<p>Dictators make better money than most engineers/doctors.</p>
<p>only the 1 percent of CC that you mentioned.... which is 95% on this thread that liked to stay on the topic at hand! Which is what i mentioned....</p>
<p>Hey, when I see a point I disagree with, I am going to challenge it, regardless of whether it had anything to do with what the OP said or not.</p>
<p>...must you, though? It's a forum, not a court room... I mean, sure, mention any exceptions you might find, but only parenthetically, and only if you've got a constructive, on-topic point to add as well. In this case, I think things were already pretty much off-topic (nine pages of posts? C'mon, da scientist, cut the guy some slack!) but threadjacking in general is lousy netiquette. Challenging <em>everything</em> people say that you take exception to just bogs down the valid points that others are trying to make.</p>
<p>Slack is cut!!! LOL! I'm done..... peace be unto you all!</p>
<p>Well, aibarr, like I've always said, if people don't like what I've written, then fair enough. Don't read it. Read only what interests you. Nobody has a gun to your head.</p>
<p>Regardless, sakky, in general, if someone writes something off-topic, then even if someone else who wants to stay ON-topic decides not to read that first person's posts, there are inevitably going to be OTHER people who DO, and who will respond to that post, and then we're off-topic again.</p>
<p>It's like rerouting speeding freight trains, dude. We may have been having a perfectly lovely conversation that was going thataway, but if you throw a switch, then even though some of us may have wanted to continue thataway, the train's not gonna go in the direction of "thataway" anymore whether we want it to or not. I mean, fine, if it's absolutely necessary, but do try to refrain...</p>
<p>They should add a feature where someone can start a detour off a topic within a thread. That would help for people to stay on topic and still be able to start additional threads that were caused by this original thread. I might start a form that does that. Thats engineering for you and thats why I do it, no for the money but for the fun and excitement I get out of it. </p>
<p>To tell the truth they should have Eng-School. I should be able to do Pre-Eng where I study physics or math and what not then apply to get into Eng-School. I'll start a post about that and see what people think. Look out for it. </p>
<p>-dru</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I am a Civil Engineer and trust me I dont make alot of money but I do alot of work, there is no need to worry about out sourcing engineering to other countries either because engineers from other countries cant do local state jobs because you need to be liciensed for example you need a PE(proessional engineer) to stamp any plan that makes it out of a shop. IF ANYTHING ENGINEERS DESERVE WAY MORE MONEY THEN THEY GET NOW, AVERAGE SALARY FOR A CIVIL ENGINEER COMING OUT OF SCHOOL WITH A B/S IS 42,000 A YEAR IF YOUR LUCKY</p>
<p>I'm going to go with the wild and crazy notion that since engineers make nearly everything in modern life work, yes we deserve what we make and THEN SOME.</p>
<p>do YOU want to spend six months in a cubicle designing a safe and light rivet for an airplane body? didn't think so</p>
<p>Hey. Life isn't fair. Now the way I see it, you got two choices. Conform. or Reform.</p>
<p>Two points:</p>
<p>1)The hardest engineering disciplines like EE, ChemE, Nuclear, and many aerospace programs are definitely harder than physics. Not only that but many engineering programs at the undergraduate level take most people 5 years to complete.</p>
<p>2)In the US, Engineering Grad school is harder than Med/Law School. Particularly, getting a Phd.
In aerospace alone it takes 2-4 years (depending on whether it is the thesis or class option) to get a Masters and another 4-5 to get a Phd.</p>
<p>And yeah, engineers don't make as much as lawyers and surgeons. Unless they are tenured professors or some total bada$$.</p>
<p>I do agree that for all the hell they go through, engineers don't get paid enough.</p>
<p>I think someone with an engineering degree is capable of getting 200k / yr after 20 years.</p>
<p>However, the reason is that they moved away from an actual engineering position into project management, and then higher and higher to VP-operations or even CEO.</p>
<p>This is particularly possible/true with gigantic corporations.</p>
<p>I will cite Jack Welch as an example..if you don't know who he is you must be crazy.</p>
<p>He started as an engineer in GE-Plastics and worked his way up to become CEO of all of GE. His B.S. in Engineering was from UMASS-Amhearst of all places.</p>
<p>Anyone with a B.S. in Engineering can make big money provided they have both the talent and drive to move up the management chain. </p>
<p>Specifically, Welch implemented a policy called "Differentiation" in GE.</p>
<p>Reward the top 20% with promotions and bonuses
Give mediocre raises to the middle 70%
Fire the bottom 10%</p>
<p>If you are in that top 20%, you are going places in an environment with that kind of attitude.</p>
<p>When some government agency polls for salary data, the problem is that the only people that are still "engineers" 20 years down the line (literally doing designs, calculations, etc) are in the middle 70%. </p>
<p>They didnt go back for an MBA, or an MS, or both; they just marched along in their decently paid career which they enjoyed (which is fine).</p>
<p>However, the big money is possible. Trust me, no business would rather hire some moron with a "B.S. in Management" to run a real project. They want engineers that actually know how to work and get things done. </p>
<p>Engineers are 7x more likely than anyone else to become CEO. And as Welch illustrated (coming from UMASS-Amhearst!), its possible to move up easily without an Ivy League pedigree...</p>
<p>
[quote]
He started as an engineer in GE-Plastics and worked his way up to become CEO of all of GE. His B.S. in Engineering was from UMASS-Amhearst of all places.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think we should point out that Welch also got an MS and PhD in chemical engineering from UIUC.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Engineers are 7x more likely than anyone else to become CEO. And as Welch illustrated (coming from UMASS-Amhearst!), its possible to move up easily without an Ivy League pedigree...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, if you want to use that as an example, I think there are better ones. Bill Gates doesn't hold a degree at all (although he did attend Harvard). Larry Ellison, 4th richest man in the world, also doesn't have a degree (although he did attend Chicago). Steve Jobs doesn't have a degree (although he did attend Reed). Paul Allen, the 'other' Microsoft founder, dropped out of Washington State. Michael Dell dropped out of UT-Austin.</p>
<p>To be fair, all of those computer guys were in unique situations. The technology was in its infancy and they knew as much if not more than their professors. Those old computer guys are more the exception than the rule.</p>
<p>Well, obviously anybody who becomes a billionaire is an exception. Otherwise, everybody would become billionaires.</p>
<p>However, I would hardly say that success in computers is all that exceptional. For example, Tom Anderson doesn't even have a technical degree (he majored in English and Rhetoric at Berkeley, then got a degree in film at UCLA). Yet he founded MySpace in 2003, and 2 years later, sold it to News Corp for $580 million dollars. Obviously he didn't get all that money (most of it went to his investors), but still, he's picked up enough money to retire. Not bad for only 2 years of work in creating an Internet company, when you don't even have an engineering or CS degree. </p>
<p>Or, perhaps an even striking example, Chad Hurley, who studied fine arts at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania (not Indiana University, or the University of Pennsylvania, but the Indiana University of Pennsylvania), co-founded YouTube in 2005, and a year later, sold it to Google for $1.65 billion. Now, granted, it should be said that the 2 other co-founders (Steve Chen and Jawed Karim) did have computer science backgrounds. But the point is, these examples prove that even today, you can become extraordinarily wealthy in the computer industry, even if you don't have an actual technical education. </p>
<p>Even today, the merry-go-round continues to spin. Rumor has it that Facebook is being shopped around for up to $2 billion. Facebook was founded only 3 years ago (in 2004), and the founder, Mark Zuckerberg, doesn't even have a college degree, having dropped out of Harvard.</p>
<p>I think Welch's story is also different because he started as a <em>staff engineer</em>; he didn't start GE.</p>
<p>Relax guys. He's a troll.</p>
<p>I remember a quote that my engineering ethics professor told me--"while doctors have the luxury of killing one person slowly, engineers have the burden with the ability to kill thousands of people quickly".</p>
<p>The point is that I feel that the rigor of the engineering degree and the inherent responsibility involved with developing technology does warrant an an increased income. Sure, I'm not saying that engineers should always make the most but when you look at the breadth of an engineering degree compared to a biology or chemistry degree, I think its easy to justify the salaries.</p>