<p>This thread is starting to really bum me out! I am an over 40 soon to be EE student. I have wanted to pursue an Engineering Degree for years and now I finally have the opportunity… at a great school -and paid for. I am in it for the academic challenge as well as a career change. I don’t expect to be overly rich but a decent living would be nice. The age discrimination factor does have me slightly worried, but it is my suspicion that this is a function of the “more seasoned” engineers being so far removed from current tech that they lose their edge. This is my hope anyway.</p>
<p>…this is a downer of a thread isn’t it…not that I haven’t had my own severe problems as an engineer…or seen other very competent engineers have equally severe problems…it’s just that part of it is the awful economy…If it were 1999, you’d be called for dozens of interviews, flown out to companies, they’d ask you what a transistor was, you wouldn’t know, and they’d give you 70k a year straight out of school. Engineering was golden!</p>
<p>If and when the economy improves, engineers will do just fine. Anyway, what else do you do with your life? Is there really a silver bullet out there?</p>
<p>Sure, there is some age discrimination out there. The bigger problems is these companies just don’t need or want to hire and they don’t care. If you’re young, they’ll say you don’t have enough experience, and if you’re old they’ll say you aren’t up on the newest technologies, when they couldn’t hire if they wanted to.</p>
<p>If there is a sliver bullet out there…tell me…seriously…! I read this stuff about the IT career and Wall st and I think it’s BS. Anybody can learn IT, and the people I know who go into it have just as many problems as the rest of us. Wall St. is a pipe dream. Sure…some get rewarded…but some really get rewarded in engineering too. If anybody has been paying attention, haven’t there been massive job cuts in wall st. over the last few years.</p>
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<p>One would think that the lack of barriers to entry would indeed drive down salaries in IT - but the inescapable truth is, as Globaltraveller said, there are indeed a plethora of high-paying, relatively secure and unstressful IT jobs that abound. </p>
<p>Which is why I suspect that the true barrier to entry is informational and social in nature. Yes, people could learn IT skills relatively easily, but the fact is, they don’t. Either they think it is too much trouble, or they simply don’t know how to go about starting out, or they’re simply intimidated by computers (a failing unfortunately common amongst older people, even engineers), or they don’t see their friends learning IT which prevents them from doing so themselves, etc.</p>
<p>As an analogy, I would point out that auto mechanics are well paid largely because many car-owners never learn how to perform even simple auto maintenance. I can understand why somebody might not want to change the oil filter on his own, not because he doesn’t know how, but simply because he doesn’t want to risk creating a mess in his garage or because he’s pressed for time. But plenty of drivers don’t even know how to do it at all. And yes - this even includes some people with otherwise impressive technical backgrounds. One of the better software developers I know freely jokes about his utter lack of knowledge of physical machinery. He admits that he has never even once opened the hoods of any of the cars he has driven, and never wants to. As far as he’s concerned, a car is nothing but black-box magic that allows him to get from Point A to Point B, and how it actually works is of no concern of his. </p>
<p>Similarly, while nowadays, everybody uses computers, practically nobody actually wants to learn how they actually work under the hood. They don’t want to know how the Windows Registry or a Linux/Unix runlevel works. They don’t want to know how to configure Wifi security or firewalls on even their own PC’s. They certainly don’t want to know how any of the backend server and router infrastructure operates They just want to be able to turn on their computers, surf the Internet, check email, play games, and have no interest in learning how any of it works. </p>
<p>Granted, you may argue that learning that material is boring and that’s why people don’t do it. True, but, let’s be honest, much of the curriculum in engineering is extremely boring, not to mention frustratingly recondite. Yet people still learn that. As a case in point, I have still yet to meet a single practicing engineer who actually understands how to use the Maxwell Relations that govern thermodynamics to solve real-world engineering problems, or heck, even knows what the heck the Relations even mean in a real-world sense. </p>
<p>Which leads to my next point - engineering salaries never rise as much as they could because an institutionalized system of engineering education serves to constantly replenish the supply of engineers. In other words, the pathway towards becoming an engineer is clear: you enroll in a college that offers engineering, and you then complete the requirements of that major. To be sure, the pathway is not easy - as the majority of students who attempt engineering will not actually finish the major. But the pathway is clear. You know exactly what you need to do; there is no informational uncertainty. However, most well-regarded engineering schools refuse to teach IT skills as part of their regular engineering curriculum. That is why you can find MIT and Stanford engineers - even EECS engineers - who know what a router actually does, or in some cases, have never even seen a router. </p>
<p>Moreover, you can see other students who are majoring in engineering, and that provides you with the reinforcing social infrastructure that eases the process. Human beings are social creatures and take cues from their social environment. This is particularly true of teenagers as that is precisely the stage in life when you are most attuned to the opinions of your peers. Yet who are the people who are entering college engineering programs if not 17-19 year old teenagers? It’s hard to excel at anything, or to even know what it means to excel, when you’re the only person doing it. More importantly, people tend to rely on role models, and many people do not feel the confidence to do something that nobody else around them is doing. If nobody else in your teen peer group is learning IT skills, you’re probably not going to learn it either. As an example, I am convinced that practically nobody would truly choose to learn the Maxwell Relations of thermodynamics on their own. But when you see others in your class learning them, you become incentivized to do so as well. </p>
<p>It is for those reasons that IT has strong barriers to entry. IT is surely less difficult to learn than is engineering, but engineering has a powerful social and institutional infrastructure built around it that greatly eases its barrier to entry. I find it deeply ironic that many graduates from the best engineering schools can calculate long derivations of equations from first principles but don’t even know how to change the oil on their car (and some don’t even want to know), or even what a router looks like. But that’s what happens when schools don’t teach you those skills. </p>
<p>Now, to be sure, I agree that if every engineer were to learn IT skills instead as I have recommended, IT salaries would surely plummet. But I am not so naive as to think that many engineers will learn IT skills just because I recommend it. Let’s face it - this posting on College Confidential is going to reach only a few thousand people at most. Even most of those people who read it will not actually do anything differently. Only a handful of people might learn IT who otherwise would not - and the IT market can easily accommodate them. </p>
<p>So the bottom line still stands: I don’t know how you get around the notion that many engineers - especially those who have the psychological fortitude to abide by informational and social uncertainty - would be better off learning IT skills. Like I said, in the realm of IT, your personal career development is largely in your hands. If you want to learn server admin, database design, router/switch configuration, cybersecurity, etc. - you can do it, at least to a moderate skill level, through a home lab. But you can’t really do that in regular engineering.</p>
<p>And again, for those who disagree, I would ask again - what are the concrete, non-obvious, yet actionable steps a (non-software) engineer could take to improve his prospects to obtain a high-paying yet low stress job (without switching to IT or software)? I don’t know of any.</p>
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<p>I certainly agree, if such skills did in fact exist and were readily learnable. </p>
<p>However, regarding schools, how many marketable engineering skills that can be learned at the undergraduate level that are taught by only a handful of schools. Let’s face it - undergraduate engineering education is standardized. What you learn at one school is mostly the same as what you would learn at any other engineering school. You may learn the material in greater depth and intensity at the better schools, but it’s still the same material. It’s not as if the better engineering schools are teaching “secret” equations or processes that other schools don’t know about. </p>
<p>Regarding employers, I certainly agree that there are some who will teach skills to certain engineers that are difficult to replicate and those engineers are indeed sitting pretty as rogracer indicated. But that leads to my core question - how do you get to be one of those engineers? What exactly are the concrete, non-obvious yet actionable steps you would have to take to become one of them? </p>
<p>Otherwise, you run the severe risk of having any opportunities to learn those high-demand skills. Let’s face it - the vast majority of engineering employers do not produce cutting-edge technology that provide valuable training opportunities. Even those employers that do produce cutting-edge technology usually also have plenty of older products in which you don’t really learn anything valuable. As an engineer, you run the severe risk of being stuck working on one of those products with no opportunity to learn more valuable skills. If an employer decides that you’re not going to be assigned to work on the newest technology, then you’re SOL. </p>
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<p>But like I said, even then, that’s not to say that you will get to be one of those engineers who will be assigned to provide that new technology. What if you’re not one of them? </p>
<p>To give you a case in point, I know some guys who worked - or used to work - as software engineers for Microsoft. Microsoft may not be the lodestone of the technology industry that it was in the 1990’s, but it still produces a number of new technologies such as Windows 7/Server2008, Exchange 2010, and SQL2008 that provide ample opportunities to learn highly marketable skills. For example, an Exchange guru, especially one with the Microsoft brand name on his resume, may be able to make over $200k a year. </p>
<p>The problem is that those guys weren’t assigned to those projects. Instead, they were assigned to handle tech maintenance and bugfixes on Windows/Office/Exchange/SQL 2000, which are clearly obsolete technologies. Even Microsoft has admitted that these technologies are obsolete, with Windows/Office 2000 (only recently) having their support lifecycles ended and Exchange/SQL to have their lifecycles ended in the near future. Microsoft provides tools and financial incentives for its clients to upgrade to the newer products. </p>
<p>Yet the fact remains that as long as Microsoft continues to support old technologies, somebody will have to be assigned to support them. That somebody could be you. Who the heck really wants to be stuck maintaining 10 year old software? Think about it. 10 years ago, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Firefox, Wikipedia, and even the very first Ipod didn’t exist. </p>
<p>It is for that reason that most of those guys quit working for Microsoft. They realized that they were never going to be provided with opportunities to learn new technologies. For example, as as the support lifecycle of Windows 2000 finally concluded, some were given the opportunity to transition to working on the cutting-edge product of …Windows XP, another clearly obsolete technology. Nor is it obvious to me that any concrete, actionable steps could have been taken by them to transition to new projects such as Windows 7. If Microsoft decides that you’re going to be stuck working on obsolete products, what are you going to do? </p>
<p>And to be fair, Microsoft is one of the most desirable engineering employers in the world, and do produce some cutting-edge, exciting products. Plenty of other companies don’t have any cutting-edge products. If even Microsoft has some engineers stuck with obsolete projects, what do you think happens at most other companies?</p>
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<p>Sure, but that’s ancient history now, as they’re back to hiring. </p>
<p>*Leverage is back on Wall Street – and this time it’s the bankers who have it.</p>
<p>Firms are adding jobs for the first time in two years, rebuilding businesses cut during the financial crisis and offering guaranteed payouts to lure top bankers. In New York, 6,800 financial-industry positions were added from the end of February through May…“Candidates are now getting multiple offers, and companies risk losing their desired candidates if they don’t act quickly enough – and that’s a real change,”*</p>
<p>[Wall</a> Street Hiring Jumps as Guaranteed Bonuses Return - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>And, yes, that includes tech workers as well. </p>
<p>*What Wall Street is going to need to stay rich are a few good tech geeks. The department where Wall Street recruiters and hiring managers say they’re going to add the most employees next year is technology. 2010 was already a big year for technology jobs on Wall Street- since the first quarter, tech postings are up 75% from a year ago, according to eFinancialCareers.</p>
<p>The Wall Street recruiting firm says there are shortages of development talent in the northeast, especially folks with trading, banking or investing experience. “Larger firms are turning to their technology departments as a cost-effective way to support compliance with new rules and regulations ensuring the integrity of the firm’s businesses, all while managing the small task of optimizing complex global technology infrastructures,” a report from the group says.*</p>
<p>[Calling</a> All Tech Geeks, Wall Street Is Hiring - Halah Touryalai - Working Capital - Forbes](<a href=“Calling All Tech Geeks, Wall Street Is Hiring”>Calling All Tech Geeks, Wall Street Is Hiring) </p>
<p>And indeed, Wall Street bonuses may be headed for record territory…again.</p>
<p>*Pay on Wall Street is on pace to break a record high for a second consecutive year, according to a study conducted by The Wall Street Journal…About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms—which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges—are set to pay $144 billion in compensation and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to the survey. Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms. *</p>
<p><a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704518104575546542463746562.html[/url]”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704518104575546542463746562.html</a></p>
<p>In fact, it has become quite clear that it has been far better to have been an investment banking employee than an investment banking shareholder. </p>
<p>*Investment banks have paid their staff nearly three times more in pay and bonuses than they have made in profits for their shareholders over the past five years, according to analysis by Financial News - raising the question over the fair distribution of rewards between employees and owners in the investment banking industry.</p>
<p>A sample of eight of the biggest investment banks and investment banking divisions that publish comparable figures paid out $311 billion in compensation and benefits between the beginning of 2006 and the end of the third quarter this year. This “payout multiple” was 2.6 times the $120.4bn they made in pre-tax profits over the same period for their shareholders - who provide the capital for, and shoulder the risk of, the business.</p>
<p>While few of the banks disclose net profits for their investment banking divisions, assuming an average tax rate of 35%, the investment banks made around $84bn in net profits for their shareholders over the past five years. This means that employees have received nearly four times the profits theoretically available to their shareholders. The disparity between how much staff get paid and how much shareholders or parent banks make in profits is likely to fuel the debate over bonuses and levels of remuneration in the securities industry at a sensitive time…banks were paying shareholders “1970s style dividends” while paying their staff “remuneration from the 2000s”.</p>
<p>He said: “Many banks have doubled everyone’s salary - how is that good management practice? It’s insane. No other business would double its fixed costs.” *</p>
<p>[Financial</a> News: High Investment Bank Staff Pay Raises Issues - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101205-704341.html]Financial”>http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101205-704341.html)</p>
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<p>Nobody is saying that IT workers don’t experience problems. </p>
<p>The difference is that those problems are more controllable. Your personal development is largely in your hands. If you want to learn a new skill, you (usually) can build a home lab and pick it up yourself. Software is largely costless either as freeware or as trial lab software, and much IT hardware is not particularly expensive. Like I said, you can build a quite reasonable home hardware lab for less than $10k through used gear on Ebay - and then when you’re finished, you can sell it right back onto Ebay and recover most of your money back. Hence, if your employer isn’t providing you with marketable IT learning opportunities, you can create your own opportunities. </p>
<p>Now, certainly I agree that there are plenty of IT workers who lack personal initiative and do not try to learn new skills. It is precisely those workers who tend to encounter the most career turbulence. </p>
<p>{Incidentally, one of the best ways to tell who is a promising IT worker or not is to ask them what they are running in their home lab. Interestingly, I’ve found the relationship to be curvilinear. If the answer is “they don’t even have a home lab”, that’s a strong indication that the person lacks true interest in IT. But if the answer is “Only the newest, most expensive gear”, that indicates that although the person clearly wants to learn, he may not really know what he’s doing. But if the answer is: “Hardware that is relatively old, but which I’ve customized to run the most advanced configurations”, then that’s the mark of somebody with a truly impressive skillset and dedication to the craft. For example, I was far less impressed by somebody who said that they had a Cisco PIX firewall in their homelab than somebody who actually *built their own PIX<a href=“the%20so-called” title=“FrankenPIX”>/i</a> from individual used components. } </p>
<p>But, like I said, you can’t really do that in (non-CS) engineering. You can’t reasonably build a homelab with which you can actually develop marketable engineering skills. Hence, you’re stuck with whatever learning opportunities your employer decides to provide you, and if he sticks you with scraps, then you’re forced to eat scraps.</p>
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<p>To be fair, I would say that engineering, for all its problems, is still probably the best overall bachelor’s degree one could obtain. This is especially true if, frankly, you’re not highly talented. Let’s face it - if you were a mediocre high school student who can only get into a low-tier college, then completing an engineering degree to obtain that $50-60k starting salary is a supersweet deal. Honestly, what else were you going to do? Be a liberal arts major and end up with just $35k? It is also for this reason that I think that many liberal arts majors would have been better off majoring in engineering. </p>
<p>The problem, as I said, is that your career is not highly controllable. You are stuck with whatever opportunities your employers provide you. Now, granted, if you don’t care about controlling your career, perhaps because you lack personal initiative, then this is not a drawback. {And there are admittedly plenty of people who lack personal initiative, and I’m not judging them.} But if you actually care, then you may want something that allows you greater control.</p>
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<p>This is a very real dilemma, but only for students at mediocre schools. Students from top schools (and I use the term top liberally, top 50 or so) can get decent jobs with degrees in any major. </p>
<p>For students at mediocre schools, I think being an accountant or actuary can be a good choice. I bet accountants have better job security and easier coursework than engineers, and salaries that are only somewhat lower.</p>
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<p>Sure, but let’s face it, the vast majority of students will not go to top 50 schools, but rather in mediocre schools.</p>
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<p>Sure, accounting and actuarial work may be fine choices. </p>
<p>But the fact remains that the vast majority of students will choose low-paying liberal arts majors, and not accounting, actuarial science, or engineering.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about your parents. Do what you love and it will all work out.</p>
<p>If you want to start your own business, which is the only “silver bullet” out there, isn’t an engineering degree the best option? And can’t you get into better MBA programs with an undergrad engineering degree, after working several years with the highest starting salary of any field? Doesn’t seem like engineering sucks…</p>
<p>You guys are being ridiculous - there is no MAGIC job that an idiot can do and make a lot of money.</p>
<p>An idiot isn’t going to pass his courses to get an engineering degree.
An idiot isn’t going to study his ass off to pass all the actuarial exams.
An idiot isn’t going to study his ass off to become a CPA.</p>
<p>@Sakky:</p>
<p>I think one of the ways engineers in non-CS fields can get more advanced training is by the time honored tradition of kissing ***. Not that I recommend that, but that’s a proven way. </p>
<p>On a more serious note, I believe engineering sacrifices a certain level of career mobility for a certain level of job stability. I view IT as a virtual version of the Old West, where adventure and risk-taking are necessary to find opportunities. You’re correct that engineering is more suitable for those of us who are mediocre, attending middle-of-the-road schools, over the age of 25, and/or don’t have many skills. You are also correct that many of us don’t learn IT skills because many of us don’t know where to start; what IT skills represent a good foundation to start off, how do we recognize what skills are in demand, valuable, obsolete, etc.</p>
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<p>But I don’t see IT as a field that necessarily requires excessive adventure and risk-taking, or at least, not in the way those terms are traditionally defined. If anything, I would argue that engineering actually requires more risk-taking than does IT. After all, many, almost certainly most, incoming engineering students will not actually complete engineering degrees. Many flunk out entirely, while others might not have flunked out per-se but were nevertheless deterred from continuing in the major due to mediocre grades. </p>
<p>Hence, everybody who actually manages to complete an engineering degree survived a frightful risk. If you try to learn some IT skills and are unsuccessful, oh well, you can simply move on to learning something else. But if you try engineering and receive poor grades, those grades will scar your academic record * for life*. I can think of several former engineering students who flunked their courses, and for the rest of their lives, whenever they’re asked whether they’ve ever been placed on academic probation or have been involuntarily suspended/dismissed from any school they’ve ever attended, they have to sadly answer: “Yes”. I therefore believe that whatever risk-taking is necessary to start an IT career is minimal compared to the far larger risk-taking necessary to earn an engineering degree. </p>
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<p>But how hard is that to figure out, really? That’s surely far easier than trying to figuring out the far more difficult material inherent in any engineering program. </p>
<p>For example, to this day, I still haven’t figured out what the real-world meaning is of the thermodynamic Maxwell Relations are, and I’ve conceded that I’ll probably never know. I also recently spoke to somebody who earned a PhD in engineering, and she freely admits that she doesn’t know either, never did, and probably never will. In fact, I have never met a single practicing engineer who does know. Compared to that, learning IT skills is child’s play. Indeed, sometimes literally so - I’ve even known some junior high school students who have picked up respectable IT skills. They can learn those skills yet somebody who wrestled with the baffling coursework inherent to any engineering program can’t learn those same skills? </p>
<p>As far as finding out what IT skills are useful or not, that requires little more than scanning the online job boards such as Monster or Hotjobs for IT jobs and note the particular skillsets that keep popping up. Or visiting some of the discussion boards that serve as the analogues to CC, but have to do with IT jobs and skill development. Or, perhaps even easier, determining which IT certifications seem to be in demand - which can also be discovered by gleaning the job boards - and then learning the skills necessary to earning those certifications. </p>
<p>Where I would agree is that an IT career is risky in the sense that it defies social convention. The standard career path laid forth for high school kids today is to attend the best college that they can, where they may choose an engineering major for which all of the necessary coursework and curricula has been laid out for them in advance. That curricula may be abstrusely incomprehensible and harshly graded such that many students won’t finish the major, but at least it is clear what is necessary to do to finish. A social infrastructure exists which they can follow: they can watch other students struggle to understand the same recondite engineering material that they’re attempting to understand. Every year, they can see other students above them successfully graduate and (hopefully) take engineering jobs. </p>
<p>In stark contrast, no such social validation system exists for the college student who wants to learn IT skills, despite the fact that those skills are far easier to learn than are engineering skills. He doesn’t see other students learning IT skills. He doesn’t have faculty telling him which skills to learn and threatening to punish him with poor grades if he doesn’t learn them. In short, he has to step away from an established social milieu in order to learn IT skills - and in that sense, I agree that what he is doing is risky. </p>
<p>But hey, that’s risk that you have to take if you want to be exceptional. After all, exceptional success, by definition, will never be obtained if you always do what everybody else is doing. You have to be willing to do things that others are not doing.</p>
<p>posts too long to read, kthanxbye</p>
<p>Your parents are more experienced and are right about that. I wish I had educated parents to know what is going on in the engineering field and enlightened me like your parents are doing. Some of the things they’ve mentioned about engineering does not apply to all engineers for example a 50 year old civil engineer is more in demand than a 30 years old because of experience. Anyways, it is up to you and what you like to do. However, engineering sucks and trust me and all the others, save yourself the long years for nothing, but it is a good start to get engineering degree and work for max 5 years and then shift to business or major in something else where you can benefit from engineering. I do not recommend law because it is as miserable unless you are well known or have the connections. Doctors work long hours and need to update all the time, however it is prestegious and rewarding and it opens a lot of other opportunities. Golden advise is if your parents are engineers and telling you this listen to them. If they’re not engineers and have their own work/business they paved the road for you, follow you’ll save a lot of time and money and you would be pushed in life.</p>
<p>There are many engineers who are happy. There are many engineers who are not. These kind of life decisions shouldn’t be made on the individual experiences of a just a few.</p>