I'm 32 years old and currently working as a senior fullstack developer. I have an associates degree in science but I never pursued a computer science degree, I'm self taught and started with a junior developer position and now around 8 years later, I'm here with a senior developer position.
In the past I thought about it but I always felt good about where I stood with my career. I've not something I necessarily love, but I think I'm decent at it and it's a good living. Lately however, after layoffs, the bad job market, and the uncertainty with AI, I've felt more anxious about my future and I've really been putting serious thought into going back to college.
I would like to get my electrical engineering degree and focus on power systems. However, I worry about whether it is worth the money when I could spend the money on a house or other expenses. I know I won't be making more money but I like the idea of the type of work and the employability of it.
I'm not married but I am in a serious relationship and we would like to have kids in the next two to three years. I know it would be hard now to go back to school with that plan in mind but it would be even harder after that so I feel like this is a decision I need to make now, one way or the other, and stick with it.
Any advice or stories of personal experience with this is greatly appreciated.
Not to put you off, anyone can do it, but you have to commit pretty seriously.
Also, what is the local job market like for Electrical Engineers? Start there first. Look for opportunities locally, in your country, or wherever you want to end up.
I transitioned from EE career into Computer Science.
One thing I found really challenging with EE is the slow feedback loop during practice/study/tinkering. In contrast Comp Sci has a really fast feedback loop so you can learn at a rapid rate.
In an EE degree you learn a really broad range of topics, and the mathematics is relatively advanced, and relatively advanced physics too. These concepts are really great to learn, and will help you grow intellectually- but they are pretty abstract.
But can be a rewarding career, one of my best friends still works as an EE and he loves it, finds it really rewarding.
I’ve been thinking of going back to EE long term (firmware so half programming half EE)
Picking what you'll do specifically without starting the degree does not sit well with me. I am in CS and not in EE, but believe a degree gives you a breath understanding of the subject to let you choose wiser.
In my days, lots of students started CS because they would "like to put up websites" or "work for this specific employers in town". Those goals were determined based on what they could see around them at the time. Then the field shifted (like AI coming) and the company's trajectory shifted. They were disappointed on either the school didn't teach them skills specific to the job or didn't graduate before the downturn. The specific type of job or the field could also be saturated with folks with years of experience on their job: Entry-level positions could be hard to come by.
Take a look at Western Governors University. They are fully online, and their courses are "if you pass the test, you pass the class" - you don't have to attend any particular set of lectures or be on any particular schedule.
Do you really like this and want to work in it / have friends or family you could ask about this career?
Because if not FYI, it's likely LESS salary than your software engineering job, plus less likely remote work is feasible if that's important to you.
Sure you can get a job without one. But try to get a coveted job at SpaceX or Netflix (just examples) and your resume will be thrown out in the first cut. In a downturn like now, you won’t even get to the phone screen stage for jobs without an ally inside.
I was well into my career before I got my bachelor's and I can't say if I would've been filtered out of my current job without it. I feel fairly confident that if I'd gotten past screening otherwise, I'd still have gotten the job. I'm really glad that I went back to school.
Much like planting trees, the best time to go back to school is 10 years ago, second best time is now. That said, I was able to pay for my schooling out of pocket and as I said I was already working (and making decent money)
A last random anecdote: A friend of mine got his EE, and then pursued and became a patent lawyer. I once asked him why (because patent law seemed boring to me, and we both loved electronics) and he told me that he realized he didn't want to spend his career designing and maintaining a print server product. You don't often get to pick what you work on.
Anyway, good luck.
- Like others have said, EE is a very difficult degree to pursue. Studying power systems will probably save you from having to study too much of the really complicated theory, but there are still some strange abstract concepts you will have to have a good understanding of in order to know whats going on, and A LOT of complex math that goes with these concepts. Make sure you know what you are signing up for and if you like to study these types of things before fully committing.
- EE jobs are probably marginally safer than software related jobs from being consumed by AI, but making this switch will not guarantee job security. When / if the day comes that AI takes 90% of developer jobs, so too will it take a massive percentage of jobs that EE's have traditionally done. Power systems design is already one of those fields that is largely done via computers. Being the person at a power plant that helps debug when things go wrong isn't going go be replaced anytime soon, but you can say the same thing about software related jobs as well (maybe AI does a lot of the groundwork in the future, so there will be less need for swaths of people to work on software but there will always be need for a human in the loop until we get to a super intelligent AI which is unlikely in our lifetimes)
- Part of the reason I left EE to pursue more traditional software was because of how slow it moves and how much investment upfront you need to do really anything. It's also more difficult to get a job as a EE in general compared to software because of fewer opportunities in general and also companies not wanting to hire new people to make mistakes at their company before they figure out what they are doing and move on to not make mistakes at other companies. It's also an order of magnitude more difficult to debug problems you encounter working on hardware or power systems. A large part of learning how to be a good EE is understanding how to use all of the very expensive equipment in the lab to gain any kind of understanding as to what is happening with your project.
Overall I would recommend taking some classes about power systems and see if you like it or not before committing. I honestly wouldn't worry about the AI super intelligence taking your job anytime soon, if anything software fields might start to get more interesting because we won't have to slog through writing so much boilerplate before getting to the interesting areas where people are actually needed to think critically about.