<p>If you want that to happen, you'll have to ban aehmo.</p>
<p>I agree. It's one thing to talk about the issues surrounding the engineering field. It's quite another to go around flinging personal insults. </p>
<p>Back to the main question, the only shortage that exists is one that relates to the unwillingness of companies to pay. Basic economics dictates that there can never really be a long-term shortage of anything, but rather only a shortage at a certain price point. If companies want more engineers, then they will have to raise their salaries. Otherwise they won't get them. It's really as simple as that. To think otherwise is, to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, trying to practice economics without the price mechanism.</p>
<p>Sakky, I agree with you.</p>
<p>And with that, we must entertain the possibility that companies are unwilling to pay more because the value added by the average engineer is low. The engineers themselves may be smart and hardworking, and may add immense value when paired with the right franchises (capital) in the right industries (e.g. finance and consulting), but the structures and maturities of industries that hire most traditional engineers may be such that they just cannot extract much value from their engineers.</p>
<p>Just a possiblility for people to consider.</p>
<p>Now, again, in fairness, I would point out that engineers are still well paid compared to the average white-collar worker. People here talk about how the engineer might get laid off at age 30, or have to sit in boring meetings or how the engineer may not add much value to the company (and hence doesn't himself get paid well). On the other hand, what about all those people with degrees in the traditional liberal arts - meaning things like English, PoliSci, History, Math, Physics, Psychology, etc.? Wouldn't these people also get laid off at age 30? Don't these people also have to sit in boring meetings? Don't these people also not add much value (and hence not get paid well)? I would argue that of all the problems that engineers may face in the job market, the vast majority of college grads have it even worse. Almost as many Americans graduate with bachelor's degrees in English/Literature as in Engineering. And that's just English/Literature. What about all the other liberal arts disciplines? People here have asked what a 30 year old guy with an engineering degree going to do. Well, I would turn that around and ask what's a 30 year old guy with an English degree going to do? Sure, maybe the 30 year old engineer ends up getting laid off. But at least he made decent money up until that point. The 30 year old guy with the English degree may ALSO end up getting laid off, and he didn't even get the chance to make decent money. </p>
<p>To add to what 4th floor has said, I would point out that I find it interesting that the liberal arts majors who get hired into banking and consulting also seem to be able to generate immense value, whereas those who end up in regular white-collar jobs get paid very little - in fact, substantially less than the engineers do. Hence, maybe it's not a matter of that engineers cannot add value in traditional companies, but rather that NO WORKER can add much value in traditional companies.</p>
<p>Expanding on Sakky's post...</p>
<p>In law school, we talk about damages in terms of the breach world v. the non-breach world. (Bear with me.)<br>
The calculation is:
$$ that would would have if person didn't harm you
-$$ that you have, given the harm
= what you can recover.</p>
<p>Example: you fall, someone trips over you, and your hospital bill is $50. If that person hadn't tripped over you, your bill would have been $20. You can only recover $30 from the person who fell on you - because you would have had some expenses even if he didn't fall.</p>
<p>Anyway... let's apply that analysis to an engineering degree. We have two people, both at age 30, one with an engineering degree, one with an sociology degree. The economy goes south and they both get laid off. Who has been earning more until that point? Who can translate her skills into another field, such as finance? Whose job will make her stand out in B-school applications if they both decide to wait out the economic slump in grad school? </p>
<p>The inquiry should always be to compare having the degree with a feasible alternative. It should be abundantly clear that, for the majority of people (notwithstanding those who want to be doctors), having an engineering degree is more valuable than almost any undergrad degree you can get. You are simply better off with one than without one.</p>
<p>Then we have something very interesting!</p>
<p>1) On average, engineers are not paid as much in traditional industries as they are in finance/consulting because traditional industries are not able to extract as much value from engineers as finance/consulting.</p>
<p>2) On average, humanities majors are not paid as much in traditional industries as they are in finance/consulting because traditional industries are not able to extract as much value from humanities majors as finance/consulting.</p>
<p>3) Traditional industries are complaning loudly about a "shortage" of engineers.</p>
<p>4) Traditional industries are not complaining about a shortage of humanities majors.</p>
<p>Seems like further explanation is needed.</p>
<p>(I agree with ariesathena that the ~$20K differential between the engineer and the humanities major up to the point of lay-off counts for something, and may very well reflect their difference in value-added. The question is: why the "shortage" whine in one case, but not the other?)</p>
<p>My guess (Sakky, I'm sure, will add his opinion) is simply that engineers can do the work that humanities grads can do, but the converse isn't true. But engineering is so very difficult, dry, and specialized that you just don't get the numbers that are in the humanities. Some of this is like "activation energy;" even if the end result is highly favourable, there is a huge hurdle in the way of getting there, so the reaction doesn't take place. A lot of people simply refuse to do engineering and will take their chances with a decently-paying job... which leads me to my next guess.</p>
<p>My further guess is that minimum wage plays a factor here. (I swear, I'm a decent person, just hear me out.) Employers of humanities majors have to pay them at least minimum wage and realistically, a bit above that. Even at the low salary of $25,000/year, employers might be overpaying their workers, given the difficulty (or lack thereof) of obtaining the requisite qualifications and what they are adding to the company. OTOH, even at $50k/year, the best engineers are underpaid. Ergo, the best engineers go into finance, where they can be adequately compensated (which, from the worker's POV, has a lot more to do with the difficulty of the work and their talent than the value they add to the company). If you want those best people in engineering, you have to figure out a way to identify them and make it worth their while. Currently, the best engineers are underpaid and many humanities majors are overpaid. </p>
<p>The dot-com boom of the late 90s is a perfect example of this. At the time, computer engineers could command whatever salary they wanted. End result is that a lot of people went into computer engineering - the salaries were just that good. (Of course, that all dried up, and there is a glut of comp-es out there... but moving onwards.) Raytheon, Boeing, Northrup-Grumman, and Lockheed Martin will get a plethora of awesome engineers the day they decide to pay their incoming people exhorbitant amounts of money. Well, not that day, but a few years later.</p>
<p>Actually, if I may offer a twist on what AA has said above, I think what is happening is that there seems to be a strong an strange salary compression element in all majors. The truth is, a bachelor's degree graduate from an elite school does not make significantly more as an average starting salary than a graduate from an average school. As I mentioned before, the average Princeton grad (and, by extension, Yale and Harvard grads) only makes about 60% higher of a starting salary, as the average US college grad. That's really not that big of an increase. Contrast that with the salaries in places like China and India where the grads of the best schools can literally make several times more, to start, as the grads of the average schools. {As an interesting politico-economic commentary, Communist/Socialist nations are supposed to be characterized with less income inequality than are capitalistic nations. Well, in the case of starting salaries, it is actually the purportedly-Communist nation of China that evinces greater income inequailty than does the capitalistic United States.} </p>
<p>I would also raise the issue I discusssed before which is that engineers coming out of no-name schools actually make higher salaries than the average Princeton grad (from all majors). And in fact, engineering in general tends to be a tremendously salary-compressed profession, at least as far as starting salary is concerned. For example, it has been brought to my attention that the average engineering starting salaries of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2004 was something like 54k. This is only a tiny bit less than the average starting salaries of engineers from Berkeley Yet Berkeley is supposed to be far better engineering school than Cal Poly is. Hence what that means is that the starting salary premium for going to a top engineering school is not large at all.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.careerservices.calpoly.edu/gsr/03-04/gsr_2003-2004.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.careerservices.calpoly.edu/gsr/03-04/gsr_2003-2004.pdf</a>
<a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2004Majors.stm%5B/url%5D">http://career.berkeley.edu/CarDest/2004Majors.stm</a></p>
<p>I would also point to the highly impressive starting salaries of engineering grads coming out of other obscure programs like Montana Tech, New Mexico Tech, Oakland University, Kansas State, and other such programs. Which again leads me to reiterate that engineering is a fantastic deal for those people who are good enough to survive an engineering curriculum but not good enough to have other choices available to them. Let's face it. If you're just a regular kid growing up in rural Montana or rural Kansas, getting an engineering degree from Montana Tech or Kansas State and getting that 50k starting salary is a fantastic deal. </p>
<p>However, as far as I can tell, the 'regular' economy, and especially the 'regular' engineering economy, while offering a pretty good deal to regular college grads, does not seem to offer such a good deal to exceptional college grads, namely those who graduate from the top schools. Let's face it. The average HYP grad is more than 60% more productive than the average college grad in general. And the top engineers are certainly worth more than a few thousand bucks per year than the average engineer is. Hence, this is why I think that the top college grads in any major, but especially engineering, may be better off pursuing the 'unusual' career paths, like consulting or banking, or law or medicine. </p>
<p>But now to get to the point that others have raised - why don't all the engineering students from the elite schools instead just drop engineering and opt for medicine right from the get-go? Well, again, I would point out that the engineering grads from Berkeley, or any other top program, are paid substantially more than the non-engineering grads. Like I pointed out, even the Montana Tech engineering grads get paid a higher starting salary than the non-engineering grads from Princeton. Engineering in general, whether from a top program or not, if nothing else, does deliver a relatively high paying backup career. That, if nothing else, is a very good reason to consider engineering. </p>
<p>Yes, an engineer can get laid off at age 30. But an English major can also get laid off at age 30. At least the laid-off engineer was making good money up until his layoff. The laid-off guy with the English degree doesn't even have the benefit of making good money before the layoff.</p>
<p>Yes, let's grant that, on average, engineering is one of the best undergraduate majors for career preparation. Let's also grant that the so-called "shortage" of engineers can be solved instantly if employers just paid engineers more/better. Let's close the debate on these two points.</p>
<p>The question is: why don't these engineering employers just pay engineers more, and solve their "shortage" problem?</p>
<p>Any explanation offered for this question must also account for the observations pointed out in this forum that: 1) other industries -- finance, consulting -- DO pay engineers more, so engineers certainly can bring much value to the production chain, when suitably matched with productive capital, and 2) the same industries that don't pay engineers as well as finance and consulting pay their English majors even less, and these English majors also do very well in finance and consulting, yet these industries don't complain about a shortage of English majors.</p>
<p>It has been pointed out that perhaps the cream of the crop in Engineering goes to Wall Street & McKinsey, leaving the traditional employers with the remainder, so they are not worth the higher pay. The shortage, then, is not of engineers, but of top engineers. There are problems with that as a complete explanation: 1) why don't traditional employers who want top engineers pay more for them, and 2) since the sharpest and most aggressive English majors also go to Wall Street & McKinsey, why don't traditional employers complain about the shortage of top English majors?</p>
<p>It has also been pointed out that the wage compression in these traditional industries (perhaps supported by minimum wage barriers on the low end) prevent them from paying competitively against Wall Street. That seems to be an easily solved problem too.</p>
<p>So is there a deeper explanation, or are we just dealing with dying dinosaurs refusing to behave rationally?</p>
<p>Kudos to the moderator for bringing us back on track. Page 7 of this thread just got a lot more interesting!</p>
<p>I think there's a missing element in the dying dinosaurs phenomenon that 4th Floor just mentioned. Sakky and 4F are talking about an economy in equilibrium, which is how most economists tend to analyze the economy. But, of course, the economy is never in equilibrium. </p>
<p>For engineers, this means that 4F is right for the dyning dinosaurs: they lack the ability to extract a large value from engineers (especially compared to their overseas competitors). (By the way, I don't like AA's list. Raytheon, Boeing, Northrup-Grumman, and Lockheed Martin are hiring lots of engineers in my area, at good salaries and with lots of potential. My pterodactyls would include manufacturing firms like GM, GE, and HP.)</p>
<p>But, in reality, there's new companies in new technology areas (and new geographic areas) that crop up, almost overnight. This is where the growth and excitement is. </p>
<p>That's the macro-scale topic--interesting, but not useful to the few (two?) engineering students still reading this thread. For you, I submit that this 'static' analysis presents a distorted picture of your career arc. When you get your BS?E, you will be about 10% of the way through your education. Now, it's a critical 10%, to be sure, and one that few in your peer group will have, but there is much, much more to work and life. Most of the jobs I know require a small amount of experience after college. (My company does very little college recruiting, but hires engineers like crazy after about 2 years of experience. I think that's a mistake, but go figure.)</p>
<p>It is not really that critical <em>what</em> you do during those first two years. It is almost like an extended internship. You establish your work persona, your flexibility, your networking skills, and your affinity for learning new things: systems, software, cultures, etc.</p>
<p>As I said back on page three, it's important to grow your skill set after college to develop a unique 'edge'. Take a job for what it teaches you, not what it pays you. For branching out, we've focused here on investment banking, consulting, finance, medicine, etc. These represent only a small subset of the doors that are open to you. Your 20s will be a terrific time to explore the nooks and crannies of this robust economy for <em>your</em> favorite niche. And, pay no attention to the messages from the dismal swamp. You're more likely to get a big promotion at 30 as you are to get laid off. </p>
<p>Companies complain about a "shortage of engineers" for a variety of reasons. I think the most prominent 'deficit goods' are the starting-level engineers: the kind you pay $50K for. There are exactly as many of those as there are graduates from the engineering schools (plus the H1B visas) in a given year. Hint: for this fiscal year, Oct-Oct, we ran out of the H1B visas in October 2005. The rest is up to you!</p>
<p>
[quote]
So is there a deeper explanation, or are we just dealing with dying dinosaurs refusing to behave rationally?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No, actually I think it's that they are behaving entirely rationally, if duplicitously. </p>
<p>What I think is happening is that these old dinosaurs don't even want to pay their engineers 50k, even though they are worth much more than that. They would love to pay their engineers the same as they pay their English majors. Hence, they are lobbying for methods that would increase the supply of engineers which would therefore lower the salaries they would have to pay those engineers (via simple supply and demand interactions). </p>
<p>What saddens (but does not surprise) me is when I see a supposedly New-Economy leader like Bill Gates also pushing for people to study CS, but refusing to raise salaries or become less selective in the engineers that Microsoft hires. Bill Gates is not a stupid man, so he has to know that if he really wants more people to study CS, he can just simply raise salaries and hire more people. He isn't even willing to hire all the available CS people now, so what exactly is this shortage is he complaining about? I think his actions belie his true intentions, which is that he just wants more available CS people to choose from. </p>
<p>
[quote]
But, in reality, there's new companies in new technology areas (and new geographic areas) that crop up, almost overnight. This is where the growth and excitement is.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I agree there is growth and excitement in new technology areas. </p>
<p>But what I find shocking and saddening is just how shockingly low the salaries are in these new technology areas. For example, the biotech and medical devices industries, which are arguably 2 of the most exciting and important new industries in the world, pay unusually low salaries, both to start and as continuing salaries. People who graduate with degrees in Biology or BioEngineering earn unusually low salaries, as can be seen in the following link.</p>
<p>Even those people who get traditional degrees like chemical engineering, but decide to go to biotech, often find that they are among the lowest paid of all chemical engineers. The same is even true of people who hold MD's or pharmacy degrees, who often find that they have to take a substantial pay cut in order to work in a biotech.</p>
<p>Or consider the field of materials science, which includes things like nanotechnology, specialty plastics, ceramics, and that sort of thing. This is another new and exciting field, but also one that is notorious for paying low salaries. Just take a look at the salaries paid to the Materials Science and Engineering grads. They are not particularly well paid, relative to other engineers.</p>
<p><a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/MatSci.stm%5B/url%5D">http://career.berkeley.edu/Major/MatSci.stm</a></p>
<p>Now, I agree that a small fraction of these people will get filthy rich off stock options. But that is a vanishingly small percentage of people. Most people who enter these fields do so for far lower salaries than they could have gotten elsewhere.</p>
<p>In fact, the engineering fields that tend to be the best paying are the traditional ones - chemical engineering, petroleum engineering, electrical engineering, etc. </p>
<p>Economics is the study of incentives. If the US is going to continue to maintain its edge in high technology and cutting-edge industries, then it is going to have to convince people to enter those industries rather than continue to be attracted to traditional fields. That shift is going to happen slowly, and perhaps not at all, if the traditional fields continue to pay significantly better than the new fields do. If you want more people to enter biotech or medical devices or materials, those industries are going to have to pay their people better.</p>
<p>Hmm. Good points Sakky. In my experience, every decade seems to have these techno-bubble areas. They sound sexy, universities commit to them, there's lots of ink spilled on them, but they go nowhere. </p>
<p>TComm was the latest, during the 1990s. It also included aerospace in the 1960s and 70s, mainframe computers in the 1970s and 80s, application programming and GUI stuff in the 90s. I could reconstruct more, but those neural pathways might be lost to eggnog. </p>
<p>The areas you mentioned are large-scale areas, such as biotech. But, while megatrends are interesting, one can only have one career at a time. I would focus more (if I were young!) on niche areas within Biotech. I just saw a briefing on bio-informatics. It's a mix of nanotechnology, bio-engineering, and artificial intelligence. That has marvelous applications to rapid diagnosis and remote sensing of diseases. There's research money and lots of interest. </p>
<p>I know sob stories in most of your example areas. Materials scientists who went all the way to a PhD and then could not be hired. (The moral: universities and academia are NOT adept at predicting the next hot topic. If they were, they wouldn't have to ask everyone for money!).</p>
<p>I'm now studying a little-know area that includes complex adaptive systems, agent-based models--all in support of the emerging computational social sciences. It's very new, very quiet, but has significant applications in industry and government. There are important lessons for economists in complexity theory. It's good that the field is <em>not</em> trendy. Frankly, I would worry if this new science finds its way on the front of a national news magazine, because it means there's too much 'buying on speculation'.</p>
<p>I've said it before, I'll say it again. If money is all that you care about, don't become an engineer. Don't become a doctor. Go to Wall Street and become a banker. Those guys can make more money in a year than most people can make in their whole lives. True, becoming a banker isn't easy, but it isn't as hard as some people make it out to be. If you're willing to network, to shmooze, to develop your public speaking and financial spreadsheet skills, and to start from the bottom, you should be able to get a banking job. Maybe not at the highly prestigious banks, but you should be able to get in somewhere, and if you then work very hard, you should be able to carve yourself out a nice career. </p>
<p>For those who aren't quite that gung-ho about making as much money as they can as quickly as they can, they should treat education as a way to expand their mind. The point should be emphasized that just because you get a degree in a certain field doesn't mean that you have to take a job in that field. The true value of education is that it teaches you how to think. The truth is, most of the specific things you learn in your college days, you will never use ever again. Very few practicing engineers actually remember how to do all those complex mathematical derivations that they used to do as engineering students, because they don't need to know that stuff for their job. But what they will use is their developed ability to think logically and rigorously. Nobody really knows what industry will be hot in the future. By developing a strong generalist education, you will be able to quickly pick up the skills necessary for you to move into that hot industry, whatever it turns out to be.</p>
<p>"I've said it before, I'll say it again. If money is all that you care about, don't become an engineer. Don't become a doctor. Go to Wall Street and become a banker. Those guys can make more money in a year than most people can make in their whole lives."</p>
<p>yeah, but so do actors. Why not try to make it at hollywood instead? ibankers are like salesman...some make a lot of money, most don't. The obvious reason for not becoming an ibanker is that it's not a true profession...it'll become flooded in no time at all without regulation. Becoming a doctor/dentist guarantees that you'll have a job simply because it's a REGULATED industry....the AMA will not allow oversupply of doctors.</p>
<p>I can't think of a safer, more fullfilling career than in the medical field! ...it can't be outsourced, flooded or anything. You'll make 7x the average income for most of your life...it's a sweeeet deal.</p>
<p>
[quote]
ibankers are like salesman...some make a lot of money, most don't. The obvious reason for not becoming an ibanker is that it's not a true profession...it'll become flooded in no time at all without regulation. Becoming a doctor/dentist guarantees that you'll have a job simply because it's a REGULATED industry....the AMA will not allow oversupply of doctors.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ibanking has existed as an extremely high-paying field for at least a century. If it's going to be flooded, why hasn't it happened already? Why now? Why not 50 years ago? </p>
<p>I agree that there is great disparity in what bankers get paid. But even the 'low-paid' bankers are still making quite high amounts of money. For example, even a mediocre Wall Street associate in a bad year is still making around 100k. That's a pretty good chunk of change.</p>
<p>"Ibanking has existed as an extremely high-paying field for at least a century. If it's going to be flooded, why hasn't it happened already? Why now? Why not 50 years ago? "</p>
<p>It's already flooded. How many job openings are there for IBers?...aside from the "fresh meat" opportunities that new grads have?</p>
<p>What's the career track for an IBer? What license/credentials do they need to say to companies they have the neccessary background for that line of work? What courses prepare you to be an IBer?....a doctor/dentist can take a series of OBJECTIVE courses and be set for life...Iber's flounder around on subjective opportunities until they land on a couple of good "leads" that allows them to make some cash....why not take up gambling for a career? I'm sure 48% of everyone who plays makes some amount of money, and who knows, you may be that 1 in a thousand that'll strike it rich!</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's already flooded. How many job openings are there for IBers?...aside from the "fresh meat" opportunities that new grads have?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And how many job openings are there for doctors? Like I said, according to AMCAS, only about 16,000 people are admitted to US medical schools every year. That's probably about the same as the number of new entry-level positions that open up in banking and related fields (like VC, private equity, pension funds, etc.) in the US every year. Heck those jobs in the related fields can actually pay more than the standard Ibanking jobs. So what's the difference? </p>
<p>I agree that plenty of people who want to become bankers don't get an offer. On the other hand, plenty of people who want to become doctors can't get into medical school. So how is that any different? </p>
<p>
[quote]
What's the career track for an IBer? What license/credentials do they need to say to companies they have the neccessary background for that line of work? What courses prepare you to be an IBer?....a doctor/dentist can take a series of OBJECTIVE courses and be set for life...Iber's flounder around on subjective opportunities until they land on a couple of good "leads" that allows them to make some cash....why not take up gambling for a career? I'm sure 48% of everyone who plays makes some amount of money, and who knows, you may be that 1 in a thousand that'll strike it rich!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It seems to me that even as a bad associate with no experience, making 100k is not 'floundering' in anybody's books. Even an experienced Ibanker will make 150-200k a year in a terrible year. There are a lot of people in the world who wouldn't mind 'floundering' into making that kind of money.</p>
<p>I will seriously dispute the notion that medicine is a stable profession. If you think it is, be prepared for the disappointment of a lifetime. Med schools, in tuition alone, cost about $40k/year. When you graduate (four years and $200k in debt) later, you don't have a job: you work as an intern for about $15/hour for a while. You do a residency, specialized training, etc - and then you can practice medicine.</p>
<p>Malpractice premiums have been rising about 20% per year over the past few years. Many doctors routinely pay over $100,000/year in malpractice. Those in some areas(such as S. Fl) pay a quarter-million annually. </p>
<p>Medicine is largely run by HMOs, who are drasticaly reducing reimbursements. As the population ages, more of medicine will be paid for through Medicare/Medicaid. If we get nationalized health care, your salary is dependent upon what Congress wants to pay you</p>
<p>Just a thought</p>
<p>Where I used to live, housing was very cost-stratified by development. The very wealthiest development, next to mine, was virtually a dorm for the local medical community.</p>
<p>When I was an investment banker, I was doing very well for a few years. I was able to afford a weekend house on a lake. Almost all of my neighbors were doctors.</p>
<p>My former roommate from college is a cardiologist. The one time we discussed this, he confirmed that no matter what, he could always get a job. Even if only at an emergency room.</p>
<p>The other people at that wealthy development, and the other people with houses on that lake, did not have guaranteed jobs. They took business and employment risk. They actually had to be good at something to keep up those big bucks, not merely show up to work. In a down market a lot of high-dollar employees are terminated, particularly as they approach 40.</p>
<p>There is no down market for the doctors.</p>
<p>I am not crying for them. They take no business risk. In an efficient employment market, with no barriers to entry into the profession, they would not make nearly so much. IMO.</p>
<p>The I-banker example above is also flawed. In that hypothetical down market you will not make 150-200k if you are sufficiently down the totem pole. You will be terminated, getting only straight salary plus severance; no bonus. Then you will get to figure out what else you can do with your life. Since nobody else in your field will be hiring, due to the down market. When I first got there, I wondered to myself why I didn't see any bankers over 50 who weren't partners. After a few down markets, I found out why. Everyone else was fired at some point along the way.</p>
<p>You'd think they were making so much they can just retire. And some of them can. But it costs a fortune to live in NYC, particularly if you have kids, and it's harder than you'd think to sock away enough bucks.</p>
<p>An investment banker is a bogus temp job for most people, and a good temp job for the lucky ones. Doctors always have great jobs....all they have to do is not kill anyone...I can live with that.</p>