sakky

Da scientist, I think you are making an unfair comparison. Nobody is disputing that engineers overall make less than lawyers or doctors.

But the key to the analysis is that engineering is one of the best careers you can get with just a bachelor's degree. You say that engineering is very unstable, and I would ask, how about the stability of the careers of people with History bachelor's degrees? Or Physics degrees? You may say that engineering salaries top out early in the career, but again, how about the salaries of the guys who majored in History?

So, fine, if you want to say that engineering is very unstable, then fine, but then that must mean that the guys with just bachelor's degree in the liberal arts have REALLY REALLY unstable careers. Sure engineering salaries start out strong but tend not to rise over time, but liberal arts salaries, on average, are NEVER strong in the entire lifetime of the career.

That's why I don't think that we should be invoking law or medicine or anything else that requires a post-graduate degree. After all, a person with an engineering degree can also become a lawyer or a doctor or whatever it is. Just because you have an engineering degree does not mean that you are obligated to work as an engineer.

da scientist

do you actually think that there are a lot of engineers out there making 200K or more?? I read quite a few comments that were comparing salaries! Yes it is a great career to only have a bachelors(engineers).... but it has its down side too. Comparing the two... take a national survey... I am willing to bet that most would rather be a doctor or lawyer over an engineer hands down. I also don't agree with it being the hardest discipline.... it is one of the hardest.

da scientist

Remember this was the original statement: Right now egineering is the highest paid degree. These people are making big money. Infact most Engineers with only a B.S make more than people with Ph.Ds in fields like genetics, pharmacology, toxicology, immunology, biochemistry. Hell engineers with B.S are making almost as much as primary care doctors. Do you think engineers deserve the massive pay they seem to get.

sakky

No. But I would venture to say that the percentage of engineers making more than 200k exceeds the percentage of, say, people with only History bachelor's degrees who make more than 200k. Or people with only a bachelor's degree in any other liberal art, for that matter.

Sure, it has its downside, just like any other career. And I am also sure that many engineers would rather be doctors or lawyers. But it's not really a fair comparison, because the good engineers CAN be doctors or lawyers. Ask ariesathena. I'm also sure that many liberal arts grads would rather be engineers. And even many doctors or lawyers would rather be, say, successful investment bankers. In fact, Robert Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton, was a former lawyer (graduated from Yale Law after dropping out of Harvard Law), and worked for 2 years for Cleary Gottlieb before jumping to investment banking at Goldman Sachs.

I also agree that engineering is not as hard as, say, physics and perhaps also mathematics.

Hey, if you want to go down that road, then who says that anybody 'deserves' anything? Do fresh Wall Street investment banking analysts right out of undergrad deserve to make 120k to start (including bonus)? But that's what they got paid last year. Do fresh investment banking associates right out of MBA school deserve to get paid 250k to start?


Check out the pay packages of investment bankers. Notice that these are from 1999-2001. The packages are substantially higher today. For example, a first year associate at the bulge bracket today can reasonably be expected to get $175-$300k right out of MBA school.

http://www.careers-in-finance.com/ibsal.htm


Which gets back to what I've always said. If you just want money, and that's the only thing you care about, then just go to investment banking.

da scientist

Oh yes I agree on the investment banking. But just making the point that the original topic was that engineering careers were paying more than lawyers and as much as primary care doctors....which is not true.
The last quote that you commented on was the original topic... not my view point. Also, who cares that engineers can possibly convert to lawyers or doctors.... what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Fact: most of them and most people for that matter can NOT become doctors or lawyers for whatever reasons. Still has nothing to do with the original topic.

aibarr

(Total aside: Sakky, I dunno about that whole "engineering isn't as hard as physics or math" thing... I routinely compare notes with my friend on the PhD track in superfast optical physics at UC-Boulder (yikes), and I'm perpetually incredibly surprised at how much our courses overlap. We go on road trips together and discussed theoretical mechanics and how much studying it totally bites, and she does just as much eye-glazing as I do when one of us gets too in-depth theoretically in our respective fields. Engineering certainly can pack a punch!)

And yeah, the original poster is kinda off the mark... As much as I love my field, it irks me to see all the law school gals from my high school senior class who started out wanting to major in theater and be actresses and totally washed out of all the really tough classes in high school, and to come back and hear about their salary offers. I totally think we should be paid *more*. As my steel design prof used to say, "Doctors only kill their clients one at a time."

Kudos to da scientist for pointing out that it *totally* doesn't matter and is *completely* beside the point that engineers might be able to *become* doctors and lawyers, because doctoring and lawyering ain't engineering! =) Bottom line is, I luuurrrve what I do but I think we should all be paid more. Engineering's a high profession, not a trade, and it's high time we start demanding pay that is more respective of the fact that we're professionals, IMHO.

da scientist

Mos def..... engineers are underpaid in my book. Excellent profession but not compensated correctly. But Hell, that goes for teachers too!!

sakky

Come on. I would say that 99% of all posts made here on CC have nothing to do with whatever was the original topic. Threads always have a tendency to branch off into subtopics.

I make the point that engineers can become doctors or lawyers to show why it is unfair to compare engineers to doctors or lawyers. If you're an engineer and you think that you're getting a raw deal relative to doctors and lawyers, then you can convert. Sure, not all engineers can do that, but heck, that's true of people from any major.

Nobody is saying that engineering can't invoke eye-glazing. However, I would say that in the hierarchy of majors, even at the tech schools like MIT, physics is generally considered to be more difficult than is engineering. Mathematics is too, to some degree (depends on what kind of math).

The issue seems to be that you can get by with just hard work, but not sheer brilliance, more so in engineering than in physics or math. For example, engineering majors have classes that consist mostly of labs and design projects where as long as you work hard and turn in something half-decent, you are going to pass. Maybe not with a good grade, but you are going to pass. Hence, I've seen some of the relatively less-brilliant (but hard-working) engineers take fulfill their engineering elective requirements through lots of these lab and design classes. Not so with physics or math. There is nowhere to hide. Math, in particular, generally breaks down into a whole series of proofs. The nature of solving math proofs is that you either get that flash of insight, or you don't. Hard work isn't going to help you very much.

Nobody is saying that this was the original point. However, it is important to deal with those people who shall remain unnamed who continuously tout how medicine and law are better than engineering. My remark to that is simple - engineers can become doctors and lawyers. Hence, what I said is a remark to a remark. If what I am saying is beside the point, then so is the original remark.

Personally, I think some of the problem lies with the engineering student themselves, particularly the top ones. While this may sound harsh, from what I have seen, a lot of supposedly "top" engineers don't really understand the opportunities that they have, so they take engineering jobs that underpay them relative to their talent. For example, it's sad when companies are offering MIT chemical engineers only 47k on average, which is 6 k BELOW the national average for chemical engineers. It's even sadder to see those MIT chemical engineers actually take those low offers.

http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infost...aduation05.pdf

So as long as companies see that they can get engineers from the top schools to actually take offers that are BELOW the national average, then companies have no incentive to ever make better offers. Why pay more salary to somebody from a lesser school when you can pay less to get the guy from MIT?

da scientist

engineers do not make as much as doctors or lawyers ....PERIOD.

sakky

I don't think anybody (besides maybe the OP) is seriously arguing the point that engineers don't make as much as doctors or lawyers.

w1cked

Dictators make better money than most engineers/doctors.

da scientist

only the 1 percent of CC that you mentioned.... which is 95% on this thread that liked to stay on the topic at hand! Which is what i mentioned....

sakky

Hey, when I see a point I disagree with, I am going to challenge it, regardless of whether it had anything to do with what the OP said or not.

aibarr

...must you, though? It's a forum, not a court room... I mean, sure, mention any exceptions you might find, but only parenthetically, and only if you've got a constructive, on-topic point to add as well. In this case, I think things were already pretty much off-topic (nine pages of posts? C'mon, da scientist, cut the guy some slack!) but threadjacking in general is lousy netiquette. Challenging *everything* people say that you take exception to just bogs down the valid points that others are trying to make.

da scientist

Slack is cut!!! LOL! I'm done..... peace be unto you all!