<p>sakky, you are still using the same flawed argument as Homer. You can’t choose just high paying police departments like Long Island or the Bay area. I am saying that if Homer is making the general statement that it is easy for a cop top surpass an engineer in salary then you must compare the entire profession. I can find engineers at Google that make a tremendous salary but that doesn’t mean that all engineers make this. This says it all.</p>
<p>Statistically, engineering staring salaries are higher than the median for all cops when you take a large enough sample size to make a fair comparison.</p>
<p>I repeat, generally speaking, engineers significantly out earn cops and sanitation workers. There is no way around it. You can find me a cop that makes over 100k in the bay area and I can find you a top engineer at Microsoft or high level managers with engineering degrees at other companies that makes 7 figures. Engineering degrees can lead to many lucrative careers in management, consulting, etc… Are there cops that make as much as engineers, perhaps but this is by no means the norm. I’m not saying it can’t happen. So the assertion that I am making is that Homer is incorrect in saying that “cops and sanitation workers can easily earn more than engineers”. This statement is simply not true. He is just so set on bashing the engineering field that he makes completely false statements. Sanitation workers “easily” making more than engineers…What a joke!</p>
<p>But there are far more top earning cops than top earning engineers. The chances of you becoming an engineer making 7 digits are slim… very slim. </p>
<p>The fact is that an engineering degree, as with most degrees, is not as lucratve as it used to be. Engineers are seeing their pay rise BELOW the rate of inflation, while most civil servants are seeing above inflation raises. So if a cop makes less than an engineer today, they will make more tomorrow.</p>
<p>You also cannot discount overtime. Most engineers are paid on an annual salary, so there is no time and a half for overtime Cops however, do get overtime. So most cops are getting paid MORE than the max salary you see published. A $100k cop is making $150k, which translates into an annual pension of $75k for the rest of their life.</p>
<p>And that brings me to my next point: PENSIONS. Even if a cvil servant makes less than an engineer, they will make up for the smaller pay when they get their taxpayer funded pension.</p>
<p>Homer, there are absolutely not more top earning cops than engineers. Show some proof to back this up. An engineering degree is more lucrative than becoming a cop, no question about it. Some engineers do get overtime too. Engineers that work for the government get pensions also and ones that don’t have other means of retirement compensation.</p>
<p>As a bitter kid with an accounting degree, I’m sure you know all about engineering compensation and their retirement funds. I feel bad for you that you have to bash all other professions just to make yourself feel better. Sad really.</p>
<p>Do you understand that most cops in the USA make less then $60K a year? Most engineers and software engineers make that much starting out.</p>
<p>From the BLS:
1.“median annual wages of wage-and-salary computer applications software engineers were $85,430”
2. “median annual wages of wage-and-salary computer systems software engineers were $92,430”,
3. "Median annual wages of computer and information scientists were $97,970 "</p>
<p>Well, none of the cops I ever knew made $100k, and here’s a quick question:
How many million-dollar-a-year cops are there, anyway?</p>
<p>For what it is worth, I get overtime (not time and a half, just straight time), a pension, and a 401K. They recently discontinued pensions for new hires at my company, but ironically they are talking about doing the same thing at my cousin’s police department.</p>
<p>Actually, I am not, for I am not making the same argument that he is. I agree with you that, in general, engineers probably do make more than cops or certainly sanitation workers.</p>
<p>But the point is - they should. After all, engineers survived a grueling 4-year degree program. Entry-level cops, at least in the Bay Area, only require 2 years of college credits, and those credits can consist largely of easy courses. Granted, police academy training is grueling, and the job itself is dangerous, but let’s face it, engineering work isn’t always safe either - while some rig workers tragically died in the BP Gulf disaster, it could have easily claimed the lives of the engineers as well, and at least one engineer has died in last week’s Mexican oil refinery explosion. </p>
<p>Hence, my point is that engineers are significantly underpaid, certainly in the Bay Area - where I suspect that the average engineer probably makes as much as the average cop, if not less - and in many other regions as well. This is particularly true, as was pointed out, when you factor in that most engineers do not receive overtime and have measly pensions if they receive them at all. See below.</p>
<p>It also does make me wonder why so many people at Berkeley study engineering, or any major at all for that matter, and why don’t they just all become cops. Like I said, Bay Area cops are extremely well paid. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, now you’re invoking the same logic that Homer is using. I’m sure there are some (ex)-cops who became millionaires by founding their own private security/investigation firms. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Then consider yourself to be one of the lucky ones. Homer is correct - the vast majority of engineers do not receive overtime, hence they can and are ordered by employers to burn their nights and weekends for no extra pay. I should know, I was one of them. It is precisely this sort of attitude by employers that has caused great consternation within the engineering ranks.</p>
<p>*what troubles me is the statement that “Engineers must accept the reality that professional employees endure some reasonable amount of unpaid overtime as a way of life.” Statements like this make potential professionals run away from engineering professions. *</p>
<p>David Walsh, a former Network Engineer
claims he was required to work after hours and weekends without overtime compensation…During his on-call hours, Walsh “was required to remain on stand-by for the entire night, every night of the week, for the entire week without compensation</p>
<p>The bottom line is that I don’t know how you get around the notion that engineers are indeed underpaid, given the grueling training they’ve had to undergo and relative to the value they provide to society. To be fair, I think other professions - i.e. soldiers - are even more egregiously underpaid. Nevertheless, it seems to be clear that engineers are underpaid. Granted, they may not make less than cops or sanitation workers. But they’re still not making what they ought to be.</p>
<p>This is one of the primary reasons why I am turned off by engineering. What puzzles me is why do engineers put up with it? Imagine lawyers or doctors working unpaid overtime: That’s a surefire way of losing a legal case or even life! </p>
<p>Engineering salaries should be much higher; they should be slightly lower than your avg. medical doctor, and much higher than your avg. lawyer, but then again, that’s my idealism speaking.</p>
<p>“Engineering salaries should be much higher;”</p>
<p>Engineers are gorssly underpaid because many years ago, a decisionw as made by the NSF and Alan Greenspan to flood the market with foregin compeititon (H1B visas) since they feared that tech salaries were rising too quickly. </p>
<p>“The National Science Foundation, a key government agency, actually advocated the use of the H-1B program as a means of holding down PhD salaries, by flooding the job market with foreign students. The NSF added that the stagnation of salaries would push domestic students away from PhD study, which is exactly what has happened. Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan has also explicitly advocated the use of H-1B to hold down tech salaries.”</p>
<p>Yet, the govt did not find it necessary to cut the salaries of any other profession… not lawyers, doctors, i-bankers, etc. </p>
<p>Why study engineering when youc an get a decent civil service job right out of high school, get overtime pay, a good pension, and not have a dime in student loans? Or, better yet, get into an apprenticeship.</p>
<p>Engineers may indeed be underpaid, but that isn’t necessarily relevant here. Unless the engineers would actually be better off doing something else, they should still be engineers.</p>
<p>Here is an interesting article. Sme highlights:</p>
<p>Those who advocate increasing the supply of STEM talent should cool their ardor a little bit," says one of its authors, B. Lindsay Lowell, a demographer at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>The researchers—led by Lowell and Harold Salzman, a sociologist at the Urban Institute and Rutgers University, New Brunswick—argue that boosting the STEM pipeline may end up hurting the United States in the long-term.</p>
<h2>This happens, they say, by depressing wages in S&T fields and turning potential science and technology innovators into management professionals and hedge fund managers.</h2>
<p>And finally, the most improtant part:</p>
<p>The way to promote US competitiveness in STEM fields is to “put more emphasis on the demand side,” says Lowell, noting that U.S. colleges and universities produce three times more STEM graduates every year than the number of STEM jobs available. Cranking out even more STEM graduates, he says, does not give corporations any incentive to boost wages for STEM jobs, which would be one way to retain the highest-performing students in STEM. </p>
<p>Actually, that’s why indeed: as you pointed out in your own post, cops (and Federal agents) are paid overtime, whereas most engineers are sadly legally exempt from overtime. I wish they were eligible, but they are not. Hence, while you may indeed work long hours as a cop, at least you’re being paid extra for all of the extra time you spend. Engineers are routinely required to work extra hours for no extra pay. That’s why I say that engineers are underpaid.</p>
<p>Now, I agree with you that work as a cop is more dangerous than work as an engineer. But the bottom line is that cops, at least in the Bay Area, are extremely well paid - to the point that most college students in the Bay Area that I know are actually shocked to discover how much the local police are paid just to start.</p>
<p>Frankly, what I find disturbing and sad about this thread is that nobody seems to want to take this thread to its logical conclusion and agitate for engineers to receive more pay. What, you guys don’t want more money? If so, I’m shocked to finally discover a group of people who don’t actually want more money. Instead, all I seem to encounter is the defeatist attitude that those who think that engineers are underpaid should simply choose other careers. That is precisely the sort of attitude that ensures that engineers will never be paid what they’re worth. </p>
<p>As a point of contrast, cops didn’t always used to be paid as well as they are now. But they didn’t simply accept that fact and respond with the despirited rejoinder that those who didn’t like the pay should not be cops. Instead, they agitated for higher pay, and they now they have it. </p>
<p>Good for them. But why don’t engineers do the same?</p>
<p>Cops got good pay increases because they have UNIONS. Engineers don’t. Collective bargaining generally results in better pay than relying on the goodwill of your employer. (and please let’s not turn this into a debate about unions, thank you).</p>
Because most people on this forum are either students or adults who are here with the aim of advising students, most career questions are approached from the perspective of trying to justify or explain a career choice to someone who still has a chance to easily switch to something else. Therefore, questions like that in the OP are usually answered with an emphasis on selecting a career rather than highlighting ways that the career could be improved.</p>
<p>The BLS data breaks things down into percentiles, so let’s go with that:</p>
<p>Police and sheriff’s patrol officers had median annual wages of $51,410 in May 2008. The middle 50 percent earned between $38,850 and $64,940. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $30,070, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $79,680. Median annual wages were $46,620 in Federal Government, $57,270 in State government, $51,020 in local government and $43,350 in educational services.</p>
<p>Electrical engineers:</p>
<p>lowest 10% - 52,990
lowest 25% - 64,910
median - 82,160
top 25% - 102,520
top 10% - 125,810</p>
<p>If one infers the median by splitting the difference between the minima and maxima, one would have to advance to captain in order to approach the median salary for an EE. This data includes overtime and the like.</p>
<p>That said, given the financial stability of local and state governments, in addition to that of this broke nation as a whole, I would be foolish to think salaries for police officers would stay as they are, if not nominally then in terms of purchasing power.</p>
<p>Even if it was the case that most people on this forum are looking for or are giving career choice advice, that doesn’t mean that this topic is not a valid point of discussion. After all, I see plenty of threads on CC that have little if anything to do with career choice advice. For example, right now, the top CC featured discussion is entitled “How the ACT caught up with the SAT”. Honestly, what exactly does that have to do with career choice advice? Is anybody actually going to change their career just because the ACT may have caught up with the SAT? </p>
<p>I suspect that there are some people here who would be interested in discussing how the engineering profession could be improved. For those who are not interested in that discussion, hey, you don’t have to participate. I certainly don’t participate in the vast majority of threads on CC.</p>
<p>I agree, but at the same time, you could exploit the high salaries while you still can. </p>
<p>Where I disagree with Homer28 is that he never talks about the *non-*engineering students who, if anything, have an even stronger incentive to become cops. Why take the average job available to Berkeley English grads and make only $39k when you could become a local Bay Area cop and make double that, with overtime? Heck, why even bother finishing the Berkeley English degree at all? You don’t need a degree to become a cop. </p>
<p>So you could drop out of school to become a cop, milking the local taxpayers until the municipality goes broke, whereupon you could return to school and finish your degree.</p>
<p>“I suspect that there are some people here who would be interested in discussing how the engineering profession could be improved.”</p>
<p>That is simple. Shut down 30% of all engineerng schools. Colleges are dumping 3 times more engineering graduates into the job market every year than there are entry level jobs. ABET needs to follow the model of the AMA (American Medical Association) and significantly restrict the number of schools they accredit to make sure that engineers remain in short supply.</p>
<p>You would also need to construct barriers so that foreign engineers cannot take jobs from US educated engineers. If we look at the AMA again, they have done a good job of lobbying the govt. to ensure that foreign medical grads cannot take the boards in the US. And to a lesser extent, the ABA has done the same for lawyers. But foriegn engineers have no barriers and can easily take the job of a US engineer.</p>
<p>Homer, stop making up lies! Seriously, can we get a moderator to get people off of here that are just here to make up completely false statements? Not only is your suggestion to shut down 30% of engineering schools completely idiotic but you are not even smart enough to handle a 3rd grade math problem. It is all adding up now…</p>
<p>You claim that there are 3 times the engineering graduates than the job market demands every year so your solution is to close 30% of engineering schools. You really are not bright. If there are 3 times too many engineering graduates every year, then you would need to close 2/3 of engineering schools or approx. 66.667% to solve the problem. Guess you didn’t learn this level of mathematics in business school. You are the most clueless person I have ever seen on here. Just when I think that your posts couldn’t get more idiotic you prove me wrong. Before you attempt the CPA exam, you might want to brush up on your basic elementary school mathematics.</p>
<p>Oh and by the way, colleges of engineering at any legitimate university will have higher job placement than any other college. In an average economy, job placement for engineers will be approaching 100%. Even in the recession, I know companies that are looking for graduating engineers. Once again, you fail miserably.</p>