Prestige of Engineers

harvard09 · December 22, 2007, 2:50am

A lot of the general sweeping statements about engineering don’t apply to engineering in the defense industry.

sakky · December 22, 2007, 9:25am

I can agree that engineers start higher and stay higher than most other people. After all, the average engineer already makes more salary * to start* than the average American who has experience will make. Furthermore, if you look at any company, you will probably find that the engineers are making more than the average employee at that company. After all, most companies hire a lot of employees for low-end jobs who don’t make much. In that sense, I have always agreed that engineers are rather well off, relatively speaking.

But the question on the table is not really whether engineers are better than the average Americans. They certainly are. The real question is whether engineers are better off relative to what else they could have done, and in particular, are they really better off than the pure business-track careers (or law or medical careers) many of them could have had. To me, that’s not entirely clear.

The same criticism as above. The issue is not whether engineers are more respected than the average employee. The real issue is whether engineers are being accorded the same sort of respect they could have had if they had chosen some other career.

Again, I harken back to the words of ariesathena who said that the grads from her law school will make more just to start than the engineers at her old employer who had been working for several decades. Granted, she is going to a top-ranked law school, but it just begs the question of why exactly top-flight law grads get paid so much more than top-flight engineers?

Nobody, least of all me, is disputing that an undergrad engineering degree is good training for whatever future career you choose to undergo.

But the real question to me is why that training isn’t rewarded commensurately or on a parallel note, why other firms seem to be able to take people who don’t have good training and yet pay them well anyway. For example, a Wall Street investment bank can take a Harvard art history graduate, put him through a 2-month training session, and then pay him $150k *in his first year <a href=“salary%20+%20bonus”>/i</a>, which is more than most engineers will ever make in a year no matter how much experience they have. Apparently that investment bank is able to train that guy successfully to the point where he is worth being paid that kind of money. Why can’t engineering firms do that?

It’s ironic that you would say that, for many engineering programs are actually filled with students who are among the *least * risk-taking of all students. Let’s be honest. A lot of students major in engineering just because they see it as a safe way to obtain a career that pays relatively well (at least to start). In other words, they see an engineering degree as little more than a backup career: they figure that if they can’t get what they really want (i.e. med school, law school, Ibanking, consulting, etc.), then they can just pull out their engineering degree out of their back pocket. But that’s not exactly a mentality that is conducive towards risk-taking. If anything, that demonstrates risk aversion.

redbeard · December 22, 2007, 11:43am

Much of this is just argumentation. Honestly, in your world, Sakky, do you really find that lawyers are more respected than engineers? Do you really think that majoring in engineering is a risk-averse decision?

I merely offer the benefit of 30 years experience, which has taught me that the answer to both those questions is, decidedly, no.

The budding engineers and young high schoolers who have to make key decisions in the coming months can use that or not. At the very least it’s a useful counterweight to dorm-room know-it-alls.

While I enjoy a good debate as much as the next one, alas, I have little time to engage in such pursuits these days. I will forever remain a “junior member”. Besides, we’re perilously close to exploding this thread into six separate debates.

keefer · December 22, 2007, 4:18pm

i agree with sakky, from my internship experiences in engineering when I was an undergrad, most engineers from the top schools weren’t very happy. Engineering really cannot compete for the best students at the top engineering schools. Many people cite long hours for consulting and ibanks, engineers have long hours too. I enjoyed dressing and wearing a suit to work in a clean, and upscale environment, where most engineers are in small town factories/mines.

DocT · December 22, 2007, 5:07pm

Unless as an engineer, you go into management, you will always be looked at as a gearhead and not respected. If you’re good in math, you’ll probably be called a triple integral gearhead. Unfortunately the view of management in many engineering companies (even management whose training is engineering) is that most engineers are too detail oriented and to move up in an organization requires thinking oriented towards the “big picture” - something most engineers have difficulty doing.

BassDad · December 22, 2007, 8:40pm

A few points:

Anyone who thinks that engineering is a field for the risk-averse these days is in for a rude awakening.

I know several talented engineers who went to work on Wall Street for the big bucks. None of them lasted more than a couple of years and the rate of divorce and illness both physical and mental that resulted among those folks makes me think that perhaps Wall Street does not pay its employees enough. That is not a job I would want at any salary. Anecdotal evidence - you betcha, but good enough for me since I know what these people were like before and after.

It is pointless to ask whether an individual could have done better had they made different choices in their life. The answer is always going to be yes. For one thing, “better” is a very subjective and value-laden concept. It may well mean something very different to you than it does to me. For another, there are so many choices that have to be made in so little time with incomplete information that, even with billions of us trying, not one of us will find that elusive optimal path, even by sheer luck.

For me the real question is, “How can I support my family in reasonable comfort while living up to my own values?” Engineering has allowed me to find a reasonable if not optimal answer to that question for close to thirty years of all sorts of economic conditions and I have even had a bit of fun along the way. As I have said before, if you are trying to maximize income, prestige and respect, engineering is probably not going to do that for you. Good luck to you in finding the answers to your own real questions.

justinmeche · December 22, 2007, 10:43pm

For me engineering is not about prestige because the work I do (power plant engineer and turbine area manager for upcoming overhaul) is very much behind the scenes and not glamorized in the media. My salary is good for where I live and being only 24 years old but it won’t increase much over the years since it may take a while to earn promotions from one level to the next. The trade-off is job security because demand for electricity will always be there and lots of people are leaving the industry through retirements. However, I could work for another power company or equipment manufacturer for a much high salary. One young engineer left my company after one year and went from a $52,000 salary to $68,000. Another young engineer could have been able to get another job as a generator engineer for close to $80,000. There are 55 year old engineers in my company who will never make that kind of money. But as always you have to factor in the cost of living and the cost of benefits.

Being able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle and steady employment is my goal. Prestige and respect? Not realistic things for me to look for. Engineers do all of the work and the managers get the rewards.

cawcaw90 · December 22, 2007, 11:27pm

I can definitely attest to that. My mom wants me to be an engineer because originally she wanted me to go to med school. She decided I don’t have the motivation, so instead she wants me to go into engineering. sigh

sakky · December 24, 2007, 9:17am

Well, I’ve had quite a bit of experience in the engineering realm myself, and I have to say that, unfortunately, the answer to both questions is ‘yes’.

I’ll unpack your first question first. I certainly agree that lawyers don’t exactly command a lot of respect. That is why you hear terms like ‘ambulance chaser’ and ‘sharks in suits’ thrown around. But engineers aren’t respected either. A lot of people think of ‘nerds’ and ‘geeks’ when they think of engineers.

Or, think of the cartoon strip Dilbert. It portrays the life of a put-upon engineer who gets no respect from anybody in the office, and there is a reason why that comic strip became so popular: that it * mordantly depicted reality *. Granted, it was a sarcastic satire, but it was a recognizable sarcastic satire.

Incidentally, this is why I believe one thing that the field of engineering really needs is an image makeover. To this day, many students shy away from engineering because they view it as the realm of geeks who have no social skills. Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to that view: as the top engineering programs often times really do have many students who can’t hold their end of a conversation, or in some cases, don’t even bathe regularly. {Don’t believe me? Go hang around Berkeley’s Soda Hall, Stanford’s Gates Building, or the MIT Stata Center around midnight on a weekday during the academic year and you will see - or more accurately, smell - guys who don’t exactly place a high priority on personal hygiene. The culture of the filthy nerd is alive and well at all 3 places. Granted, they are a minority of the engineering students, but they are a highly visible minority that makes all the other engineering students look bad.}

As for your second question, I think we have to ask why exactly is it that so many engineering students from those same 3 schools I mentioned above (MIT, Stanford, Berkeley) don’t actually take engineering jobs, but instead become consultants or investment bankers? {By that, I obviously don’t mean the minority who don’t shower and don’t have social skills, but the ones who do.} These are some of the best engineering students in the world, yet they decide not to work as engineers. Why not? If they chose to study engineering because they really enjoyed it, you would think that they would actually take engineering jobs (or go to engineering grad school), right? It’s not like these guys can’t get an engineering job offer, as they most certainly can, for if you’re an engineering who is earning high enough grades to land a consulting or banking offer, then you surely can get some sort of engineering job offer. Why would somebody turn down a career that they actually like?

What that tells me is that these guys probably didn’t really like engineering and never did, but decided to major in it anyway. Why? Probably as a career backup. They figure - quite rationally - that if they can’t get the job they really want, then they can just pull out their engineering degree from their back pocket to get an engineering job.

Uh, I think what you described here actually *reinforces * my point rather than detracts from it. What you have shown (and I agree) is that Wall Street is a risky place to work. But that is why an engineering degree is a risk-averse degree. Those guys with engineering degrees who worked on and then quit Wall Street can now take engineering jobs. Granted, they might have to take something entry-level. *But they’re still far better off than a guy who has a humanities degree who worked on and then quit Wall Street. * Honestly, what is that guy going to do?

Uh, I actually think it is point*ful<a href=“if%20that’s%20a%20word”>/i</a> to ask that question, and it is precisely for the incomplete information that you cite. Given incomplete information, most people rationally choose the path of low risk. This is entirely rational because most people are risk averse. Engineering does in fact provide a low risk path.

Exactly. Engineering does not maximize prestige, respect, or income. Instead, it offers reasonable safety. That is precisely my point.

lkf725 · December 24, 2007, 10:57am

I am wondering how the heck guys with poor personal hygiene and limited interpersonal skills are successful in the world of business?

merper68 · December 24, 2007, 11:24am

Like mentioned before, a lot of this has to do with preferences based on personality. For some people, they get the kick out of being the expert - the person not in charge, but who everyone looks to for guidance, certainly a good role for an engineer. Others need to be - if not in charge - at least in an environment where they feel the people around them are competent and that they are being rewarded for the effort they put in. I think this sort of personality might be more after the prestige mentioned in the thread title.

I was doing some looking around on personality types on the MBTI test and found that most engineers fall somewhere within the Rationals(Intuitive, Thinking - not exactly surprising):

[Keirsey</a> Temperament Website: The 4 Temperaments](<a href=“http://www.keirsey.com/handler.aspx?s=keirsey&f=fourtemps&tab=5&c=mastermind]Keirsey”>http://www.keirsey.com/handler.aspx?s=keirsey&f=fourtemps&tab=5&c=mastermind)

Where you fall from there depends on your two other types. Of course, you can’t categorize everyone into rigid boxes, but you can see broad patterns of preferences. For example, the pure engineer, involved only in his work and the pursuit of truth would probably be an INTP or ENTP. Perhaps I’m reaching here, but this type may not be so held up on what an unfair deal engineering students are getting relative to others. However, and NTJ type would probably get very frustrated at having to deal with incompetence in management or finance and would be better off being in charge or working in an environment where they feel satisfied with how others perceive them.

You don’t need a test to know yourself obviously, but it can help clarify your self-image and help you understand what you may really be after in a career more than simply money or prestige. I’m an INTJ for example, with extremely dominant NTJ and slightly expressed I, which according to the descriptions makes me naturally suited to contingency planning, something which I already knew but not quite in those terms. It also tells me I may be happy with management(ENTJs tend to be the executives and business leaders), but that I at least need some sense of autonomy in my work, maybe in a small business environment - again something I knew, but interesting nonetheless.

Everyone, engineer or not, could benefit from a self examination. This study on how different personality types do in engineering majors might be a useful starting point:
<a href=“Teaching and Learning STEM”>Teaching and Learning STEM;

sakky · December 24, 2007, 1:44pm

They’re not. That’s the point. They’re the ones who don’t get hired despite being the most qualified. Or, if they do get hired, they’re the ones who have all the right answers, but that nobody listens to. I’ve certainly seen my share of that in the workplace. I’ve seen employees who always seem to presciently know what the right decision is, and for which the manager will nod and say “that’s an interesting idea”… and then implement some other decision. The worst part is that when the company decides to downsize because its managers are making too many poor decisions, each manager has to decide which of his employees he is going to lay off, and that manager will tend to lay off those employees who had the right answers but were never listened to. Like I’ve always said, there is a very big difference between having the right answers and being able to convince others to agree with your answers. The former takes intelligence, but the latter takes social skills.

But the situation is not all bleak. Some nerds with poor social skills can nevertheless take their answers straight to the market for validation. Consider the story of Bill Gates, a guy whose social skills have been universally described as being so poor that he’s been deemed as possibly suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome (a condition related to autism).

Gates realised early on that being seen as a geek was a big advantage in negotiations with MBA-wielding executives, and that by disguising his sharp business acumen behind a dorky haircut and poor social skills, he could win deals and grow his company.

[BBC</a> NEWS | Technology | As one gate closes, another opens](<a href=“http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5087998.stm]BBC”>BBC NEWS | Technology | As one gate closes, another opens)

BassDad · December 24, 2007, 2:13pm

Perhaps there are a few low-risk areas left in the engineering profession, but most anyone who has worked as an engineer for an electronics or telecommunications firm in the last ten years would probably not characterize their job in that way. I’d bet there are a lot of other industries that are in the same boat. Just ask some folks in the 40+ age group what it is like finding a job after a major downsizing or outsourcing.

Starting over at entry level is not exactly a security blanket when you have a mortgage, car payments, one or more kids in college, and quite possibly alimony and child support to pay courtesy of that two-year stint on Wall Street. Certainly there are riskier paths, but if you are thinking of engineering as “safe”, I would recommend asking some pointed questions of people who are currently in or recently have been in the specific areas of engineering that interest you. You might just find that the safety net quietly unraveled some time ago. Anyone who is banking on being able to find a job by pulling their engineering degree out of their back pocket had better be prepared to be out on the street for a while (and I don’t mean Wall Street.)

Today, job security comes from being able to learn whole new areas quickly, from being able to market yourself effectively, from being able to connect with people, from being able to size up an audience and communicate with them effectively. At least when I went to school, many of those areas were more effectively addressed in the liberal arts curriculum than in engineering. The guy with the humanities degree is probably in a better position of finding a job than that alpha geek with lots of knowledge but no social skills.

Concerning Dilbert, I think anyone who works in an office sees the humor in that strip. Mr. Adams skewers not only the engineers, but management, HR, marketing and every other part of the corporation. The fact that the title character is an engineer has much to do with his creator having been an engineer when the strip started. Yeah, the engineers are lampooned, but most everyone else gets it even worse. To my way of thinking, Dilbert and one or two of his co-workers in engineering are the only reason that company has not yet folded. From that point of view, they are the most respected characters in the strip.

Concerning why the smartest engineers leave engineering, it is precisely because they have demonstrated that they have the skills required to succeed in just about any field that they care to enter. Many people change quite a bit over the course of their undergraduate years and may decide that they want to take a different direction. The best and brightest are simply the ones who have the most opportunities to follow through after graduation.

DocT · December 24, 2007, 3:05pm

From where I stand - near the end of my engineering career, I would never recommend engineering as a profession. The point made above in regards to safety is quite accurate. I’ve seen too many engineers get layed off with nowhere to go or having to uproot their families to find jobs. The ones that are left behind, sit worrying about whether they’re going to be layed off in the future, their job is going to be outsourced or they’re going to be replaced by someone straight out of school who is paid less and has more current skills.

Many companies claim to have a dual career path but few actually implement it. Unless you’re willing to go into management which really doesn’t use all that much of your engineering background, you’re in for a rough ride.

sakky · December 24, 2007, 3:15pm

Sure are. The one that immediately comes to mind is the government. I know guys who have worked as engineers for government agencies for their whole lives and have never once reported a single layoff of any of their coworkers, and how stressless their job is. A true 40-hour work week, full pension, lots of vacation, excellent health benefits, basically the works.

Sure, everybody is getting lampooned, but it is quite clear in the comic strip that Dilbert has no power. The pointy-haired boss is a complete idiot, but he is an idiot with power and that’s a source of continual frustration to Dilbert. Catbert of Human Resources is a sadist, but again, * she is a sadist with power*. In contrast, Dilbert has to play the role of the pitied put-upon straight man.

Uh, I said low risk, not no risk.

If you think that engineering is risky, compare that to getting a degree in Art History. Or Leisure Studies. Or American Studies. Try paying for your mortgage and your kids college bills with one of those degrees.

It all gets back to my basic point: engineering is a low-risk option compared to most other subjects you can major in as an undergrad. You think engineers have it bad? How do you think the people with humanities degrees are doing? I know people with English Literature degrees who are working at the mall and who would love to be able to trade places with an engineer.

Ah, but you are presuming that an engineering degree and social skills are mutually exclusive. How about the guy with the humanities degree who also has no social skills? What happens to him? I think it’s safe to say that he probably would have been better off (or at least safer) with an engineering degree.

sakky · December 24, 2007, 3:26pm

But that doesn’t answer the basic question - why did they choose to study engineering in the first place?. Why didn’t they just study something else? Is it really because of a lack of self-confidence? Did they not know how good they were and so decided to choose engineering because of career safety concerns?

Specifically, if you are one of those MIT engineering students who ends up in strategy consulting - as many of them do - why didn’t you just major in management at the MIT Sloan School? Or perhaps major in Economics? Why did you major in engineering? Engineering has little to do with strategy consulting. If you really enjoy business strategy such that you would take a job doing it, then it stands to reason that you would actually want to spend your time studying strategy, right? After all, it’s what you like, isn’t it? So why didn’t you? Why would you deliberately choose to avoid majoring in something that you actually like?

Seems to me that the alternative explanation is far more likely. The guy probably always wanted to do strategy but didn’t know if he was actually going to get a strategy job offer, as not everybody who wants one will get one, so he decided to get an engineering degree as insurance.

lkf725 · December 24, 2007, 4:03pm

sakky,
re: the issue of geeky engineers with questionable hygiene and interpersonal skills
If the smartest, geekiest guys (see above) go to to MIT, Cal Tech, etc, and these are also the guys who shun engineering for better opportunitites in i-banking and consulting jobs, there seems to be a disconnect to me. Are the top engineers mostly the non-bathing, geeky guys who are oblivious to business aspects, or are they the astute ones who roll their engineer degrees into great jobs in the financial industry?

BassDad · December 24, 2007, 4:05pm

Government service varies a lot, depending on what you are doing. Ask the folks who once worked for NASA how secure their jobs were. Ask the folks who were working on SDI as well. There are undoubtedly some secure jobs in government service and elsewhere, but the numbers are just not that large compared with the entire engineering profession. Pensions and health benefits have eroded to near worthlessness in most places outside of government service.

Given the numbers of engineers who have lost jobs in the last decade, I would not exactly characterize the profession as low risk. Would those folks in the mall care to trade places with engineers who have been out of work for months with their unemployment payments about to expire who cannot even get a job at the mall because they are overqualified (HR code for too old and too expensive)?

I have known quite a few successful majors in fields like English and Art History. In most cases, they have gone on to a higher degree and are either teaching or have moved up the corporate ladder with a lot more speed than the hardcore techies that I know. There are companies out there who are willing to train bright college graduates regardless of their degree. My wife started out as a music ed major and now has a job with an insurance company that pays better, has far better benefits and more job security than my engineering job offers.

I am not insisting that technical knowledge and social skills are mutually exclusive; that is a stereotype that others have been attempting to perpetuate. I was saying that the old saw, “Its not what you know but who you know” is as valid today as it ever has been. The humanities major with no social skills is just as bad off as the engineer with no social skills. Unemployment pays both of them exactly the same for exactly as long. It may be true that the engineering major has a slightly better chance of finding that first job, but he still has to be able to keep it. It is not at all obvious to me that an engineering degree is safer than one of any type that specifically addresses solid writing and presentation skills, critical thinking and networking.

BassDad · December 24, 2007, 4:13pm

I’ve known several MIT grads in my time, both those who have stayed in engineering and those who have not. A lack of self-confidence in their own abilities is about the least common characteristic among them. The suggestion that they went into engineering because they were worried about their future employability would probably make many of them laugh out loud.

sakky · December 24, 2007, 4:54pm

Smart engineers come in all types. Some are indeed the unhygienic ones with poor social skills (but evidently have the potential to be the next Gates). And then there are the highly social and well-adjusted ones. These are the ones who tend to become bankers and consultants.

Again, compare their situation to those with art history degrees. Or humanities degrees in general.

Given the number of non-engineers who have ALSO lost their jobs, I think the engineers are doing quite well for themselves, relatively speaking.

Again, I said LOW risk, not NO risk. Everything in life has risk. Just because you put on your seat belt doesn’t guarantee that you won’t die in a car accident. Just because I exercise every day and eat right doesn’t guarantee that I won’t drop dead of a heart attack tonight. But my risks are lowered if I do these things. My risk is never eliminated. But they are LOWERED. That’s the difference between no risk and low risk.

And I also know of quite a few extremely successful engineers as well. And many of them didn’t even need that higher degree of which you speak.

At the end of the day, engineers, on average, make significantly higher salaries than does the average American. That doesn’t really mean that the engineers are that well off, rather, what it does mean is that the average American is WORSE off. Let’s be honest. The average American ain’t exactly doing that well. What does the average American make? Something like 40k a year? That’s less than what most engineers get TO START.

And it’s not clear to me at all that an engineering education does not teach any of these characteristics any more than a humanities degree does. Let’s be honest. A lot of humanities students don’t exactly learn a lot particularly solid writing/presentation/critical-thinking/social skills either. In fact, many of them learn little of anything, for the simple fact of the matter is that many humanities courses are quite easy to just pass. {It may be hard to get an A, but if you just want to pass, you can often times get away with learning very little.}

Fine. So then that leaves the question open: for those who didn’t actually take engineering jobs, why did they study engineering in the first place? I’ll put the ball in your court.

Prestige of Engineers

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