<p>The point of me saying what I did is to give a glimmer of what it is like to work for a private aerospace company as a young person.</p>
<p>However, I’m not going to talk about it anymore (now or in the future). I’m tired of this blowing up.</p>
<p>Good day.</p>
<p>I agree with ME76.</p>
<p>You can provide far less detail and still provide significant knowledge.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You surely could argue that point, but that’s only a variation on the same theme that I have been highlighting. After all, if your argument is correct, then that begs a constellation of questions: why does that firm need an MIT alum to be their ‘face’? More importantly, again, why can’t the MIT alum simply be hired directly, and with greater pay? Why does that MIT alum need to hire onto a consulting firm to receive higher pay? </p>
<p>Again, the real problem seems to be cultural and speaks to an egregious flaw in organizational design. Companies balk at raising salaries for new engineering graduates but apparently have no problem paying hefty sums for the services of consulting (and banking) firms, who then often times hire the same new engineering graduates who those companies refused to provide competitive salaries for in the first place. Far from saving money, those companies are losing money through the entire transaction.</p>
<p>But, as I said, as long as companies refuse to pay their engineers better and provide them with better career opportunities, then many of the best engineering students will naturally prefer to work as consultants or financiers rather than as actual engineers.</p>
<p>As we’ve previously spoken too, engineering graduates in the US do not have salaries which are significantly out of tune to other countries (as a multiple of per capita GDP).</p>
<p>Even if that were true, it would be beside the point. Even if engineering salaries within the US have maintained pace with engineering salaries around the world, that has nothing to do with the fact that other industries in the US have vastly improved their compensation schemas, such as consulting and finance (which is once again paying record bonuses). </p>
<p>Besides, even if US engineering salaries have maintained pace with other nations, that still speaks to a serious problem. After all, the US is the overall most technically advanced nation in the country, and regions such as Silicon Valley are natural treasures as innovation dynamos that have yet to be matched anywhere else in the world despite decades of attempted replication. US engineers and technologists should therefore be extraordinarily well paid, in the same way that any nation whose industry that features the best performance should be paying employees far above scale. </p>
<p>For example, it is generally agreed that the NBA is the premier basketball league in the world, and so the best foreign players such as Dirk Nowitzki and Yao Ming choose to play in the NBA rather than in their lower paying home country leagues. Similarly, the best professional soccer leagues are generally understood to be in Europe, and so most of the best non-European players choose to play in Europe where they can earn far more than if they stayed home. {Kaka is being paid more than 15 million euro a year to play for Real Madrid, which he could not have earned if he had stayed in Brazil.} </p>
<p>Yet the fact is, while US engineers may have propelled the country into being the most innovative nation in the world, the fruits of that innovation are largely captured by the venture capitalists, investment bankers, tech consultants, and tech salesmen than by the engineers themselves. The average venture capitalist makes far more than the average engineer.</p>
<p>Why do you think the US has the most innovation? There are quite a few East Asian countries which have higher per capita patent production rates (which is probably the single best measurement for innovation rates).</p>
<p>Innovation rate is far more important than the aggregate amount of innovation, which can be influenced significantly by population number.</p>
<p>
I disagree heavily with this statement. The fruits of that innovation are <em>largely</em> captured by owners. The extremely large majority of all value created by innovation is captured by company owners.</p>
<p>“Why are we all so dumb?”</p>
<ul>
<li>Speak for yourself.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<p>Really?</p>
<p>Patents per capita:</p>
<p>1) US
2) Japan
3) Taiwan</p>
<p>[How</a> universities promote economic growth - Google Books](<a href=“How Universities Promote Economic Growth - Google Books”>How Universities Promote Economic Growth - Google Books)</p>
<p>Besides, I am not sure that patent production rates are a strong proxy for technical innovation anyway, I suspect that patenting has more to do with ‘legal innovation’ - patent lawyers simply finding more things to patent - than actual technical innovation. I suppose that legal innovation is an innovation of a sort, but not the type of innovation that engineers regularly engage in. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which means that you’re implicitly conceding that US engineers are indeed being stupid, in that they are not capturing the fruits of their innovation. As a corollary, perhaps that points to a way for engineers to become savvier by learning how to capture those fruits, either by learning how to utilize patent law to secure the rights to their innovations, or by becoming owners (hence entrepreneurs/venture-capitalists) themselves. </p>
<p>That points to two possible reforms: #1, perhaps engineering schools should offer, as an elective, a course on how to become a patent agent. In contrast to being a patent lawyer, you don’t need a law degree to become a patent agent. You just need a recognized technical degree - for which an engineering degree would surely qualify - and then pass the USPTO exam. Or, #2, a course could be offered on how to start a company and secure venture/angel funding. Note, these courses wouldn’t necessarily have to be offered by the engineering department itself, but might be offered with the law school or business school of the greater university or neighboring university (for example, MIT might offer a specialized course on patent law jointly with Harvard Law). </p>
<p>But in any case, any way you want to look at it, US engineers are indeed being ‘dumb’. Either they’re not particularly innovative, in which case they are dumb, or they are innovative, but they fail to capture the fruits of that innovation, in which cases they are still dumb. Let’s hope that they can become smarter.</p>
<p>[Worldmapper:</a> The world as you’ve never seen it before](<a href=“http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=167]Worldmapper:”>http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=167)</p>
<p>Both Japan and South Korea have more patents per capita. Really, you don’t think patents per capita is a good proxy for innovation? What exactly do you think is a good proxy for innovation?</p>
<p>
What are you talking about? This is the same in <em>any</em> country. The company owners capture the value. Stupidity is a relative game and there is no indication that US engineers are more or less intelligent in capturing the fruits of their labor compared to others.</p>
<p>When was the last time you saw a businessman making something tangible for society? No, turning oxygen into carbon dioxide doesn’t count!</p>
<p>There is a lot more to innovations than patents. Japan might have more patents per capita but when was the last time an Google-level start-up came out of Japan?</p>
<p>Here is what I think makes Silicon Valley such a hot-bed of new ideas and products:</p>
<p>1) Lots of VC funding
2) It’s ok to fail
3) Large domestic market
4) Lots of spare talent
5) large research universities</p>
<p>my 2 cents</p>
<p>You are talking about what us older people refer to as a quality of life choice. I have personal experience with this phenomenon. I began my career as a litigation attorney and worked up to 90 hours a week. When I began having children, I realized that my family was more important than a paycheck and went back to school to become a teacher. I love what I do and rarely have a day where I feel overwhelmed or inadequate or insubstantial. I am now helping to shape children’s minds rather than lining some strangers pockets.</p>
<p>Trust me - you don’t want to go to work every day hating your job. It can make you a miserable, unhappy person whom no one will want to be around.</p>
<p>As an aside, you have many misspellings in your posting (salery - salary), and alot is not a word - it is a lot (forgive me - I’m a teacher!).</p>
<p>money is a factor, but the main reason I major in engineering is that I love it</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I would argue that my data is better. Your data is regarding one particular year (2002) whereas mine is regarding multi-year performance. I suspect that 2002 is an outlier. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>As I said before, patents seem to be more of a legal concept rather than a technical concept: patent lawyers simply finding more ideas that can be patented. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What are you talking about? It is not the same in every country, as you have conceded yourself: the score is relative. Obviously the owners of a firm in any country must capture some value, for otherwise they would never have even started the company in the first place. The question is how much do they capture, and how much accrues to the engineers. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So you’re agreeing with what I’m saying, which is that US engineers are dumb when it comes to capturing the fruits of their innovation. Note, engineers in other countries may be dumb too, but that doesn’t obviate the fact that US engineers are being dumb. They should learn how to capture those fruits.</p>
<p>
But then again, mine is more recent.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/st_co_04.htm[/url]”>http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/st_co_04.htm</a></p>
<p>
So you don’t have a good answer, thanks.</p>
<p>
I’ve seen no data that indicates engineers in other first world countries are better at capturing value than in the US.</p>
<p>
I’m saying that it’s not even provable that engineers, anywhere, can capture more value. The wage levels are an outgrowth of the capitalist system and no different from any other first world economy.</p>
<p>See, sakky always brings up this argument that engineers aren’t doing what they need to be doing in order to secure a better wage, and I just want to march right into my boss’s office and let him know that he’s not paying me enough, dang it. I should be making TWICE what I’m making now!</p>
<p>I’m certain that this will work in my favor! It will not backfire at all for me!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>True, but markets aren’t perfect and you can’t assume perfect information on both sides of the labor equation. Management, or in our case IBs, VCs, consultants and salespeople all tend to have greater information on the exchange side than engineers.</p>
<p>I side with sakky on this, but don’t put as much blame on the engineers. In many cases, dare I saw all, these other professions act as a middleman which create no value of physical substance to a product. While they all have their role in the world, wages have been disproportionally skewed in the directions of those that create nothing in a literal sense. It’s actually alarming, nearly all of the major industries, especially high wage industries, create nothing tangible. You can argue intellectual value all you want, but slick salesmen and financiers have never registered well with this title in my book.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how you agree with sakky but disagree with me, considering I agree with virtually everything you’ve said.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well I agree with certain points on both sides, but largely I was referring to this issue. My thoughts are that intangible aspects that one may refer to as value are created by middlemen, thus, market prices don’t necessarily reflect true value nor do they, by any means, proportionally reward those who innovate products. Likewise, disproportionate risk burdens are usually veiled in complex exchange markets that innovators rarely have any specialty in – and, once again the innovator has born a deal in which they garner the short end of the stick.</p>
<p>There are surely economic arguments to the contrary, one being that any exchange is by itself one that benefits both sides adequetly, however, economic theory has fallen short one too many times for me.</p>
<p>Again, it doesn’t seem like you are even disagreeing with my statement. Do you not think it’s factual?</p>