Why would anyone go through the four to five long years of torture in the school of engineering and then find out there are too few good jobs in this self-inflicted dried up economy? During this time you lived in the library or in the lab preparing for the next day while the business majors are partying. You have no social life or at least deprived of a good one. After your parents refinanced their house and now in the hole for over $100,000 in exchange for that piece of sheepskin with your name on it, you are now out in the job marketplace with no or very little work related experience on your resume. You are now competing against some very experienced and desperate unemployed PEs, PhDs and ScDs. God help you if you're not from the top 10% in your class form MIT or Berkeley. Now you are in the unenviable position to be under experienced for an engineering position and over qualified for others. Assuming you're the lucky few, you will work long hours like a dog, with unpaid overtime, just to protect you job. At the same time we have had and are having an influx of some very good foreign engineers who are willing to take your job at a fraction of your wages and are willing to work even longer hours. Long hours, long commute, relative low pay with no overtime, no job stability or security, company going offshore and outsourcing and the union blue-collar worker next door makes about as much as you do, more with overtime, and he is at the job site at
7am and go home by 3pm while you're just warming up. Couple of general contractors I know, who makes too much money as they said, works 6 months and then go fishing, hunting or whatever for the other six. My auto body friend who owns a shop and brings in well over half a million a year, same with my lawyer in-laws who have to take 4 months off for vacation around the world every year. Further, IEEE is a joke. It's a money making machine collecting dues, insurance, books and whatever it gets its hands on but don't depend on it if you're unemployed or in search for a better career path. Unlike IEEE, the medical and law professional organizations must be doing something right to promote a high living standard. If that wasn't enough, if you still have an engineering position by age 40, you are either burned out, too old and obsolete or considered a failure if you haven't gone into management. Enough ranting and my bias views, I'm back to cleaning my rooms.- posted
18 years ago