Old Post/Thread: Recommended to Avoid Engineering

Parents Forum
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<p>In the old board (to which I could not reply), there was a post by Marleys Ghost saying that you people should avoid Engineering. The following is my attempted reply, which turned out to be unpostable.</p>

<p>AZiffelle</p>

<hr>

<p>In defense of Marley's Ghost, I should say that an Engineering Career is not for everyone. The same is true of every other type of career. On the other extreme, we would be SOL (Surely Out of Luck) if we had no Engineers.</p>

<p>As a working engineer with over twenty years of experience, I'd like to respond to M.Ghost's points.</p>

<p>As an engineer
1) you will miss out on a lot of fun in college, forsaking some of the best years of your life.
I'm sorry some have to work that hard. Your milage may vary. Personally, my undergraduate work (Physics/Math) was mostly a big party. By the time I got into an MSEE program, I finally reached a healthy balance of work and play.</p>

<p>2) you will miss the best chance you'll have to enrich your mind in a variety of academic areas
As a Physics undergrad (which I recommend for future engineers) we were in the College of Arts and Sciences. This invited a broad wealth of electives. I didn't find myself limited to the 189 trimester hours required for the degree. I graduated with nearly 230 hours... opening a world of possibilities. Compared to Physics, BSEE students were more cookie-cuttered. Mechanical, less so. Materials, about the same. I can't comment on (Bio)Chem E. as I didn't hang out with that crowd.
The MSEE program I went through was a nice application of the fundamentals learned in Physics.</p>

<p>3) you will be limited to working in a few major cities.
If you limit yourself to the "standard" employers, you will find that they will be hiring in the locations (cities) where they have facilities. If your motivation is highest salary (you will never get rich selling hours of your life), then you will be constrained to areas with high cost of living (sorry, that's just the way it is). On the other hand, with the advent of the Virtual Enterprise, you can basically do your work wherever you want. This won't be the case if you work on classified programs.</p>

<p>4) the hours will be excessively long
What's excessive? When employed by someone else, I always worked a standard work week. If you want to work some long hours, start your own business. Besides, time flies when you're having fun.</p>

<p>5) you will be surrounded primarily be men at work
Gee. This sounds like an encouragement for would-be female engineers. My work environment has always been 33 to 60 percent female.</p>

<p>6) many if not most of your coworkers are going to be foreigners
I'm sorry Marley's Ghost is bothered by this. Personally, I think variety is the spice of life. If you really dislike working with foreigners, you can keep your nose clean and work for a defense or intelligence contractor. The demographics is different in that environment, but you will be back to working in some finite collection of locations.</p>

<p>7) your salary will top out early and those liberal-arts majors will catch and pass you
I don't know many liberal-arts majors making a higher salary than I. Engineers I know are making nearly, or in excess of 6 figures. Just selling hours of labor, I am at about twice that. All of this without being responsible for evaluating subordinates' performance or having to do sales or other things that I find distasteful.</p>

<p>8) by the time you're in your 30's you will be worried about keeping a job
I've never worried about keeping a job. I have seen two types of "rightsizing." One type lets the underachievers go, involuntarily. The other invites voluntary termination, which tends to lose the brightest contributors to startups. Either way, if you are really good at what you do, you shouldn't have to worry about anything.</p>

<p>9) you're NOT going to get into management
It seems to me that most engineers don't want to get into management. That's why they became engineers in the first place. As an engineer, you will certainly have opportunity to do so if that is your inclination. However, the liberal-arts manager would be hard pressed to move to engineering if that turns out to be the interest or opportunity.</p>

<p>10) the long-term outlook for engineers is dismal
Some number of years ago, the movie "The Graduate" had one word of advice. "Plastics." Most of the opportunities available today didn't exist when that movie was made. We (and I include Marley's Ghost) have absolutely no idea what the long-term outlook will be for any career path.
Some people get rich providing liquidity (finance). Some get rich in distribution. Some get rich embarking in a new enterprise with a great idea. Alternate means of liquidity can be found... and means of distribution are being streamlined... but we would be SOL without engineers.</p>

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<p>real nice post, thianks for dissuading some fears</p>

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<p>I can give you somewhere between 10,000 and 18,000 reasons per year to pursue an engineering degree.</p>

<p>There are many salary surveys supporting the following conclusion, but one of them is the National Assocations of Colleges and Employers, Job Outlook 2004 Spring Update:</p>

<p>Major:</p>

<p>Psychology $27,791
English $31,169
Political Science $32,999</p>

<p>Marketing/Mkt Mgt. $35,321
Business administration $38,188
Economics/Finance $40,906
Accounting $41,110</p>

<p>Mgt. Info. Systems $42,098
Info. Sciences and Sys. $43,053
Computer Science $49,691</p>

<p>Civil Engineering $42,053
Mechanical Engineering $48,864
Computer Engineering $51,572
Chemical Engineering $52,819</p>

<p>There are a lot of people in this country who will never make $52,819 per year. Making that sum when you are 22 or 23 years old means a cool ride, nice pad, and a smile on your face.</p>

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<p>What about Jack Welch?</p>

<p>Mr. Welch was born in Salem in 1936. He received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts in 1957 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1960.</p>

<p>Also, you can, in fact, get rich selling the hours of your day. Ask the lawyers if you don't know how....</p>

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<p>There's rich, and then there's RICH!</p>

<p>The RICH lawyers are getting a percentage, not just selling their hours.</p>

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<p>Regarding engineering: I'll agree with a lot of what AZ has to say... a few thoughts of my own, however.</p>

<p>As an engineer, I worked a lot harder than my liberal arts friends. I acutely remember freshman year, with my roomie (Comp-e) and me (chemE) studying until the wee hours of the morning, with earlier classes than our liberal arts hallmates who were done with work at 10 pm. We consoled ourselves with the fact that we would have jobs later - which we did. As I'm not in engineering, I wish that I had more fun undergrad. I would never unilaterally advise for or against engineering, but, if you don't want to be an engineer, there is no reason to suffer through the curriculum for the sake of the education. It would be like wanting to learn a little music and joining the Army marching band for that. Chemistry or physics would afford the same technical degree, but with far fewer requirements (at least at my alma mater, there are about 12 classes required for each, compared to about 30 for chem engin).</p>

<p>That all said - there are some people who love being engineers and are great at it. It can be a lot of fun, challenging if you do R&D, and provide a stable, well-paying career. Marley is completely off - while engineering salaries do top out much below other salaried professionals, most liberal arts majors will never come close unless they get an advanced professional degree. If you want to make money, do investment banking. That advice doesn't change... but engineers can do well, especially if they go into management. Rich - no. Stable, well-paying - yes.</p>

<p>I will always caution (strongly!) against engineering as a background for law or med school. Med schools are incredibly GPA focused; there is NO WAY that an engineer can get a comprable GPA to her liberal arts counterparts. Law school is more of the same. While patent law is quite hot as a field, you can sit for the patent bar with other technical backgrounds as well - hard sciences, combinations of science courses, nursing degree, or medical degree. No need to torture yourself with engineering to get there. For med school - it's impossible to compete with liberal arts pre-meds in organic chemistry, as engineers take a much tougher schedule and cannot devote the same amount of time to it.</p>

<p>While engineering (esp. chem and comp) will monopolize most of your time, it is entirely possible to still get a great and broad education. I do think that the engineering education is phenomenal - you won't see me complaining about that! I, and many of my classmates, took second majors or minors in the liberal arts. MIT requires that 8 courses be taken in the humanities or social sciences; my alma mater requires 5, which may be true of all ABET curricula. If you plan your free electives and humanities well, as well as use some AP credit, there is enough room for electives. It is something that you will have to actively seek out and work for - it's not like liberal arts where the distribution requirements force you to take a broad spectrum of courses - but it's definitely doable.</p>

<p>Finally, my former classmates, as much as they all complained about the work, are not complaining about their lucrative and challenging careers. Note careers, not jobs! Often, engineering firms will pay for a masters of MBA as well. </p>

<p>Anyway - that's my rant. R&D isn't for me - never has been for me - and if I could tolerate the frustration of research, I would still be an engineer. My guess is that Marley's Ghost would probably be dissatisfied with a lot of professions - and does not represent the bulk of engineers.</p>

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<p>There are a lot of Smart peole in this world. The Internet made the Smart People more accessible to the rest of the world. ITs going to be an interesting next 4,8,10 years. There will be a few countries that will not be able to adapt fast enough.</p>

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<p>I'm the spouse of an engineer. Here's the view from where I sit.</p>

<p>1) fun in college: Well, I met my H in college, and we had fun. :) </p>

<p>2) enrich your mind: My husband took Ancient Greek for the fun of it. Perhaps engineers have a different definition of "enriching your mind". My H is one of the smartest people I know. He does have trouble with small talk, though.</p>

<p>3) limited to a few major cities: Do you consider Amberg, Germany (pop. 40,000 in the heart of beautiful Bavaria) one of them? My H is an ME and has had job offers in many places, large and small (in the US). As he gets older, and more specialized, his opportunities do get less, as there are fewer companies who do what he does. </p>

<p>4) long hours: Yes. I think that is probably the biggest reason my kids didn't consider engineering as an option. They saw how hard their D worked. We sure do love Germany, though, with it's mandatory 35 hour week. However, H LOVES engineering. If you find something you love, it is not that great a hardship to do it a lot.</p>

<p>5) mostly men: Yes, this is still true; there are more men than women, although many more women than when he first started. My sister is also an engineer. But, I'm not sure why this matters. My degree is in nursing, and they're mostly women. So if you're chosing a degree based on where the women are, be a nurse.</p>

<p>6) foreigners: Actually, my husband is the foreigner at the moment. :) Again, why does this matter? But in reality, my husband has worked with a handful of non-American engineers when we were in the states, some of whom were cracker-jack engineers, some who weren't. They were generally evaluated by that, not nationality. But most of his co-workers have been Americans.</p>

<p>7) salary: My H's starting salary was twice mine. I believe (I'm no longer working as a nurse) that the "average" engineer till tends to make anywhere from 25 to 60% higher than a nurse with the same number of years experience. But no, he is not making a lawyer or doctor's income. However, we get by. (And he's doing this with only an undergrad education.)</p>

<p>8) job stability: Have no clue how engineering compares to other careers. I would expect it has a lot to do with how good you are, what kind of engineering, etc. I currently know a doctor who is out of work, and a lawyer who wants to be!</p>

<p>9) management: My H was a manager for a number of years; left it because he prefers R&D to personnel issues. Many engineers are not necessarily "people persons".</p>

<p>10) outlook: Dismal? Really? Oh dear, I had no idea. Frankly, I don't see how it could be. My H is an "inventor." It is a limited imagination which thinks everything has already been invented. The person who thinks that probably should avoid engineering, which requires quite a bit of creativity.</p>

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<p>When you graduate with an engineering degree you not only get a diploma, you also get a PROFESSION. This is particularity true of Civil and Chemical engineers. And there is no law that you have to practice the profession; you also have the option to peruse any career any other grad can peruse. But as an engineer you will always have a profession.</p>

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<p>One thing that shouldn't be underestimated is the rigor of a good engineering program. It's just about impossible to bluff your way through four years of engineering school (if you can pull that off, you'll probably be highly successful in business & life anyway). Successful completion of a solid engineering program says something to employers about the individual, whether that person is seeking engineering work or has branched into other areas of endeavor.</p>

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<p>pursue</p>

<p>Darn spellchecker</p>

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<p>This thread is seven years old!!!</p>

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