<p>I've spoken to a few knowledgeable ppl including my MIT Mech Eng uncle and they all believe that engineering is eventually gonna move to China and us Westerners will be left doing sales bc we demand higher incomes than the Chinese.</p>
<p>Therefore, is it even worthwhile to study engineering unless you're deeply passionate about it and/or don't care about the pay, or are the ppl i consulted wrong?</p>
<p>This is untrue, partly. Lower level engineering jobs will ultimately go to China. I am in China right now with an internship with Ford, and I will tell you that the workforce here is currently not up to the quality of that in the United States, yet. </p>
<p>You can make the same argument for Computer Programmers and India, but then how come TIME(?) rated the best job in US to be computer programming. Also, why is Google among the best companies to work for? The point is, Google wont hire engineers from india or china to do their more leading and cutting edge projects. </p>
<p>Many engineering jobs are going overseas, but not all of them. Globalization has caught up with the United States and we are being left behind because Americans generally do not work as hard as people from Asia. Most of the engineering jobs that are going overseas are the blue collar jobs such as the manufacturing plants. This is rather unfortunate for workers who have worked for many years and are now getting laid off. </p>
<p>In the United States, if you want a comfortable, secure, engineering job, it is almost necessary to attend graduate school. Americans have access to much better graduate education than students in Asia. You must take advantage of it. The world has changed, and the playing field is level. You aren't being compared to other graduates in the US, but graduates from around the world. You need take the next step up and go to graduate school. </p>
<p>If you would like to learn more about gloabalization and its effects, a brilliant read is "The World is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman</p>
<p>Meteorain007, other than computer programming, what other engineering disciples are currently potentially threatened by globalization? </p>
<p>Also, does the advice to go to graduate school flow well with engineering? (I've heard multiple times that if you want to work as an actual engineer, a graduate degree is not usually needed).</p>
<p>Do Infosec, ya cant outsource security stuff.</p>
<p>you cant outsource a Civil engineer,.</p>
<p>TIME rates Software Engineering the best job, which is wholly different than computer programming. Software engineers design applications and systems, and programmers implement them. Too completely different tasks. SEs are high-level, technical, and solve problems, rather than deciding how to indent code.</p>
<p>The same analogy holds for all other engineering disciplines. Engineers here in the US will do R&D, while manufacturing will go places where people work for peanuts. Writing code is a lot easier than solving a computational problem, and designing a chemical process is a lot easier than operating the machinery to make it work, just as designing circuits is a lot harder than supervising their production.</p>
<p>Engineering's a good bet, especially if you like doing it.</p>
<p>And yes, civil engineering cannot be outsourced, nor can aerospace/mechanical (think military airplanes) or electrical/computer (think military comm systems) nor can CS (think military encryption, etc). Some fields might go away, but there will always be a place for engineers.</p>
<p>"In the United States, if you want a comfortable, secure, engineering job, it is almost necessary to attend graduate school. Americans have access to much better graduate education than students in Asia. You must take advantage of it. The world has changed, and the playing field is level. You aren't being compared to other graduates in the US, but graduates from around the world. You need take the next step up and go to graduate school. "
But can you become "overqualified" by getting a PhD for example? Would companies be reluctant to employ you with the same wage as someone with a BS in ChemE, assuming you have lost all the practical aspect of the job (assumption by the employer)?</p>
<p>Also, can ChemE be outsourced?
In the research world, foreign engineers and scientists seem to thrive in the US as opposed to homegrown scientists. Is this true?</p>
<p>Besides, does someone with very high qualifications in engineering mostly do managing jobs instead of engineering jobs? That's what I don't like because I specifically interested in engineering, not managing.</p>
<p>Graduate school? If you like, yes. But you won't have any problem getting an engineering job with a bachelor's from an accredited program and a good gpa.</p>
<p>Actually, I'm concerned that getting a graduate education can give you a disadvantage.</p>
<p>Also, let's not forget, sooner or later Chinese workers will also demand higher wages. It won't be nearly as high as American workers but it will give companies something to think about.</p>
<p>As far as graduate school and engineering the only way it will hurt you is the outlook employees have on graduates students and salary requirements. Employers need people to do the low end tech stuff and a person with a Master's may start out at that position but will advance more so than someone with a bachelors - ON AVERAGE - (and I'm saying to keep i586 from trolling.) Employers would prefer to hire graduate students but they do indeed know that students with more advanced education are going to require promotions and higher salaries quicker than a student with a simple BS or BE.</p>
<p>It's like sakky always says it's not the degrees that are worth anything, It's the engineering firms that are too cheap to pay engineers what they deserve.</p>
<p>Can we explain we don't expect faster promotions to employers, or is it just grounded in their instincts?
Also, is there a decline in employment and salaries of ChemE? or engineering jobs in general?</p>
<p>I've been wondering the same thing. If you're overqualified for a job - say, you have a Ph.D. and are applying for an entry-level bachelor's position, do you have to tell them about the advanced degree, if you just did it for fun and their knowing about the advanced degree might hinder your chances? It seems like it wouldn't be a <em>lie</em> to say you have a Bachelors in, say, CS, even if you <em>also</em> have a Ph.D. and forget to mention it. In fact, it sounds like brilliant salesmanship.</p>
<p>lol!! forget about your PhD??</p>
<p>Yes, if the PhD makes you effectively unemployable.</p>
<p>To me it seems that the Chinese are just as good quality engineers as are American engineers- theyre very intelligent, and work much harder than we do. Also they work for a tenth of what we work for. It's in U.S. industry's interest to outsource all jobs to China (or wherever labor's cheaper) bc they save a lot of money. The only reason there are still engineering jobs in the U.S. is that they don't speak English as well as the fact that civil/environmental engineering jobs, among others, must stay here. We have the communication barrier to our advantage only for now though...</p>
<p>While you can't export all civil engineering work to a different country, you can certainly export parts of it overseas. I used to intern for a company that had a few traffic engineering consultant projects in Asia. We had partnered with a local firm that knew the area well to make it all work. </p>
<p>As stated by others, nothing concerning national security can be exported to another country. CS, mechE, EE, compE can all be exported overseas though if it's not gov't work. The key to every field in these days of globalization is maintaining a higher quality level, so cheaper prices won't give people incentives to look elsewhere.</p>
<p>So things like Aerospace engineering could be useful especially if you design new airplane models for the military?</p>
<p>I just don't see it the way some of you do.</p>
<p>I remember when we were doomed: The Soviet Union made the first satellites, the biggest rockets, the most powerful weapons, the largest submarines, the fastest aircraft. They studied diff eq in 10th grade and graduated five engineers and scientists for every one of ours. So, who won that Cold War anyway?</p>
<p>I think a lot of this gloom and doom is politically motivated. Some people want the government to 'step in' somehow and prevent outsourcing, or lower the bar to entry into engineering, or regulate salaries, or some other ill-advised solution.</p>
<p>Where is it written that there are X thousand engineering jobs and if Y jobs appear in China, then the US will have X-Y jobs? It has never worked that way, and it never will. </p>
<p>Broken record time: you hold he key to your success far more than these global trends like outsourcing or high-tech immigration. If you constantly change and adapt, if you don't rest on your laurels, then you should have a fine engineering career. Always take a job for what it teaches you, and when you stop learning new things it's time to move on. </p>
<p>If you get your PhD in something only you are interested in, then you might face employability problems. So don't do that. There are dozens of ways to discover what the world wants for the resourceful graduate student. Don't get stuck on stupid.</p>
<p>
[quote]
To me it seems that the Chinese are just as good quality engineers as are American engineers- theyre very intelligent, and work much harder than we do. Also they work for a tenth of what we work for. It's in U.S. industry's interest to outsource all jobs to China (or wherever labor's cheaper) bc they save a lot of money.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, it's far more than that. It also has to do with the mentality of the people. The truth of the matter is that China is a corrupt country and that corruption pervades the mentality of the people. I know many Americans who run divisions in China and they run into the perennial problem among their workforce in China in that that workforce thinks nothing of just trying to steal as much from the company as possible. Whether that means stealing intellectual property, or actually stealing physical company output or machinery, a lot of Chinese employees are highly 'entrepreneurial' as far as looting their employers. That is the sort of mentality that was fostered under decades of Communism - that everybody should just try to fake their way to making the numbers. </p>
<p>A related aspect is that a lot of Chinese employees don't particularly value quality. A lot of workers in China believe that if they can just produce a product that looks like the real thing, regardless of whether it actually is the real thing, then that is good enough. Again, that is the legacy of Communism in which bulk numbers were what was emphasized, in leiu of product quality. When you had to meet the Communist quota of making 1000 widgets, then making 1000 shoddy widgets is good enough. Hence, Western companies who manufacture in China have found that they have to spend far more on quality control than they do in the US. </p>
<p>Don't get me wrong. This is not to impugn the intelligence and work ethic of the individual Chinese worker. Chinese workers are as smart and hard-working as anybody else. The issue is how that intelligence and work ethic are harnessed. A lot of Chinese workers have been taught through decades of Communist rule to direct their energies towards corruption and stealing. </p>
<p>Related to all of that is the general lack of rule of law in China. Chinese politicians can basically do whatever they want, regardless of what the law might say. The Chinese court system offers little recourse, as it too has been perverted by corruption. The US at least offers some protections against the theft of intellectual property or the trampling of minority shareholder rights. Chinese offers very little on that front. </p>
<p>The analogy would be Russia. Russia is endowed with one of the best technical education systems in the world. Russia has the broadest plethora of natural resources of any country. What is missing in Russia is the rule of law. That is why Russia is not a rich country.</p>