You don’t want to work for engineering firms or large market-cap firms like ExxonMobile or GE. There are engineering consulting firms that pay similar if not better than McKinsey if you add up total compensations like equity or stock options. I worked for one right out of college though that was many many years ago. If you are real good, you can make a small fortune working for a fast growing company or a start-up. I have many friends from Microsoft/Cisco/Apple (when these were fast growing) who were able to retire early in their forties.</p>
<p>Of course if you want a normal life, you can be a lifer at IBM or ExxonMobil. You get pay enough to lead a comfortable life and your retirement is assured. To each his own.</p>
<p>p.s. The guy who wrote “Don’t go to an engineering college” didn’t know what he was talking about. He made the mistake of lumping all engineering jobs in one basket (in the lowest denomination). The only point he raised that applies to me is that “the hours will be excessively long” … but that’s only because I was compensated excessively well.</p>
<p>I guess I was one of those “fortunate” MIT grads to get recruited right out of school to go to work for a consulting group. The pay was about 20% better than traditional engineering jobs with the potential for substantially more. For almost a year, I commuted between Boston and DC to provide my “expert advice” to congressional subcommittees, among other things. Notice the quotes. It didn’t take long to recognize this world for what it really was, and I elected to go to work for a large-cap S&P500 firm where I could get involved with cutting-edge research and development, albeit at significant reduction in pay. For me, there is no question this was the right choice, but my engineering degree gave me the opportunity to work in either of those worlds, and I took advantage of it.</p>
<p>Well, that actually only moves the goalposts, for engineering consulting is just another form of consulting. That raises the question, why don’t regular engineering firms simply raise their salaries to compete with the engineering consulting firms? </p>
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<p>But that’s mostly a luck-based strategy. For every one engineer who joined Microsoft/Cisco/Apple when they were fast-growing startups, there were surely many more who joined startups that failed. Remember Webvan? Friendster? Pets.com? And those are startups that actually became prominent, if only briefly, and that’s why the public has heard of them. Most other startups that do so fail before the public even knows they exist at all. </p>
<p>So it’s not merely a matter of being a strong engineer, but also about having the luck of winning the start-up lottery. My understanding is that Webvan employed plenty of brilliant engineers. But it didn’t matter. </p>
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<p>I don’t know about that. How soon we forget the trials and tribulations of IBM during the early 90’s, when during a 5-year period, IBM eliminated a whopping 150k jobs. That’s more jobs than the entire populations of many towns in the country. Thousands of IBM engineers who thought that they had secure lifetime jobs realized to their great chagrin that it was just not so. Indeed, many commentators stated that the actions of IBM (and other large companies during that timeframe) permanently poisoned the well of employee loyalty, as employees realized that when even a supposedly benevolent and protective employer such as IBM was revealed to have little loyalty towards its own employees, why should employees provide any loyalty in return? ‘Never fall in love with your employer, because you never know when your employer will fall out of love with you’ - such was the mentality that the IBM layoffs engendered. Similarly, during the late 90’s when oil prices dropped to a trough of $10 a barrel, oil companies such as Exxon & Mobil (before the merger) were seemingly competing in a “Layoff Championship”, and the city of Houston was essentially in a state of economic depression. </p>
<p>The upshot is that there are no such things as lifetime employment and guaranteed retirements in the private sector. Not anymore. Those are anachronisms from our parent’s generation.</p>