<p>So engineers are dumb and managers are smart. What’s at issue here?</p>
<p>I agree that engineers are underpaid, and I wouldn’t argue if someone handed me a raise, but money isn’t everything, sakky. It’s not going to make me regret my career decisions and go into management. And I’m not alone.</p>
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<p>That has basically been the underlying meaning I’ve managed to pull from all of sakky’s posts in the engineering forum…</p>
<p>So, how feasible is it to bring the engineering profession to the same “protected” status as lawyers and doctors? What are the obstacles?</p>
<p>Considering how important engineering work really is for society at large, how the hell did it get this way?</p>
<p>How is it that lawyers and bankers, (who provide questionable value) have layers of protection, and, on the other end, engineers, who build and maintain practically everything physical around us, have so few barriers to entry?</p>
<p>Like someone mentioned above, Joe Schmoe with questionable credentials can write avionics control software and nobody gives a damn? Meanwhile, for “jobs” where you spend hours looking over contracts and deciding whether to use “shall” or “shan’t” and other such trivial legalese, the whole system comes down on you if you’re not “properly credentialed”. It’s ridiculous. Our society overly-rewards jobs that create little value and under-rewards engineers and scientists who create (arguably) the MOST value. What can engineers do to get the compensation they deserve?</p>
<p>^ Well, there’s always refusing to work until higher wages are paid. Strikes, I think they’re called. If this would work, it’s scientists’ and engineers’ fault for not doing it. If it wouldn’t work, then the scientists and engineers should just be happy with their jobs or give them to people who would be. Everybody does important work for society. Engineers and scientists aren’t special in that respect… doctors, lawyers, and bankers also do important work. So do management types. A lot of people just need to get over themselves.</p>
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<p>Surely there are other ways. I’m not aware of a single strike by bankers, lawyers, or management consultants for higher pay, yet they obtained that higher pay nonetheless. It is an interesting socio/political question as to how certain professions were able to maneuver their way into strategic positions within the greater economy in order to extract higher pay without having to resort to extreme measures such as strikes. It is also interesting that engineers were not able to do the same. </p>
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<p>Demanding to be paid what you are worth is an entirely legitimate goal. Sure, I can agree that other professions may create value, but that doesn’t obviate the fact that engineers create significant value that they are unable to capture.</p>
<p>Doctors only do important work because the government takes the power from the people to care for their own health, and puts it in the hands of doctors. If the government decided that I would be the only one allowed to decide who can live and who dies, I would be important too.</p>
<p>Sorry, but I can’t help but rant about that whenever I see someone bring it up.</p>
<p>What galls me is the lack of understanding laymen have for the role of structural engineers. Bad engineers can a) cost an owner a lot of money with an inefficient design and poor details; and b) cause deaths in the event of a building collapse due to design errors. We’ll submit a carefully thought-out proposal, and the owner will come back with, “Oh, we decided to go with Engineer B, because he’s a few thousand cheaper.” Sometimes it’s hard to bite my tongue and not say, “Good luck! You and Engineer B deserve each other.” We are viewed as a commodity rather than design professionals. We’ve managed to educate a few of our clients, but there are still a lot of people who don’t understand what we do.</p>
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<p>:)…but sakky the answer is really complex……give it my best though</p>
<p>Are these engineers underpaid?</p>
<p>-23 year old engineering grad making $60,000(Midwest) or $78,000(Bay area) just out of college
-No…pay is good</p>
<p>-33 year old engineer with 10 years of experience making $80,000(Midwest) or $100,000(Bay area)
-Yes, underpaid……but not horribly underpaid….probably deserves 10k or 20k more</p>
<p>-43 year old engineer with 20 years of experience making $100,000(Midwest) or $120,000 Bay area working as a contractor since no company want to pay for health insurance
-Yes, badly underpaid</p>
<p>43 year old engineer with PhD working as tenured professor making $120,000+$30,000 in consulting,
-No….hardly</p>
<p>43 year old engineer with PhD working in the corporate world making $200,000+options
-No….hardly</p>
<p>43 year old engineer with MBA working as a Manager in the cooperate making $200,000+options
-No….hardly</p>
<p>43 year old engineer making $80,000, but who has significant equity in a reasonably successful start-up
-No</p>
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<p>I think a lot of it is the fact that engineers feel an inherent duty to be ethical.</p>
<p>You aren’t going to find a 43 year old engineer with an MBA working as a “manager” making $200,000 plus options. That is like executive kind of cash at most companies, maybe upper management in some rare cases.</p>
<p>Also, a 43 year old tenured professor will likely be making more than $120,000 at a research institution. If they are fully tenured and 43, they likely will have the title of full professor, not associate or assistant, so they probably are going to make more like $150 +/- $20k or so depending on the school. Consulting can definitely net a lot more than $30k if you have already made a name for yourself as well. My advisor, while older than 43, pulls in closer to $250,000 without consulting and it wouldn’t surprise me if he drew in another $100,000 with consulting.</p>
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The owner of a business is smart. They are the ones that get the wealth (as I’ve mentioned many times). The owners of Google got the vast vast vast majority of the value generated by that company. Same with Microsoft. Same with any engineering company. The owners get the wealth.</p>
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Seems like Brin/Page are pretty smart. I’m repeating myself…the owners make the money.</p>
<p>In most technical companies the owner generally is the first engineer.</p>
<p>Now, I don’t generally like to take sakky’s side in this debate, but Brin and Page hardly constitute a majority here. They are both superstars, but that doesn’t disprove the idea that most engineers are dumb.</p>
<p>Still, I would just say that most engineers aren’t dumb, they just lack the skills necessary to successfully market their innovation, and therefore leave it to someone with those skills to really reap the benefit while the engineer sits at his desk earning an upper middle class wage. Probably at least 75% of the engineers out there are perfectly content to do that. Maybe it isn’t that engineers are dumb so much as that they are much easier to make content than someone such as an investment banker. It is no secret that I subscribe to the idea that there are man things in life that are far more important than money.</p>
<p>I’m saying that the owners get the vast majority of the wealth. Saying anything different than that is just 100% wrong - there is no other answer. Google wealth enriched the owners those two far more than anything else. Same goes for all the recent tech companies. Why else do we think Bill Gates is the richest man in the world?</p>
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<p>Some of us don’t even have the benefit of having the grounds to market an innovation unless we get in lockstep with the rest of our profession. Bottom line is that if I want to work on the big projects… If I want to design skyscrapers and stadia (or the next fighter jet, or submarine turbines, or anything beyond the small bread-and-butter design projects), then I have to work for one of these companies, and I have to take what the market will bear.</p>
<p>If I were to go out and say, “I’m a PE with five years of experience with the very best companies and I’m going to design your brand new skyscraper!” then I’d be laughed straight out of the client’s board room, no matter how inspiring and market-savvy I am, because they know I don’t have the resources or the experience to ever do it. Even if I were a forty-year veteran of the field and had given talks on the subject all over the world, I would be laughed out of the room if I tried to go on my own, because I wouldn’t have the resources of the company and the diversity of knowledge to be able to convince a client to hire me.</p>
<p>I’m stuck, but I’m not utterly morose about it. This is the way you do it, if you want to work on the BIG projects in this field, which is what I want to do. There’s no other way around it. Since this is what I want to do, I’ll take satisfaction in doing it and getting all the compensation I can negotiate for it. It’s not “dumbness” on my part. It’s how this field works, and I was not blind to the constraints of the field when I went in. I earn a decent wage, and I get to do exciting things.</p>
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<p>the real reason is social capital, as some are “in” on the investor/vc/angel scene and the vast majority are not. as a prospective entrepreneur, you should hypothetically be able to raise money for your fantastic idea. yet, there are significant barriers/obstacles to overcome in that effort. why should angel investor X give a **** about YOU? the “skill” of raising money often comes down to who you know, not what you know.</p>
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<p>yes, in virtually all of the cases listed. compare any of those tracks to 22 yr old -> law school -> biglaw:</p>
<p>[Baker</a> & McKenzie LLP](<a href=“http://www.infirmation.com/shared/lss/one-payscale.tcl?employer_id=NY0460&firm_name=Baker%20%26%20McKenzie%20LLP]Baker”>http://www.infirmation.com/shared/lss/one-payscale.tcl?employer_id=NY0460&firm_name=Baker%20%26%20McKenzie%20LLP)</p>
<p>age 25 - 160k
age 29 - 205k
age 33 - 270k (already higher than the engineers/professors listed)</p>
<p>how do we know engineering is “underpaid”? well, if someone of a certain intelligence/ability can make more money elsewhere, then he/she is underpaid. </p>
<p>that said, an engineering gig does have its benefits. there is no huge risk-element like a startup. there are also pretty regular work-schedules, the opportunity to work at home, etc. </p>
<p>in a way, engineering is making an involuntary trade-off of living a modest/comfortable life with relatively low work stress.</p>
<p>“how do we know engineering is “underpaid”? well, if someone of a certain intelligence/ability can make more money elsewhere, then he/she is underpaid.”
- That’s fundamentally flawed thinking. I could go work at Burger King making $20/hr, and just because I’m worth $100/hr doesn’t mean I am being underpaid at Burger King. Or if it does, it’s my own fault and nobody else’s.</p>
<p>I would argue that the underpaid argument also fails to take into account the concept of people being overpaid.</p>
<p>your point is valid, but if you go to burger king, you would be under-employed. i am saying that if you are working at your “ability level” and fulfilling your potential, then my rule applies. since most engineers could handle law intellectually, something is wrong with the huge pay discrepancy.</p>
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<p>I would argue that this has a cause that is twofold. On one hand, a lot of engineers are undervalued/underpaid. On the other, a lot of lawyers are overvalued/overpaid. I say “a lot” because obviously not all engineers or lawyers are of equal value.</p>