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<p>The change has to come from above the company level as aibarr suggested. My former company once worked a small project where the client would only pay $10,000 total, which is a ridiculously small amount considering the project was out of state and required field work. I believe we ended up having interns do 90% of the work. Kind of ridiculous… Profit margins just aren’t high enough. Top companies in my field (which is engineering-related and hires a lot of engineering majors) usually offer the best starting pay for civil engineers, but our profit margin is usually between 0.5% and 2.5% with 2.5% being rare and usually for highly complex projects. I can’t imagine how low it is for the engineering consultants on the job. </p>
<p>Working conditions differ immensely from company to company. There are the EA’s of the world at there are those at the top of the Best [insert category] Firm to Work For lists. </p>
<p>Going after engineering graduates who go into law, medicine, and finance would be tough. It’s probably easier to try to get more average engineers from average schools. Engineering is still the best money option for these grads.</p>
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I’m not sure that’s the key. All you’re going to get if you only do that is more crumbling infrastructure, more collapses, and more deaths because there will be fewer engineers around to do the jobs. What we have to do is MARKET ourselves better to both private clients and to the general public as a whole. If engineering services are viewed as a commodity, then of course pay won’t be higher. Of course clients will go with the lowest bidders. Of course the public won’t support allocating funds to rebuild our country’s infrastructure if they don’t understand how critical our services are. If you have fewer PE’s, firms will just try to force the remaining PE’s to take on extra work with the same pay since the company isn’t getting any extra revenue.</p>
<p>Nobody gives a damn how hard you worked for your PE. It’s all about marketing marketing marketing!</p>