u/Felix033

We are a very low volume store, which I always intuitively understood to be due to poor location, but the new owners have stressed they are very confident they can turn that around quickly with more outreach and marketing. Only 5 inhouse employees, nobody's getting let go (yet lol). They wanna extend our operating hours when it's already super dead most of the day...

The new owners kinda have the vibe of having just graduated from Domino's University so I'm guessing they'll be really strict and by-the-book on every little thing.

I think at a baseline what students are thinking is this:

"I ideally want to work in software. Jobs in software are rough to get right now. I'll study EE so I can be qualified for software jobs but have other industries to fall back on."

This is an outdated idea of how tech hiring works now. An EE degree worked in the past because programming skills were so in demand that employers had to reach into engr/math grads to meet headcount. The only exception is hardware/firmware roles, which do hire EEs but are very few in number and way more competitive to get into than generic software dev even now.

Tech hiring is firmly through internship and co-op pipelines out of CS/CmpE programs now. if you want a software job you need to do one of those two, you can't wander in with an EE degree anymore unless you maybe do a cs-related masters or hustle like crazy on a project/startup with revenue, at which point your undergrad doesn't matter anyway.

If you want a job in softwate dev more than any other type of job, you NEED to study CS or CpE.

I've heard continuing to the bachelor's is quite competitive, but what about admission to first year? Do people generally need to score much higher than the stated minimum requirements?

I've been trying to find all the options for doing this in case I decide I'll want that stamp someday, so far I've found:

-Camosun College bridge programs to UBC and UVic (2 semesters at Camosun + 2 years UBC/UVic)

-Lakehead upgrade path, one summer term + 2 years

-Queen's University upgrade path, very new, online term + summer term + 2-3 years depending on program

Apparently with good diploma grades, U of Alberta will offer admission straight into the engineering major associated with your diploma but you still have to do the full four years.

Just wanted to make sure these are the only options, since notably none of these are in Calgary. There is the Energy Engineering program at UofC but it's not clear that the CVT diploma applies to transferring into it, nor does it seem clear that you can use it to become a civil P.Eng

"I really like to clean" - this person will possibly be super OCD about the floors/countertops/etc at the expense of higher priority tasks, I will constantly have to shepherd them away from cleaning/mopping excessively or inappropriately early

"I use a flip phone by choice" - this person will never, ever communicate or return texts in a timely fashion

"I am 16-19 years old with a whole cover letter and super dense resume" - this person is collecting extra-curriculars for their college applications and will prioritize every single one of them over this job, they will rugpull their availability after hire to just one shift a week which they will call out half the time anyway

hate me if you must, pattern recognition's a B

The theories my friends and I have come up with are:

1. Civil compensation is seen as not competitive with the others

2. Civil jobs often requiring being outside/on-site/in-field even just a fraction of the time is a non-starter for many students who envision an engineering degree as a ticket to working in an air-conditioned office or even fully remote

3. Civil projects are not seen as "sexy" even if the reality is most MechE and EE grads are not working on anything glamorous either