<p>Better to know what’s coming. It’s not really going to change the minds of people who are after engineering because of the decent hours and stability. But for people out there who want more in life, they know where they need to start looking. </p>
<p>Personally, I think more engineers should take a risk when they’re young, i.e joining a smaller company or trying to found a startup. Going straight to a large company might give you fall back if you don’t do as well or a chance at management if you’re of that mindset. A smaller company, however, will give you a much larger share of the credit if you do manage to innovate, which is after all what school trained you to do.</p>
<p>Realize that top paying jobs in finance don’t allow much free time.<br>
IMO, engineering allows more free time, but depends on the position.</p>
<p>You can make a lot of money in real estate, insurance, and financial advising…but, these are mostly sales jobs, and it’s not the norm to make large amounts of money. Also, it takes a long time to build a client base.</p>
<p>That’s good advice. I would also add that if you really enjoy engineering (as I do) and want to advance than make sure to continue to educate and market yourself. As engineers we can get really engrained into what we are doing and forget to take credit or make sure that others know what we are doing. MBA, MS, etc. are something that you should consider even after getting your first job, and do so while you are still comfortable with your current position.</p>
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<p>Lots of time up front and less time after a few years is better than deadlines and crunch times for years. I think you put too much imphasis on work/life balance. IMO, I would rather of used my youth working my butt off if I knew it would get me good money and a good work/life balance. Instead, I worked hard and got alright money and a continued good work/life balance.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to depress engineers, I’m just addressing the topic. We are underappreciated because we don’t demand much and don’t measure our worth by how much we make, but by what we can do. This gets no respect from non-engineers, and most of us will find ourselves working for a non-engineer one day.</p>
<p>Look, to be fair, I still think engineering as a career is an excellent choice for most engineers out there. It provides a solid, middle-class (or in some cases upper-middle-class) profession and career path with just a bachelor’s degree. Relatively speaking, that’s pretty darn good. I think most people with just bachelor’s degrees in wish they could have a solid and decently-paying career path like that. I would guesstimate that 75% of all engineers out there are receiving a pretty good deal, relative to whatever else they could be doing.</p>
<p>The problems seem to be concentrated within the top 25%, meaning the hardest working and most talented of the engineers. These people really do have other options. They’re good enough to do well in other endeavors, and frankly, they may be better off pursuing those other endeavors. For whatever reason, the engineering career path does not seem to have room to reward its very best performers in a manner commensurate with their performance. For example, rarely will you find any company who pays its star engineers more than 2X or 3X what it pays its mediocre engineers, despite the fact that its stars are almost certainly far more than 2X or 3X more productive. {You could look at the situation from the other angle too, where the mediocre engineers are getting paid more than they are really worthy.} </p>
<p>I will end this post with a relatively upbeat note. Engineering students, for all their problems, still tend to get paid significantly more than science students. Those guys have to work hard, have to study hard, and they end up with * even lower *salaries than do the engineers. So, despite all of the problems of engineering, just keep in mind that things could be worse.</p>
Well, as merper said, it’s better to know ahead of time. It really shouldn’t be “scaring” people. Engineers still have great salaries, but it’s clear that they’re not the highest. I have absolutely no regrets going into this field, and am quite satisfied with where my career is going, including the financial aspects of it. Honestly, I wouldn’t even know what to do with the extra money, but that’s just me… I live a pretty simple life and am easily satisfied, lol. As a point of reference, I would have gone into architecture if I had the talent, and they make a fraction of what average engineers make. It really all depends on what you want in life. </p>
<p>There are plenty of people out there who go into engineering with the impression they’ll make as much money as doctors and lawyers, so it’s important for them to know this isn’t true ahead of time. Otherwise, they’ll work their butts off for nothing if they only wanted money, and had no real interest in engineering. </p>
Maybe this is just a fluke, but I’ve worked for three different organizations, and all three were headed by professional engineers or engineering grads.</p>
<p>I find it disheartening that so many people on this board simply want to go to school (and major in certain fields) simply to make tons of money. I applaud those on here who want to become engineers simply because it is their passion. </p>
<p>I went to school for psychology some years ago. I wasn’t too concerned with the money, although I realized that I had the potential to make loads of cash. In the end I realized that, despite the money, this line of work would drive me crazy and I would end up hating it. </p>
<p>Now I am going to school for biology, with a possible grad in biological engineering. Granted, a biologist has the potential to make good money, that is not why I am choosing this. I have an honest interest in it and I have a very strong feeling that this line of work will be fulfilling. When you’re a git like myself, that is all that really matters.</p>
<p>It’s less about money than it is getting rewarded for your effort. Next to the physical sciences and math, engineering is the most challenging BS major to succeed in at campus. To spend 5-6 hrs every day of the week for four years, then to go out and find business and finance majors who breezed by get compensated so much more, or even worse, put in charge so they can take credit for what the engineers manage to accomplish - I think that’s what bothers people. </p>
<p>What’s a CEO without a product? What’s a doctor without his MRI? What’s a lawyer without… well I guess lawyers don’t need engineers, but then again, I don’t really think lawyers are very high regarded anymore (except salarywise). </p>
<p>The point is, the thread’s title is Prestige of engineers, not Paygrade of engineers. And the truth is, engineers are the backbone of modern civilization, but very few get recognized as such. Part of that has to do with the paycap, but I think it goes beyond that. </p>
<p>Not that this should scare anyone away if they’re really interested, because top engineers can get great success. They’re just not considered engineers at that point.</p>
<p>What is prestige anyways? Do you want to sit in a fancy restaurant and have everyone gawking at you because you are successful? OMG! He’s an engineer! The truth is that prestige and rewards come from one thing-job satisfaction. If you do not enjoy your line of work, nothing else will make it better. </p>
<p>You want prestige-patent something. Create something new. Write articles or blogs or books. Get a second degree and combine the two.</p>
<p>“Not that this should scare anyone away if they’re really interested, because top engineers can get great success. They’re just not considered engineers at that point.”</p>
<p>Well said. If a top engineer is well-rounded, s/he can become CEO, as at my company here in Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>For me, I can’t imagine having more fun than I’ve had as a computer engineer; they pay me well to feel like I’m having fun, like a kid with Tinker Toys or Erector Set. I have no doubt that investment banking is fun for those who do it. It’s just different strokes. </p>
<p>Study what you think you’ll enjoy working at.</p>
<p>Prestige has nothing to do with salary. IMO, the most prestigious professions are doctors, teachers, law enforcement, followed by engineers. </p>
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The reward for me is the feeling I get when a project gets finished after months or years of effort. I like being able to point to a building and say I had a hand in building that. The paycheck is just what I use to pay my bills.</p>
<p>I’ve been an Engineer for close to thirty years. In that time, I have earned a comfortable if not extravagant living and have nearly always enjoyed the work and the people with whom I did it. On a few occasions, I have even felt that I have produced something of lasting value for both my employer and society at large.</p>
<p>I would take that any day over a job that paid much more but was uninteresting, added little value to an end product, forced me to dress up every day and had me working with and for idiots. If you are in it for the money alone, do yourself a favor and stay out of engineering.</p>
<p>Prestige is more about what other people think about you. I care more about what I think about myself.</p>
<p>Right after I graduated college with an engineering degree, I had a choice to pick a consulting/finance career or an engineering career. I chose the consulting/finance path due to the higher prestige and flexibility. And I have not regretted my decision, a few years later. </p>
<p>For me, prestige is doing well in something you are good at and being appreciated by your employer and the society at large. I’ve had a few internships during college at some of the best engineering/manufacturing companies, and most of the engineers in their 30s were trying to get into management. So, I said to myself, why should I join them?</p>
<p>I agree engineers are paid well starting out, and in the long term, get nice salaries. But for me, I didn’t like the salary ceiling. Engineers are trained to do very specific things, and that made the job seem very inflexible, especially in today’s skill based job market. </p>
<p>The only way to increase the prestige of engineers is to give engineers more exposure to other fields within the companies, give them more money. For now, engineering grads from the best schools are choosing other fields with higher earning potential.</p>
<p>Well, in addition, and I speak from personal experience, if you go to one of these schools and you attend their career fair, you will get ambushed by legions of consulting/banking/finance people begging for you to give them your resume and consider coming to work for them. It’s a well-marketed profession.</p>
<p>I’m pretty happy with my career development opportunities in my company and my professional organizations. Sure, there are people out there, many of them, who are less smart than me, or worked less hard, who are making more money, but so what? If I didn’t make enough money, it would bother me, but I make more than enough. I don’t judge my success by their salaries. I would like to eventually make more, but if I don’t ever make, say, 3x more (to use a figure that sakky brought up), that’s okay. There are other things for me to strive for in my work life - promotions, publications in prestigious journals, etc. I know enough about myself to know that I would hate working in finance, and after watching my mom go through law school, I had no particular desire to do that.</p>
To be fair, law and finance are interesting to some people who aren’t just in it for the money. It’s all about finding what YOU want to do for a career… for a life. You couldn’t pay me $200k a year to work as an investment banker… well, maybe I’d work for a year or two and just deal with the agony, but then go back into engineering, lol.</p>
<p>ken285, I certainly agree that nearly any profession will have members who find their employment interesting for reasons other than just the paycheck. Finding what you want to do with your life and pursuing that goal enthusiastically is indeed essential.</p>
<p>While you happened to pick a few jobs that would not suit me at all, I was speaking about my own preferences except for the sentence that advised those who were only in it for the money to stay away from engineering. I just wanted to let those who may be considering Engineering that not all of us are unsatisfied.</p>
<p>but what happens after 10 yrs of being an engineer? Moving to management? Or stay technical and wait for your job to be outsourced? Or make a flat salary and be happy with it? What kind of career advancement is there for an engineer with only a BS/MS?</p>
<p>Been there and done that. Stayed technical, outsourced twice, thrown kicking and screaming into mid-level management after the first time and hated it. I’m back in the lab now, making less money but tons happier.</p>
<p>My career advancement now consists of being the one people come to with problems that they cannot solve themselves, from being asked to referee papers written by people with higher degrees than mine for journals and conferences, from finding subtle but serious mistakes in those papers, from being requested by name when the person in another country who is doing one of my old jobs screws up, from being able to charge his company three times my normal hourly rate plus expenses to save their sorry butts… (Even though my company gets most of the extra pay rather than me.) Those are the things that make me happy these days. I will never see another meaningful promotion or another double digit raise, but I can live with that.</p>
<p>Engineers at my company expect to be making 100k a year after 5 years with the company. And this is in a low cost of living area. Seems like a good deal to me. Working 60-90 hours a week in a high cost of living area as a lawyer or investment banker does not sound very appealing to me.</p>
<p>A recent report by Prof. James Duderstadt of the University of Michigan, my alma mater, and also former President of the University addresses some of the concerns and future of engineering education. </p>
<p>It’s a long article, but it’s very much relevant to the topic that’s being discussed here. An important point he mentioned is that he would like American Engineers to retain/increase their value/prestige through a broad liberal arts education.</p>
It’s a well-marketed profession.</p>