Shocking: More MIT engineering students now actually want to work as engineers

[sakky]

<p>

I’m sorry man, I’ve just seen too many poor engineers from top schools to think this is a large drain on the economy. Simply put, if our per capita rate of engineers was doubled, we’d be producing a lot more great, good, average, and poor engineers for our economy.

</p>

<p>Poor engineers from top schools precisely highlight the problem. Those poor engineers from MIT can nevertheless compete for high-paying consulting/banking jobs. So why can’t the best engineers from average schools also be paid highly? If the consulting/banking firms won’t hire these engineers, then maybe the engineering firms who do hire them should pay them better.</p>

<p>Otherwise, you have the following problem discussed below:</p>

<p>

Certainly more than the trivial amount that get sucked into finance.

</p>

<p>I don’t know that it is a trivial amount. Perhaps 500 engineering students are hired into finance right out of college. However, that doesn’t factor in all of the engineers who may work for a few years as engineers and then head to top MBA programs, often times with the express intent of switching to finance.</p>

<p>As a case in point, more than 1/3 of the entire MIT Sloan MBA program is comprised of former engineering students. Granted, many of them did indeed come from top-ranked engineering programs such as Stanford and MIT itself, but I know many others who came from average engineering programs such as New Mexico State or Oregon State. Similarly, there are Harvard MBA’s who earned their engineering degrees at schools such as Wayne State or Oklahoma State. They worked as engineers for a few years, then got their MBA’s to switch careers to high-paying jobs in finance. </p>

<p>Which begs the question: why did these former engineers feel that they had to leave their old engineering employers? Why couldn’t they provide those engineers with better opportunities to entice them to stay? Obtaining an top MBA is frightfully expensive, yet those engineers clearly felt that the post-MBA opportunities, relative to just staying in engineering, were worth the cost, a striking indictment at the perceived paucity of opportunities available in engineering. If engineering was a better career path, then you wouldn’t have nearly 25-40% of the entire MBA classes at schools such as MIT, HBS, and Stanford Business School comprised of former engineers, for those engineers would just stay working as engineers.</p>

<p>*Profile of MIT Sloan Class of 2010</p>

<p>Undergraduate degree area</p>

<p>Engineering 36.9%*</p>

<p><a href=“http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/experience/classof10profile.php[/url]”>http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/experience/classof10profile.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[jack63]

<p>I’m with you on the Dilbert Principle messing up who gets promoted in large corporations.</p>

<p>I’m with you on the start-ups more likely to functionally operate on a 20-80 principle as you described. They are different beasts than major corporations.</p>

<p>I’m with you that SOME engineers in top start-ups do very very well.</p>

<p>So why don’t engineers go into Start-ups in droves? From my experience interviewing with start-ups in Northern California and speaking with recruiters about them, if you get into one and get a decent position, chances are you will do very well. Again, why don’t engineers go into Start-ups in droves?</p>

<p>This is what I think is going on. You need a PhD from a top engineering school to be in a position to benefit from working at a start-up when it is successful. I think we agree that a new employee at a start-up will not benefit from the start being successful.</p>

<p>So why wouldn’t students want Ph.D. from top engineering schools rather than top business school? Why would the following be true in your quote below?:</p>

<p>

When I asked a few of them why they didn’t just get their MBA’s at the MIT Sloan School (or some other B-school) instead, their candid answer is that they didn’t get into those programs. Engineering was the easiest way for them to obtain a grad degree from a school of the caliber of MIT and hence avail themselves of the career opportunities.

</p>

<p>The acceptance rate numbers into top engineering grad schools just don’t support this generalization.</p>

<p>I don’t know about the people you talked to, but the numbers would say that it is much harder to get into a PhD program or even masters program in the more desirable engineering programs (EE,ME,CSE) than to get into the any of the top business programs in the US. The official numbers I’ve read in the grad school part of college confidential are 4% acceptance for berkeley and 15% ish for Duke(ranked 30ish). I’ve been told that Purdue EE acceptance rate to grad school is 13%to 14%.</p>

<p>Don’t let USNEWS general engineering numbers mislead you. The most popular engineering programs have much much lower acceptance rates. A top 5 to 10 engineering grad program in the US will have an acceptance rate lower than any almost any business school in the US</p>

<p>These program’s lower acceptance rates are due to funding…fellowships,TAs,RAs This goes back to my basic point that the basic opportunities for engineers in our country aren’t there…I still do not believe that that finance pulling engineers away from solid engineering opportunities is the problem.</p>

[purduefrank]

<p>

But the question then is if a company can reward certain engineers through the external means of acquisitions, why can’t it do the same internally? For example, if I had been an internal Google engineer who developed a successful YouTube, why couldn’t I be paid millions directly? Why could I do so only through an external startup? Put another way, Google presumably has numerous top internal engineering direct hires, yet Google showers millions on only the top external engineers who work at startups that Google acquires. Why?

</p>

<p>Well, do these externally acquired engineers garner a million dollar salary, or were they made millionaires through the IPO. The difference being quite obvious here, Google simply had no choice in the latter.</p>

<p>

Then I would ask whether he is truly going back to engineering or just engineering grad school. </p>

<p>As a case in point, I know plenty of MIT engineering grad students who ended up going to the very consulting and banking industries that we have decried. When I asked a few of them why they didn’t just get their MBA’s at the MIT Sloan School (or some other B-school) instead, their candid answer is that they didn’t get into those programs. Engineering was the easiest way for them to obtain a grad degree from a school of the caliber of MIT and hence avail themselves of the career opportunities.

</p>

<p>I don’t know that I would question the motives in one individual case. Undoubtedly there are a number of people who simply enjoy engineering more. However, I tend to agree that majority of students opt to go from engineering to an MBA, not from Wall Street to engineering.</p>

<p>

In fact, often times it is precisely the least competent engineers who are the ones who are promoted to management because the firm can’t afford to lose the technical skills of the competent engineers (but of course they won’t actually pay those competent engineers more).

</p>

<p>Exactly.</p>

<p>

Well, actually, Ben Franklin did indeed become extraordinarily wealthy from his publishing and printing businesses - Poor Richard’s Almanack was a best selling publication and the Pennsylvania Gazette was a highly successful newspaper in its day. </p>

<p>By the time he retired [from publishing] at age 42, [Franklin] was one of the wealthiest men in America

</p>

<p>Using this logic I could argue the case for any number of engineers turned millionaires. Perhaps this example is more closely tied with a start-up, nonetheless, my point was that I seriously doubt Ben Franklin had any intention of becoming one of the wealthiest men in America. He followed his passion, not the money.</p>

<p>

But let’s face it: most engineering companies simply don’t provide many opportunities for creativity. You don’t really get to build anything of great consequence. Instead, you’re assigned to supervise one production line or one step in the manufacturing process or maintain one old (often times obsolete) product.

</p>

<p>Which is precisely my point – I seriously have to consider whether or not any of the very best engineers are actually going into banking/consulting or engineering (in the typical sense). If I’m one of the very best engineers, it seems pretty obvious to me that I should have a passion for engineering – otherwise I seriously doubt that anyone will consider me one of the very best. In order to realize my potential and satisfy my interest, the likely place for me to be is either in R&D (regardless of the money) or a start-up (regardless of the money). Any sports analogy will suffice here, any musical genius analogy, and I would argue any engineering example as well. To be considered the best in any field, you seriously have to eat, sleep, and breathe it – nobody can pay you to do this. Sure, they can pay you for your time – and I would argue that this is primarily what happens on Wall Street - a great number of people who have no interest (or very little at best) in finance, all scurrying around trying to produce enough to get the next promotion. This, simply is not greatness. The very best financiers are the ones who are there for more than the money, and my bet is that they would be there even if the megamoney was elsewhere. They simply love what they do.</p>

[purduefrank]

<p>I think we all can agree on some of the very good any valid points that have been made in this thread. Nonetheless, I think the line of logic that you use in this case is strikingly hard to validate. </p>

<p>1.) We are asked to take [at face value] that a school such as MIT actually produces better engineers in the first place. While at first glance this would seem obvious given the prestige of the institution, quite a few engineers in the field probably wouldn’t agree. There is no doubt that some of the best students go to MIT, but just how well this correlates into productivity is quite hard to prove – and while I’m sure there is some correlation, just how much can only be speculated. Given the ratio of student bodies at prestigious schools to non-prestigious schools, there is no doubt in my mind that the marketplace gives respect for the name. However, there is a very real possibility that what the marketplace is really paying for is in fact the name itself. You have said this before in your very own posts. There is also no doubt in my mind that many promotions go hand in hand [in some cases] with the institution that one graduates from, however, this says nothing about the productivity of an individual [especially for technical engineers] – as even in your last post you have cited that many promotions are given to poor engineers. Thus, what we are asked to take at face value is actually highly questionable and very hard to prove given that we might have to search the ranks of industry’s technical roles – not management roles. </p>

<p>2.) We are asked to take [at face value] that the very best engineers could very well be the best bankers, accountants, salespeople, doctors, and lawyers – completely neglecting the fact that [from my experience] the very best people love what they do. Not only this, but the required skills set to achieve greatness in any of these fields greatly differs from those required in the next. On top of this, we are asked to throw character and values out the window, and are asked to think of our best engineers much like we would a rabbit chasing a carrot. For me, this is hard to do. I would hate to think that our country’s best have never learned to follow their heart instead of money.</p>

[purduefrank]

<p>

I’m sorry man, I’ve just seen too many poor engineers from top schools to think this is a large drain on the economy. Simply put, if our per capita rate of engineers was doubled, we’d be producing a lot more great, good, average, and poor engineers for our economy. Certainly more than the trivial amount that get sucked into finance.

</p>

<p>While I would love to see more engineers coming out of our schools, I don’t really think that the marketplace can handle this. The key is creating more engineering jobs in the first place – the engineers to fill those positions will come along. I don’t know where you’re getting your numbers from, but if we graduated a whooping 80,000 more engineers/year – we would have a hell of a lot of students looking for jobs. Now, perhaps if we stopped outsourcing a lot of engineering work then we would have the space for them – but as it stands, we don’t. Even if we were to stop outsourcing then you get into the economic argument of whether or not the lower costs of producing goods justifies lowering the number of well paid jobs here… An often heated topic. As it stands now, I think the majority of the focus should be on creating new jobs, which means start-ups, entrepreneurship, etc…</p>

[AuburnMathTutor]

<p>What are you guys even arguing about anymore?</p>

<p>If people want to get engineering degrees and go work in Finance, let them. You can’t force them to be engineers. You can’t keep them out of engineering majors, either - it wouldn’t solve any problem anyway to do that.</p>

<p>And you can’t make Wall St. pay less than they want for them, and you can’t make engineering companies pay more than they’re willing for them.</p>

<p>Realistically, what point does any of this serve? Is this just another pointless, bitter debate about the shoddy state of affairs the world is in? If so, I suggest we aim for talking about some sort of icecream pretty soon.</p>

[jack63]

<p>

And you can’t make Wall St. pay less than they want for them, and you can’t make engineering companies pay more than they’re willing for them.

</p>

<p>Maybe…just Mabey…Sakky and I can agree that you’re wrong :)</p>

<p>You still in Auburn?</p>

<p>You can use the government to do both. </p>

<p>Sakky? Do we actually agree on this one?</p>

[jack63]

<p>

While I would love to see more engineers coming out of our schools, I don’t really think that the marketplace can handle this. The key is creating more engineering jobs in the first place – the engineers to fill those positions will come along. I don’t know where you’re getting your numbers from, but if we graduated a whooping 80,000 more engineers/year – we would have a hell of a lot of students looking for jobs.

</p>

<p>Purduefrank…certainly with you on this one. I remember hearing Obama talk about are need for more engineers, and I was thinking that whatever we do, we don’t need anymore engineers.</p>

[tennischamp822]

<p>If anyone is interested, William Black’s “How the Servant Became a Predator: Finance’s Five Fatal Flaws” makes many of the same arguments as sakky. </p>

<p>[How</a> the Servant Became a Predator: Finance’s Five Fatal Flaws New Deal 2.0](<a href=“home”>home)</p>

[sakky]

<p>

And you can’t make Wall St. pay less than they want for them, and you can’t make engineering companies pay more than they’re willing for them.

</p>

<p>Certainly it is true that you and I alone can’t change anything. </p>

<p>However, collectively we have the power to change quite a bit. Barack Obama himself has said that the country would be better off if we produced fewer financiers and more scientists and engineers. </p>

<p>*President Barack Obama is urging students to eschew finance in favor engineering.</p>

<p>Obama’s advice was offered on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (see video). “We need young people, instead of – a smart kid coming out of school, instead of wanting to be an investment banker, we need them to decide if they want to be an engineer, they want to be a scientist, they want to be a doctor or a teacher,” the president said.</p>

<p>Obama didn’t specifically cite computer science in his riff on Leno’s show, but the message was clear. He would rather see students pursue “things that actually contribute to making things and making people’s lives better – that’s going to put our economy on solid footing.” *</p>

<p>[Obama</a> on Tonight Show urges students to study engineering, not finance](<a href=“http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9130129/Obama_on_i_Tonight_Show_i_urges_students_to_study_engineering_not_finance]Obama”>http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9130129/Obama_on_i_Tonight_Show_i_urges_students_to_study_engineering_not_finance)</p>

<p>As to how to go about making such changes, changes in the regulatory regime, as well as subsidies of engineering projects, could be used. For example, new banking regulation could reduce unwarranted pay by tightly linking compensation to long-term performance, with clawbacks/‘maluses’ (the opposite of bonuses) for transactions that look initially profitable but that later sour, as well as requirements for larger capital holdings for larger (and hence more difficult to understand) asset bases, which tend to be inappropriately correlated with higher pay, as well as reforms to encourage technical innovation and R&D. </p>

<p>Those of you who are free market proponents might balk at the notion of regulatory creep. Allow me to allay those concerns:</p>

<ul>
<li>Some of the regulatory reform would consist of a reduction of regulation, particularly as it has to do with entrepreneurship. Let’s face it: a lot of silly laws proliferate that serve to block the founding of new companies. Some observers have noted that many new companies were actually technically illegal when founded as they broke some legal technicality regarding zoning or registration that nobody really understands. {Apple was almost certainly technically illegal when founded, as at the time it was a violation of residential zoning laws to found a company in a garage in Cupertino.} Entrepreneurs are perennially worried about violating some regulation that they never even heard of.<br></li>
</ul>

<p>*Finance is one of the most heavily regulated industries on Earth, and rightfully so, considering its penchant for not only throwing the world’s economy into chaos, but demanding taxpayer bailouts to repair the damage that they inflict. What other industry could have demanded a whopping $750 bn emergency taxpayer bailout, without even counting the Federal Reserve’s bailout of AIG, the conservatorship of Fannie and Freddie, and the implicit subsidies provided by the FDIC to guarantee interbank debt, all in only a matter of weeks and with minimal political debate? {In contrast, the various auto bailouts cost only ~$50bn in total and elicited months of pitched political debate.) Even now, those financial firms such as Goldman who have repaid their taxpayer capital have pointedly refused to relinquish its rights as a chartered bank holding company to borrow at the Federal discount window - a privilege that no non-banking firm enjoys. </p>

<p>Hence, given the heavily regulated nature of the finance industry, the government is well within its rights to modify compensation packages to reduce systemic risk and if that means that banking becomes a less desirable place to work, then so be it. Bankers are not supposed to earn high bonuses while offloading risk onto the taxpayer. </p>

<p>*Finance is also arguably the most politically powerful industries in the nation - more politically powerful than the tech industry and certainly far more than the small business and entrepreneurship sector (whose political power is miniscule). Even now, after a momentous taxpayer bailout that was supposedly necessitated to ‘stave off Great Depression 2.0’ (in the words of Geithner and Bernanke), the country still can’t pass a financial reform bill. Meanwhile the banks are once again earning record bonuses. </p>

<p>[JPMorgan</a> heralds return to bumper bonuses - Telegraph](<a href=“JPMorgan heralds return to bumper bonuses”>JPMorgan heralds return to bumper bonuses)</p>

<p>[Wall</a> Street 40% Bonus Rise Feeds Spending on $43 Steak, Co-ops - Bloomberg.com](<a href=“Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg”>Bloomberg Politics - Bloomberg)</p>

<p>Meanwhile the country suffers under a 10%+ unemployment rate and a giant hole blown in the national budget. </p>

<p>If we can’t reduce the political power of the banking industry (my preference), then the next best thing is to increase the political power of the tech industry and especially the entrepreneurship sector. If banks enjoy special drawing privileges upon the taxpayer account, then maybe tech firms and startups should too.</p>

[AuburnMathTutor]

<p>“You still in Auburn?”

• Yep.</p>

<p>"You can use the government to do both. "

• Well yeah, but the government shouldn’t. That’s what I meant to say… clearly they can, in the same way they could take all of our first born and turn them into soylent green.</p>

<p>I think you took my post too literally. Change “can’t” to “shouldn’t” and I think you’ll be closer to my actual sentiment. The use of “can’t” was used as a rhetorical device to illustrate my strong feelings on this matter.</p>

[jma]

<p>purduefrank,</p>

<p>I agree that it is probably difficult to measure the correlation. </p>

<p>That said, Microsoft was founded by a student from Harvard, as was facebook. I’m not going to speculate as to how much value was potentially lost from the Stanford and MIT engineers who left the field, but at the very least, I think its reasonable to claim that there is a non negligible probability that something of moderate to great value might have been lost.</p>

[jma]

<p>Sakky, your proposals sound reasonable. </p>

<p>That said, do you agree that a large amount of the blame rests solely on the shoulders of engineering firms themselves. Its not the government that is preventing companies like Microsoft from rewarding top engineers financially. Wouldn’t the easiest method of all be for the “McKinseys” or the “Bains” or the “GS’s” of the engineering world to pony out the money to their top earners?</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>

I agree that it is probably difficult to measure the correlation.</p>

<p>That said, Microsoft was founded by a student from Harvard, as was facebook. I’m not going to speculate as to how much value was potentially lost from the Stanford and MIT engineers who left the field, but at the very least, I think its reasonable to claim that there is a non negligible probability that something of moderate to great value might have been lost.

Do we think that social networking websites or the operating system would not have existed if not for Chad Hurley or Bill Gates? Seriously?</p>

[jma]

<p>Look, you can nitpick at specific aspects of the post, but the point remains, to deny that the loss of MIT and Stanford engineers could possibly rob society of some great discovery or invention is downright foolish. (But again, that operating systems and social networking would exist without those two is such an obvious point as to render the notion that I could possibly imply otherwise, frankly, incomprehensible. )</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>Wouldn’t you have used a better example then? You know, one that would actually illustrate the point you are trying to make?</p>

[jma]

<p>That those two were not solely essential to the development of the respective fields does not imply that they did not create businesses which have ultimately led to thousands of jobs, and untold other benefits. Furthermore, it does not imply that their removal from their fields would not have resulted in some loss to society. </p>

<p>Furthermore, you could make the claim you made with virtually any great discovery. Indeed, I doubt that you can name me one great discovery that would not have been made had you taken away a certain individual.</p>

<p>Wallace was right behind Darwin with evolution. Leibniz and Newton simultaneiously invented calculus. Others were relatively close behind Einstein with photoelectric effect. That all of these discoveries could have been made by others does not mean that losing those individuals would not have represented a loss. Similarly, that social networking and operating systems undoubtedly would have emerged or already had emerged without Gates and Hurley alone in no way implies that those two did not contribute greatly both by improving the formats and by thusly, creating thousands of jobs as well as countless other intangible benefits. </p>

<p>I’m not suggesting that losing 500 MIT engineers is going to lead to the definite loss of some great product which otherwise would never emerge. I do however believe that their loss increases the time needed for certain technologies to emerge, and lessens the likelihood that the optimal version of such technologies will ultimately emerge. Heck, I’m not even going that far. I’m merely suggesting that their loss increases the probability that some technology will take longer to emerge/will not necessarily achieve an optimal form. </p>

<p>Now I suppose you could claim that if we wanted to maximize the probability, we may as well force everyone to go into engineering. While that may be true, I’d claim its too drastic a measure. Yet I don’t think its particularly drastic to suggest that students who openly choose to major in a field widely regarded as amongst toughest undergraduate majors would want to take careers in that field, provided the incentives were right.</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>You get my point and I agree with yours.</p>

[jma]

<p>Was about to say, bottom line is I think we pretty much agree. Way too easy to get caught up in debate on this board, even when its not necessarily related to the point of the thread.</p>

[goblue93]

<p>People and companies are willing to pay top $$ for their own service (doc. lawyers, accountants, consultants, etc.) but they don’e want to pay for service to all the people in the world.
Unfortunately engineers are the latter.</p>