Prestige of Engineers

sakky
Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:37:40 +0000

One of the problems I see in part of the engineering industry is that too often the services are being treated as commodities too often. You have a few firms competing against each other to win a project, and frequently it will be awarded to the low bidder. So do companies working in these industries that employ these type of procurement methods really want someone with a high salary? Having a high quality high salary engineer can actually hurt your ability to get work for the company.



Yeah, but that begs the question of why engineering services are treated as commodities, when other services are not.

For example, McKinsey is almost never the lowest bidder on any management consulting job. Far from it, in fact, they are usually the highest bidder. Yet they win plenty of contracts. Similarly, Goldman Sachs is almost never the lowest bidder when it comes to investment banking or wealth management/advisory services. Yet GS is the most successful investment bank by far.

So why is engineering subject to low-bid contracts when other services are not?



Can i ask sakky, bassdad or any other senior engineer if they feel they made a bad choice going into engineering, not stcking with it constantly or sticking with it for too long before searching alternatives?



I think, again, it should be clear that I make a strong distinction between an engineering education and an engineering job. I still strongly believe that an engineering education, while having its flaws (particularly with the gratuitous grade deflation), is still a high quality method of rigorously training your mind. It’s a lot better than choosing to study something easy where you don’t really learn how to think. That sort of rigorous training of engineering will serve you very well in the marketplace in whatever it is that you end up doing.

Working as an engineer, on the other hand, is a different matter, for all of the problems that I have already enumerated. But I think one excellent choice you can make as an engineer is to work for a tech startup, or to even start your own. Then, you don’t have to deal with the politics and bureaucracy that BassDad and I have discussed. And, perhaps most importantly, if the company makes it big, you’re filthy rich. Just look at the guys from Google. Or YouTube. Or Facebook.

But overall, no, I don’t really ‘regret’ engineering, for I realize that, for all its problems, plenty of other career paths have it far worse. I know people who majored in humanities from top schools who ended up working at the mall. Engineering ain’t great, but at least it’s better than that.