Any engineers out there?

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Just a quick roll call to see who is out there. I'd be interested in hearing your story on how having Asperger's is both a strength and weakness for you at work.

I'm an electrical engineer. I think Asperger's allows me to keep organized and on track. I can understand how systems operate and work. I'm effective at communicating work related items and answering questions. However, I'm also not very creative and do a lot of things by rote. I'm socially awkward, of course, and I have trouble with chit-chat; I feel it gets in the way of work. There are some co-workers in my surrounding cubes, who have been there for years, that I have never had an actual conversations with. I'm always stuck in the mind-frame that I need to be introduced first - I can't just go up to people. Typical Aspie stuff.

Anyway, I'm known as a technical guru and go-to person for questions, but I'll never be in a team lead position or management. It's a niche, I guess and it works for me.

How about you?

I'm not an engineer, but I'm wondering how the work situation is for EE. What kind of work do you do? The last google search I did indicated that EE had tougher competition than other fields, is that true?

<-- Electrical Engineer. Everything you said could describe me.

I'll add that I'm the guy whom my co-workers never seem to include in their social events, but who is always expected to drop everything and help them out whenever they've screwed up so badly that the continuation of their employment is at risk.

They rarely ever say "Please", "Thank you" or "I'm sorry" to me, either, yet I'm the one they rely on to save them from imminent unemployment.

Hi MDD123. I'm not sure about competition for EE jobs since I haven't had to look for a job in years, but it is a pretty broad field, so it would depend on the discipline. My guess is that you are still better off with an EE degree than without.

Hi Fnord. I think a lot depends on your co-workers. I don't have a problem with people expressing appreciation to me, but I also force myself to do so likewise (sometimes it is hard to remember). So I guess it can go both ways.

Social situations are usually a one-way street for me. I do get invited out for beers from time to time and I usually accept, but I'm never the one to initiate things. Maybe it has be do with fear of rejection or something.

I am a self taught electrical engineer. I have always have had a natural knack for electronic things and have been messing with it ever since I was 3 years old. I never cared to go to collage for it since I could never justify the cost of going and it was going to be the same hell hole that school was and from sitting in on classes at the local U. They weren't teaching any thing that I couldn't learn an my own so why pay for it. Plus the biggest problem I had was being able to hold down a job of any kind because of my social problems. Even if I could get a EE job. I would need one where I could work alone in the lab and take a break when I needed too. In my early 20's, I did begin a career in EE but is was on the dark side. I did freelance work for organized criminals for about 15 years(I ended that career 2 years after Sept. 11). The pay was really good and the best part was, I build my own lab at home and I could work by myself without anyone else bothering or distracting me and could take a break when ever I needed too. The fact that I was doing business with OC's was risking and it really bother my moral conscience a lot but I just tough it out and kept reminding myself that I needed to make a living.

I am 42 years old now and just found out that I had AS just over a year ago. I actually had a psychiatrist come up to me at a Starbucks in Seattle and tell me I had AS witch was a good thing because I would have never guess that my social problems where the result of a brain disorder and not because I didn't learn them. Although I can't imagine how that possibly can be. It sucks knowing that there is no cure for it, but then again, would I really want one if there was.

I don't know if this is a aspie/social thing but I could never seem to strike up a conversation with an other EE person about EE related subjects. It's like they don't seem to care at all about the subject even though whey went through 4 years of collage to learn it. Could it be that they are only interested in EE because of a better career and to recoup their collage investment and really have no passion for what they learned.

I'm an electronic and software engineer with A Levels but no degree. There is some truth in what you say about EE people with degrees having no passion for their subject. I'm still trying to figure out why. One explanation is that a significant proportion of EE graduates have an engineer as a parent who lured them into the career. Another are grammar school types who are first rate at the maths and physics theory but have no real hands on experience with electronics. Many of the most passionate EE and those I get on well with don't have degrees.

The best universities in Britain for EE don't really value past experience in electronics and would much prefer starters to have a 'clean slate' in the subject. They are only interested in A Level grades and NT extra-curricular activities like team sports. It's a bit like many of the best universities for law don't want applicants with an A Level in law.

Odd ... I pursued my MSEE degree because of my "passion" for electronics.

I started out by building a shortwave receiver from old radio parts, then got my Ham license and built a transmitter the same way.

I still have my first IBM-XT computer (c. 1985), now with a few 'enhancements', and my home security system is my own design.

I went from recruit to E6 (Electronics Technician, First Class) in only six years, which is about twice as fast as almost any other Navy enlistee.

Don't dismiss university degrees, as they provide documented proof that someone knows what they're doing and deserves higher pay.

I did my first electronics experiment when I was 3 years old and that involved hooking an AC plug up to one of the speaker cabinets on my parents stereo system. I will never forget the day when I plug that speaker into the wall and it made that hideous loud buzzing sound that scared the living s**t out of me and my mother. I still wonder if I didn't get AS from the shear trauma of that event.

Speaking of Ham radio. I did get a no-code license when I was 18 and started out on 2-meter but because of my social problems. I soon lost interest in it and quit about a year later.



I don't know about keeping an old PC like that around but I still have my Tektronix 2465B scope from 1989 around and after having it for 24 years, I still use it to this day.



So you where an aspie in the military. How did that go?



I agree and I defiantly wanted to go but with all the uncertainty about my employable future because of my mostly unknown mental problems at the time. It just didn't seem like a good investment at the time.

What is this...too many electrical engineers! I'm a chemical engineer here. I mix strange things together and hope they don't go "boom!"

In terms of how Aspergers affects me on the job, it doesn't affect me very much. The only thing that I find very difficult in relation to it is conference calls. I'm not very good at talking on the phone in general (I always seem to interrupt people since I can't tell when they've stopped talking). The whole idea of conference calls is still kind of foreign to me also, I prefer a quick e-mail exchange or face-to-face meetings instead.

Yeah, conference calls are tough for me unless I'm actually leading the discussion or asked a direct question. Otherwise, I tend to get lost in the conversation since I never know when to start talking without cutting someone off.