Is harvard engineering (Biomedical especially) famous?

rtkysg
Mon, 07 Nov 2005 03:16:56 +0000

Think of it this way. If the top engineering jobs paid better, than fewer of the top MIT and Stanford engineers would leave engineering for other fields. Furthermore, even more people at MIT and Stanford would choose to major in engineering (as opposed to a science or math or whatever). Hence, the number of good engineers produced is NOT a constant, but rather is a function of the quality of the job.



You seem to be purposely forgetting many reasons that I’ve mentioned earlier. As engineering is known to be a safe and marketable degree; many non-engineering aspirant would be happy to finish their engineering degree and see what are the options they have upon graduation. Everyone knows that you can go into finance/banking from engineering but not vice versa. It’s not surprising that some of the engineering grads go into i-banking after graduation. It doesn’t mean however that they were really interested in engineering during their college time.



I’ll put it to you this way. Take an very large engineering company that shall remain unnamed. It pays its engineers poorly. At the same time, it is also a well-known McKinsey client, and pays hundreds of millions of dollars to McKinsey to help it improve its internal business processes. Well, think about what that means. It means that the company has enough money to afford very expensive consulting services. So instead of paying McKinsey, why doesn’t the company simply pay its own employees to do the same kind of consulting that it is paying to McKinsey? Specifically, why not set up an internal consulting division within the company that will provide the same services as McKinsey? This internal consulting division can hire the same sort of high-quality people (including star engineers from MIT and Stanford) and pay them something equivalent to McKinsey.



Isn’t it a funny question you’re asking? Why wouldn’t McKinsey build their own computer software rather than leasing from Microsoft and other software companies since they have those MIT and Caltech engineers and scientists?



Is it really that surprising that people will see that and decide that they are better off going to consulting? People see that and realize that if they just work for that company, they will end up in a powerless low-level job but if they go to McKinsey, they might actually be able to make things happen, and get paid better too.



Not so, if an engineer has been promoted to manager or director position which is paid no less than those McKinsey’s consultant, he would hardly go to McKinsey and work as an ‘ordinary’ consultant.



That still doesn’t answer the question of why can’t the very best engineers be provided with very good jobs to keep them in engineering. I harken back to my memories of some very good engineers coming out of MIT who ended up taking jobs in consulting and banking because they said that they felt they could make more money and advance more quickly by doing that than they could as engineers. So the question is, why can’t more engineering companies offer a faster track to star engineers that is equivalent to what is available at consulting/banking?



Well, it turns out that what these ‘very good’ engineers from MIT said does not constitute any authoritative view in terms of opportunity and rewards in consulting and banking. In fact many of these not-so-knowledgeable MIT engineers are driven by the hype of consulting/ibanking jobs without reading sufficient Wall Street Journal. The career path in ibanking is not fast, you may even be fired faster than being promoted.



And again, if he was really so worried about this, he could simply pay American engineers more. So I guess he isn’t THAT worried about it.



Yes, he is basically promoting engineering to Americans who mostly adhered to non-tech occupations rooted in the East Coast since more than 300 years ago. Not to mention the illusion of being rich by getting ibanking jobs. He doesn’t convert his talk into money value because Microsoft does NOT need so many engineers after all. The fact that he just talked, not acted, would show that he is more concerned about the future American engineers prominence in the industry.