff like power plants, etc and less CS stuff. Computer doesnt have that many electives neither. Do you think electronics is the best out of the three? I checked on the electrical engineering curriculum on some US colleges and they all seem more similar to argentinas electronics engineering.

 

[Rudynate]

Just from a marketability standpoint, unless you are really interested in the subject, I would stay away from any majors that focus on power or signals -- they tend to be pretty specific and hard to find good jobs. If the goal is to get some startup experience and put yourself in a position where you can later use your skills for your own entrepreneurial ventures, then I'd focus on the areas that are most popular and common these days -- that would be something that is about 50% hardware and 50% software.

I don't know exactly how each of your programs break down, but I would guess that would be either compuer engineering or electronics engineering. If you have a separate electrical engineering program from those two, it's probably almost exclusively hardware, signal and power based -- which (again, unless you're interested in that) is probably less marketable.

I agree with what you said upthread about embedded systems. I have an old friend, an EE, who, long ago, specialized in embedded systems. She has never had entrepreneurial ambitions, but she is extremely employable. She has worked at one top company after another in Silicon Valley.

 

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[David Young]

As a slight aside. Don't forget that collage can be great fun and provide experiences much harder to to attain in the real world. There is a certain fast-lane aspect to it that shouldn't be ignored.


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