<p>[Survey:</a> Engineering seniors study the most ? USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-11-17/college-students-study-hours/51245162/1]Survey:”>http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-11-17/college-students-study-hours/51245162/1)</p>
<p>Engineering is hard. Maybe students get weeded out the way orgo (organic chemistry)weeds out many premed students</p>
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<p>We don’t use open source tools (outside of the ones that we own) for building products but I have worked on open source projects before (outside of my employment) where we use open source tools. My son has used a lot of open source tools in his various intern positions. We do use lots of open source applications though - I use Firefox, Thunderbird, VirtualBox, Open Office, FileZilla, Ubuntu, VNC, etc. but these are usually for accessing resources or work unrelated to our build. We do use vi, emacs, xemacs, grep, awk, etc.</p>
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<p>Maybe there’s a bigger emphasis in money in those families. If you want a lot of money, engineering isn’t the place to go.</p>
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<p>The potential could be quite high, kinda depends if the person wants to go into something else in the career path. If the person wanted to remain an engineer they will remain an engineer. Some engineers will move into the “people” engineering fields. </p>
<p>Starting out in a higher salary then followed by COL increases, if done right, can offer a lot of flexibility over other professional professions.</p>
<p>Engineering also has some mobility over general legal and MD’s. Specialize engineering will of course have mobility issues unless you are self employed.</p>
<p>The financial hurdle of a MD is huge first in the education phase and then in the practice establishment when compared to a engineer. The opportunity cost for an MD is upfront and that of an engineer is at the backend.</p>
<p>Agree with LongPrime about the COL and flexibility and mobility issues. I can certainly say my 09’ grad son is making way more than the 5% COL increase that oldfort mentions. With COL and bonuses, way way more than that.</p>
<p>Flexibility and mobility are great if you’re 30 years old with no children I have turned down recruiter sirens from all the CC-approved big computer firms out west for a number of reasons, including the fact that the 50% salary increase likely is not even going to cover the cost of living / tax difference, the prevailing company culture is not to my liking, and the job description invariably means that ‘technical work’ is largely hand-holding offshore resources who are doing the real work while the ‘senior software architect’ is sitting stateside doing Powerpoint.</p>
<p>each will make their own way.
good for those who chooses the medical route.
engineering isn’t. right for everyone
if they are having fun at what they are doing, that’s a good thing.</p>
<p>ds wasn’t. exactly happy in his last job at the university. Some people however wanted that position.</p>
<p>All i want to know is whether if he’s happy. :)</p>
<p>Engineering definitely is not for everybody, that’s for sure. It certainly is easier to move when there are no children involved. Considering the cost of living in a area is always good regardless of whatever job one has. My kid is in DC and I do worry about things like being able to buy a house someday if he decides to stay in that area. But it’s his life and he’ll have to figure all of those kinds of things out, like where to live,what job to take. And yes, always good when they seem happy!</p>
<p>The need for doctors will be lower when technology advances.
It’s possible that a medical technician can perform prostate cancer surgery in the future.
And robot family doctors will be available for sale.</p>
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<p>Recent study by Georgetown Univ., Median Salaries
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<p>The Unemployment rate in 2009 and 2010 for Engineering is much ower than the general public, esecially for the graduate degree holders.
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<p>Of course, closed source software with bugs is even more of a hassle to deal with. At least with open source software, you can better attempt to figure out what the bug is in order to fix it or at least figure out a reliable work around.</p>
<p>Re #49, my child who is a mechanical engineer 20 something makes over 100K AND he doesn’t have to go to third world countries to earn it (as those high earning managers do).</p>
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<p>It can depend on the quality of the product and the quality of your support contract. I used to work in engineering support and we had service contracts that provided for 24-hour support including on-site if necessary.</p>
<p>I think unemployment rate for people with college degree is 4.1%, and without high school diploma 13.8%, so I don’t think it means engineers are doing better.</p>
<p>This may be the Georgetown study that was mentioned. It is the subject of an article in the Washington Post . If you google Georgetown study unemployment, the article in the Washington Post should come up-New Study shows architecture,arts degrees yield highest unemployment. Very interesting.
Engineering probably has pretty variable unemployment rates between disciplines but seems to be doing well in general.</p>
<p>Here is the link to the actual Georgetown study. Also interesting.
<a href=“http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Unemployment.Final.update1.pdf[/url]”>http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Unemployment.Final.update1.pdf</a></p>
<p>H wanted to be an engineer but ended up settling for accounting so he could graduate. He’s spent his 40+ career working alongside and supervising engineers while working on computers. S so far seems to like being an engineer & is satisfied with his job + benefits.</p>
<p>re #53
The data from the Georgetown study is based on info from 2009 and 2010. The study indicated the average unemployment rate for new college grads was 8.9%, was 22.9% for recent high school grads and 31.5% for recent high school dropouts.
In terms of college majors of recent grads, engineering had 7.5% unemployment, business 7.4,arts 11.1, humanities and liberal arts 9.4, social sciences 8.9,architecture 13.9. Health care and education had 5.4% so they did the best during a recession.Does anybody have any info for 2011?</p>
<p>My feeling in tech is that things were moderately better in 2011 than in 2010. In the first half, employers were very picky but things seemed to improve in the second half. On education, we’ve had tons of layoffs of teachers - it would seem to me that the low unemployment rate for new grads is due to replacing experienced teachers with new grads to reduce school expenses. That’s good for grads looking for work but not a good indicator of the health of the profession.</p>
<p>I’m not surprised that healthcare is doing well but I think that it’s also a bubble that has to tail off at some point.</p>
<p>[Concern</a> as baby-boomers prepare for retirement - FT.com](<a href=“Concern as baby-boomers prepare for retirement”>Concern as baby-boomers prepare for retirement)</p>
<p>There is a looming shortage of engineers that will accelerate over the coming decade. </p>
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<p>I have my doubts on a great wave of retirements with the useful working life getting longer and longer. My mother worked into her mid-80s in nursing and I don’t see any reason why I need to retire in my 60s or 70s.</p>
<p>Supposedly there is 7 or 8 percent unemployment in new engineering grads for 2010 and maybe it’s a little better right now. These companies could go out and hire those looking for work now. I’m sure that Mark77 would be available.</p>
<p>The link is a bit of a headache as they want you to register and you don’t get to see the article if you close the registration box. It’s easier to read the article by looking for it in Google.</p>