Is harvard engineering (Biomedical especially) famous?

rtkysg
Fri, 28 Oct 2005 17:43:01 +0000

And I stand by what I said before. You should not live your life in fear of jerks. Just imagine the kind of world we would live in if nobody ever dared to do something because they’re afraid that some jerks might laugh at them.



Ahh… so after a long debate, we finally arrive at the core of this problem. Well, eventhough I admit there are ‘jerks’ within our society, I would take those ‘jerks’’ view into parts of my consideration when I formulate my suggestion. This is because none other than the fact that we live in the society where jerks constitute a significant percentage in this world. We can then close this topic.



#1 - why can’t engineering be made more interesting such that more people want to study it, and #2 - Why can’t there be more cream engineering jobs? Or in other words, why do there have to be so many crappy engineering jobs, and why can’t they be made into cream ones?



It’s a matter of demand and supply, the supply for engineering jobs is huge as the production that depends on engineering jobs is huge as well. Since the supply is huge, we couldn’t afford to have the best engineers for all those engineering jobs for three reasons:

1. The number of good engineers are limited and hence the ‘not so good’ engineers are also vital components in engineering industry.

2. The competition for engineering sector is highly competitive that it couldn’t afford all the best engineers as employees.

3. Many functions in engineering jobs don’t require high qualifications/skill to operate, hence those ‘mediocre’ engineers who work in this operation would be paid much less.

Furthermore, those reasons are related closely to each other such that the head->tail effect is indeed hard to analyze. Fortunately, the demand/supply of engineering jobs and the demand/supply of engineers’ skill are following the bell curve that satisfies the equilibrium. Consulting/banking on the other hand has the characteristic of steep bell curve by the nature of its demand/supply. Nevertheless I would argue that the absolute number of positions in engineering industry that could reward you as much as those in consulting/banking is not less than consulting/banking’s.



Furthermore, if Bill Gates is already turning down many engineers, whether from Asia or anywhere else, then why is he complaining that he can’t find enough people? You have to agree that he’s obviously not being completely honest.



When has Bill Gates been honest?? But when he said US need more [American] engineers, I agree with him, as I said before, most top engineers in those top engineering companies are Indians and Chinese, while top US students are going to consulting/banking which is regarded locally as more prestigious jobs.



If you’re talking about Microsoft, I know plenty of people who are 25-28 and on the management track and make nothing even close to 300-800k.

However, none of that is the point. The point is, why is Microsoft lecturing Americans to become more interested in engineering if Microsoft turns down most of the engineers that want jobs?



Yeah, and I know some people who work in Citigroup couldn’t make 250+ after working for more than 25 years. Let’s not talk about this thing.

Microsoft turns down engineers, yes, but it has more than enough employess and that’s the reason why it can be very selective and still turning down qualified engineers. The campaign Bill Gates proposed is not for the sake of Microsoft, but he is perhaps worried about the trend where the Asians take over Americans in engineering and computer science.