Electrical Engineer Doing Electrician Work – 6 Things I Learned

We get a lot of crossover questions from the electrician field (electrical engineer vs. electrician stuff) and Josh finally got the opportunity to learn more about residential electrician work while roughing in the wiring of his house. In this video, he shares the 6 things he learned about doing electrician work, from the perspective of an electrical engineer.

Table of Contents:
0:00 Introduction
1:04 Lesson 1 - Lots of Construction Work
2:15 Lesson 2 - Very Physically Demanding
3:50 Lesson 3 - Electrician Work is Rule-based
6:18 Lesson 4 - Being an EE Helps, a bit
7:06 Lesson 5 - Trade Workers are Cool
8:22 Lesson 6 - There are Practical Benefits
11:08 Summary and Wrapping Up
12:10 The toast will never pop up

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[jonathanwazar]

Really appreciate this.

I’m your age and started self learning process for electronics a few months back. As I work through all the I have to learn, in the back of my mind I have wondering how all this ties into actual Electrical work on like a home. Been wondering if what I’m learning will translate in any way to helping do that kind of work later on.

I see now it’s really a separate thing. I’m going to plan out a section at the end of my syllabus to get better understanding (practical) of how electrical work is conducted.

(Thanks for the electronics vids btw - really helpful!)

[tektonelec]

Your very humble. As an electrician I have a ton of respect for the effort and time you put in to be a EE.. keep up the good work and thanks for posting

[duxanthony]

As an electrician I took EET(Electonics Engineering Technology). I thought with an electrician background i would have advantage over my classmate. In a way I was so wrong. We do solve circuits in electrician but it was nothing compared to engineering. In EET when I first heared about things such as Norton"s theorem, Thevenin's theorem, Super position etc. The advantage I thought I had went out the window. These were things I've never heard of in electrician. I also realized that in electrician, circuits we most commonly solve are actually DC circuits. I came across AC circuits in EET and they were lot harder to solve with Time and Frequency factors.There is no electrical code in engineering tho which governs electricians to smallest detail. The electrical code was to me the most challenging aspect in electrician program since the codes are actually legal documents and as someone having english as a second language, I did struggle a bit in the code section of the program. The code also evolves that you need to constantly update yourself wich in itself is a challenge. I like electrician, i like electronics and currently working as the only personel in the engineering and maintenance department of a 7 storey commercial building with restaurant and all that and i do get to apply things I've learned on a daily basis and a whole lot more. It's a cool experience.

To sum things up, you engineers do the research that set the industry standards and we electrician follow those standards to the T.

[adrianblack]

In my last year of training as an electrician in Ireland and we are required to take electronics in our college phase. It is frying my brain but it is extremely interesting. The reason I say is because on big industrial commercial sites I would be cursing the electrical engineers for not designing things in a logical manner for us to install and thought their job was easy. But seeing it from the engineering and electronics side it opened my eyes to how hard it actually can be and I may do the engineering degree as a result. But it is because they have no experience on site I think a balance and experience of both makes the best compromise. Nice Video

[Fcers]

electrician should be a prerequisite to becoming an electrical engineer. it would help alot when designing construction plans. Just because you can design it on paper doesn't mean it can be done in the field

[roastinNAVY]

When I was an avionics technician in the Navy, I would notice that the some engineers designing our equipment didn’t have lots of practicality. They would’t fully understand the technical problem because they never left the lab. Mad respect for you getting your hand dirty.

[DasIllu]

Retired cable monkey from germany here.
I've worked in general construction and in industrial settings. We germans love them rules...
You should take a look at just physical dimensions of the printed out VDE code :-)
I'd say that french and german code share the number one spot when it comes to which one is all encompassing and most restrictive.
I'm not complaining. A lot of the stuff makes sense and everytime i see i.e. americans wire their homes i get an irregular heartbeat ;-)
Oh, btw. at least here in germany in an industrial setting you oftentimes work side by side with you engineers. No ivory palace for EEs in the heavy industry.
That leads to a lot of cross contamination of knowledge. The flow is biderectional by design. The engineer learns about possibilities and limitations from the technicians as well as the technicians learns abour why the engineer wants something done a certain way and can therefor make sure to follow the idea instead of just the letters.

[MrWaalkman]

As an electrician (Colorado Journeyman & Master electrician) turned Controls Engineer, here are a few of my thoughts:

1) Being an electrician can be demanding, particularly if you are a construction electrician. I was definitely in much better shape and I had a pair of guns from all of the wire pulling and ditch work. The other trades pretty much left us alone knowing that if we didn't beat them to death, we could always just electrocute them. :)

2) In general there are three sub-fields in electrical work; Residential, Commercial, and Industrial. Residential and Commercial being almost exclusively rule-based (and what your inspector is going to want to see), while a good Industrial/Maintenance electrician will rival what an engineer knows in their niche.

The proof of that is in many automotive plants a large part of the PLC programming is done by electricians with little to no input from the engineers. And you will quickly learn that in the big industrial plants you will never see an inspector.

3) For those who wish to wire their own house, do yourself a favor and visit a construction site - with coffee and donuts - and hang out with the trades during break time. This way you can see how they are doing it, and possibly recruit one of the guys for some side work. Doing side work is often forbidden by the shop owner, so best if you keep this between yourselves.

4) For those who followed the suggestion in #3 and did your wiring *exactly* the same way as the pros did it, and still failed your inspection, don't take it personal, this is just the inspector protecting his local electricians. And his own job by extension. ;>

I re-wired my sister in law's house and did my wiring just like I had the previous 250 times before that, and the Lincoln, Nebraska inspector (him thinking that it was her and her husband doing the wiring) dinked them for needing an extra staple. He did let them put it in on the spot and they got their approval. And he did say that it was the nicest homeowner job he had ever seen. :)

That was done over a Memorial Day long weekend 40 years or so ago. My Brother in law helped me with the wiring of an old house that had a 110V 30A service tied to it. We got it done over the long weekend and that included me driving from Colorado to do it.

5) A bit of inside baseball here, but if you are interested in becoming an electrician, go the apprenticeship route, preferably in a state that doesn't allow LLE's (Limited Liability Electricians). A LLE license allows a person with little to no training to work on projects of up to $25, 000. You just have to pass a watered down test and pay a license fee (at least here in Tennessee). A four or in some localities, a five year apprenticeship may seem like a long time. But it goes by quicker than you think, you are getting paid to learn (no student loans here), and if you decide to do something else at the end of it you always have electrical work to fall back on.

6) And being an electrician first before becoming an engineer is *very* attractive to leadership in factories. Besides being able to do the same work as the electricians, you have a mutual respect for your fellow electricians (one would hope at least). And if you look at how European engineers are taught, it is a mix of apprenticeship and university.

And there usually isn't any tomfoolery of the plant guys trying to pull a fast one over on you. On the other hand, a new engineer better get ready for some serious hazing (we went through all of that during our apprenticeships, so we just suffered in a different setting).

And in the case of union plants we could get away with things that a degreed guy couldn't ever even dream of trying.


One of the little secrets of engineering is that not all engineers have a degree. Far from it. Companies like GM, Nissan, possibly Ford and Chrysler, don't require a degree. Most others as well.

The basic rule is that if you can do the job, you got the job. At Saturn in the group that I was in, half were degreed engineers, and half were non-degreed electricians. And it's not limited to letting just us electricians sneak in, I've worked with, or known of a; rancher, preacher, phycologist, pipefitter, draftsmen (remember those?), and of all things a lawn care guy who all became engineers.

[didriksoderstrom]

As an older EE student who is also wiring his own home right now I couldn't agree more. It's definitely physically demanding and the ability to internalize so many rules is impressive but the most exceptional thing to me is the ability to adjust entire wiring systems on the fly while staying to code.

Add to that the saints who are willing to work on systems with varnished cloth and greenfield cable.

[mnada]

For me as electrical engineer I wish I had invested some of my time in learning the basics of home appliances maintenance, this would also save me a great deal of agony and increase the level of self fulfillment, but never happened at least till now 😁

[Pocket_Rat]

You'd be surprised how much most tradies love their work.

[Hatim.]

Great video, here is a tip regarding staples, try to hold the staple with your needle nose pliers/ long nose pliers, and hammer it that way, 1 you ll get a better grip and control over the staple with pliers, 2 you ll never hit your thumb again!
I am a 2nd year IBEW apprentice/CW

[kerwinloukusa]

As a do double E, who did all my own electrical work in including trenching the conduit to transformer, it was an extremely rewarding and being in the house working with other trades helped move the project along more smoothly and I learned more.
💯

Kudos!!

[tedlahm]

Very nice listening to your experience. Thank you.

[douglaswhalen]

The only place success comes before work is the dictionary. Our passion for the work comes from helping people who can't do, or don't want to do the work. Great experience.

[jesussaquin]

It’s crazy to think that with an engineering degree youre above all when in reality, we should know the more you know the less you dont know.

[tjmedina]

Electrical engineer is a very broad field. Seems like you're more embedded circuits. I'm purely a power EE. I'm referencing NEC several times a week so I'm pretty comfortable with it. So there are EEs who dive deep into the rules and I'm often debating NEC with other EEs or electricians.

[LTVoyager]

I’m a retired CS/EE/SE and I have done a lot of electrical work. And, yes, it is a bunch of work. And they call it “rough in” for a very good reason as you discovered.

[nicholaspeaker]

I’m an electrician thinking about getting an EE Degree to widen my job opportunities as I get older and don’t want to hurt my body as much

[divyangvaidya]

Do you mind doing a video on the best textbooks you used as a student/professional? It can be all the textbooks that specifically pertains to EE. Every engineering major requires the same math, physics, and calculus. But if you could showcase all the textbooks that are EE related, that would be great. Thanks. This channel is so valuable along with Zach Star.