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Sakky would say, and is correct that, if you want to major in engineering and be rich, go into investment banking as soon as you leave school.
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<p>Actually, I would say that if you want to take a shot at becoming truly rich, I would recommend you take a shot at entrepreneurship, akin to what pearlygate said. Heck, you may not even need to finish your degree. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison - all of these guys dropped out of college.</p>
<p>If your company fails (and most startups do fail), oh well, then you can just go back to school. Or start another company. For example, Microsoft is not Bill Gates's first startup, nor is Apple Steve Jobs's first startup. </p>
<p>You can also start a firm after you graduate. In the worst case scenario, you will go broke in a few years. But so what? Most 24-year-olds are broke. Given that you put a bonafide effort into your startup, you will have learned a heck of a lot about business and that's something that will pay dividends throughout your career. You will have learned what doesn't work and what businesses should not do, and you will therefore have become a far better decision maker. </p>
<p>Nor do you even need to have a killer idea when you start your company. This is a myth that is perpetrated by the media (and by corporate public relations departments). The truth is, most firms do not start out with the product that ultimately makes them successful. Instead, they iterate, via a process of learning, towards a product that ultimately makes them big. For example, Microsoft's first product was not an operating system. It was a programming language interpreter (an interpreter of BASIC for the now defunct MIPS Altair). Apple's first product (the Apple I) was indeed a PC, but a highly primitive one at that, and only about 200 of them were ultimately produced. Hence, it was hardly a blockbuster product. But it provided Apple with enough cash flow and engineering experience to develop the supremely successful Apple II which sold in the millions, and then later the even more successful Macintosh, the Ipod, etc. </p>
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Well, one of the co-founders of TIVO was an EE major. Maybe you could follow that career path.
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<p>Tivo actually illustrates my point. Their first product was not a DVR. It was network connected kitchen appliances (i.e. Internet-enabled refrigerators). </p>
<p>I talk about investment banking simply because I have noted the increasing popularity of Ibanking within the top engineering schools (i.e. MIT, Stanford, etc.) Ibanking can indeed earn you a very high pay packet to start, although clearly not as much as joining a successful startup. </p>
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My husband the doctoral-candidate-and-future-professor says that you can't get rich being a professor.
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<p>I'm with merper68 on this one: you can indeed becoming extremely rich as a professor, just not by professing. For example, Amar Bose, the long-time Professor of EECS at MIT (now emeritus) is worth about $2 billion from starting Bose Corporation (the audio equipment company). Basically, Bose Corporation is the vehicle by which Amar Bose commercialized his research that he did as a young MIT assistant prof. Similarly, Henry Samueli, (at the time) assistant professor of EE at UCLA, cofounded Broadcom with his grad student, Henry Nicholas. The "two Henry's" are now both billionaires. In fact, Samueli donated so much of his wealth back to UCLA that it renamed the engineering school the "Henry Samueli School of Engineering". He's still a professor there. Imagine how strange it must feel to be a professor at a school that is actually named after you. </p>
<p>Nor can you get rich as a professor only by founding a startup to commercialize your research. You can also get rich by starting your own engineering consulting firm. There are numerous profs at MIT (and presumably also at Stanford, Berkeley, etc.) who do extensive consulting on the side. I know of one MIT prof who charges in the thousands of dollars an hour for his consulting services (largely as an expert witness in court testimony regarding defective product engineering/personal injury cases). Granted, he'll never become a billionaire like Amar Bose, but he'll still make a very very nice packet. Similarly, I can think of several profs who are partners in venture capital or private equity firms. </p>
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merper- that's less being a professor than being an expert, prolly
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<p>I agree, but they're also part and parcel to each other. Their status as professors provides them the expert imprimatur. Very few people are going to question the technical knowledge of an engineering professor. In the words, those professors are basically using their professor status as an 'advertisement' to market their other services.</p>
<p>As a case in point, I am sure that when Broadcom went hunting for venture capital funding, it used the fact that that one of its founders was a UCLA engineering professor as a major selling point to convince the VC's to invest in them and not some other startup. </p>
<p>Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think that professors view their academic status as useful only for advertising purposes. Most profs obviously truly enjoy their jobs. It is in fact a quite nice job. But the point is, it also has an important additional benefit, which is its marketability. </p>
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Bachelor--->Master--->PhD--->Full-time Professor at a prestigious school?
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<p>Well, if you become a full professor, especially at a top school, you don't really need to become rich anyway, for the truth is, once you get tenure, you're unfireable. You have a job for life (that is, presuming you don't do something foolish like steal from the university). And it's a job by which you have immense control over your own schedule, as the academic year is only about 32 weeks out of the year. {While most profs will use the extra time to conduct research, if you're tenured, you don't really have to do research if you don't want to.} Hence, while you can still become rich through the methods I mentioned above, the truth is, you don't have to. You can instead just choose to enjoy life, pursuing the research that most interests you. That is the real reason to become a prof.</p>