<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>
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<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>