<p>why do they say that Germans make good engineers?</p>
<p>Wow, I almost made a really inappropriate WWII related joke.</p>
<p>What!!?! I thought it was Asians</p>
<p>Asians make better engineers because, like the saying goes, 15 heads are better than 1.</p>
<p>^ i don’t get it :(</p>
<p>Haha, AMT that is just wrong.</p>
<p>LOL! 15 is better than one… wow that is funny. </p>
<p>I would venture to say germans are renowned for their engineering. I mean BMW and all those car companies are over there for a reason. I want to study abroad over there because of it.</p>
<p>I was also about to make an inappropriate WWII joke. High five for commonality over tasteless jokes, AMT.</p>
<p>But really… In Germany, they take engineering as seriously as we take medicine over here. When you finally pass all your exams and get your license, you’re not referred to as Mr. or Mrs., you’re referred to as Engineer So-and-so. It’s an actual title. I think the prestige associated with the profession over there is a lot higher, and so I think that attracts a lot of motivated students that, in the states, would have put their smarts towards more prestigiously-perceived professions.</p>
<p>In Germany, the prestige associated with engineering and science especially if you have the Ph.D. far exceeds that in the US.</p>
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<p>That isn’t just Germany, that is in a lot of that area of the world and Asia as well, which is part of the reason that we have all of these discussions on these boards about why American engineering students like to do consulting and financial crap instead of actual engineering.</p>
<p>It’s better for us, as the fewer engineers in the US will get more highly compensated because of it.</p>
<p>Not really because we have tons of engineers from China, India and Pakistan where I work.</p>
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Then being a native english speaker helps you, of course.</p>
<p>No, its not better for us because it means that a lot (not all) of our top potential engineering talent ends up on Wall Street or winds up doing some other non-engineering job simply because in America, those jobs are more “prestigious” since we as a country seem to value the almighty dollar above all else.</p>
<p>No it doesn’t help at all because everybody speaks English and they are willing to work for less. Do you work as an engineer or are you a student? You seem somewhat naive.</p>
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I’m an engineer. I work with plenty of foreigners. The fact I am a native English speaker and American helps tremendously in my work product. All else being equal, it puts you on the fast track for management.</p>
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<p>That all presumes that there is a ‘fixed’ demand of engineering work available for US engineers to meet. If that truly were the case, then I might agree that the lower supply of engineers (specifically, those who actually want to work as engineers) would enjoy higher compensation.</p>
<p>The reality is that the demand for US engineering services is also a function of the social prestige of the profession. Many US ostensibly “tech” companies choose to invest relatively little on actual tech R&D and production, instead allocating the bulk of funds to marketing, business development, and, in some cases, financial engineering. </p>
<p>As long as consultants and investment bankers are accorded higher social prestige than are engineers, then CEO’s, company boards, and other high-level decision makers will continue to spend more on consulting services and banking fees rather than invest in engineering. As former consultant Matthew Stewart once said, the ‘real’ task of any consultant for a client is not actually to solve the client’s problems, but rather to garner more consulting business from that client. The same can be said for investment bankers, who will always recommend that the firm acquire or divest, issue (or buy back) securities, or contract some financial derivative product. </p>
<p>Consultants and bankers are cloaked with prestige that dazzles top management, convincing them to continue to fund consulting and banking projects at the expense of engineering. Hence, the relative lack of social prestige of engineering work reduces the supply of engineers, but also reduces the demand.</p>
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I don’t understand your point. This is already true, engineers in the US make more than they do in other countries.</p>
<p>I don’t know what kind of engineering you do but we have tons of foreigners who speak as well as any native here since they’ve been taking English since elementary school in their own countries.</p>
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<p>My point is quite simple: if engineering was considered to be as socially prestigious in this country as it is in countries such as Germany and Japan, then more spending would be devoted towards engineering projects, hence increasing the demand for engineers. </p>
<p>Engineers make more in this country than in others because, frankly, every job pays better in this country than in others. A guy stocking shelves in the US makes more than a guy stocking shelves in the Third World, but that doesn’t mean that shelf-stocking is a desirable job in the US. What matters is the relative payscales within a particular country, as well as the cost of living. An engineer in India makes an average starting salary of ~$7-8k, and an exceptional one may make $24k which is obviously piddling to us, but relative to the average per-capita income of India of only ~$1000, is a whopping salary, especially given how cheap living costs are in India. The analog would be if the average US engineers made $210-240k a year, and a star engineer made $720k just to start. I guarantee you that if engineers in this country made that much, Americans would be coming out of the woodwork to become engineers. </p>
<p>[Connecting</a> India: India Today - Latest Breaking News from India, World, Business, Cricket, Sports, Bollywood.](<a href=“http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/43969/Aspire/Connecting+India.html]Connecting”>Connecting India - India Today)</p>
<p>To obtain an engineering degree in the US secures you a solid middle-class lifestyle, but little else, and certainly little social prestige. On the other hand, obtaining an engineering degree in a nation such as India immediately launches you into a bracket of wealth that the vast majority of Indians can only dream of having, and all of the social prestige that connotes. </p>
<p>Here’s another way to think of the situation. The increasing social prestige of consulting and banking, and the resultant mad dash of the top graduates to enter those fields, has not seemed to have depressed the pay available in those fields. If anything, the pay has only increased - for example, the investment banking industry is set to pay record bonuses this year. {In contrast, not too many engineering companies will be paying out record bonuses, or heck, any bonuses at all.} That is because the consulting and banking industry have cunningly managed to increase the demand for their services to compensate for the increase of supply. Like I said, the real job of any consultant is to not to actually solve a client’s problems but rather to procure more consulting work from the client.</p>