[leapis]

“Of the 18 crossovers I talked to, 16 said yes.“

I’m just as surprised to see the number be this high. I can’t help but wonder if this might be due to survivorship bias: crossovers are, after all, self-selecting. Perhaps not all engineers would say the same, if forced to swap roles.

Regardless, I’m excited to hear more from these crossovers. As a (soon-to-be) recent graduate, I think there can tend to be a great difference in perception between CS students and Engineering students, particularly at institutions without rigorous CS programs. Many tend to view CS students in the same way that some CS students view bootcamp students- people motivated by an “easy path to success”. I’ve found this opinion is rarely held of engineering students, given the reputation of engineering programs. I think it’s very useful to profile the motivators, mindsets, and general attitudes between the disciplines, if only to see that perhaps the difference isn’t as large as one might assume.

[tobmlt]

The answer is a clear yes in my case, but I work on commercial numerical design and analysis software. The interleaving of computers and engineering entailed here makes a hard case that there is not an absolute "no" available. But computational software is a corner case, I know. (sigh)

We certainly view our pure CS people as experts in what they do -- and the things I see them do are, e.g., build out cloud based versions of our product, add new GUI features, automate build and test systems (until management tries to replace them with us... a dubious proposition at best). That's just the stuff I see day to day, since it's most closely tied with us on the numerical side. Why wouldn't that be engineering? I could speculate but I don't care to. We are all working to make the product the customers want.

[syntaxing]

MechE here so my thoughts can be biased. It’s high because of two reasons. One the pay is typically much better (upward of 20%-100% (yes 100) better) and secondly the “crossover” barrier is much lower compared to other engineer mobility. For instance I would argue, a MechE becoming a SWE is easier than a SWE to become a MechE since companies are opened to SWE not having a specific degree in it.

[analog31]

I wonder if there might be a technological barrier. My degree is in physics, so I depend on mobility for any hope of employment. ;-)

It was easy to learn programming. One reason was that the tools were always relatively cheap (even when they cost money), and the cost to learn by trial and error was negligible. At least this is true for the basics. Becoming a good programmer who can be an asset to a large project is outside my wheel house, though I'm in the process of learning.

Today, for mechanical design, you at least need access to SolidWorks, and the part of learning that comes from experiencing failure is costly and time consuming. Surely 3d printing is changing that equation, but not overnight.

But you can test the waters of programming without asking anybody for permission, and if you discover that you hate it, then you can just bury it. And many do. Programming is hard or most people, for reasons that I don't think we understand.

Now, programming and mechanical design by themselves are not engineering, but if someone wants to get into a new skill through the back door, they are similar. A person with SolidWorks skills can be useful as a designer without being a full blown engineer.