How Can I Transition from IT to Industrial Automation?

[sedna]

I have received my Assoc. degree in IT; which is by far one of my biggest regret, as I hate this field. I took three comp. sci classes (Intro, OOP 1, and C++) and cannot bring myself to program even as a hobby. As a matter of fact programming bores me to all hell. I have tried to make myself program the past two months only to write one-two lines of code and hate it with a passion...

Basically, I need help getting out of this dreaded field... I was thinking engineering but need tips and insight.

 

[lisab]

What sort of hobbies do you enjoy? What makes you happy?

When you visualize a perfect job, what does it look like? Lots of interaction with people, working with your hands, having lots of responsibility, or...?

 

[FlexGunship]

Basically, I need help getting out of this dreaded field... I was thinking engineering but need tips and insight.

Well, as a career engineer, I've been in an out of a few different engineering fields: military and aerospace, electrical, and I'm now I'm in industrial automation. I would say these are the questions you should look into before deciding to be an engineer:

• Are you comfortable taking personal responsibility for your designs? They might endanger someone's life some day (a responsibility that will never be fully appreciated until you design a bridge that collapses or a machine that grinds up factory workers).
• Do you understand "systems" well? You will often be called on to solve problems that occur when your work is interfaced with someone else's.
• Do you have an implicit understanding of math and physics? You often won't have the luxury of rediscovering the relationships between torque, power, and angular velocity. Nor will you be able to live without calculus (not textbook calculus... REAL calculus).

If you want to be a good engineer, you must genuinely enjoy solving problems by applying theory in a practical manner.

Also, your boss(es) will never understand the work your doing and they'll never understand why it takes so long (they will also NOT share the blame when your new stove design kills a family of five).

 

[FlexGunship]

Heh, here... this is what an engineer's desk looks like. And, no, I didn't just set it up to make it look unappealing.

 

[Marioqwe]

FlexGunship,

You said you've been into aerospace engineering. How was it like? What did you do? Was it tedious? How was the team work?

Just an aspiring aerospace engineer. I want to know more about it.

Thank you

 

[FlexGunship]

FlexGunship,

You said you've been into aerospace engineering. How was it like? What did you do? Was it tedious? How was the team work?

Just an aspiring aerospace engineer. I want to know more about it.

Thank you

Yes, I worked for a defense contractor doing cockpit and interface systems for retrofits on existing and new attack aircraft. I was technically an electrical engineer for the power components, but I wasn't really limited to that type of work.

I actually left the job because of how tedious it was. I think that's going to be a reflection of any government contracted job. Ever try to keep track of your day in 6-minute increments (tenths of an hour)? The fun runs out quickly!

I originally had intended to use the job as a stepping stone to the private sector space industry, but it didn't pan out, and I started looking for more lucrative work.

 

[nathanlee52]

if you don't have passion for it, get out now.

 

[turbo]

I have received my Assoc. degree in IT; which is by far one of my biggest regret, as I hate this field. I took three comp. sci classes (Intro, OOP 1, and C++) and cannot bring myself to program even as a hobby. As a matter of fact programming bores me to all hell. I have tried to make myself program the past two months only to write one-two lines of code and hate it with a passion...

Basically, I need help getting out of this dreaded field... I was thinking engineering but need tips and insight.

Have you gotten out and done any real applications? Coding is deadly-dull work, but I always had fun and good job-satisfaction building custom applications for customers. First, find out what your client would *love* for his/her current software to do that it doesn't do. Prod around a bit and make up a "wish list" of functions that they would like to have. Then get to work and make it happen.

It took me one week and LOTS of hours to write an entire point-of-sale and inventory control program for one client. He manufactured wood-harvesting equipment, repaired heavy equipment, and did both wholesale and retail sales out of his location. It was a very complex program, but it performed flawlessly right out of the box, and flowed all his internal and external sales directly to his current accounting software, so that customers and internal divisions could be billed/charged properly. I included lots of options for his accountant, too, including evaluating the tax consequences of last-in-first-out, and first-in-first-out inventory valuations. Writing that application was fun because the client had no idea that I was going to be able to give him all the items on his "wish list". Seeing his face light up when I installed that app and walked him through the simple interface was a BIG piece of job-satisfaction.

I don't program for the fun of it, and when I got out of the business, that was the end of my coding. Still, it was fun to solve clients' problems that just couldn't be adequately addressed with commercially-available software. Coding isn't fun, but problem-solving is, and that might be the motivation you need.

 

[sedna]

Thanks for the input...

Coding is just not something I can do; not because I can't but because it pains me to do it. I want a degree that is hands on; not data like Comp. Sci. I thought IT would be good, but I've found that customer service is needed for IT and to be honest I hate dealing with people (I work in teams just fine, and my coworkers just fine; customers I can't stand). So I thought that engineering, possibly Mechanical or Computer would be a better choice?

 

[lisab]

Thanks for the input...

Coding is just not something I can do; not because I can't but because it pains me to do it. I want a degree that is hands on; not data like Comp. Sci. I thought IT would be good, but I've found that customer service is needed for IT and to be honest I hate dealing with people (I work in teams just fine, and my coworkers just fine; customers I can't stand). So I thought that engineering, possibly Mechanical or Computer would be a better choice?

Someone here once said that being an engineer is like having an 8:00 class and and afternoon lab, every day of your life.

Many engineering jobs would involve hands-on work.

As far as interacting with people, it sounds like you do better with those who have a technical education than with lay people.

 

[sedna]

I think my problem may be that I need a computing break... Considering I work on a computer 8 hours a day, I spend free time on the computer, I do my homework on a computer...

 

[turbo]

I think my problem may be that I need a computing break... Considering I work on a computer 8 hours a day, I spend free time on the computer, I do my homework on a computer...

Cognitive dysfunction, perhaps... Just because you have your computer on and are using it for a specific function doesn't mean that you should associate those times with efforts that you find tedious. Computers are pretty handy tools, and the more clever you are, the better use you can make of those tools. Are you sure that you can't stand your major?

 

[hitmeoff]

[*]Are you comfortable taking personal responsibility for your designs? They might endanger someone's life some day (a responsibility that will never be fully appreciated until you design a bridge that collapses or a machine that grinds up factory workers)
.

Wow...never though of that myself.

I always have wanted to do physics and math, but always had a special place in my heart for Aerospace Engineering

At one point I wanted to try my hand at Pharmacology (yes I know, math, physics, pharmacology?!?...thy this one: my first degree is in socio and psych, what can I say I love a lot of things), but felt I probably couldn't live with myself if I ever designed a drug that killed a bunch of people.

I always said if for some reason, once I finish my B.S. in Math/Physics I can't get into grad school, that I might try to get a job in Aerospace. Never did it cross my mind that I might end up designing an airplane or a rocket, or whatever that might claim the lives of people.

On a lighter note, I kinda find your workspace cool. I wouldn't mind doing work in that environment...computer screen here, math equations flowing out of the white bord. Looks good to me!

 

[lubuntu]

I have received my Assoc. degree in IT; which is by far one of my biggest regret, as I hate this field. I took three comp. sci classes (Intro, OOP 1, and C++) and cannot bring myself to program even as a hobby. As a matter of fact programming bores me to all hell. I have tried to make myself program the past two months only to write one-two lines of code and hate it with a passion...

Basically, I need help getting out of this dreaded field... I was thinking engineering but need tips and insight.

A few years ago I was in a similar position. I was sophomore year in a CS program and while I liked to program I didn't like my career options and what my job would probably end up being like. Namely, sitting a desk writing a Java accounting application or something. At first I thought I'd get into something more technical like Embedded Systems or Scientific Program, but the fact of the matter is that most of the time you don't need CS to do something like that.

Having a degree in EE or Physics will give you much more diverse set of career options I think. At this point pretty much everyone in a technical field is just expected to know how to program at some level.

CS is actually a pretty specific and small field dealing with theory of computation and information theory at the higher levels. The thing is the CS curriculum is pretty orthogonal to what your job as a developer will be like.

So yea, get out of CS there are better degrees out there unless you are really interested in the sort of computational math stuff done at the higher levels.

 

[lubuntu]

Thanks for the input...

Coding is just not something I can do; not because I can't but because it pains me to do it. I want a degree that is hands on; not data like Comp. Sci. I thought IT would be good, but I've found that customer service is needed for IT and to be honest I hate dealing with people (I work in teams just fine, and my coworkers just fine; customers I can't stand). So I thought that engineering, possibly Mechanical or Computer would be a better choice?

Yeah, funny I was in IT too around when I was doing my CS courses. It is a really bad job unless you have it in you to be really fake and perky to people all day asking you stupid questions and having unrealistic expectations. You are blamed for everything and basically hated by the other employees. Don't do IT. It is a dying field anyways all IT is going to be off-site within 10 years probably.

If you really like technology and are passionate about it EE or Computer Engineering are much better career choices than IT or CS.

 

[sedna]

Well,

There are two aspects of programming that I like: scripting, and hardware level programming (such as embedded and C). I also would like to be able to build hardware and program that hardware. I have been led to believe that Computer Engineering may be what I seek?

 

[sedna]

lubuntu,

Thanks for the input; my interest is generally in robotics and hardware programming. But software development I do not want anything to deal with. I've been told that Comp. Eng. is more geared towards what I 'want', but I need more input.

 

[lubuntu]

lubuntu,

Thanks for the input; my interest is generally in robotics and hardware programming. But software development I do not want anything to deal with. I've been told that Comp. Eng. is more geared towards what I 'want', but I need more input.

Yeah my interest was generally in the vein too. I ended up in physics because I'm more of a theoretical dreamer type than an engineer.

It will be much easier to get in the field and you will enjoy your classes much better with Comp Eng. EE isn't a bad and is a bit broader but will still let you go into those sorts of fields. Comp Eng is going to be geared more toward programming low level device drivers and stuff. While EE is bit more toward dealing with the actual physics of stuff.

 

[sedna]

I'd really like to get into soldering, and possibly making electronics. Would Comp E cover that or would I need EE?

 

[FlexGunship]

Give some consideration to industrial automation. I find it incredibly rewarding (certainly the best of all of my career paths).

I write software that controls the way a machine operates. From individually connecting logic gates in a motor drive controller all the way up to proceedurally generating algorithms to re-solve for complex motion profiles in realtime.

I've found that no one seriously thinks about the software that operates high speed, highly dynamic motive operations. The challenges that come with it are incredibly variable... from mechanical design flaws, to system resonance, to control loop tuning, to electrical hardware design, to high speed realtime isochronous networks, to writing human-machine interfaces.

I can move paper at 3000 feet per minute, print on it within a thousandth of an inch accuracy on 8 different colors, dry the ink, cool the paper, slit it into ribbons, overlay the ribbon, form it, fold it, divert it, slow it down, chop it, and deliver it in perfectly overlapping shingles and I can do it 10 million times without so much as knicking the corners.

Or you could do website design, or whatever.

 

[sedna]

Give some consideration to industrial automation. I find it incredibly rewarding (certainly the best of all of my career paths).

I write software that controls the way a machine operates. From individually connecting logic gates in a motor drive controller all the way up to proceedurally generating algorithms to re-solve for complex motion profiles in realtime.

I've found that no one seriously thinks about the software that operates high speed, highly dynamic motive operations. The challenges that come with it are incredibly variable... from mechanical design flaws, to system resonance, to control loop tuning, to electrical hardware design, to high speed realtime isochronous networks, to writing human-machine interfaces.

I can move paper at 3000 feet per minute, print on it within a thousandth of an inch accuracy on 8 different colors, dry the ink, cool the paper, slit it into ribbons, overlay the ribbon, form it, fold it, divert it, slow it down, chop it, and deliver it in perfectly overlapping shingles and I can do it 10 million times without so much as knicking the corners.

Or you could do website design, or whatever.

FlexGunship,

I love you man! This is what I wanted the whole time but didn't know what to look for! Thanks a bunch!