Is engineering a bubble that will burst?

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Number of billionaires by state (per Forbes, 2016):
California 128
New York 93
Texas 48
Florida 44
Illinois 17
Washington 13
Connecticut 12
Michigan 11
Colorado, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, 10 each
Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, 9 each
Maryland, New Jersey, Nevada, 8 each
Missouri, Ohio, 6 each
Arkansas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Virginia, 5 each
Indiana, Montana, 4 each
Idaho, North Carolina, 3 each
Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, 2 each
Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, 1 each
Alabama, Alaska, DC, Delaware, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Dakota, Vermont, none

A quarter of the nation’s billionaires are in California, an impressive number to be sure, but according to Forbes only about 40% of the Califronia billionaires are in tech. Others are in real estate, finance, the entertainment industry, etc. I wonder how many of the nation’s 500 or so billionaires have engineering backgrounds. A higher fraction than the percentage of engineers in the general population, I’d wager, but it’s certainly not the only route to vast wealth.

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By domicile, not necessarily where said billionaire made his/her fortune. Since most of these folks own multiple homes, it is hard to gauge where the business got started to support a claim that Boston in Silicon Valley is where great wealth is created (vs. everywhere else).

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Well, this isn’t the case. To invest in a venture fund, you have to be an “accredited investor”, which at one time required ~$2M in assets or > $200K in annual income for the last couple of years. Now structures like pension funds could invest in VC funds, but they are much more likely to go into private equity funds than VC funds.

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Some of it (but not all, of course) is also inherited wealth that started before the tech boom. Forbes has an interactive map that shows where the wealthiest person in each state got their wealth. In Pennsylvania, it was an older woman who is an heir to the Campbell’s soup fortune, in Virginia , it is a Mars candy heir,etc. In California, it is Facebook and Zuckerberg, in Washington, it is Gates and Microsoft. Some states will have people that made their money in things like coal or oil, etc. It’s a mixup . The NC person made their money in software . It will be interesting to see going forward what these lists will look like as older people die off and their money is dispersed and new ways of becoming truly wealthy become more common.

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What do you think about Data Analytics Engineering?
My dd has the option of studying bioengineering with a concentration in Healthcare Informatics along with a Masters in Data Analytics Engineering in a 5 year program.

At her school the graduates from the cyber security engineering program are getting multiple job offers.

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@raclut, if she’s interested and has an aptitude, why not?

But few 18 year-olds actually know what they want to do at that age even if they think they do. Does that school have other majors that are easy to transfer to?

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Systems engineering could also be an option, maybe better fit with data analytics than bioengineering? She could potentially do systems or cyber security engineering with a minor in data analytics … But she should talk to advisors, fellow students, career services for best advice. If she is just starting school, she will have time to explore her options.

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No doubt a lot of people fall into that camp. However, in many instances, I think its just a matter of taking the percentages. What percentage of people have tech wealth or could ever have it? How limiting are college choices? What percentages of doctors have comfortable livings (going to state college for both undergrad and med school)? Upper limit for doctors (effectively speaking) is less than for certain other career paths. But lower limit for doctors is much higher.

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Is being on the Forbes 400 seriously a goal for any of you or any of your children?

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No, I think extreme wealth can end up being a burden. But, since I’m not extremely wealthy, I guess I’ll never know for sure!

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Not at all. But because stock ownership is widely dispersed in tech, someone in tech being on the Forbes 400 very likely means a few thousand millionaires from the same company. This is unlike say someone on the Forbes 400 who made their family fortune from something like soup, or finance, where ownership is much more concentrated.

We have to understand that the average engineer likely doesn’t have the endurance or mindset to pursue a medical degree, where the payoff only starts after about 11+ years of slogging vs. as little as 4 years for an engineering degree. The intelligence of the average engineer might also be slightly lower than the average doctor as well.

So a better comparison is an engineer with the motivation and intelligence of a doctor, I suspect that for those engineers, the median income will be lower than that of doctors, but the average income and accumulated wealth may well be higher.

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Yes, yes it is. Who else is going to pay for my Super Yacht! I can’t be expected to get by with some old plan yacht…please… [-X

http://kitty-mason.com/privilege-one-ultra-super-yacht-6x-ferraris/

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I think it’s odd to compare how you do financially to those in professions you don’t want to be in in the first place. I think the goal is to do well within your own profession/interests. If you want to be a doctor, be a doctor … Why care what engineers make? If you want to be an engineer, go be an engineer … Why care what doctors make? On CC, there sure is a lot of effort expended in comparing one’s income to others.

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Suppose we have x number of doctors (MD/DO) in the country, select x number of engineers, then do a comparison, any comparison. Do we count Bill Gates as an engineer?

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Why is it so important to people to prove that “their tribe” (professionally speaking) is smarter than some other tribe? Isn’t that kind of the mark of a loser, to think that way?

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A lot of 18-22 year old kids don’t really know what they want to do. So potential incomes can be a factor in picking. Also, for a lot of people there isn’t just one dream job. There are multiple different jobs/careers in which they could do well and would be happy. So for those folks, potential income is another factor.

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Exactly this. My D loves mathematics, and art, and research, and the possibility of being a doctor. She is getting exposure to all of those fields, as well as some grounding on what the income range in each category is likely to be.

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Is the path to receiving an engineering degree rigorous? Do you need certain amount of intelligence to get an engineering degree? Is being a smart, hard-worker a bubble that can burst?

On the other hand, what undergraduate degree gives our kids the best chance at being a billionaire? Or even millionaire? I’ll finish my coffee on the lanai, go to my middle class job I love, walk the dog on the beach, then back out on my lanai to grill dinner, and enjoy my health and happiness while that gets decided so I can push my kids towards that degree, and they can have a better life than mine.

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A lot of what made Silicon Valley the tech hub in the first place was… military investment in early tech projects such as semiconductors and the internet, that were based in the SF Bay Area. That government infrastructure contribution was necessary for SV to become the hub. States that are far away from that infrastructure would have a hard time getting started due to a lack of available resources in the region. Though states neighboring California (Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico especially; Washington and Texas have tech scenes of their own as well) have developed a tech scene that comes from companies branching out to those states. So it makes sense that more Midwestern states have fewer tech billionaires, being far from a tech center in the first place.

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You know, that’s a bit of a funny issue. Doctors who go into primarily administrative work are still doctors. Engineers who do the same are no longer engineers but rather managers/executives. Makes it hard to do a fair comparison.