Prestige of Engineers

ken285
Wed, 16 Jan 2008 08:52:12 +0000

Well, that only applies to civil engineers, and a limited number of engineers in other disciplines, which is not that many. There just isn’t a need for everyone to get licensed unlike the healthcare industry.

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.

I’m reminded of a line from Armageddon about the space shuttle: "You know we’re sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn’t it? "