Is harvard engineering (Biomedical especially) famous?

rtkysg
Tue, 25 Oct 2005 02:26:10 +0000

1. If people going to Michigan grad eng truly feel that they are better off than people going to Harvard grad eng, then why does anybody feel the need to laugh? That is, unless they are just jerks?



Those ‘jerks’ may think that those Harvard grad engrg students made a wrong decision (instead of lack of capability) due to trivial reasons. It is not so hard either to find people who laugh at those desperates running to casinos for financial answers. It is not a proper analogy, but it should give some idea why people laugh despite their better form.



2. Why are so many top engineers attracted to banking and consulting jobs rather than engineering jobs?



Let me give some prior notes:

1. Being top engineers doesn’t imply that their best interest is engineering when they’re in college.

2. There is no evidence that cream engineering positions are less attractive than consulting/banking jobs. In fact I would argue that most Caltech/MIT engineers go into engineering positions.

Now with those in mind, it’s not hard to see that banking/consulting are better in terms of financial rewards than average engineering jobs, and for most practical people this gives better appeal; But it doesn’t show that good engineering positions at Genentech, Microsoft or Yahoo would be less attractive than consulting.



3. Should engineering companies try to make engineering a better career path to compete against banking and consulting and other alternative paths? If they should, then why don’t they? If not, why not?

4) Don’t you find it positively daft on the part of engineering companies like Intel to complain that the US doesn’t produce enough engineers, yet not do their part to try to improve the attractiveness of an engineering career?



Despite of Bill Gates campaign for more engineers, getting into Microsoft is extremely difficult compared to the other tech companies. Nevertheless, you’ll see that many of its employees are internationals, which I suspect motivates his tour. Let me assert once again, there’re plenty Asians who could flood those tech companies if only they want to hire them. Given the number of international engineering students from top 10 engineering US schools who have to return home since they couldn’t find jobs in the US, engineering already seems to be a very good path on its own.



3-5 years to become a principal engineer? I don’t know about that. That would make you 25-28.



From my knowledge, 25-28 would have made you sit in management hierarchy, i.e. director or product manager (depends on your management skill) and obtain 300-800K.