<p>Sure there are exceptions to everything but your negative view of engineering is not exactly accurate. On average, engineers make more than machinists. This is a fact. I’m not saying machinists can’t make a good living but a general statement claiming that trades make more than engineers is baseless.</p>
<p>Why do people always talk down about Civil. It’s REAL engineering. Have you ever see the Hoover Dam, Empire State Building, etc. This took some bright minds and innovators, you know. Btw, most people say ME is one of the “real” engineering along with EE. Well, news flash guys, CE and ME are almost the same. We both use the same theories and principles. We just apply it different. The 1st year of engineering school is same for every one (CE,CS,EE,ME, etc.). We all take Physics, Calculus, Chemistry etc. Now after that ME and CE is like 70% the same. We both learn theories in Stress Analysis, Dynamics Systems, Fluid Mechanics, etc. And in my school we were required to take Thermodynamics (condensed version where we learn the important parts for what the ME take in there two semester sequence). Of course ours was less detailed, but still you what I am saying. If so many people say ME is one of the elite then why not CE, when our program is 75% the same in terms of a program in which we apply the same theories like failure criteria, dynamic equilibrium, etc. </p>
<p>And the people who say EE is the only “Real” engineering, well, I took a general course in electrical engineering (circuits, basic fields, etc) and it was’t too difficult. And I’ve taken Diff. Eq. with all types of engineering majors. The ones who understand Laplace Transforms the most wasn’t always the EE’s :o!! And they use that crap more then other engineering majors. At the end of the day engineering is all the same crap, applied physics and math (and BioE, EnviormentalEng and ChemE include chemistry in there).</p>
<p>P.S. CS is engineering in sense they just use a lot more math then physics thats all. CS is just as hard as everything else. Their classes is based the stuff people made up like JAVA and C++. While other engineering major is governed by laws of nature (motion, electromagnetic field, etc) which is more understandable then the stuff CS deals with.</p>
<p>It depends much more on location than anything else. In NYC it is very common for the contractors(tradesmen) to make much more than the civil engineers or other engineers at the same company. </p>
<p>Most likely is rural and suburban areas engineers make more and those in the trades made less. Though in major cities, the inverse is true. My father is a machinist, grandfather a plumber, three uncle’s are plumbers and one a electrician. All make well more than I can every dream to make as a engineer, unless I start my own company. </p>
<p>We then also need to calculate the pensions of union trade-workers. if you calculate this out, for the time worked and money contributed to retirement the unionized tradesmen will usually always come out on top. In the trades you really only have to work 20-25 years and you are set for life, you get a nice pension and health care for your family life. As a engineer you will need to work until 65, contributing to your own retirement and your healthcare goes away when you leave your job.</p>
<p>Those who say that being a machinist is a better deal… yeah but isn’t there a LOT of competition for that well-paying job?</p>
<p>I was under the impression that successful machinists make a lot of money, but they are very few of many, and usually engineers have the better chance of landing a stable job.</p>
<p>The article doesn’t seem super useful to me because it ignores potential future salary increases, which from everyone that I know (just finished CS undergrad at Stanford) isn’t really that great. So all the CS kids either try joining early stage start ups or working in finance so they can get paid well.</p>
<p>Also, I haven’t heard of anyone getting an offer for a software engineering job and getting paid 60K like the article says is the average. Maybe if you were doing software engineering at a non-software firm, but most of the offers I’ve seen people get are in the 75-95K range (just salary).</p>
<p>As for the debate about whether CS is an engineering major or not, at least at Stanford it is. We take a few classes with EE kids, they seem to have pretty similar experiences as us at the end of the day. But really, you could call CS a humanities major for all I care as long as at the end of the day, I get paid. lol. :)</p>
<p>That is very true member. In the end the individual has to decide what is the best career for their goals. Yeah, just to give you an example. I had worked at the plant for a while as a general helper during the summer one year, and I would get home from a 14 hour shift and have to lay down on the floor to get tension of my lower back. Having to maintence manufacturing rack systems and coming home covered in grease is not fun. That is when I decided that I wouldn’t complain about having to study in school ever again.</p>
<p>Sure there is a lot of competition but there is just as much for the engineering field. Engineering and stable job should never be in the same sentence, at least from what I have learned in engineering career seminars and from reading, the average turn around time for a new engineering hire is 4-5 years and after 2-3 cycles(10-15 years) you will be considered a old engineer. </p>
<p>Once you become a good machinist you will likely never be fired, unless you continually loose your company profit. Engineers on the other hand, even when they do a amazing job still sometimes get fired after 4-5 years, just because the company likes to shake things up. </p>
<p>I was told a few key things from my professors from industry and they are
the only thing static in this field is that it is dynamic
Job stability should be expected.</p>
<p>We learned a lot in those seminars, from how to find jobs, how to invest and prepare ourselves financially for the 4-5 years turn around, etc. </p>
<p>These trends are not really 100% specific to engineering, the youth of today no longer have the same mentality as there parents where they slave away for a company for security until retirement. A new grad today is much more likely to work on his terms rather on the companies. Its not uncommon for somebody to just quit at a engineering firm solely because he doesn’t want to work on Saturday. </p>
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<p>i think I have read a few articles which have said the memberships have started to go up. I think unions will be around as long as those who are in them want them. Its law in NYC, that anything over a days work or so will require union members. Sure a very small roofing job could get a Mexican day worker, but lets say the building of the new Yankee stadium, all of those workers are in the union and all get paid extremely well.</p>
<p>You also say that once you become a good machinist, you will likely never be fired. The problem is, what if you lose your job before you become a good machinist? Many of the recent layoffs of machinists have hit the junior, inexperienced people, and while that may indeed help those who already have knowledge and seniority, it doesn’t exactly do any favors for those who are trying to build that knowledge/seniority. </p>
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<p>The long term trend is quite clear: other than in the public sector, unions have suffered from declining membership for decades, and even any recent uptick would do little to counteract the overall trend. </p>
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<p>That has nothing to do with machinists, however. Machinists didn’t build Yankee Stadium. Those are skilled tradesmen and construction work. </p>
<p>More generally, relatively little actual machining, that is, the operation of machine tools, occurs in NYC for the simple reason that the city has very little manufacturing remaining. Most of it has fled overseas or to the Southern United States.</p>
<p>Investment Banks actively seek out CS majors/engineering majors for banking analyst/trading analyst/quant analyst type jobs. I personally know plenty of CS kids that went into banking/trading just at my school. Some trading firms are super tech focused and don’t even interview anyone that majored in economics. You just need to show that you have a serious interest in finance in one way or another. For me, that turned out to be a software engineering internship at a BB firm my sophomore summer.</p>
<p>I know 2 guys that I think are going into patent law. Completely different deal altogether obviously. Sounds super boring to me personally. But I took this CS + law class at Stanford and apparently having a CS background is super desirable for that. One thing is that generally I think CS majors tend to have a bit lower GPAs than other majors which could make law school a bit more challenging. That said I think they tend to do very well on the LSAT (relatively speaking)…</p>
<p>Median hourly wage-and-salary earnings of machinists were $16.71 in May 2006. The middle 50 percent earned between $13.14 and $20.82. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $10.29, while the top 10 percent earned more than $25.31.</p>
<p>Member, you claim the average turn around time for engineering hires is 4-5 years.</p>
<p>You should back up your rhetoric with some actual facts!! Your claims are totally baseless.</p>
<p>I have a BS in mechanical engineering and the picture you paint of engineering is not accurate at all. I’m guessing you don’t have any engineering experience or an engineering degree. I’m also guessing for some reason you are very biased towards machinists.</p>
<p>If being a machinist is a much better gig than engineering then why do people struggle for years in school to get an engineering degree? Your claims don’t add up. Engineering is a stable career that pays higher than most machinist jobs. This is fact not biased opinion.</p>
<p>The only proof I have is from the seminars I attended, which included many owners and ceo’s as well as HR people from various engineering firms. When you have the CEO of Moog or Praxair telling yop data you tend to take them for their word and not require proof. I gather I could send a email asking for proof, I can do that if you would like, just let me know. </p>
<p>Im not biased towards machinists, my father was one, but he is a looser, all I know is he makes a lot of money, drastically more than what sakky’s statistics portrayed. My dad though was a very smart man, never even graduated from HS, but science and math were simply instinct to him. As for me having a engineering degree, I have a degree in CS from a engineering department from a top 20 school. While I havent been out of school for more than 4 years, I cant say from personal experience that I will be fired. What I do know is what I was told by various representatives from many companies. </p>
<p>Should I expect every engineer to get fired in 4-5 years, no. Do I expect some to, yes. </p>
<p>As for why people go to school instead, well they do that for reasons I have stated above. The main reason is that lifting a pencil is easier on the back than picking up heavy metal objects all day. Most of the men in my family are in one trade or another. I have access to nearly any union I could think of, though I chose to get a degree. The reason for that is, even though the pay may be less, I will not come home with a hurt back and I wont be exhausted. I also wont be subjected to the high number of environmental toxins those in the trades are subject to.</p>
<p>Im not trying to **** on engineering, I think very highly of it. I respect it greatly and certainly believe that society would not be any where near as advanced as it currently is, if not for engineers. </p>
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<p>Well one would have to have pretty good soial skills to be a lawyer and most engineers really dont.</p>