Not at all true. My company has no problem retaining competent engineers until retirement. Most companies have a “general competency” level for professionals, and for engineers this usually takes about a decade to reach and is the minimum level of accomplishment required before you can be considered for any significant management role. If you cannot reach that level within 20 years, you are probably done in engineering, but that is the exception - most people not able to do so will self-select into another field of endeavor. I have worked for a couple of companies, and as long as you reach that “general competency” in a reasonable amount of time, they’ll keep you until retirement - new engineers may be cheaper, but many will be duds and many more will leave in search of greener pastures at a net loss to the company. It helps to have a core of competent, experienced engineers.</p>
<p>Plus, beyond that “general competency” there are lots of engineering opportunities for more talented and dedicated individuals. Some become subject matter experts, others climb up the systems engineering ranks to become systems architects. I regularly work or worked with both groups - I know several engineers who are experts in certain narrow fields of design so important that we have succession plans for them, and my current working group is comprised entirely of very senior engineers who all have 25-40(!!) years of experience (I am the exception, essentially an apprentice). I know that several of these engineers are making salaries in the $250k range, in case anyone thinks there is no money to be made.</p>
<p>This is of course completely ignoring all the management opportunities, which do not necessarily mean stepping out of engineering roles. Most of the first two levels of management at my company are essentially split-roles, where you spend a certain amount of time doing management work and the rest working as an engineer. Even at higher levels, it is not uncommon for people to rotate between the different roles, spending a couple of years as a manager, then going back to an engineer for a few years, then returning to management, and so on.</p>
<p>I would assume the reason for the difference is that the nature of the other fields allows them to work on their own. Lawyers, dentists, doctors, and accountants can all perform their work by themselves, even if they work for firms and are not self-employed (correct me if I’m wrong). Engineers work in teams, and thus need someone to manage the groups.</p>
<p>That being said, the structural engineer on the project I’m working on is a vice president but still handles the day to day issues that come up through the construction of the building.</p>
<p>I still do “grunt” database work. Yes, I have done the project management stuff and at one time an I.T. director but nowadays companies do not pay much more to do management so there is not much incentive for us “old techies” to manage. I look at it like why should a worry about 30 engineers work while I can get paid the same for just worrying about MY work.</p>
<p>Me and my manager are in the same pay range. He gets paid to make sure my required training is up to date (LOL) and I handle the tech stuff on whatever project I am on.</p>
It varies considerably. I would say about 30% have at some point gotten their PhD’s. About 60% have a masters, although the majority of those are coursework-only degrees done during the evenings. Only about 10% have just the BS degree, if only because the coursework masters’ are paid for 100% and easily attainable.</p>
<p>I have to completely disagree with this. I’m not sure what you are basing this comment on but there are many experienced technical engineers with little to no management responsibilities that do very well. You do not need to be a manager to do well in engineering. This is a huge misconception. In some instances, technical engineers can make as much or more than managers.</p>
<p>Not to sound like a broken record or mix thread topics, but I then have to ask: what concrete, non-obvious but actionable steps could people - whether they be engineering students or currently practicing engineers - actually reasonably take to maximize their chances of landing one of those positions? Not insipid bromides such as “Work hard” or “Do your best”, for everybody has known since they were children that those steps are important. Rather, I’m talking about steps that people don’t know about because they’re not obvious, but can be reasonably acted upon. </p>
<p>The fact of the matter is, engineering as a profession does seem to have a problem with career progression. Starting salaries are relatively high, but salary progression decelerates markedly with experience. The lament of experienced engineers of their inability to break past their employers’ ‘pay ceiling’ - real or imagined - without transitioning to management pervades much of the trade literature and engineering-oriented discussion boards and blogs. </p>
<p>Some of you may remember ariesathena, a former CC contributor and former practicing engineer who quit her job for law school, and was told by her former engineering coworkers that she was likely to make a higher salary in her very first post-law school year than any of them would ever make as engineers for the rest of their careers regardless of their experience level. Certainly the notion of ever making $250k as an engineer (not a manager, but an engineer) represents nothing more than delusions of grandeur for the overwhelming majority of engineers. </p>
<p>So I ask again: if there is indeed a concrete, non-obvious yet actionable procedure by which an engineer could actually someday obtain one of those $250k jobs, then let’s put it on the table. Let’s discuss it. I’m quite sure that many people - myself included - would like to know exactly what that procedure is.</p>
It depends on what you want to do. If you want to become a subject matter expert, become one - study that subject religiously, take every opportunity to do “learning” jobs like research rather than production jobs (although you should take some of those as well). If you want to become a systems architect, really study outside your specialty, and keep working your way up the system ladder - parts to boards to subassemblies to assemblies to units (in EE). But a lot of it comes down to hard work, talent, and luck. Be a “yes” guy.</p>
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This is an issue in ALL fields. Most jobs of ANY type have a pay progression that builds up quickly over the first 4-10 years as you attain “general competency”, and then settles into a pyramid with a few “top-quality” people making top money and most making the base. Going into management is the way out of this, if you lack the talent or dedication to go for one of those top spots.</p>
<p>How many fields do you know where the salary starts high and just keeps going up and up and up for the “average” workers? And “average” is an important issue here, because there are always a few people in a given profession who will make a killing. But top lawyers are not “average”, and lawyers who want a $1M salary better either be superstars or else move into management. Top doctors either step into management roles or else become sought-after specialists.</p>
<p>Another question is why? Why should salary keep rising if contribution is not?</p>
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Yep, law pays more if you pick the right specialty. The best paying jobs are those in medicine, that manage, or that negotiate or handle money. This is not new</p>
<p>sakky, making 250k as a lawyer also represents nothing more than delusions of grandeur for the overwhelming majority. If a lawyer is making this much as a non partner, then they are either billing a very larger number of hours or they are very specialized and in a select group of graduates likely from the very top law schools. The thing to consider is what is required to make this much. If you have to work 90 hours a week to make this much, is it really worth it? You always paint such a negative picture of engineering by making comparisons that aren’t really accurate. On average do lawyers earn slighlty more than engineers, maybe in some areas of law, but it is pretty unlikely that a lawyer with no experience would earn more than a truly experienced engineer. And you are right that most engineers will not make 250k without managing people but it is possible for technical experts and consultants to reach that range. If you are making this in any field (not including surgeons) and you are not a partner or manager, you are going to have to be very skilled.</p>
<p>Is there a concrete way to earn this much as an engineer? The short answer is no but this applies to absolutely every profession. It isn’t like new law graduates are all getting starting salaries that exceed those of veteran engineers. From the lawyers that I know, it seems the job prospects for graduating lawyers is currently not very encouraging, not to mention that most law school grads have a large amount of debt upon graduation. If you are good enough at anything you can make 250k or more. There might not be a concrete way to do this but a certainly possible answer for an engineer is to become an expert in your field and become a consultant, start a company, or work your way up to a high level manager. There are no jobs that will give this type of salary without an extreme amount of work.</p>
<p>Cosmicfish, that’s not a bad first try, but I think that doesn’t quite capture the essence of what I’m talking about. But once again, you’ve fallen into the trap that many others have fallen into before you by retreating into palavers of “hard work”, “talent”, and “luck” that everybody knows are important. Granted, it’s not your fault, as the trap is tempting to fall into. That may be my fault, for perhaps I didn’t phrase the question well.</p>
<p>So here’s a better way to ask the question. Michael Porter once famously described corporate strategy as not only what companies should choose to do, but also what they should choose not to do. Hence, along that same vein, regarding career strategy, what exactly should engineers choose not to do that they are doing now. And again, I don’t mean mere bromides such as “Don’t be lazy” which is just a restatement of “Work hard”. What I mean are actual job responsibilities, skills, technologies, or related aspects that you should deliberately choose to spend as little time as possible on because they are unproductive and unmarketable, so that you have more time to spend on learning skills that are actually productive and marketable. </p>
<p>As an example, one of the most profound - if sad - insights regarding career strategy that has taken hold in the US economy has been: Don’t learn manufacturing/operations. Don’t enter the man/operations side of a company. Instead, enter the finance, strategy/business-development, or sales side of the company because, sadly, that’s where the power has swung in the US economy over the last generation. </p>
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<p>I’m not even talking about salaries necessarily having to rise forever. I agree that most people in any profession will make the “base”. The issue is that the “base” in engineering is not particularly high, relative to many other professions. See below. </p>
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<p>Ariesathena wasn’t even talking about the ‘right specialty’. Without mentioning which law school she went to, I can tell you that the average graduate from her law school who took private sector jobs - aggregated over all “specialties” (if 1st year lawyers can even be said to have a ‘specialty’ at all) - will make significantly more then even most engineers with decades of experience. According to the BLS, other than PetE, even the top 10% of all engineers, regardless of degree level and experience, will be making less than she will be while she’s still in her 20’s. </p>
<p>And that’s the answer that I was afraid you would provide, but surely only confirms the worst fears of the readers on this board. The correct career strategy, sadly, is then, if you want high pay, choose not to be an engineer. Instead, choose to enter those other professions you mentioned, such as finance. </p>
<p>Is is then any wonder that many of the best engineering students from the top schools such as MIT and Stanford choose not to actually work as engineers, but would rather take jobs in finance and consulting?</p>
<p>Is that right? Again, consider the highest 10% of engineering salaries - aggregated over all experience and degree levels. Removing the Petroleum Engineering outlier, the 10th percentile salaries seem to settle around 120-135k. In contrast, Biglaw associate positions - which are the type of positions that students from the (high ranked) law school that ariesathena attended often times obtain - now pay $160k just to start. More broadly, the average graduate from her law school who took a private sector job made $135k, again, just to start. </p>
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<p>But that’s what we’re talking about. Obviously the average lawyer will never make $250k, and neither will the average engineer. Cosmicfish himself stated that those engineers who do make that sort of salary represent the pinnacle of technical excellence, a level which presumably most engineers will never attain. </p>
<p>Hence, we’re inherently talking about exceptional people, regardless of profession. What seems to be clear is that an exceptional lawyer is far more likely to make $250k than will an exceptional engineer. For example, if you obtain a starting biglaw job - a position that is highly achievable if you obtain a law degree from a top - that already pays $160k in the first year alone, then achieving $250k only represents a few years of career progression at that firm. The pathway is then obvious if not easy, just stay at that law firm. In contrast, the way to achieve $250k as an engineer is entirely unobvious, although I hope that cosmicfish could enlighten us with some actionable strategies of what to do (and more importantly, what not to do). </p>
<p>Let me put it to you this way. The award-winning guy with the brilliant PhD dissertation in engineering from MIT and a number of published papers in top journals is still less likely to ever make a $250k salary in his entire life than somebody who graduated from Harvard Law School or Harvard Business School, despite the former surely being a far more impressive achievement. </p>
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<p>Well, the initial responses from cosmicfish seem to indicate that you will have to work strenuously hard as an engineer if you ever want to make $250k, perhaps also on the order of 90 hours a week. He mentions that you have to take opportunities to learn and study both inside and outside of your specialty (cosmicfish, feel free to jump in if you disagree). So that seems like a wash to me. Either way, you’re going to have to work hard. </p>
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<p>First year associates in the financial services make that right out of business school. Are they ‘very skilled’? I suppose that’s in the eye of the beholder. But nobody can deny the exceedingly high pay packets in finance, coupled with rather questionable skillsets, which was surely one major factor for why the industry collapsed just a couple of years ago, necessitating immense government intervention. {And now, ironically, they’ve returned to record payouts.} </p>
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<p>All I know is that I continue to see many of the best engineering minds of our generation not really wanting to actually work as engineers, but are instead more attracted to other, more lucrative professions. I fret for the future technological leadership of this country if our best human capital continues to be diverted to other fields. </p>
<p>Consider the lamentations of Nicholas Pearce:</p>
<p>*Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: “It’s marketed as–I don’t want to say dead end but sort of ‘O.K., here’s your role, here’s your lab, here’s what you’re going to be working on.’ Even if it’s a really cool product, you’re locked into it.” Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. “If you’re an M.I.T. grad and you’re going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day–as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that–it seems like a no-brainer.” *</p>
<p>To be clear, I’ve never met Nicholas Pearce. I certainly never told him to say what he said to Time Magazine. He came up with that conclusion all by himself. Before the economic downturn, nearly half of all MIT graduates who entered the workforce took jobs not in science/tech, but rather in finance or consulting (and even now during the downturn, nearly 1/3 still do). MIT is arguably the best technical school in the world, and yet many of the best graduates don’t actually want to work in tech. Nor is this specific to MIT - a large fraction of graduates at Caltech and Stanford also choose not to work in tech but would rather become consultants or financiers.</p>
<p>If it isn’t true that engineers are always consigned to relatively low salaries (compared to those other professions), then what is the correct strategy that an engineer should pursue to achieve those high salaries? Again, I’m asking for specific, concrete, non-obvious, yet actionable steps that people should not only choose to do, but also choose not to do in order to maximize their chances for success.</p>
There are reasons that I say this - there are many paths to great financial success, but ALL of them involve some combination of the above. You can’t control luck or talent (although you can be aware of it and plan accordingly), so hard work is the only real recommendation.
Ultimately, there are so many different routes to success that it is hard to pinpoint anything as a killer OTHER THAN the opposites of what I said above. The only thing I can really say is that you should not remain in the exact same position more than 2 years in most circumstances - after that you should try to grow in some way.</p>
<p>I had the opportunity to participate in a “leadership training” program at my company - the educational part was of mixed value, but one of the real benefits was that the couple of dozen of us in the program got a lot of access to the top people in the company. We asked ALL of them about their routes to success, and ALL of them were different - some people aggressively pursued certain activities, others quietly built a reputation and let people seek THEM out. Some stayed focused in a single area, others branched out across technologies, disciplines, departments, even job roles. We asked them what WE should do, but you can guess the only real suggestions they could give us.</p>
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Well, if you want to be an engineer, then operations and manufacturing are valuable things to learn. If you just want a pile of cash then do the other stuff. I’m sorry that you can’t do everything, but the paths to fabulous wealth are tragically restrictive.</p>
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Sorry, but that is just not true - of all professions NOT requiring a professional graduate degree, engineering is consistently one of the highest paying. </p>
<p>According to this table, my starting salary was greater than 10% of all lawyers and after less than 5 years in engineering I am already making as much as 25% of ALL lawyers!!. Now, I should say that I do have a coursework-only masters degree, got it at night paid for by my company, but even still, I think I’m doing pretty well compared to a national selection of lawyers.</p>
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Sure, if all you care about is money, or if the amount by which you prefer engineering is less than the amount that you prefer the extra money. Considering just the field of law, I know several lawyers - of my friends from high school and college I can now count a corporate tax attorney, a patent attorney, an assistant DA, a personal injury lawyer, and a lawyer for an ad company. ONE of those people makes substantially more than I do, all of them work a heck of a lot more hours, none of them have kids (no time!!), 3 are married (2 to each other), and I would not choose ANY of their jobs - even the one who makes 4x what I do. Perhaps especially - he absolutely HATES his job, but knows that if he leaves he will be professionally ruined.</p>
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No. Many of them are entering those programs with that specific intention, so why should I be surprised? For that matter, many people graduating from a degree program do so having just discovered that they don’t want to work in that field.</p>
<p>My boss has a PhD in EE, and the rest of his graduate lab group went into the financial sector. He still makes a ton of money, loves his job, and gets to do things and go places that they will never get a chance to experience. How many of them have ridden in a jet fighter, or attended satelite launches, or stood inside a submarine under construction? You think he made a bad decision because they make a little more money than he does?</p>
<p>It seems you want a “rich engineer” instructional manual, and unfortunately, one doesn’t exist - and if one did, who wouldn’t follow it? You can’t have everything in life, so it is up to you to decide what is more important - money, fun work, family, leisure time? Decide.</p>
But many will not be able to get private sector jobs, and many of those who do will be dropped from those companies during their first couple of years only to take less profitable positions. I posted a link to some lawyer averages, and you’ve seen it too - MEDIAN average wage for lawyers is only $113k.</p>
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Sure. And an exceptional engineer will build more stuff and work less and require less of an education. I would argue that being a drug dealer has an even higher potential income, if that is all that matters to you.</p>
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Let’s compare. My friend from BigLaw bills about 4000 hours a year - that’s about 80 hours a week, and occurs at any and all hours - I’ve seen him leave parties (the few he attends - seriously, I hardly ever see the guy), and he (and his wife) have told me about getting calls in the middle of the night that sent him rushing back to work or fielding calls from his kitchen. He gets paid really really well, so when he vacations he can travel to great places and do cool things, although he has had to cancel some of those vacations at the last minute (or during).</p>
<p>I “work” about 2200 hours a year (including sick time, vacations, holidays, etc.), and pretty much set my own hours. During the three years I spent getting my masters I studied and attended classes probably about another 300 hours a year, so give me a total of 2500 hours for that time. I have never had to bring work home, and the only times I’ve had to go significantly overtime were things for which I volunteered and got paid extra, and enjoyed. If I attend a conference or attend an in-house training session, I get paid to do so - it doesn’t cost me extra time or money. Don’t get me wrong - during the hours when I am actually expected to be working, I work and it is not easy, and I work harder than almost all the non-engineers in the company … during thise hours.</p>
<p>I have kids and love my job, he has been waiting to start a family for literally 8 years now, works a lot more than I do (around 30 hours more a week), and hates his job, but I will freely admit he has a very nice house.</p>
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I don’t think anyone can tell YOU how to do it, for two reasons. First, there is no one path for engineers - for lawyers and finance junkies the path is laid out precisely, and the money really goes to those who are best at walking that very very specific path, but that is just not how engineering works. Second, if there is one single characteristic of really financially successful engineers it is that money was at most a secondary concern - they love what they do and pursued what fascinated them, and that interest and pursuit lead them to expertise and innovation and dedication that other people were willing to pay a lot for. Since money seems to be your PRIMARY concern, I cannot imagine what advice I could give you that would help.</p>
<p>Spouse is an atty–just because this BIGLAW atty bills over 4000 hours (!)(?) does not mean he is actually working all of those hours. We question that amount of hours billed even in a BIG law firm. Spouse wonders if this person is committing mail fraud (HA!). Yes, the hours can be grueling for attys–if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Our engineer child comments all the time that lawyers sell their soul for work…engineers don’t have to do that!</p>
<p>Bottom line–if you are passionate about your work, you will be successful. How do you measure success? For some, it is the big paycheck–for others it is much more.</p>
<p>So you throw out the petroleum engineers as an outlier but you compare engineering salaries to big law salaries. Big law is arguably an even bigger outlier within the law profession than petroleum engineers are in the engineering profession. For every lawyer making big law money, there are thousands of lawyers making no where near that. Sure if you want to use the very top law school graduates working at the most prestigious law firms to base your claim on then be my guest but if you are going to count outliers for lawyers, then you should count outliers for engineering. I know you will say that exceptional lawyers can make more than exceptional engineers but every situation is so different, who can say either way. I know an engineer who started a company and sold it for millions, but in all fairness, should I use this example to compare what this exceptional engineer made to lawyers in general? I don’t think so. Your bias against engineering is evident.</p>
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<p>Again this is speculation. A truly exceptional engineer that starts a successful company is much less likely to make 250k than an exceptional lawyer who starts a law firm? Not sure whether anyone can say for certain either way. An exceptional technical consultant can make upwards of 250k. Can an exceptional lawyer in certain areas also do this? Sure, I’m not saying they can’t. If you are bright enough to start a company or climb the corporate ladder, you can make a great living in either profession.</p>
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<p>Another instance of sakky telling us all how engineering is inferior to investment banking. Here again you are using a very, very small group of business graduates from the very top schools. You don’t think exceptional engineers at the top software companies or successful start ups could make as much as an investment banker?</p>
<p>The bottom line is this. We can sit around all day and argue about exceptional lawyers making more than exceptional engineers but the truth is that if you are truly exceptional in any field, the sky is the limit. If someone has the ambition and drive, there is nothing holding them back. Sakky, you seem to turn every thread into “investment banking or big law jobs pay more than the average complacent engineer sitting in a cubical.” Ok. point taken but don’t forget that this is for .01% of lawyers and business majors. The top .01% of engineers at places like google, microsoft, petroleum companies, or successful start ups aren’t doing too bad either. I’m not saying the very top lawyers or bankers can’t make a lot of money. If someone wants to pursue that profession, more power to them but how can anyone sit here and say for certain that one profession will lead to more money than another. Bottom line is each individual should find what they enjoy.</p>
<p>Because there are so few of them. But even if you wanted to include them, fine. Including the tiny number of PetE’s in the world only emphasizes the point further that only a small percentage of engineers will ever make even what a first year biglaw associate will. </p>
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<p>But that is indeed what we’re talking about. At least, that is what I am talking about. Anybody who can graduate from MIT, Stanford, or any other top engineering school is clearly an outlier. </p>
<p>Certainly, I have always agreed that for somebody who was merely an average high school student who then attended an average college, earning an engineering degree and a $50-60k starting salary is a sweet deal. Not to be overly harsh, but, frankly, what else was he going to do? He doesn’t exactly have a plethora of top recruiters beating down his door. For that reason, I have always recommended engineering as an excellent major for the average person. </p>
<p>But we’re not talking about the average person here. We’re talking about people who were the best students in high school and then attended the best colleges. For this person, exactly why should this person work as an engineer, when he has a multitude of other career options? That is what I am trying to ascertain. </p>
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<p>But now you’ve just changed the terms of the debate. I don’t dispute that exceptional entrepreneurs in any field will do very well. But that’s not what we’re talking about. After all, I don’t know that too many engineering programs actually teach you entrepreneurship skills. That’s not what you’re learning in those programs. You’re learning engineering. Hence, it is fair to examine the marketability of simply the engineering skill set.</p>
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<p>And again, I am restricting myself to the very same small group of engineering graduates from the very top engineering schools. </p>
<p>I said it before and I’ll say it again: the average graduate from Harvard Law School or Harvard Business School makes more than does the average engineering PhD graduate from MIT, despite the latter being surely a far more impressive intellectual achievement. In each case, clearly we are talking about a small minority of highly exceptional people. Only a tiny handful of people in the world could ever dream of earning an engineering PhD from MIT. </p>
<p>Yet, at the end of the day, the MIT engineering PhD graduates are not really paid that much relative to the professional degree graduates at the nearby rival school - to the point that many of MIT’s PhD graduates also choose not to take engineering jobs, but rather will take jobs in consulting or finance. For example, the 2008 winner of MIT’s Karl Taylor Compton Prize, which is the highest award bestowed upon an MIT student every year, was awarded to a PhD Materials Science graduate who then chose not to even take a job in engineering at all as his first job, but rather chose to join a venture capital firm. </p>
<p>Frankly, I’m shocked that nobody else seems to find this to be distressing. Much of the very best human capital that the engineering world has to offer doesn’t even really want to work as engineers at all, but would rather head to consulting or finance. </p>
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<p>I agree that each individual should find what they enjoy. But it is clear that people seem to be voting with their feet. I don’t see a mass exodus of consultants and financiers looking to become engineers. Do you? I have never heard of anybody saying: “After college, I worked for 2 years at Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, but now I want to go back to graduate school in engineering so that I can switch careers to be an engineer.” But I see plenty of former engineers who say: “I worked as an engineer for a few years, but now I’d rather go to a top MBA program and transition to consulting or banking.” Or, heck, many of them don’t even bother working as engineers at all, if Nicholas Pearce is any indication. Like I said, before the downturn, nearly half of all MIT graduates who entered the workforce didn’t take jobs in tech at all, but rather went to consulting or banking. Granted, while not all MIT graduates are engineers, ~60% of them are, which means that a substantial fraction of engineering students at arguably the most famous engineering school in the world choose not to actually work as engineers. </p>
<p>That raises the question: Why is the migration so one-sided? Many of the best engineering students would rather be consultants or bankers, but few if any of the best consultants or bankers would rather be engineers. Why? The same also seems to hold for law. Many engineers would rather become lawyers - as I know many former engineers who went to law school - but it seems that not many lawyers would rather be engineers. Again, why the asymmetry? </p>
<p>I would not be concerned if migration patterns were balanced. If some engineers wanted to be consultants/bankers, and a comparable number of consultants/bankers wanted to be engineers, then we could simply chalk that up to a matching process where people are trying out different careers to find one that is optimal for them. </p>
<p>The issue is that the migration is unbalanced. People want to emigrate from engineering, but nobody seems to wants to immigrate. As they say regarding geopolitics, if a country has more people that want to leave the country than want to enter, that country has a problem on their hands. And this is especially acute when your best people want to leave, for that means that you’re exporting precious human capital. One should then ask: why do so many of our best people feel that they need to leave? Why can’t we provide better opportunities for them at home?</p>
<p>Yet you disregard the fact that only a small percentage of lawyers will ever make it to a big law job…Your bias continues to show.</p>
<p>We all know your stance and I am not going to argue any further but the point here is that if you are an exceptional engineer, you can make as much as an exceptional lawyer. Even forgetting about people starting a company, a highly specialized technical consultant can make as much as a highly specialized lawyer. We can’t sit here and say for sure which profession will lead to more money for any specific individual, but comparing engineering to a big law associate is not accurate because that is an extreme outlier. If we are talking about big law salaries out of all lawyers, then lets consider the top petroleum or software engineers at start ups or lucrative places like google or facebook. I can choose the very top earners in every profession and I can compare that to other professions in general, but that doesn’t mean that this comparison is valid at all. The best in any profession can do extremely well. Bottom line.</p>
<p>Yet, sad to say, to not provide specific advice about what you should, and more importantly, what you should not do, is to actually provide no workable advice at all. If all you can say is “many different paths to success exist”, or “you can’t control luck or talent”, is , frankly, to not provide any help whatsoever. People need to know what specifically what they should and should not be doing.</p>
<p>Now, to be fair, cosmicfish, I know that these are hard questions that I am asking, for which very few people have ever provided strong answers. But these are precisely the types of questions that people really want to know. Everybody knows that hard work is important. Everybody knows that luck is important. That is obvious. Everybody has known that since they were children. What people want to know is what is not obvious, but also actionable. Advice is the most helpful when it actually tells you something that you don’t already know, but that is useful. Otherwise, there frankly is not much value in advice. </p>
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<p>So in other words, you agree with my point that if people just want money - however misguided you may think that goal is - then they should specifically choose not to learn manufacturing/operations. </p>
<p>That’s been my point all along regarding advice about what you should choose not to do if you want to achieve certain goals. So you now have a template for the sort of useful advice that I and other CC readers are seeking: “Given that you want to achieve goal X, what activities Y should you specifically choose not to engage in, as being unproductive uses of your time?” </p>
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<p>Sorry, but it is true. Notice that I said many professions. Not all professions. Strategy consulting is a profession. Investment banking is a profession. Hedge fund management is a profession. VC/PE is a profession. None of them strictly require a graduate degree (although it is true that many participants hold MBA’s). Yet I think we can all agree that all of them pay higher base-level pay (including bonuses) then does engineering. </p>
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<p>But we’re not talking about all lawyers. We’re talking about the best lawyers. After all, ariesathena didn’t just got to any law school*. She went to one of the best law schools from which garnering a high-paying BIGLaw associate job immediately upon graduation is a highly realistic possibility, indeed, likely a probability. Like I said, she almost certainly made more than does the average graduate with a PhD in engineering from MIT. </p>
<p>Like I’ve always said, certainly, engineering is a desirable profession for the average person - in fact, arguably even better than law. But I’m not talking about average people. I’m talking about the *very best *people. After all, the population on CC is strongly skewed towards the very best students. {It sure doesn’t seem as if there are many mediocre students from no-name schools who populate the CC readership.} The question then is, regarding the very best students, what should they do to succeed? </p>
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<p>And again, however wrong-headed you may think it is to pursue the goal of money, the fact is, that is indeed what many people want. Whether they should want that is a different question. </p>
<p>However, given that people do want money, the relevant question then is what is the best way for them to achieve it? </p>
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<p>I’m afraid that strains credulity? Why the heck would somebody choose to undergo the harsh lifestyle of an MIT engineering student if they had always known from the very beginning that they never wanted to work as engineers at all, but would rather be consultants or bankers? They could have always chosen the easier lifestyle of a MIT-Sloan Management major. </p>
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<p>Again, if the migration was symmetrical, then we wouldn’t have a problem. </p>
<p>But it isn’t. The migration is consistently one-sided. Far more engineers switch to becoming consultants or bankers than consultants/bankers who switch to becoming engineers. If the problem was simply one of matching, then you would expect to see a symmetrical distribution of emigration and immigration. Sadly, you do not. Certain professions consistently attract people from other fields.</p>