> Plenty of cutting-edge science needs hobbyist-level EE, it's just not work in EE
But aren't there a lot of actual hardware products that are "simple circuit blocks connected to a microcontroller"? Like a toaster, shaver, keyboard, etc. If that's not "work in EE" then what is it classified under? It's not CS either.
The actual electrical engineering involved there is the sort of thing that an early-career engineer could bang out in an afternoon. Maybe a day or so for the PCB designer. The more time consuming part might be managing the regulatory compliance testing.
Most of the orgs I worked in building simple circuit blocks connected to a microcontroller either farmed out the actual EE work to contractors or design houses or had 1 EE for like 20 different projects.
But aren't there a lot of actual hardware products that are "simple circuit blocks connected to a microcontroller"? Like a toaster, shaver, keyboard, etc. If that's not "work in EE" then what is it classified under? It's not CS either.