<p>Were I to continue in the chimerical vein that this discussion has taken, I would be forced to ignore the metaphorical nature of both ball and court, deny that either ever existed and assert that any questions regarding their possession are therefore moot. Instead, I will point out that we seem to be in violent agreement on a number of points. Instead of getting bogged down in those areas, I would rather summarize what I feel are the most important of the areas in which we seem to disagree.</p>
<p>I will grant that there are some students who pursue an engineering major because they consider it safer than some other field that interests them more. I will also grant that some engineering jobs have historically met reasonable expectations for safety in terms of salary, benefits and longevity. I’m here to tell you that those jobs are getting thin on the ground of late and that there are likely to be even fewer of them available when the current crop of engineering students starts looking for employment. If you want a “safe” job in engineering, you had better pick your field and your specializations very carefully.</p>
<p>I will grant that the average employed engineer makes a salary above the national average. I will also grant that the average American makes a salary above the world average. Combine those facts with advances in communications, trends toward globalization, free trade agreements, the emergence of the EU, large corporate mergers and the like, and you will find that there is very likely someone out there who is certainly willing and very possibly able to do your job at a fraction of the cost. Anyone who thinks that American engineers are going to be earning higher salaries and getting more respect than they have had in the past is likely to be disappointed.</p>
<p>I understand the concept of lowering risk but I am not willing to take the leap of faith that would allow me to say that a career is engineering constitutes low risk these days. A person can try to lower their risk of a heart attack through diet and exercise all they want, but neither will do enough for someone with a genetically weak heart to put them into the low risk category. If every man in his family for the last three generations died of a heart attack in their fifties, the writing is on the wall. Similarly, the fact that risk is lowered because someone takes sensible precautions does not necessarily mean that their overall level of risk can be said to be low if they are participating in an inherently dangerous activity. I have already agreed that a career in engineering is lower in risk than some, but to say that the overall risk level could be characterized as low in many fields of engineering would be to ignore recent history.</p>
<p>An education in humanities or other liberal arts can be the easy route through college for someone who does not want to put in the amount of work demanded by most engineering curricula. Liberal Arts majors who are serious about their studies, even those in fields like Art History and American Studies, will have solid career options when they graduate. Make fun of them at your peril for, one day, one of them may be your boss. What you know upon graduation is less important than how an employer views your potential for growing into a job, particularly at the start of your career. </p>
<p>I do not know why some of those MIT grads who eventually left the profession went into engineering twenty and thirty years ago. If I were a betting man, I might guess that it was because they liked math and heard there were some interesting jobs available, particularly for grads of top programs. I think the probability is fairly low that any of them said, “Gee, I’d really like to get into arbitrage trading but I’d better study engineering just in case.” Most of the people I knew in high school simply did not think in those terms. I am willing to entertain the possibility that the typical high school student is fundamentally different these days, but those who are looking for safety in engineering are living in a prior decade. I can be pretty certain that one friend who changed majors from engineering to music (and many people do not even know that music is an available major at MIT) was not overly concerned about future employability when he did so. His reason for switching careers was that he found something that he simply liked better.</p>
<p>Again, I am using “safe” in a relative sense. Look, I put on my seatbelt because it is safe. Again, I could put on my seatbelt and still die in a car accident, so in that sense, it isn’t “100% safe”. But does that mean that anybody ought to quibble over the notion that “seatbelts are safe”? </p>
<p>No profession is ever *truly 100% safe<a href=“apparently%20except%20tenured%20professors%20and%20teachers”>/i</a>. But some professions are safer than others, and by extension, some college majors are safer than others. Engineering is a safer college major than are the humanities. So when you say that a major is “safe”, it is always “safe” relative to your other choices. </p>
<p>Similarly, when I say that (my beloved) San Francisco 49ers stink this year, I obviously mean that they stink relative to other NFL teams. Clearly the 49ers could beat the heck out of almost any college or (certainly) high school team out there, or any teams in the Arena Football League, etc. Hence, they’re clearly better than 99.99% of all football teams out there. So in that sense they don’t stink at all, in fact, they’re one of the greatest football teams in the world. But, *relative to their competition<a href=“that%20is,%20the%20rest%20of%20the%20NFL”>/i</a>, they do unfortunately stink this year.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Uh, I have never said anything about engineers garnering more pay and more respect in the future than they had in the past. I was simply talking about what is happening right now. Right now, engineers get paid significantly than does the average American. In fact, right now, engineers usually get paid more to start than does the average American who has experience. It’s a purely static argument. </p>
<p>But now that you brought it up, I think many engineers will continue to be paid quite well. Not all engineers, but many of them. We have to keep in mind that great economic advantages exist in regional agglomerations that often times override low costs. Low costs will only take you so far. Often times, the advantages of proximity will justify paying very high salaries, despite the effects of globalization. Heck, globalization may actually enhance these trends.</p>
<p>I’ll give you an example. Forget about China, forget about India. Even before the age of recent globalization, American companies always had the opportunity to relocate to low-cost areas. That’s because some regions in the US are simply far cheaper than others. The Northeast and California are expensive. The rural South and Mountain States are cheap. So why didn’t all US companies simply relocate to the cheap states? </p>
<p>As a specific case in point, probably the largest single concentration of highly paid electrical engineers and computer scientists/software developers in at least the US, and probably in the world, is Silicon Valley. It also correspondingly has the greatest concentration of information technology and electronics companies in the world. But why? Silicon Valley is hardly cheap and hasn’t been for at least 40 years. Business tax rates are high, office space costs are sky high, and salaries are very high. So why did all these tech companies stay there? Why didn’t they all just relocate to, say, rural Mississippi where costs are far lower? Why doesn’t Google, right now, fire all of its thousands of very high-paid Silicon Valley workers and shut down the hugely expensive Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View and just relocate themselves to, say, Arkansas, where things are dirt cheap? In fact, not only is Google not doing this, but Google is actually looking to expand its presence in Silicon Valley, hiring even more highly paid people in Silicon Valley and building out the Googleplex even more. Why? Is Google just being dumb? Are all these Valley tech companies being dumb? </p>
<p>I don’t think they’re being dumb. I think, instead, they’re demonstrating the limits of outsourcing. Regionally specialized networks carry great economic advantages. There is a reason why so much of the world’s financial services industry is concentrated in New York City, and not just any part of NYC, but certain very specific parts of NYC (basically, downtown and midtown Manhattan), despite the fact that these are some of the most expensive locations on Earth, and why all these huge investment banks and fund management firms don’t just all relocate themselves to cheap Montana. There’s a reason why so much of the world’s entertainment industry is concentrated in Los Angeles even though it’s far cheaper to build office and studio space in rural Idaho. Heck, if anything, these regional networks may actually be strengthened by globalization. For example, if you’re a budding tech entrepreneur, it may actually be more important for you to be located in Silicon Valley today than it was 30 years ago, because tech companies today can sell to the entire world vs. to just one country, which makes it even more important for you to have access to top venture capital firms (most of whom are located in Silicon Valley) so that you can expand your business quickly in order to sell to the world. Similarly, globalization has arguably made Hollywood even more profitable as a feature film can now be sold throughout the world. </p>
<p>Now, of course, that’s not to say that outsourcing can never be valuable. Obviously many types of outsourcing are indeed valuable. Some parts of a business can and should indeed be outsourced. But not all. The key then is to figure out which operations can be outsourced and which cannot, and situate yourself with the latter. </p>
<p>But in any case, engineers are not the only profession that will be affected (good or bad) by outsourcing. Many humanities majors will also be affected by outsourcing. Let me give you a case in point. I know people who majored in a foreign language, and then took other steps to become truly fluent in that language (i.e. went to live in that country for a few years), and then obtained rather high-paying part-time jobs tutoring that foreign language to others. The jobs paid quite well if that language was rare. For example, when one of my friends wanted to learn conversational Slovenian, she had to pay quite a bit of money for the rare private tutor who could speak fluent Slovenian. She found one: a person who had majored in Slavic Languages as a college student and who had spent years working in Slovenia. But that guy didn’t come cheap. </p>
<p>But now, I see that there are entire Internet sites devoted to connecting you to native speakers of any language you want to learn. Often times, the service is free. I just have to put in my time. A lot of people around the world want to learn English, and in return, will teach you how to speak their native language. Right now, I can fire up Skype and learn Japanese or Korean or whatever I want from a native speaker. It’s great for me. </p>
<p>But of course what that means is fewer jobs for those local language tutors. I don’t need them anymore. Those guys who majored in a foreign language thinking that they can get jobs as language tutors now have to do something else. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t make fun of all liberal arts students. When did I do that? In fact, I have often times said that many engineering students may be better off studying the liberal arts instead.</p>
<p>Who I make fun of are those you discussed: those lazy liberal arts students. And, frankly, they deserve it. We should be criticizing them. Those people, frankly, do not deserve college degrees. There are far too many students who view college solely as a place to party and get wasted on their parent’s dime, and sadly, many of these students will actually graduate (because they chose easy majors in which it is nearly impossible to actually flunk out). </p>
<p>In short, I have absolutely no problem with students who major in American Studies because they actually truly are motivated and interested in learning about America. That’s commendable. The problem is with those students who choose American Studies just because they know it’s easy and hence won’t take up much time away from their partying and drinking. Those students make the serious students look bad. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Uh, I’m not talking about those who eventually leaving the profession. I’m talking about those who immediately leave the profession. Meaning those MIT engineering students who never work as engineers a day in their lives, but instead take jobs in consulting and banking on day one. Why did THESE students study engineering? </p>
<p>Consider this. EECS is the largest major by far at MIT. Yet, according to MIT, 25% of the graduates will not take engineering jobs upon graduation and also do not go on to engineering grad school, but instead opt for jobs in consulting or banking. So, this isn’t about “eventually” leaving engineering. This is happening right after graduation. Why? </p>
<p>“…around a quarter go into investment banking and other financial or management consulting.”</p>
<p>Engineering is inherently safe in some sectors, particularly those that are essential for survival (infrastructure). There will always be a need for electrical (I’m thinking power generation specifically) and civil engineers working for the government, no matter how bad the economy gets. These two are also the least susceptible to outsourcing, since you need a local presence for most of these jobs (though it does happen for some tasks). </p>
<p>NASA sounds like an extreme case. I used to work for my state’s dept of transportation and I was told that if I passed my probationary period of one year, they were not allowed to fire me for any reason, unless I screwed up big time. If that’s not safe (relative or not), I’m not sure what is. Before you say that this is not common, the last figures I heard was that 1/3 of all civil engineers work for the government. Although I despise the bureaucracy associated with it, some do not mind it. One of my former co-workers left a private consulting firm to work for my city’s dept of transportation. </p>
<p>Really, if you don’t consider majoring in engineering to be safe, what is safer then? </p>
<p>There seems to be a strong focus on the top students in this thread and how they have the option of going into engineering, law, med school, ibanking, etc. What about those who barely graduated from the local college? They have a much better chance of getting a good job if they majored in engineering than if they majored in something else. It directly prepares you for a profession unlike others.</p>
Money, career advancement. If EECS made 100% more than ibanking or consulting you can bet that 25% would approach zero. In fact, that’s why people go into engineering to begin with. Money, career opportunities (relative to other careers it certainly is good), etc.</p>
<p>Exactly. So in other words, I take it that you agree with me that engineering is a safe choice, relative to most other majors you could have chosen.</p>
<p>From what I have seen, and certainly from what is logically coherent, a person who is aiming for consulting or banking will often times strongly considering majoring in engineering because he will know that there is a good chance that he won’t actually get a banking/consulting offer - as not everybody who wants one will get one - and so he will have to consider what he will do if he doesn’t get it. Engineering, as a second-best choice, is often times pretty good. Gets you a relatively high paying job to start and puts you on a career path that can prepare you to shoot for admission to a top MBA program (and hence get a 2nd bite at the consulting/banking apple). From a career strategy standpoint, this seems highly rational. </p>
<p>As a case in point, we should keep in mind that there are plenty of people who graduate with humanities or social science degrees who end up with quite mediocre jobs. For example, consider the guy who majored in English at Berkeley and ended up working as a Starbucks barista (aka, the guy who makes your coffee). Or the other English grad who ended up as head cashier at Barnes and Nobles. {Hey, at least it’s better than regular cashier, right?.} And of course those are people who actually reported their jobs. I’m sure plenty of others who got those types of jobs were too embarrassed to report them. </p>
<p>I think a lot of people would like to minimize their chances of ending up like that after graduation, especially if they’re coming out of a top school like Berkeley or MIT. Engineering seems to be a solid strategic choice.</p>
<p>Once again, I understand that you are using the word “safe” as a relative term. What we have here is a problem in semantics. It is precisely that usage that I have an issue with. I would prefer the term “safer” when you are speaking in relative terms, as in “Engineering is a safer profession than buggy whip manufacturing.” It seems to me that the word “safe” when used by itself is not at all a relative term but an absolute one. Saying that Engineering is a safe profession runs counter to the experience of hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of engineers including myself who have been downsized and/or outsourced. Many of us in this position would like to convey that, while it may be safer than some professions, Engineering should not be considered safe in an absolute sense. You can say that Engineering is safe as often as you like and mean what you want when you say it, but there will be a large number of experienced engineers out there who will never agree with that statement.</p>
<p>Once more, I say that engineering students should consider their field and specialization with great care. As you point out, some things are much more likely to be outsourced than others. The problem is that you may or may not have a lot of mobility within a company once you get there. From within, the process can seem quite random with some people who are obviously not doing a great job spared because they happen to be in the right group at the right time, and others fired even though they are doing a good job because their entire organization was let go.</p>
<p>Up until one of the recent postings in which you mentioned the subset of liberal arts students who ease their way through school, it was not clear to me that you held a different opinion of them than you did of liberal arts students who are serious about their studies. I agree with you that the lazy ones deserve little respect and that their employment prospects will probably be dim.</p>
<p>I have never met any of the MIT students who majored in engineering but went directly into finance. I have no particular insight into their motives, so will refrain from speculation. The way you have presented their motives appears to me to be speculation on your part. If you have actually interviewed some of them or can cite published work by someone who has interviewed them, it would lend more credence to your claim that they are using engineering as a safety net. The MIT grads that I know, on the whole, are a pretty self-confident lot. Some might be seduced by a gaudy salary offer, some might want to understand more about the business that they go into than accounting and management methods. I do not know, so will not ascribe any of those motives to them without taking the trouble of asking some of them first.</p>
<p>I do not consider any major to be safe in and of itself. Safety comes from being able to learn new things fast, thinking on your feet, looking out for your own interests and being ready to move when it is in your own best interest. Loyalty to and from a single company or profession is a thing of the past.</p>
<p>My impression is that this thread is more about getting the first job, but should also be about considering how to keep a job and knowing when to move on.</p>
<p>I certainly don’t consider it particularly safe. The company that I work for decided that to reduce the impact of cycles in our business (semiconductor industry) where they need to lay people off every 3 years or so, they would lay off a bunch of full time employees and implement a “flex work force” - temporary employees that they could lay off anytime without having to worry about paying benefits or age discrimination lawsuits. Yes this is true to some degree in other professions, but engineers particulary those in high tech companies have a lot less leeway (salary and location wise) in finding new jobs unless they’re in a tech heavy area like California.</p>
<p>High tech industries are always volatile. I know a few people who graduated with CS degrees and simply couldn’t find a job, and ended up doing other things.</p>
<p>I think “An engineering job” itself is too broad to say it’s a safe career or not… In addition, every single field in engineering such as mechanical, electrical, industrial, CS, CE, nuclear, chemical, civil, financial, etc… spread out infinitely…
I think it would be a more accurate approach to look at the total engineers being introduced to the market versus the “above average” jobs available for them.
In that sense, I think Sakky, BassDad, and everyone out there are correct… I’m too lazy to look for solid evidence… but I’m pretty sure that engineering is a “safER” route to take compared to other disciplines.</p>
<p>By the way, Merry Christmas to all~~~ + Happy early new years~!</p>
<p>It seems to me that the “many” engineers out there who can’t find jobs simply do not have the will or dedication to keep looking for them. There are so many opportunities out there that people just don’t seem to notice…This is coming from a undergraduate so I guess you could say that I still have not gotten out into the “real world”. However I have gotten enough offers to realize that there a myriad of opportunities out there that no one seems to want.</p>
<p>Enjoy it now, CH121S. Those entry level jobs are not open to those of us who have been in the profession 20+ years. Actually, there are probably jobs somewhere even for us, but it is not so easy to have to relocate without your new company picking up any of the expenses when you have a kid or two in high school and a wife who does not want to leave her own job or friends in a community where you have put down some roots. The prospect may make you dig in your heels and live off the unemployment checks while looking for anything that might come up. How would you have liked moving at about this time in your senior year of high school because your mom or dad had to take a job somewhere clear across the country?</p>
<p>When you experience a mass layoff and suddenly, 1000 or so engineers are chasing maybe 20 or 30 available engineering jobs within commuting distance, you may have some idea of how we feel. Having a college student who has not yet had any real-world work experience tell you that you lack will or dedication in that situation is not going to go over real well.</p>
<p>Now I think this is a matter of semantic quibbling. Fine, have it your way. Then wearing a seatbelt is just a safer way to ride in a car, but it’s not actually safe. Refraining from smoking, exercising daily, and eating right are just safer ways to live life, but not actually safe, because I can do all of those things and still drop dead tonight. How’s that? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And this makes the concept of ‘career insurance’ even more salient. Sure, an engineer can find himself shunted into a job that eventually becomes obsolete. But a humanities major can also find himself shunted into a job that eventually becomes obsolete. What is therefore important is to obtain a degree that gives you the flexibility to do many things. An engineering student can take a job that a humanities student can take. {For example, I know a guy who majored in EECS at Berkeley who a few years ago became a real estate salesman to take advantage of the huge housing boom, and now that the boom is a bust, he went right back to engineering and got himself a quite good software job.} But not too many humanities majors can get hired as engineers. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My dim opinion of the liberal arts is not so much regarding the students themselves, but really about the structure of the curricula that enable the laziness to persist. It’s a sad truth that you really can often times earn a humanities or social science degree while doing very little work, having very little idea of what is going on, and even worse, not WANTING to know what is going on. Hence, those majors attract many students who just want easy classes that require little studying. Frankly, that’s why you see so many scholarship football players majoring in ‘American Studies’ or related subjects.</p>
<p>If anybody is getting screwed over by this arrangement, it’s those students who actually DO want to seriously study those subjects. I have found them to be the most critical of all of the present arrangement, because they understand first-hand that the lazy students (and the structure that enables the laziness) make the serious students look bad. </p>
<p>Engineering doesn’t have that problem. You never hear of football players at Michigan, Texas, Cal, UCLA, or any other such schools all flocking to engineering just because they are looking for easy classes to maintain their academic eligibility to play. So, if nothing else, at least engineering teaches you how to work hard. Many humanities students don’t learn that. I think it’s safe to say that no matter what will happen in the future, no matter what jobs will be outsourced, the ability to work hard will always be valuable. If you don’t know how to work hard, then you’ll probably lose your job, and frankly, you’ll deserve to lose your job. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ha! You are presuming that I have not done these things. In fact, I have myself talked to quite a few of these guys, and the motives are exactly as I described. They chose engineering because they were looking for a marketable and safe (or ‘safer’) degree, and then they realized they could now shoot for something better (i.e. banking or consulting). It is NOT speculation on my part. These are the actual responses I have obtained from actual people.</p>
<p>And conversely, how would you like to be one of the 1000 English majors who just got laid off and trying to chase the 20-30 available jobs within commuting distance, especially if, as you say, you have a wife and kids and mortgage to take care of?</p>
<p>At the end of the day, everybody has to worry about getting laid off. But some career paths are safer than others. Similarly, I could exercise daily and not smoke and still die of a heart attack tonight.</p>
<p>I never said that an English major was safe either. In fact, I said that no major is safe. If you learn how to play the game, you do not have to live in fear of getting laid off because you will have confidence in your own abilities and will have developed the connections you need to get that next job.</p>
<p>I was not presuming anything about what you have or have not done, merely pointing out that, from what you had said up to that point, it was difficult for me to tell whether you had any actual data to back up your claims. I have no doubt that there are some folks out there who view engineering as a safety net, and I have no doubt that many of the same people will eventually come to realize that their net has some holes in it. I feel sorry for anyone who has turned away from what truly interests them before their careers have even started out of concerns for safety. The years in and after college may well be the only time before retirement that they have the opportunity to try what they really want to do. Believe me, it is a lot harder to pick up stakes and change directions later in life than it is in the first few years after you graduate, but it can still be done. It is better to fail a couple of times early on in your career when you don’t have so far to fall.</p>
<p>Personally, I do not prejudge people by the majors that they pursue. Therefore, I do not think the fact that some humanities majors are lazy reflects poorly on those with the same major who are serious about their studies. Engineering has lazy students who could easily get A’s with a couple of more hours work each day, but choose to go out partying and take the easy B and occasional C. They may have to work a little harder than some of the humanities majors, but they are still lazy. </p>
<p>College curricula set minimum standards and some people are quite happy to get by with doing the minimum. It is not up to a college curriculum to instill a work ethic. That must be done by the individual.</p>
<p>yes, keefer, I do love engineering. I do not, however, love some of the things that go on behind the scenes that they don’t mention in any engineering class that I ever took.</p>
<p>I went weightlifting today. When I did, I made sure to install the safety collars and bar-catchers. Why? Was it because I wasn’t confident that I couldn’t handle weight? On the contrary, I was quite confident. I wasn’t lifting particularly heavily. These were weights that I had easily handled before. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, I implemented all of the safety procedures anyway, not because I seriously thought that something unlucky was probably going to happen, but because I knew that something unlucky might happen. I might suffer a cramp during mid-lift. My hands might slip. I might, for some reason, black out during a lift. Any of these things might happen. They’re all unlikely, but they might happen.</p>
<p>That’s why people use safety equipment in any setting. You buckle your car seat belt not because you’re not confident in your driving ability or because you think a car accident is likely, but just because you know that you might get into an accident. You strap on a helmet before you ride a bike not because you’re not confident in your cycling ability, but just because you know you might slip and fall. Even Lance Armstrong might slip and fall on a routine ride (and I think he once recounted an incident when he did slip and fall on a routine leisure run.) </p>
<p>The point is, confidence and prudence are not mutually exclusive. Just because you’re highly confident in yourself doesn’t mean that you aren’t prudent. Again, back to my lifting example, implementing a safe exercise wasn’t trivial. I had to actually spend quite a bit of time just to find the bar-catchers (as somebody had taken them to another floor of the gym). But I did it not because I lacked confidence in my own strength but because I know full well that bad things sometimes do happen. I didn’t think anything unlucky was going to happen, but I had to account for the possibility that it could. </p>
<p>So, getting back to the topic at hand, MIT students can be both confident in themselves, and also prudent. After all, job offers inevitably have an element of randomness and arbitrariness. You can be the absolutely most qualified person for a particular job, and still not get the offer. A prudent person therefore has to consider what his plan B is. </p>
<p>Not everybody who wants a consulting or banking offer will get one. Hence, it is entirely reasonable for a student to think: “While I like consulting/banking and I’m pretty confident in myself, I still have to consider what I will do if I don’t get an offer.” Engineering is a reasonable second-best choice as ‘career insurance’. </p>
<p>Is that so unreasonable? Look, insurance is a multi-trillion dollar worldwide industry. That entire industry’s existence is predicated on the notion that unlucky things sometimes happen. If nothing unlucky ever happened, then nobody would ever need insurance (or, at least, nobody who is confident would ever need insurance). Confident people nevertheless still take out insurance policies as a matter of prudence.</p>
<p>{In fact, not only are confidence and prudence not mutually exclusive, they are often times reinforcing. For example, using collars and catchers actually gives me *more *confidence to lift *more *weight, because I know that I can push my strength to the limit and not have to fear serious injury as the weight crashes down on me. Similarly, having an engineering degree in his pocket probably may give a guy more confidence when pursuing consulting/banking offers as he knows he has a solid backup plan, and hence he can be more relaxed and confident during his consulting/banking interviews. Relaxed and confident people tend to interview better than do nervous people. }</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know that it’s so stark that people are necessarily turning away from what they like just for interests of safety. I think a lot of it speaks to something you alluded to in post #97, which is that *majoring in * engineering is quite different from actually working as an engineer. </p>
<p>An MIT engineering student often times gets to work on projects that are very exciting. They get to work on cutting-edge projects that involve the latest technologies and advances. In short, a lot of them profoundly enjoy their experience because it is cool, it is topical, it is innovative. </p>
<p>But many (probably most) engineering jobs, including ones that recruit for MIT students, are not like that. The projects aren’t that cool or interesting. You don’t really get to innovate the way you might like. You don’t get to see the big picture. Processes are highly bureaucratic. You don’t have the power to make important changes. </p>
<p>Hence, a lot of engineering students see that and realize that the sort of innovative culture that they crave is actually to be found in a consulting job than in an engineering job, where they have more power to effect change. </p>
<p>Here’s what Time Magazine had to say about it:</p>
<p>Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: “It’s marketed as–I don’t want to say dead end but sort of ‘O.K., here’s your role, here’s your lab, here’s what you’re going to be working on.’ Even if it’s a really cool product, you’re locked into it.” Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. “If you’re an M.I.T. grad and you’re going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day–as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that–it seems like a no-brainer.”</p>
<p>Self-confidence and prudence are certainly not mutually exclusive, but when precautions become very expensive and time consuming and there are serious questions being raised as to whether they are all that effective in the long run, then you start to wonder about their cost-to-benefit ratio.</p>
<p>It seems to me that the students described in that article chose to go into a different field toward the end of the process. They discovered when they nearly had a degree that they were qualified to do things that were more rewarding in some way but that they had never really considered before and they grabbed the opportunity with both hands. That is a different situation from studying engineering (or any other field) as a backup plan from the get go.</p>
<p>Concerning consulting vs. engineering, I have done both. Although it may seem like a no-brainer, there are advantages and disadvantages to each that make careful analysis of the overall, long-term picture essential to deciding between them. The answer very much depends on the individual and exactly what they are looking to achieve.</p>
<p>My take on the whole engineering situation has certainly been colored by my career. Like Aeppli in the article, I worked for Bell Labs right out of college at a time when there actually was some security and prestige to be found in an engineering career and where employees were treated as humans rather than assets to be managed for maximum profit. That world is long gone for a number of reasons and wishing for its return will not bring it back. Perhaps if I had never been in that situation to begin with, I would feel more sanguine about the profession as it is now.</p>