Think you're a big shot with your engineering degree? Look at this Chipolte worker!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking engineers.

One of my degrees is engineering from one of the arguably 3 best schools in the world. My entire class got recruited by Microsoft, back when. Those who didn't go, went to one of the other 3 schools for graduate work.

The poster upthread who claimed that foreign-trained engineers are uncreative and IP thieves generalizes too much. There are some great engineers who come out of Germany and other places, who respect IP. India, China, etc., yes, you can hire those people if you need garbage grunt work done, but don't expect them to do anything great, and don't trust them an inch. I know many who have learned this lesson the hard way.

Graduate physicists and materials scientists are another matter entirely from engineers. Different mentality.

And so-called "SW engineering", isn't. It is programming, plain and simple. They are technicians dressed up as engineers, with a technician's mindset.

You can't talk about "engineering" like it is monolithic. Specialties vary widely, and work situations vary widely. Like all other professions, there are 2 classes of engineers: those who have management potential, and those who don't. Those who do can do very well, especially if they land a good situation early; those who don't are left to toil, tweaking modeling programs.

Like in other fields, the toilers stagnate, while the others skyrocket.

Having a career as a stagnated engineer can suck every bit as much, if not more, than a career as a manager at Chipotle. Managing any business, even a burrito place, has its challenges and rewards, entirely different, and more mature, from what an engineer in the trenches experiences.

It depends on what kind of person you are. The world needs managers, and the world needs engineers, and the two things often have very different requirements.

Stats on engineering salaries are available from many places. Again, don't believe certain government stats, as they are biased toward public-sector engineers--who can initially be "underpaid", but who always trend positive.

dell, microsoft, chinese, indian companies are pilferers of open source software and hardware IP and are not highly regarded in the basic research, product r&d, and engineering community. microsoft is infamous for 'wrinkle engineering', again demonstrating the concept with win 8. suprisingly enough though china and india have lately in recent times become very innovative and are producing some original material.

Eng. paid too much? Really? wrote:

Engineers are far underpaid for the profession and how valuable our assets are to a technological company.

Maybe you should have taken an economics class on market forces. But seriously, if you are "worth" 200k and were offered 100k, why wouldn't you work for yourself and keep the margin? Oh wait...

general store--

You are absolutely correct.

Microsoft has changed over the years, to what it is now.

When you're talking SW, there is effectively no such thing as "invention", everything is just combinations of old elements--so yes, there can be "innovation", which just means making something new, some combination that hasn't necessarily been made before, but which is not necessarily "inventive" in an IP sense (yes, I know patents are granted on SW, but that is changing rapidly).

As far as actual engineering goes, it is expensive to set up and run a good engineering school--which is why they don't have any in Asia (at least not until very recently, and now, only a very few), and why they concentrate on SW--because the schools are cheap to set up and run, compared to, say, a real mech, elec, aeronatics, robotics, eng. program.

once in awhile the SW community comes up with a earthshaker. the last that shook me was ZFS. now whether it was really SUN or NetApp who came up with the idea 1st or not i don't know. but ZFS has made hardware RAID totally obsolete and that fact cannot be disputed. of course the weakness is you have to run ZFS which is not available on win. And MS has again 'wrinkle engineered' the forthcoming btrfs ?sp instead of licensing ZFS ;-<

As an engineer I don't think we're necessarily underpaid, but I do think American business culture in general grossly overvalues managers. In my experience, the company that pays its engineers 50k and managers 300k will do worse than the one that pays its engineers 90k and managers 150k. If you want good engineers who stick around, you have to pay them.

It depends, of course, but I haven't found much of a reliable quality increase between well-paid and extremely well-paid managers. My current company has frozen engineer and manufacturing floor salaries for the past 2 years, and in the mean time hired 6 new managers. They can't figure out why quality keeps slipping, despite all the money they're pouring into "Six sigma black belt whatever" managers with certifications out their asses. It's because you're underpaying the people who are actually producing your products! Last I heard, HR was talking about replacing most factory employees with temps. Good luck with that one...

Anyway, if you want to get rich as an engineer, it's totally doable. Just like most other jobs, you need to start your own company or get in on the ground floor of something big. Consultants can also make very good money.

I know this one guy who makes $40,000 a year who makes something that everyone who obsesses about their salary can't make.

Enough.

coach d wrote:

Look in the mirror. Engineers making $250-300K are managers. For the 2011 class, the AVERAGE Computer Science major started for $70K. If you can write java with some experience, you can make $90-110K, without being a manager.l

Now tell me why I should tell my youngest, who is being recruited by Harvard to study computer science, that he should give up Harvard and go to work for Chipotle instead.

Software engineers and computer scientists are going to make SEVERAL TIMES what non-degreed people will make over their career.

The girl at Chipotle has done great given her abilities, but the comparison is ridiculous.

God you are an idiot. Nobody is saying that someone should give up going to Harvard to work at Chipotle. Harvard is by no means average. And to the people who keep talking about Silicon Valley or NYC and how much people make there, you are all morons as well. Most people don't live in places like that. Most engineers and people with college degrees don't make 100k per year. Throwing out 10 salaries of people you hired is less than pointless, because we are talking about AVERAGES. If you can make that much, great. If you can't and still want to get a degree, then that's great too. The point is, this girl worked hard and achieved success at a young age without a lot of the stuff that so many people feel is essential for success.

The invention in software is not the code itself, but the processes and algorithms, like unique encryption algorithms. But then, its more likely to be theoretical computer scientists or mathematicians who develop those algorithms, while the software guys just do the implementation.If the SW company is able to fund an R&D department like Google and Microsoft, then you get into the domain of patents and real inventions.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

general store--

You are absolutely correct.

Microsoft has changed over the years, to what it is now.

When you're talking SW, there is effectively no such thing as "invention", everything is just combinations of old elements--so yes, there can be "innovation", which just means making something new, some combination that hasn't necessarily been made before, but which is not necessarily "inventive" in an IP sense (yes, I know patents are granted on SW, but that is changing rapidly).

As far as actual engineering goes, it is expensive to set up and run a good engineering school--which is why they don't have any in Asia (at least not until very recently, and now, only a very few), and why they concentrate on SW--because the schools are cheap to set up and run, compared to, say, a real mech, elec, aeronatics, robotics, eng. program.

I didn't read any of the responses but what is the point of this thread? Telling people don't go into a fantastic career like engineering and work for f*cking chipotle because some random chick got super lucky and makes pretty good money?

Ho Hum wrote:

Anyway, if you want to get rich as an engineer, it's totally doable. Just like most other jobs, you need to start your own company or get in on the ground floor of something big. Consultants can also make very good money.

If you're creative, this is especially true. Think of pure engineers like Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and portable dialysis machine, in addition to a host of other inventions.

The guy who invented Breathe-Right nasal strips is an example too. He worked as an imagineer at Disney, and was going through a bad cold...he had a moment of inspiration one night, and voila, Breathe-Right.

If you're really good, get your patents on paper and make something. It can be as simple as that new waterhose I see advertised on TV, the one that elongates when you run water through it and retracts to a managable tote-bag size when the water flow stops.

No, its more to point out that those with degrees shouldn't dog people in positions like that, because you never know whats inside a person.In a related area, 3 inmates in Washington state saved a group of kids whose kayak overturned recently. The guys were on a work crew when they heard the cries for help. Just because they're incarcerated doesn't mean their bad people:http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/inmates-save-3-boys-drowning-article-1.1251940

Dennis Reynolds wrote:

I didn't read any of the responses but what is the point of this thread? Telling people don't go into a fantastic career like engineering and work for f*cking chipotle because some random chick got super lucky and makes pretty good money?

bguyMilleniumJ_2012 wrote:

No, its more to point out that those with degrees shouldn't dog people in positions like that, because you never know whats inside a person.

In a related area, 3 inmates in Washington state saved a group of kids whose kayak overturned recently. The guys were on a work crew when they heard the cries for help. Just because they're incarcerated doesn't mean their bad people:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/inmates-save-3-boys-drowning-article-1.1251940

Dennis Reynolds wrote:

I didn't read any of the responses but what is the point of this thread? Telling people don't go into a fantastic career like engineering and work for f*cking chipotle because some random chick got super lucky and makes pretty good money?

There are hard workers everywhere but if you got a degree in engineering you've worked harder than some person in chipotle. There may be one or two exceptions which you've found one but overall, come on bro.

I completely agree with your second point, making a mistake is not a reflection on your overall character.

> If the SW company is able to fund an R&D department like Google and Microsoft

Google has R&D and many want to work their. Microsoft does not do R&D.

Google employs engineers and scientists to innovate new ideas and products

Microsoft has never innovated one thing, but rather employs engineers that reverse-engineer, re-purpose, and re-write open source to create incompatible implementaions for marketing to sucker companies into an endless cycle of $150 upgrades.

that depends on the quality of the engineering program you went to.

I know engineering undergrads who mention that many of their classes are curved, to the extent that a grade like 50/100 would be an A. If thats all it takes to get an A, even if its relative to your peers, either the students are not learning the material they need to learn, or the professors are not making tests that a reasonably intelligent engineering student can do well on.

How good is the quality of an engineering class if students in the class cant make at least a 70 on the test? Are they stupid, or is the test too hard? If the latter, than the professors are incompetent and dont know what the hell to test on.

bguyMilleniumJ_2012 wrote:

that depends on the quality of the engineering program you went to.

I know engineering undergrads who mention that many of their classes are curved, to the extent that a grade like 50/100 would be an A. If thats all it takes to get an A, even if its relative to your peers, either the students are not learning the material they need to learn, or the professors are not making tests that a reasonably intelligent engineering student can do well on.

How good is the quality of an engineering class if students in the class cant make at least a 70 on the test? Are they stupid, or is the test too hard? If the latter, than the professors are incompetent and dont know what the hell to test on.

Every program has that, not just engineering.

You're misunderstanding how curving works. In order to differentiate between students, some professors will give incredibly difficult tests, because otherwise everyone would be too close. You might only get 60 percent right, but that doesnt mean you only understand 60 percent of the material. Tough tests also force people to put in more effort studying.

Those hard testing classes are much more stressful than other classes -- imagine taking a test where you don't have a clue how to do a third of the questions, sometimes haven't even seen the material.

bguyMilleniumJ_2012 wrote:

that depends on the quality of the engineering program you went to.

I know engineering undergrads who mention that many of their classes are curved, to the extent that a grade like 50/100 would be an A. If thats all it takes to get an A, even if its relative to your peers, either the students are not learning the material they need to learn, or the professors are not making tests that a reasonably intelligent engineering student can do well on.

How good is the quality of an engineering class if students in the class cant make at least a 70 on the test? Are they stupid, or is the test too hard? If the latter, than the professors are incompetent and dont know what the hell to test on.

Plus there's a lot of cheating or near cheating going on at many schools. I'm thinking of frats and sororities that kept files of old exams. That might not be cheating, but to me it's not completely honest.

kartelite wrote:

Maybe you should have taken an economics class on market forces. But seriously, if you are "worth" 200k and were offered 100k, why wouldn't you work for yourself and keep the margin? Oh wait...

Not entirely true.

Engineering and the sciences are among the few professional fields truly compete on an international playing field.

Look-- you want to hire someone to practice law in America, you have to hire an American. You want to hire someone to practice medicine in America, you have to hire an American. You want to hire an accountant, you have to hire an American.

That is not true for engineering or the sciences.

Same thing with visa policies. The government is very willing to hand out visas to immigrant engineers but will not do the same thing for MD's, lawyers, and accountants.

The only reason that engineers are not "worth" the same as those other professions is that the other professions are much better at restraining trade and keeping the free market from working...