Is mechanical engineering right for me?

HAL2000
Fri, 18 Mar 2011 22:47:32 +0000

Seriously, having worked as an engineer for ten years before going back to grad school, I can attest to the reality of the comic strip Dilbert. Unfortunately, every engineering/computer science graduate thinks they are going to work for Google, Apple, etc. and work with geniuses and change the world. Wrong. I’ve worked for both a start-up company and a company that was over 100 years old. Guess what - they both were straight from Dilbert. The start-up had young bosses who thought they were brilliant before they ran the company into the ground (the death spiral rate for start-ups is pretty high). The old company had a Byzantine management system that ran on the premise that if you didn’t make any decisions, no one can fire you for being wrong. I hate to confirm your worst fears, but Mark Zuckerberg stories are made into movies because they are extremely rare. There are plenty of people out there as smart as him - it’s not like he invented the concept of social networking - he was just a very lucky fellow standing in the right place at the right time. Likewise, if you get a job with a Fortune 500 company, you will work your butt off for years until you realize that engineers are not that respected in the US and don’t make big bucks or get any autonomy in their job. Then you will spend the rest of your career trying to claw your way up middle management only to retire trying to convince yourself that it was worth all those years in the cubicle farm knowing that you were able to increase sales in your division by 8%.

From your brief all-over-the-place bio, I would recommend you major in ecology and get into nature conservation work. We could always use more people fighting against the corporate overlords and you will live longer because you will get to spend lots of time outside away from artificial lighting and computers.