Article re: Engineering in America today

[sakky]

<p>Eternity, I don't want to come off as too harsh, but I believe that, from a purely careerist standpoint, the natural science majors have it the worst. But engineering/CS majors and natural science majors are extremely difficult, and in fact, engineering/CS majors are probably more difficult than many natural science majors, but at least when you complete an engineering/CS major, you have a decent backup career with a quite good starting salary, relative to what other undergrad majors can deliver. In other words, natural science majors have almost all of the difficulty, with much less of the payoff. </p>

<p>Put another way, if you are interested in chemistry, but not enough to want to get a doctorate in it, then you could major in chemical engineering which will increase your starting salary by about $15-20k. Yes, the ChE major is more difficult, but not that much more difficult than a chemistry major. And chemistry and ChE are quite similar. If you like math, you could major in CS. If you like physics, you could major in EE or ME. </p>

<p>Now obviously, those majors are not exactly the same. So I don't want somebody coming here and saying that math != CS. Of course it isn't, that's not what I'm saying. Obviously if you know you love one of the physical sciences to the point where you want to get a doctorate in it and spend the rest of your life doing it, then you should just major in that science. But if you just 'like' that science (but don't love it), and you're just interested in a marketable degree (as most students are), I would argue that an engineering/CS degree fills the bill better than does a science degree.</p>

<p>Now, as far as the "business-y" majors, I will admit that often times the competition is a lot closer. It should be said that if we're talking about a scrub no-name school, then the competition is not close at all. I'd rather have an engineering degree from a no-name school than a business degree from a no-name school. In fact, it is often times true at those no-name schools that the business majors are where the scholarship football and basketball players hang out because those majors are known as easy majors. </p>

<p>However, you want to talk about those business-y majors at the good schools. And I admit that here the competition is quite close, and would probably depend on the school in question. For example, if we're talking about Penn, I would probably agree that getting a BS at Wharton may be better than getting an engineering degree at Penn SEAS. In most other prominent cases (Berkeley, MIT, Cornell, Michigan), I would argue that getting that engineering degree is still better, although I would agree that the advantage is not large. Again, keep in mind that, as far as I can tell, engineering students seem to be at no serious disadvantage in getting banking/consulting jobs compared to the busad majors. These consulting/banking jobs hire plenty of engineering students from the top engineering schools. </p>

<p>Let's also keep in mind that being able to major in busad at many of the top schools is not assured. For example, at Berkeley, you can't just walk in as a freshman and say that you want to major in busad at Haas. No, to major in busad, you first have to get admitted into Haas, and these admissions are only done at the end of sophomore year. That means you have to take all the brutal Haas prereqs with no assurance that you will actually get in. Only about 50% of those who apply will get in. And that's just those who apply - plenty of people get bad grades in those prereqs and so they don't even apply because they know they won't get in. So if you go to Berkeley hoping to get into Haas, you have to know that there is a high chance that you won't get in and will have to major in something you don't really want to major in. Contrast that with Berkeley engineering, in which you people get admitted as freshmen, so at least you know you have an assured spot in engineering. </p>

<p>However, I do think one of the best ways to hedge your bets is to try both out and then pick the one you like, or even get both. For example, I think the Jerome Fisher program at Penn, where you get an BS engineering degree and a BS Wharton degree, is a good way to hedge your bets. Some people at MIT get dual degrees in engineering and Sloan. While I'm not exactly the hugest fan of dual-undergrad degrees, because I recognize the compromises involved, I would say that going down a "dual track" could be useful, and then once you figure out which way you like better (the technical track or the business track), you then take that path, or if you can handle it, complete the double degrees. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Also, can you elaborate more on what you mean when you're talking about 'consulting' jobs? I've heard a lot about consulting in the IT industry where you have to have excellent computing and programming skills. I haven't heard much about consulting / engineering. What other kinds of consulting jobs are there?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I'm not talking about computer consulting. I'm talking about management consulting and strategic consulting - basically helping companies formulate strategies, redesign operations, restructure their businesses, figure out what companies to acquire or what divisions to spin off/divest, who to hire and fire, and basically all aiding managers with their business decisions. </p>

<p>Read about it here:</p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_consulting%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_consulting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Here is information about some of the most prestigious consulting companies:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.bain.com/bainweb/consulting_expertise/consulting_expertise_overview.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bain.com/bainweb/consulting_expertise/consulting_expertise_overview.asp&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.boozallen.com/bahng/SilverDemo?PID=Home.html&dispType=HTML&contType=TABLE&NGPgID=serviceintro&Taxonomy2=33%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.boozallen.com/bahng/SilverDemo?PID=Home.html&dispType=HTML&contType=TABLE&NGPgID=serviceintro&Taxonomy2=33&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.monitor.com/cgi-bin/iowa/about/companies.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.monitor.com/cgi-bin/iowa/about/companies.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.bcg.com/our_expertise/expertise.jsp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bcg.com/our_expertise/expertise.jsp&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.mercermc.com/defaultFlash.asp?section=HowWeHelp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.mercermc.com/defaultFlash.asp?section=HowWeHelp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>One thing I find extremely interesting about consulting companies is the emphasis on "alumni" of the that company, and when I say "alumni", I mean people who used to work at that company, but left (hence they are "company alumni"). At almost every other company, once you've left, they don't want to have anything to do with you anymore. Not so with consulting. Consulting companies actually devote a part of their website just for the alumni (where you can only get in with an alumni login), and even invite you to events where you can meet other alumni and people who are still at the company. Basically, once you've worked at McKinsey, you're always considered to be part of the "Mckinsey family", and the same thing is true at Bain or BCG or any of the other companies. </p>

<p>Of course this is not altruistic. The real goal is to improve networking. The fact is, consulting is a tough gig and the majority of consultants will burn out and quit and move on to a "regular" job - often times, a position of high importance at a normal company. However, by maintaining strong connections with the alumni, the consulting company then has access to all these well-placed contacts in industry, and that adds to the knowledge base and social capital of the consulting company. Furthermore, those alumni in a company helps other alumni who are looking for jobs at that company. For example, Kevin Rollins, CEO of Dell, is a Bain alum, so it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he were to fill many Dell management positions with other Bain alumni, and Jonathan Schwartz, President of Sun Microsystems, is a McKinsey alum, so it wouldn't surprise me if he's filling the company with other McKinsey alumni. This then increases the overall desirability of getting hired at a consulting company in the first place, because you then get access to that alumni network (in the same way that a major reason to go to a top business school is to get access to the school's alumni network). Furthermore, keeping contacts with the alumni means generating more business for the company. For example, if Kevin Rollins decides that Dell needs to hire a consulting company for advice, I think we all know which consulting company he's going to hire. </p>

<p>In some sense, you could treat working at a consulting company as not even really working, but more like "going to graduate school", except that instead of you having to pay, they pay you. </p>

<p>The real point is not to sit around talking about the intricacies of consulting all day long. The point is that, for whatever reason, consulting, as well as banking, seem to offer career paths that are more attractive to many top engineering students than even the engineering companies do. That's why 25% of all MIT EECS students ran off to take jobs in consulting/banking, and the number would surely be a lot higher than that except that not everybody who wanted an offer got one. Engineering companies often times come to MIT or the other top engineering schools to recruit, and can't find enough students who want to work for them. That practically never happens with consulting/banking. If anything, they receive an embarrassment of riches - they have too many strong candidates and have to turn many away. </p>

<p>I am intrigued by why this is the case. Engineering companies have to know that they're losing top engineering talent to consulting and banking. I am stunned that they refuse to do anything about it. I am even more stunned when these same engineering companies then turn around and hire a consulting company, who then sends consultants who may happen to be the very same former engineering students that those engineering companies were unable to hire before. If you are willing to pay top dollar to bring in these guys now that they are consultants, then you should have been willing to pay top dollar to them when they were just graduating college seniors.</p>

[ashernm]

<p>Alexandre, celebrities and athletes will always be paid extravagant sums, because of the huge demand for services and high quality. It's laughable how people criticize Terrell Owens (I'm repeating the gist of a recent WSJ op-ed) for asking for more money. If his talent warrants more cash, all the power to him.</p>

<p>Until recently, I was interested in Mech E. I'm increasingly interested in what's known as Organization Research and Industrial Engineering (is that right?) at Cornell, or its equivalent at other schools.</p>

<p>It is a shame, although there are pockets of hope. The continuing popularity of gadgetry and even sudoku is inspiring, but yet may lie only skin-deep and not instigate further interest.</p>

<p>I read in the Cornell Daily Sun that 4 of the 9 members of an elite Chinese committee attended Tsinghua, the Chinese MIT, and (I think) all nine were trained as engineers.</p>

<p>Judging by the college scene, why would kids want to sacrifice their parties and all for a career lacking in reward and prestige? I sincerely believe that some kids do not consider college a privilege but merely something you just do, cultivating more nonchalance instead of scholarship and discipline. Milton Friedman said that this is because most kids are not paying the true cost of college; I think that subsidies to colleges are actually hurting the scholarship to college, enabling them to execute nonessential functions in midst of a bloated bureaucracy that may in fact be deleterious to true scholarship. The idea that taxpayer money supports such indolence is discomfiting. See Richard Vedder.
Also, in America, at least in college admissions, at times administrators place such importance on individuality over 'sheer numbers' in a sort of elitist manner, that such 'individuality,' arbitralily defined by the spectator, may trump such measures as academic excellence. Wherever there be academic excellence, there will be individuality and creativity, rendering at best useless and at worst counterproductive this quest for 'individuality.' If colleges truly wanted the best students, they would take an empirical approach and devise some equation to predict college performance using past records, and lessen the importance of such nebulous 'intagibles.'</p>

[sakky]

<p>In fairness, I would point out that the lack of scholarship in colleges nowadays is not really the fault of the students. I agree with you that from what I've seen, the vast majority of students are in college not because they really care about learning anything, but because they want to get a job. In other words, a lot of students just see college as a way to get their tickets punched so that they can get employed. Let's face it. If a college degree was no longer of any benefit in terms of employability, most college students would drop out. </p>

<p>Employers aren't exactly helping the cause when they require college degrees for jobs that, honestly, don't require a degree. Let's face it. you don't need a college degree to become a receptionist. However, many companies require a degree in order to even get an interview to become a receptionist. It doesn't even matter what that degree is in or what school it's from - it could be in Film Studies from a no name school - just as long as you have a degree. In other words, employers are using the degree as a simple mechanical screening system. </p>

<p>It also doesn't help when employers denigrate serious scholarship by giving little weight to those who did well in school. Countless times have I seen people with stellar grades get turned down by companies in favor of people with quite mediocre grades, but who may have had a better interview. While I don't discount the importance of interviews and personality, I would submit that interviews, the way they are currently run, are a far more arbitrary and random method of selecting new hirees than are the grades you receive over many years. In short, the way that interviews are run today, a hiring decision is basically predicated on 1 day's worth of interviews. Hence, 4 years of diligent and responsible studying can be invalidated by 1 bad interview day, or conversely, 4 years of laziness and hard partying can all be made up for by 1 good interview day. Students see that those who get the top grades don't really get significantly better job offers than those who get mediocre grades (or at least, not by enough to make them want to study harder), so a lot of students decide that they'd rather just lounge around and take it easy. They figure - why study hard if it doesn't help you?</p>

<p>The point is, if you want better scholarship and better diligence from the students, you have to give them an incentive to provide it. Basic economics dictates that you have to match incentives to get people to behave the way you want. Like it or not, the biggest incentive for most students to go to college is to get a job. But when jobs are only weakly correlated with those who demonstrate the most serious scholarship, you end up with reduced incentives to provide that scholarship.</p>

[lkf725]

<p>Could someone please explain to me why engineers would be highly sought after by i-banking and consulting firms? I know engineers are logical problem-solvers, but wouldn't a background in economics and/or business be better? How does being a chemical or mechanical engineer translate into these careers? Do these sought after engineers also have an MBA degree?</p>

[sakky]

<p>The philosophy seems to be, whether you agree with it or not, these companies are not hiring you on what you know, but rather on your intellectual talent and your work ethic. These companies figure that they can train you on whatever it is you need to know. What cannot be trained is your sharpness of mind and your tolerance for hard work. Anybody who can survive engineering at a top school has clearly demonstrated top-flight intellectual firepower, as well as the willingness to work hard (something extremely important in consulting and especially IB where 90 hour workweeks are quite common). </p>

<p>The truth is, it's not that hard to train you on the topical business subjects that you need to know to be a competent entry-level banker or consultant. But it takes talent and desire, and that cannot be taught. </p>

<p>Another contributing characteristic is that these firms are "renting" the name brand of your alma mater. You can't just get an engineering degree from a no-name school and expect to get into McKinsey. No, it has to be a degree from a big-name school. Why? Simple. Consultancies and banks are basically in the business of selling human talent and human capital, and they can impress clients if they can boast that their people come from bigname schools. Fair or unfair, having a bunch of MIT and Stanford graduates in your stable of consultants or bankers is more marketable and will land you more clients than will having a bunch of people who came from no-name schools, even if they have business/econ backgrounds. </p>

<p>Finally, you can look at the situation this way. Consulting companies and banks hire from a wide swath of majors. I've known people with biology degrees get bulge bracket Wall Street Ibanking offers. I've known people with English and Art History degrees get into consulting. Granted, they all came from very big-name schools like Harvard and Yale. However, the point is, if these firms are willing to hire people with those kinds of degrees, then why wouldn't they be willing to hire engineers too?</p>

[mizera]

<p>Wow. This is a great thread!</p>

[unggio83]

<p>a lot of what's being discussed on this thread has been done in more detail in this thread:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=81502&page=2&pp=20%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=81502&page=2&pp=20&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>it goes on for several pages covering all of the main points of the pros and cons of engineering as a career and as a major. it's mostly between myself (unggio83) and Sakky.</p>

<p>I’ve read that you do not post your personal bio in these forums. However, considering you probably post more about careers in engineering than any other person, it would make sense that we know where you’re coming from. I know I did.</p>

<p>I told people I’m still a college student, but all my uncles are working in silicon valley and all are vehemently discouraging myself and their children from going down their path. This is not an ad-hominem attack, but how can anybody reading these posts fully agree with your opinions. I understand that you provide lots of links to raw data, but you draw lots of opinionated conclusions from your facts, and again I say it would make sense to know your bio. (i.e. college student, engineer, teacher etc..?) unless you have something to hide that is.</p>

<p>also here is a link to a thread by ACTUAL WORKING ENGINEERS
pay attention to the satisfied engineers and notice how they're pretty old and about to retire, where as the younger ones have a very different view on the profession and where it's going.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=60310&page=4%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=60310&page=4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>in the other thread, i specifically debated with Sakky about the merits of choosing engineering versus almost all other real majors. if you're just starting college, it would benefit you to research both sides of the argument.</p>

<p>i remind you to not mention film studies or art history. i don't advocate those majors either.</p>

<p>perhaps you could save me some time sakky, give me some links on how many engineering majors actually go into investment banking. don't just give me statistics for MIT, Cal tech, and Stanford. i want for engineering grads in general. Take San jose state university, it supplies more engineers to silicon valley than any other university, find me statistics of those grads going into IB. it would help me out.</p>

[ashernm]

<p>"It also doesn't help when employers denigrate serious scholarship by giving little weight to those who did well in school. "
I do not dispute your points by experience but... Wouldn't companies have an incentive to discriminate only on characteristics relevant to productivity? So if grades are found to have no correlation with productivity, then a company need not discriminate based on them. On the other hand, if grades do correlate with productivity, why are employers not taking advantage? The company who does will obtain an edge in the competition.</p>

<p>unggio83, pray tell, what major is better than engineering, at the undergrad level? </p>

<p>I looked at your thread and you mainly talk about civil service and highly unionized jobs. I am opposed to such jobs, and the pay for healthcare workers is artificially high as the AMA, more effective than a union, places harsh limits on supply, through the various requirements of med school, and their paucity. Engineering may be victim to the same forces, though if at all present, is definitely less prominent than the price gouging of medicine. Unfortunately, its harder to just not pay for healthcare like you can with airfare.</p>

<p>Question: If one majored in engineering, could he take say a few more classes way after college to teach math, physics or some other course, in a middle or high school?</p>

[system]

<p>sakky,</p>

<p>Please stop telling us that most of the top engineers go into banking /consulting. You may be correct in the sense that an unusually high amount of engineers from elite schools "run off" for Mckinsy, and Goldman and Sachs but MOST engineers, even from top schools, are still loyal to the science professions. There are many cutting edge fields in in biomedical areas, nanotechnology, areas requiring newer ways of producing power (like hydrogen fuel cells), polymer engineering, and many more things. These things are very appealing for many people and the simple fact that i-banks offer more money doesn't take away their appeal.</p>

<p>You are taking away the integrity of engineering jobs by all this talk of how most engineers from elite schools run away to banking/consulting jobs. Also I find it interesting how everytime you talk about MIT, you refer to the EECS majors. What about the chemE majors, biomedical engineering majors, civil engineering majors? I can assure you that many of the non-EECS engineering majors are still very loyal to their profession and that most of them aren't 'whisked' away by prospective banking / consulting companies.</p>

<p>I'm not trying to disrespect you and I'm not accusing of you of bashing engineering. However, with all your talk about how most engineers run off into banking / consulting companies because of a higher pay, your taking away the integrity of the major.</p>

[unggio83]

<p>
[quote]
unggio83, pray tell, what major is better than engineering, at the undergrad level?

[/quote]

By Ashernm</p>

<p>Before patronizing me with your ignorant questions, read my link that I posted.
Since you missed it here it is again: (look on pg. 7)</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=81502&page=7&pp=20%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=81502&page=7&pp=20&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>And you mention that the reason healthcare workers get such good pay is because AMA is a highly effective union. What’s your point? By the way the demand is not artificially high. Keep in mind I do not only advocate becoming a doctor but many healthcare professions. </p>

<p>My posts are meant to enlighten prospective science majors about the possibilities of each field and career in general. I don’t care if healthcare is artificially high. Yes, eventually healthcare prices and salaries will drop, but people starting out in college right now will have a solid & secure career. I’m not talking about 2 generations down the line.</p>

<p>About teaching in middle or high school. Look it up on google, public K-12 school teachers don’t get paid that much, nor do they have great benefits either, especially in California with the governator in office.</p>

[ashernm]

<p>I said the pricing, not demand, was artificially high.</p>

<p>I aim not to patronize. I am curious about your opinion of the optimal undergraduate education.</p>

<p>I asked about teaching out of curiosity; I know it does not pay nearly as well the engineering industry. And, public school teachers DO have strong benefits. Frequent is the editorial lamenting the difficulty of firing teachers in public schools, all due to the immense power of the teachers' unions.</p>

[unggio83]

<p>the teachers union is the biggest union in california. however, the gov. is trying to fight them to lower their overall benefits & cut spending. though, i doubt schwartz will succeed. i know a bit about this firsthand, because my mom works for Santa Clara county as an accountant. She has a CALPERS plan (california public employee retirement) as well.<br>
i take back what i said earlier about teachers w/out strong benefits.
as of now they do have benefits, but their stagnant salaries and the rising cost of healthcare cuts into the overall pay.</p>

<p>so, yes i agree that most engineers could probably become high school teachers as a backup, but i doubt they could save up to buy a house to live in the bay area on less a starting salary that's less than 40K.</p>

<p>i already stated in other posts that the optimal undergrad education is contingent upon the individual and his or her ultimate plans. plus, i would like to wait for sakky to reply before i dive too deep into this subject.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/htPensionReform.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/htPensionReform.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

[sakky]

<p>
[quote]
a lot of what's being discussed on this thread has been done in more detail in this thread:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com...02&page=2&pp=20%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com...02&page=2&pp=20&lt;/a>

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Unggio83, my point in that thread is the same as my point in this thread. I do not dispute the problems associated with engineering as a career. However, it leaves the standing question of what ELSE are you going to major in as an undergrad, if not engineering? What's the alternative? Specifically, what other kind of bachelor's degree is more marketable? Like I said, after you get your engineering degree, you can go run off and be an engineer, or else you can be a cop or a nurse or possibly work at Mckinsey, or whatever else you want to do. </p>

<p>Unggio83, your point in that other thread is that engineers might prefer to work at blue-collar jobs, or perhaps as a nurse/PT. You would have made a FAR stronger point in that thread if you had said that engineers might prefer to work as Wall Street bankers or as management consultants instead. If you had said that, I would have agreed with you. Let's see - working as a nurse, or working as an investment banker. You tell me which one is better. </p>

<p>
[quote]
I’ve read that you do not post your personal bio in these forums. However, considering you probably post more about careers in engineering than any other person, it would make sense that we know where you’re coming from. I know I did.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Fine, then go and email/PM me. I have always said that this is the way to find out who I am. </p>

<p>
[quote]
I told people I’m still a college student, but all my uncles are working in silicon valley and all are vehemently discouraging myself and their children from going down their path. This is not an ad-hominem attack, but how can anybody reading these posts fully agree with your opinions. I understand that you provide lots of links to raw data, but you draw lots of opinionated conclusions from your facts, and again I say it would make sense to know your bio. (i.e. college student, engineer, teacher etc..?) unless you have something to hide that is.</p>

<p>also here is a link to a thread by ACTUAL WORKING ENGINEERS
pay attention to the satisfied engineers and notice how they're pretty old and about to retire, where as the younger ones have a very different view on the profession and where it's going.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=60310&page=4%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=60310&page=4&lt;/a>

[/quote]
</p>

<p>And this is all just more fodder to the fire as to why the top engineering students run off to careers like banking and consulting. In fact, why don't those Silicon Valley engineers who you know who are complaining about engineering do that? They should consider getting their MBA's from Berkeley or Stanford and running off to Goldman Sachs or to McKinsey. </p>

<p>
[quote]
perhaps you could save me some time sakky, give me some links on how many engineering majors actually go into investment banking. don't just give me statistics for MIT, Cal tech, and Stanford. i want for engineering grads in general. Take San jose state university, it supplies more engineers to silicon valley than any other university, find me statistics of those grads going into IB. it would help me out.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Come on, man, read my posts. I have always said that consulting and banking was a career path restricted only to those who went to the primo schools. Obviously if you're going to SJSU, you're probably not going to get into Goldman Sachs. </p>

<p>My point, once again, for those who missed it, is that I am asking why is it that so many of the top engineers don't want to be engineers? Obviously if you're just an engineer coming out of a no-name school, you're probably going to have to end up working as an engineer. Not to sound elitist, but, hey, if you want to have the same kinds of opportunities as the guys from MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley have, then you should have worked harder to get into a school like MIT, Stanford, or Berkeley. What I am pointing out is that the many of the best engineering students are being siphoned away to other fields, and I think it is a perfectly valid question to ask why. Specifically, why is it that the engineering companies can't make their career paths better so that the top engineers are happily turning down Wall Street banking jobs to work for them? </p>

<p>
[quote]
Please stop telling us that most of the top engineers go into banking /consulting. You may be correct in the sense that an unusually high amount of engineers from elite schools "run off" for Mckinsy, and Goldman and Sachs but MOST engineers, even from top schools, are still loyal to the science professions. There are many cutting edge fields in in biomedical areas, nanotechnology, areas requiring newer ways of producing power (like hydrogen fuel cells), polymer engineering, and many more things. These things are very appealing for many people and the simple fact that i-banks offer more money doesn't take away their appeal.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>While I don't dispute that many of the top engineers are still loyal to the sciences, that still doesn't answer the question as to why is it that they can't be more appealing so as to draw MORE of the top engineers away. Keep in mind that not only do a significant portion of top engineers run off to consulting/banking, but a lot more of them WANT to run off, but don't get an offer. If they had, they would have. </p>

<p>Case in point. I believe that Goldman Sachs hires less than 5% of all the people it interviews. Obviously if you are interviewing at Goldman Sachs, you must be interested in working with them (otherwise, why are you interviewing with them?). Now obviously some of those who don't get hired end up hooking on to some other bank, or maybe a consulting firm. But plenty do not. In fact, I would surmise that probably well over half of all people who try to get a banking/consulting offer don't get anything. </p>

<p>
[quote]
You are taking away the integrity of engineering jobs by all this talk of how most engineers from elite schools run away to banking/consulting jobs.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I am the one who is taking away the integrity of engineering jobs? I? So are you saying that all these engineering s are running off to banking/consulting because I told them to do that? So I am the puppet master? If I really had that sort of psychological hold on people, I think I'd have a lot better things to do with my powers, like convincing Lindsay Lohan to marry me. </p>

<p>It seems to me that you're just playing a game of shooting the messenger, ignoring the message. Whether you like it or not, there are guys running off to consulting/banking. They're not doing that because I told them to do that - they made that decision all by themselves. I'm just telling you what's going on, I'm just the messenger here. </p>

<p>If anybody ought to be accused of taking away the integrity of engineering jobs, it's those engineering companies who refuse to make offers that are competitive to consulting/banking offers. But in any case, don't lay it on me. I'm not the one who created the situation. I'm just telling what the situation is, but I didn't create it. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Also I find it interesting how everytime you talk about MIT, you refer to the EECS majors. What about the chemE majors, biomedical engineering majors, civil engineering majors? I can assure you that many of the non-EECS engineering majors are still very loyal to their profession and that most of them aren't 'whisked' away by prospective banking / consulting companies.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>What about those non-EECS guys? In many cases, they are even MORE prone to running off to consulting/banking. While I don't have the statistics, I can tell you that banking and consulting are even more popular with some of the other engineering majors like Civil Engineering or BioEngineering. Why? Simple. They get paid even less than the EECS guys at MIT. </p>

<p>What I am saying is that at MIT, it is generally understood that EECS is the highest paying and probably most difficult of all the engineering major (Yes, I am aware that nationwide, chemical engineering is higher paying, but at MIT, it is EECS that takes the crown). So you would think that the EECS engineers at MIT would be the most dedicated of all the engineers, and the ones who would be the least likely to bail. Yet even 25% of them take consulting/banking jobs, and of those that don't, many wanted to, but didn't get an offer. </p>

<p>The point is that when even a lot of the EECS guys at MIT would rather be in consulting/banking, just imagine how it is in other majors. You must agree that with an EECS degree from MIT, you can get a pretty darn good engineering job. Yet even so, a lot of the EECS guys evidently believe that consulting/banking is better. And you have to ask why. That's my point.</p>

<p>Bottom line. I continue to maintain that engineering is clearly one of the most marketable undergraduate degrees you can get. After all - what other kinds of bachelor's degrees are better? It teaches you a lot, it gives you a backup career, and that's far more than can be said about most other kinds of bachelor's degrees. </p>

<p>However, I still find it extremely interesting that engineering companies on the one hand complain that they can't find top engineering talent, and on the other hand, don't feel that it's necessary to improve their job offers to attract those guys who otherwise run off to consulting/banking. That's what I'm saying.</p>

[hdotchar]

<p>eecs is (if this follows the trend at most schools) the most popular engineering major.</p>

[lkf725]

<p>sakky,
Is it my imagination, or were engineers paid relatively better in the previous two generations? My dad did very well in engineering and engr mgmt. Maybe that's why the older guys are so happy. I do know that they retired with excellent benefits that disappeared for younger engineers.</p>

[sakky]

<p>Now again, I would assert that I am trying to take a moderate position here with regard to engineering, which is quite difficult, because I am getting assaulted on both sides. I don't believe that engineering is the greatest thing in the world, but nor do I believe that it is a terrible thing either. There are some things that are good about engineering, and some things that are not so good. </p>

<p>Now again, I would reiterate that engineering is a pretty good lifestyle, relative to most of what is out there. Let's face it. There are a LOT of bad jobs out there, even for people with college degrees. You could do a lot worse than being an engineer, believe me. Let's disabuse ourselves of the notion that once you have a college degree (any kind of college degree), you will then automatically have a good job and a nice career. That is light years away from reality. Plenty of people get non-engineering degrees and then spend their whole lives shlepping from bad job to bad job. I would venture to say that there are probably millions of Americans who would gladly trade their careers for an engineering career. That's because engineering as a career, for all its faults, is still a whole lot better than a lot of other career paths you could take. That's why I maintain my position that an engineering degree can deliver, if nothing else, a relatively decent backup career, and that's something that few other undergrad majors can deliver. </p>

<p>For those who want to dispute this point, fine, go to the website of any school and look at the choice of undergrad majors, and then list the number of other majors that can deliver the kind of backup career that engineering can. It's going to be a pretty darn short list, you must agree. That illustrates one of my central points - engineering still delivers something that most other undergrad majors cannot. That is why I have to emphatically disagree with anybody who declares that engineering is a bad career choice. If engineering is bad, then what are you saying about all those tens of millions of jobs that are even worse than engineering? </p>

<p>However, having said that, I will not say that engineering certainly has its faults, especially at the top end. What I believe is that engineering suffers from significant 'truncation' at the top end, such that the top-flight engineers don't really do that much better than the bottom-flight engineers. For example, the kind of engineering job you will get as the top guy in EECS from MIT is not hugely better than the kind of engineering job you will get as the bottom guy out of EECS from San Jose State. The job will be better, but not by a huge delta. In other words, except for a few notable exceptions (i.e. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, some other high-tech companies), there isn't much of a system to reward the superstars. The average engineer enjoys a quite nice lifestyle, relative to the tens of millions of other mediocre jobs out there. However, the superstars don't really enjoy superstar benefits.</p>

<p>And that's precisely why a lot of the top engineers leave engineering. Look, I agree that obviously there are some people who love engineering and want to devote their whole life to it and don't really care about the money or the career advancement or any of that stuff. Of course! However, there are also plenty of other people who don't really love engineering, but are just doing it because they see it as a means of career advancement and marketability. {Some of you might think that's unseemly, but I don't see why. After all, what's so bad about trying to enhance your career? What's so wrong about using college as 4-year career prep?}. Hence, these are precisely the kind of people who would happily jump ship if something else came along. </p>

<p>In the case of the top engineering schools like MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and others, something else has come along, in the form of consulting/banking. The people who are coming out of engineering schools of that caliber are superstars that are looking for superstar opportunities. Whether they are right or wrong (and I think they are right), a lot of them obviously believe that they are more likely to find these superstar opportunities in consulting/banking than in engineering. A lot of these people figure that the whole reason why they chose engineering in the first place was to advance their careers, and now that consulting/banking is offering them more opportunities to advance their careers, they'll take it. </p>

<p>So now some of you might ask, yeah, but what about the nonsuperstars? Sakky, what about the engineers at SJSU? And my response is, yeah, what about them? Look, I don't want to sound elitist, but if you go to SJSU , then you clearly can't expect to get the kinds of opportunities that the people who go to MIT or Stanford or Berkeley are getting. The way you should look at it is you should look at the kinds of careers and salaries that SJSU engineers get, relative to the kinds of careers and salaries than the average SJSU alumni, in all majors, get. I think we can all agree that the average SJSU engineering graduate is significantly better off than the average SJSU graduate. Again, keep in mind that there are LOTS of bad jobs out there. Obviously as a SJSU engineer, you can't expect to get what an MIT engineer will get, and you certainly can't expect the consulting/banking offers than an MIT engineer might entertain, but you are still relatively well off when you look at all the other things you could be majoring in at SJSU.</p>

[ariesathena]

<p>Sakky's trying to say that, for the top engineers, engineering isn't a good job compared to the other things they could be doing. If you are a mediocre engineer, you might not have many opportunities if you were in another profession, so making $50k/year starting is a pretty sweet deal. However, for the top engineers, engineering just isn't a good job (salary, prestige, etc) compared to the other things that someone with that drive, work ethic, and intellect could do - such as consulting, investment banking, medicine, or law. </p>

<p>It hasn't really been discussed so far, but engineering salaries start off very high but taper. Many companies do a standard 4.5% increase across the board every year, which, once inflation is considered, shows that it's going to take your entire career to double your salary. Senior engineers are seeing kids coming in who are earning roughly the same amount of money they are. When I told people at my company that I was going to law school, their response was, "Good for you - you'll start off making more money than we're making now." "Now" being after ten, fifteen years in the field. </p>

<p>This issue, IMO, is similar to the teacher issue. Top teachers don't have it significantly better than mediocre teachers; there's little incentive for people who could do a ton of other things to go into teaching. The hours and benefits (pension, health, etc) are a lot better than other, similarly-skilled jobs, but the same cannot be said for the uber-talented teacher.</p>

[lkf725]

<p>The same with healthcare jobs (non-MD). It creates alot of frustration when new grads with zero experience make nearly as much as a person with 20 years of experience. Also, healthcare jobs do not really discern between a superstar and a slug. Quite a few leave for law, business, etc.</p>

[sakky]

<p>I would also point out that knowing that you can get a decent starting salary right out of college is no worthless thing. Far from it - it is a highly desirable security blanket because you know that if nothing else works out, you can always just take the engineering job. This is important not just from a financial standpoint (obviously) but also from an ego standpoint. Let's face it. Whether right or wrong, most people feel that starting salary is a proxy of their worth, and don't want to feel that they are worse off than others. </p>

<p>For example, I've known some people who've graduated from schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford with degrees in various non-engineering, non-CS fields, who are now quite unhappy with the career choices available to them. Yes, they all tried to get those primo consulting/banking jobs, and many of them got such jobs, but many others did not. Like I said, I would estimate that well over half of all people even at the elite schools who try to get into consulting/banking don't get an offer. </p>

<p>Furthermore, yes, many of them try to get into professional schools like law and medicine, but even from the top schools a lot of people don't get in. For example, take premed. Even at Harvard, about 10% of the premeds who apply to med-school will get rejected from every single med-school they apply to, and that's just talking about those people who actually apply. Some Harvard premeds, believe it or not, actually have low grades, such that they know they won't get in anywhere so they don't even bother to apply. Now, let me be clear that that 10% figure is one of the lowest premed 'failure' rates of any school in the natio, yet it's still a fairly significant number. Harvard is one of the best places to go for premed, but it still cannot guarantee anything. {Incidentally, this is why I strongly recommend those BS/MD programs, because guaranteed admission to med-school is nothing to sneeze at}. </p>

<p>Or take prelaw. I think AA would agree that there is a very strong dropoff between the top law schools and the mediocre law schools such that in many cases, it's not even worth going to law school if you can't get into a top one. Yet the fact is, there are prelaws at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford who can't get into a top law school. Some of them even manage to get rejected from the mediocre law schools. Again, believe it or not, there are actually people at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford that actually get bad grades - bad enough to make them uncompetitive for law school. Yes, these are grade inflated schools so there aren't a lot of these people, but they do exist. </p>

<p>So a few months ago, I was talking to some guys who graduated from Stanford with degrees in various non-engineering, non-CS fields, and they were railing bitterly at the kinds of job prospects they had. Basically, they were complaining about how they would end up having to take worse jobs than the guys who went to San Jose State, but majored in engineering or CS. Their take was that they thought they were better students than the guys coming out of SJSU, so they didn't understand why they weren't getting good jobs just because they didn't want to studying engineering the way the SJSU guys did. In fact, some of them cynically laughed that they would have been better off going to SJSU and majoring in engineering. What I wanted to tell them (but I didn't have the heart) was that the fact that they chose not to major in engineering and those SJSU guys did was precisely the issue. In a nutshell, those guys chose to major in non-lucrative fields of study, and that's why they're in the state that they're in. Stanford is an elite engineering school, and I'm sure that they all had the brainpower to have completed engineering degrees. Yet the fact is, they chose not to do that, and look what happened to them. </p>

<p>And it's not like they all just majored in fluffy stuff although some of them did. Some of them majored in the sciences like biology, or chemistry. {Incidentally, I sometimes think that biology majors have it the worst, because while many bio majors make it into med-school, those that can't end up have to face quite low-paying job entry-level work}. </p>

<p>The point is, again, while I don't think engineering is the greatest thing in the world, one thing it does deliver is a high starting salary, and while we might pooh-pooh its importance, the fact is, there are a LOT of people in the world who can't even get that, and hence wish they had studied engineering. I'm fairly certain that a lot of those Stanford guys I was talking to were thinking that they should have studied engineering instead, now that they see the kinds of career prospects they have with their non-engineering Stanford degrees. It may be just an ego thing - they don't like the feeling that all these engineers from SJSU will be bringing in more money than their Stanford degrees will - but that's good enough of a reason. At least with an engineering degree, you can try to get into those primo career paths like consulting/banking, and if you can't get it, you can just fall back into the high starting salary of engineering. Engineering may not be great, but it's better than what those Stanford non-engineers had available to them. </p>

<p>Now again, having said all that, I would point out that while engineering is a great "safety net", it's not great in rewarding its top people. And I think that that needs to be improved. If the US wants more of its most talented people to become engineers (instead of consultants, bankers, lawyers, etc.) , then the top engineering salaries will need to rise accordingly. Basically, the very best engineers need 'room to play', so that they can enjoy comparable money and prestige as the top consultants or the top bankers do. I would argue that a top-flight engineer can create just as much value as anybody else, so then they should be allowed to enjoy the fruits of the value they create. Look at all the wealth that has been created in the technology industry in the last generation. That wealth was created largely by engineers (yes, I agree, marketers, sales guys, managers, consultants, venture capitalists - they all helped to create that value too - but the engineers also contributed greatly). </p>

<p>Most professions follow something like the "80/20" rule, where 80% of the value is created by 20% of the workers. Personally, I think that it's even more extreme than that - where something like 95% of the value is created by only 5% of the people, but it doesn't matter. The point is that every industry out there has superstars that generate the lion's share of the value. What I think should happen is that those engineers who create the most value should make massive amounts of money. For example, what is so outrageous about paying engineers 250k, 500k, or even in the millions, if they create many millions of dollars of value? After all, the banks and the consulting firms have no problem in paying millions to those people who generate many millions of dollars of value. Even at the non-bank/ non-consulting firms, the top salespeople make many hundreds of thousands, often times in the millions of dollars a year. At any company, the guy who makes the most money in any given year is often times not the CEO, but is often times whoever happens to be the top sales guy that year. If companies can pay their salesmen that way, why can't they pay their engineers that way? </p>

<p>But in any case, that's obviously a rhetorical question, because I obviously don't have the power to change anything here on CC. All I will say is that as long as the top engineers aren't get paid top dollar, then you will continue to have a braindrain of top talent from engineering to other fields like consulting and banking.</p>

[ashernm]

<p>The pre-med situation is especially sad. The AMA imposes merciless controls on the number of doctors practicing to artificially raise salaries. The people who run these controls are the ones that got 'in' to medical school and thus have an interest in maintaining the controls. It is quite analogous to the "drawbridge" or Not In My BackYard (NIMBY) syndromes common to real estate. Ironically, this approach backfired slightly in that the use of alternatives (nurses and the like) for roles traditionally filled by physicians has grown.</p>