Occasional Ideas

After I got to Columbia, I realized that there was a big gap between what I thought electrical engineers did and what they actually did. Now, I have a much better understanding the field and so here is my best attempt to define a structure for what electrical engineers do.
The way I understand electrical engineer is by dividing it up by scale. Each order of magnitude contain discrete areas of electrical engineering though of course there is overlap and many activities do not fit.
Materials (nano) Scale
This is the scale where electrical engineering meets up with the physics. At this scale EE’s work on new semiconductor materials, manufacturing processes, new transistors types, and quantum mechanics.
Component (micro) Scale
This is where integrated circuit (IC) and component designers reside. They design all of the components, processors and chips that are then put into devices. A lot the design work is done on the computer in CAD packages like Cadence.
PCBA Scale
These EE’s take the chips made by the IC designers and integrate them in to printed circuit boards assemblies (PCBAs) boards for devices like cell phones, computers, etc. Analog, digital, power engineers all work at this scale.
System Scale
In this scale EE’s takes the PCBAs and other devices such as motors or keyboards and connects them together into technological systems. This can be anything from the electrical system in a car or plane to the Wifi network in your home. Network and wireless engineers do a lot of there work at this scale.
Network Scale
This is the scale of continent sized technologies and includes things like the cell phone grid, the internet backbone, the power grid. This scale is where wireless, communication, and transmission line engineers work.