Why aren’t engineering jobs popular anymore?
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
- Engineering fell off + L + ratio
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Original reddit post: / engineering_is_high_ef...
Created by Gauruv Virk
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Why aren’t engineering jobs popular anymore?
• Why aren’t engineering...
Gauruv Virk
/ gauruvvirk
Video topics:
- Why engineering jobs aren't popular anymore
- Why engineering students are not getting jobs
- Why engineering is not worth it
- Why engineering is so hard
- Why are engineering jobs so hard to get
- Why are there no engineering jobs
- Why engineers are not getting jobs
Being an engineer may not be worth it, but leaving a like on this video definitely is (and it's way easier) 🫣
since you didn't seem to get it, the first example was an exaggeration, the minimum vacation days for the guy would have been 24 days excluding sundays and holidays
@GauruvVirk I study pure mathematics and some of us math students really admire the scrappy and tenancious attitudes engineers bring to their work especially when it comes to building stuff. Also, you folks don't worry about needing to understand all the nitty gritty when using some other tech for your own building project as long as it work.
90% of engineers must spend their days looking through boring documentation and spreadsheet manipulation. Companies either work you to death or bore you to death. If you are lucky and actually gets to use a small fraction of the skills you learned in engineering school, then you are part of a very small minority.
⚠️ shoutout microsoft excel ⚠️
Facts
Nowadays I'd only recommend anyone pursues any type of engineering if they're actually interested in it and want to do it in their spare time purely as a hobby or something a little more, most of the time you end up developing your own spins on things and end up learning extremely valuable and niche areas within it, that's where the money is and something that no course or professional experience can really teach you.
Very good point - genuine interest in any pursuit is invaluable
I am an electronics engineer in the USA, I agree engineering has become high effort low reward here. Although this is very dependent on industry.
I don't see myself continuing with engineering work in the future.
The problems I see with electrical/electronics engineering jobs in the semiconductor industry.
- Long hours with unpaid overtime expected.
- Stuck in a toxic corporate environment in a high cost-of-living city.
- US H1B visa engineer exploitation taking away jobs from US citizens and bringing salaries down.
- A few arrogant uncompromising idiots that make engineering out to be some prestigious calling and lifestyle. These people live to work and look down on others not doing the same.
Ya from what I've seen, a lot of people share this sentiment
Key word is it really is dependent on industry. Thanks for sharing
@@GauruvVirk Good video! Thanks for the response. I hope good things happen in your engineering journey.
@@quicksilver2923 No problem! What has your experience been like?
@@gds-guydoingstuff I'm attending a local community college to transfer into a state university for their electrical engineering program. I had no idea what I wanted to study before, but I've been getting really excited about pursuing this field! I was initially hoping to study computer engineering and work with embedded systems or IC design. If I take well to the theory, I would love studying electrical engineering for a broader undergrad education and maybe specialize with a masters later on.
As an enginner for 8 years, i wish i had gone into finance.
I have known several people with finance degrees and they either hated their job or they were constantly getting laid off.
grass is always greener type beat
In my experience, the benefits have been going away year after year. Jobs have been moving outside of the US. Work load is increasing with very small increase in pay, with some engineers saying they received no pay increase at all. We're just told how we can increase shareholder value now. It doesn't feel the same as it did years ago. I
feel moral is low, and engineers are getting squeezed to produce work for as cheap as possible.
With that being said, I'm still staying because engineering is fun. I love math, science, and innovation. It just sucks that at the end of the day its just business.
Ya morale has taken a big hit recently 📉😔
Join the merchant marine. Their engineering gigs are really good and the job markets great. For the us at least
You act like going to a JOB for MONEY were something of a problem. That's absurd! We work primarily for the money, otherwise most people would be spending time on their hobbies or doing nothing... If the money is not great, this is enough reason to say that the job is not that great, unless you're the kind of person who doesn't need money.
I think a lot of people study engineering simply because they belive they will make a lot of money but have little to no interest in the field. And when/if the paycheck does not meet their expectetion they get discouraged
I went into engineering cause i liked it and found the area interesting.
🎯
also, because the fresh graduates pool got flooded with these types, it makes it harder for everyone to get a job as a result
I want to be a robotics engineer, not an employee. I want to be an entrepreneur.
Nice!
Civil Engineering is still solid right now. Really competitive job market and pay is rising pretty quickly. I have secured a full time job for when I graduate in May
Oh interesting - congrats!
@lukewarm4553
Civil and industrial seen like the only one's still worth a shit when you're just factoring in the amount if effort to get the diploma vs the compensation and employment opportunities (at least in most of the West rn).
That is unless you're just super passionate about mechanical or electrical i guess.
This is especially true after 2019. I’m seeing the requirements getting tougher while pay hasn’t proportionally increased, at least to the tune of the cumulative inflation over the past few years. Bonuses have all but evaporated too. The hiring gatekeepers are looking for a unicorn scenario where the candidate has 5+ years experience on a property platform, has worked with all of the BU’s SW tools, and is willing to take a meager wage. Hiring managers are also unwilling to invest in training new people and seem to gravitate towards internal only candidates…
Really good points - ya we are still feeling the effects of the pandemic
It’s really really hard to find good engineers top to bottom, and it doesn’t matter how much you have to spend on them. I think the bench has been hollowed out after years of not training new ones - or not having enough projects to keep people in the pipeline.
The #1 thing that makes a good engineer is someone who has seen projects through from start to finish. They know how it works, and they’ve seen the impact of poor decision making.
i keep hearing this stuff and it makes me sad. I’m a 30 year old mailman but i wanna be an electrical engineer so bad, I’m passionate about it, always built electronics, but never pursued it. i always see these posts and think the cards are stacked against me.
My engineering degree is in the trash. I've been programming since I was ten and built my own breadboard computer at 15.
Cheap labor busted tech workers years ago.
@@DeadCat-42 what do you mean. you got a degree and couldn’t find work? what does in the trash mean
Tbh, if you find a topic you are interested in you can find plenty of online university courses and just go through them. I did that for classes I was interested in but didn’t have room in my schedule for in uni
@@thatpunslinger i have room in my schedule, i just don’t wanna spend money on a UC engineering degree if i can’t find a job.
@@LeavingCaladan I say go for it! Things are just bad relative to what they used to be - if you truly care about electronics, it’s still a very fulfilling career to get into (the engineers solely driven by money are the ones that are having the biggest shock right now, because they don’t get any satisfaction from the job - and so with reduced benefits, it feels like they are losing everything)
Hyperinflation is destroying everyone's livelihoods. Pretty soon the best option will be to go neet.
Civil engineering taught online, make grandma’s basement great again
gonna go off grid 😶🌫️
I think a bachelor’s degree in engineering is very useful for the introductory knowledge. Advanced degrees in engineering are definitely lower monetary reward than other advanced degrees like business administration, finance, law, computer science, etc outside of entrepreneurship. However, the non-monetary rewards like work life balance might benefit certain people’s lifestyle.
@@ceasetheday87 Intangibles are underrated 🙂↕️
Engineering is an awesome profession. Constant learning, WFH, competitive pay, building and shipping product. I’ve tried finance, management, and the most fun I’ve ever had was as an engineer.
Definitely has its perks 🙂↕️
Yeah, I have to agree. I quit my Mechanical Engineering job about 4.5 months ago to start my own business. Looking back, it was fun and even fulfilling some of the time. The only problems I had were co-workers (usually non-engineers) who were rude and incompetent, and upper management who was very self-serving and fascinatingly incompetent
Hate to say this, but "something you care about" might be ultimately useless where you live or in society overall.
I wanted to be an animator/writer, but today big studios will often outsource a lot of the work to Asians because they are cheaper, and in the future AI may take care of the rest.
And the arts is just one example of this.
the real engineers stepped in (software)
the swe glaze is crazy 💀
*laughs in current software job market*
@@GauruvVirk game is game
@darbodrake89 both job markets suck rn, but at least swe pays wayy better on average and much easier
I got a job straight out of college in computer sience and i make more than average but its not really enough because the cost of living and housing is crazy high right now been doing this for 6 years now and still no house on my name but I do have a brand new car
That tracks - and congrats on the car!
I really don’t understand where the idea that engineers dont make money is coming from. All of the senior engineers i work with do 120k+ in low cost of living area. Engineering also has the highest number of millionaires by occupation(11%).
@@deegs1749 I think it’s more of a relative low, rather than a general low
I live in CT and the engineers at my engineering company founded by an engineer get paid shit for the hours they put in while the technicians like me drive better cars than they do and have more freedom. They really are underpaid, especially the junior to 4 or 5 year ones who still live with parents or roomates because they can't afford to live on their own.
Software developer for 25y, never made more than $77k/y, outside of USA so I got pension ontop of that. But got taxed high. Managed to save and invest but it wasn’t easy. I was an engineer cause I liked it, not cause of the pay. The key isn’t what you earn, but what you can live on. If that equation works out, then work with what you like the most. Easiest way to get the equation to work out is to reduce spending.
no problem just bring in some jeets from Mumbai and get them to work in engineering
I’m not sure what’s going to be left of this country if it doesn’t invest in the future of its workforce. Sad to see that it even doesn’t pay to be an Engineer, sad commentary.
Not true it goes up very close to experience i made less then a chasier in the beginning but make 5000 euro a month now after 7 years. The median here is 2500 euro a month. You just have to job hop a bit.
Job hopping is definitely a lucrative venture for anyone with the flexibility to do so
I can relate. it's worth it for me, (although barely, mostly from stress/time) but I won't recommend it to most of my friends because I feel that they deserve better.
"I feel that they deserve better" is hilarious
I got understaffed Aviation Engineer in Malaysia. Most likely experienced worker working abroad after getting squeezed worklife and underpaid. Bosses would find new workers but too bad that unemployed worker changed career since the begining of fall job hiring in 2014. Now open position cant be fill anymore
idek what to do besides engineering for college
So like you're not really into it, but you don't see any other option that would be better basically?
Sales
You've got options. You could do any role with computers, you could do creative writing, sales, etc... I've met quite a few dropouts, and the core theme is that they weren't interested in what they were learning.
Markets come and go, valleys and peaks are the nature of life, and tethering yourself to something because "it sounded prestigious and I had no other choices" isn't a good way to go about things; you'll probably fail.
You're better off finding something you *like,* and pursuing that. You have the option for College, I didn't, so I'd suggest to try and leverage it for *yourself* as best you can. Your parents aren't always going to be around, your friend aren't always going to be around, but you'll always be around; pick the one that will make *you* the happiest.
@@epicotakugamer4930thats the most normie job there is. Tons of competition i bet
talk to a real, practicing engineer before making the decision
Don't you get 100k a year? Bam. Reward
a lot of engineers don't tbh 😔
How much have the benefits decreased cant you still make 6figures
It depends. It’s more in high cost of living areas that have higher wages. On top of that you usually need a masters and experience for a lot of them. Been applying recently so I’ve been looking at a lot of job reqs
@@Woobbled it’s all relative - six figures can mean anywhere from $100,000 to $999,999 - if you are in a big city, it’s not uncommon for an engineer to have a six figure salary, but that person would also have to spend a lot of it on their cost of living which may leave them with little disposable income compared to someone not making six figures that lives outside of a big city
Most engineers won't make 6figs until they're mid level, typically have their PE license or be in a more experienced (but high stress) private role. Which usually requires a PE still.
And PE licenses, in most states, take about 4 years of experience you have to certify.
It's that making 6 figures (100k) isn't enough anymore. You need to be making over 300k/yr to have the same buying power our parents had in these HCOL areas
@@sirnonapplicable ok true but for right now engineering is still in of the most high paying compared to other degrees right ?
Aerospace engineer here. When I entered the field in 2000, top engineers could make over $100k. Now, a handful of top engineers can make over $100k. Compensation just hasn’t kept up with the times when I left engineering and went into consulting I got a 40% pay bum. if I’m gonna work 60 hours a week I want to get paid like it. when I started engineering. I was part of a department. By the time I left engineering each engineer was its own department. I was a single person doing engineering support for three separate shifts at a factory. For the same hours I could make double my salary as a consultant. As a consultant who used to be an engineer, nothing will scare you, not data, not process. Nothing is too complicated for you to understand if you started as an engineer.
Yeah found that in the software space. Being a consultant has its own downsides, but unless you are the head engineers you'll make similar pay
Great post. I never worked in engineering, but I majored in it for three years and I still find myself drawing from it - at least philosophically. "Nothing will scare you" is right: the way you folks attack problem-solving is something that should be taught in every field of study.
There are a bunch of adages that get thrown around in the lexicon, like "don't reinvent the wheel" and "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," and as I like to say, it certainly was not an engineer who first said these. Engineers are the types who always look to build the better mousetrap, so to speak. My first TA at UC Davis told us, "We look for ways to do for a nickel what others can't do with a dime." That always stuck with me, and the constant desire to find better and/or more efficient ways to do anything as followed me 30 years since the last time I touched my last pad of green engineering paper.
After training my cheap a d low skilled H1b replacement to 'try' to do my job I tossed my engineering degree in the trash and became an electrician.
I make MORE work half the hours and I'm not worried about a being laid off again.
What was your degree?
“nah imma do my own thing” - Miles Morales
excellent, i hope to be you someday
Honestly an engineering student that does electrical work, especially for themselves, is way ahead of the game compared to almost anyone. Not a bad outcome.
They tried to have me train one, and the lack of base knowledge made it impossible. Tried for 3 years and he still can't do anything, while 5 others with the base knowledge are excelling. I don't think corporate takes those things into consideration. Pennywise and dollar poor, and then all your good engineers leave when they keep getting burdened with tasks like that and being under valued then your left with only people that can only do the minimum viable. May work for a year or two but things will fail at some point in fast order, and be impossible to rebuild cuz all the foundation people are gone
it’s not worth-it to be an EMPLOYEE anymore… for anything other than seed money for your investments… engineering is just one solid & stable way of doing this…
time to enter *_founder mode_*
The main problem we have nowadays is that all companies believe they need to hire only super star engineers. In other words, they will hire people only if they can prove to be among the 10% best of their fields. That's unrealistic. It always generates a large number of unemployed people, which leads naturally to lower salaries even for the ones that were hired. That is, the industry is now in a self reinforcing negative cycle: companies will hire less people because they only want the very best, then fewer and fewer people with those abilities will be available and many will leave the profession altogether to do something less demanding. This will only stop when enough people have left engineering and companies need to start to pay a premium to hire anyone.
It will take years for this cycle to end and go back to normal. Maybe 10 years
I agree, engineering is no longer a solid way to make good money. Engineers are way underpaid and underappreciated, which is unfortunate. But if you want to be an engineer, you have to LOVE being an engineer. It's definitely not worth it otherwise; you can make about as much money with less stress/responsibilities at a lower cost of entry in many other fields.
I'm planning my exit strategy from engineering now. I enjoyed learning engineering but the pay and benefits aren't worth it any longer, and I'm no longer really enjoying the work. It's just a stable job that pays my bills (barely).
Important thing to understand: In large corporations, where you are not paid per-piece, your salary depends on position, status, and prestige. It does not depend on your skill, or how much money the company makes. However, those (skill and money) may be minimum enabling requirements.
Specifically, the amount of money people in corporate positions make depends on the hiring salary proposed by what the people currently responsible for setting salaries are willing to pay, and/or can convince higher levels of management to budget for. At least in the companies I worked for, they budgeted what they were willing to pay for from the top (i.e. management) down.
Thus, in those types of positions, the most useful skills are rhetoric and persuasion, not mathematics and science.
That's good insight.
One thing I'd like to note is that if you successfully negotiate a higher salary, you need to deliver higher value. If you're not able to do this, then the company is more likely to lay you off if they experience a downturn.
Again, you're not wrong, but there are perils associated with this
This guy gets it
Engineering salaries and working conditions are worse compared to most other comparable fields. You can pursue hundreds of different professions that are a lot easier to get a degree in and get a better salary and working conditions. Its not that we had it so good and now its normal.
The general issue is that engineers are not clearly defined as a class regarding what they are only allowed to do. So, while we are all in agreement that only surgeons are allowed to cut people open, we somehow allow anyone to design critical software and machines. Engineers are often just needed to sign off on the work of others, which is why so many job postings do not require engineering degrees.
I think that mainly applies to software where I think other engineering disciplines are more defined and require certain degrees.
@@eliana993nope. Even electronics and manufacturing have been heavily infiltrated by tech programs that let folks with 2 year degrees or course certs do a job like PCB layout. That used to be a job reserved for Engineers. Companies have commoditized skills to the point where they have a supply of people who can do work for cheap.
It’s also the case that companies prefer to outsource work to turnkey consulting companies rather than have too many in-house engineering staff so that they can save on salary.
@@eliana993 While it is most profound in software, it is still prevalent in other fields. For example, while I used to work with teams of mechanical/electrical engineers, now it's just one or two certified people who review stuff from people without formal education.
Companies love hiring people who just know how to use Solidworks and outsource most simple work.
In theory, I would not have a problem with this, but It does increase my workload as most of the stuff is not up to standards, and it drags engineering wages to be more on par with theirs as we "Do the same thing."
What do I do as an engineer? I clean gutters. ($80 an hour)
The dirty secret about engineering is you do not need a degree to do engineering. You only need the degree if you plan on getting the license. You can always work under someone else's license.
Companies hire based on your actual skill set, not your degrees.
Degree helps to get job. Speaking as an engineer. You will not even be considered for most jobs Without a degree unless you know someone or your dad owns the company.
@qatarworldcupwinnermessi depends on the field, depends on the company.
In my experience, internships, personal projects, and demonstrateable skills get you the job these days. The degree is a check box at best.
@@GeoFry3 Depends on your race too.
Having a "dirty" secret as someone that cleans gutters is kinda funny lol - but ya I think it ultimately comes down to what kind of engineer you are trying to be (some fields value it more than others)
@GauruvVirk my experience with the ones obsessed with degrees are in code/regulatory compliance industries. They are not doing anything interesting, novel, or even all that productive.
Back in the 80's...a new grad Engineers made about as much as a grocery chain cashier. It improved in the 90's...
Mostly the problem is capitalism. In a capitalistic society the rich NEED unemployment to use as leverage to reduce your salary.
So the pipeline goes: Make an area famous so more people get into it, stop hiring people and use the "there's other people wanting your job" excuse to average down your salary, and start making the requirements for the job way too hard to hire people more experienced paying less. Every single area is going thru this.
What capitalism? You mean social corporatism right? Because that's where we are ATM.
The problem is that they get taxed to death as a euro.
we’re cooked bruh 🫠
@@internetpointsbank Social Corporatism is capitalism. All capitalism is corporatism. That is the base of capitalism.
@@_Cartographer_ Even in places where taxes are low the same thing happens.
Taxes do not affect the job market. What affects the job market is the capitalistic need for cheap labour.
I think you’re talking about larger companies, this has been the reality for smaller companies for a long time.
Very true on the work experience, been in engineering for a long time and only the past few years I’ve been making a decent income.
Good distinction
I did Mechanical Engineering in the 90s (in the US). I never worked as an engineer. But I never thought I was gonna work as an engineer. I thought I Was gonna do the MBA thing and go into (international) trading.
However, I do not regret my choice. In fact I have always been proud of it. I learned how to NOT SLEEP once day a week (on Monday/Tuesdays as the ME572 lab reports were due). How to live in 5 to 6 hours of sleep. To take constant, perfect and steady state mental stress.
Having an engineering degree has opened many professional doors. Very often people thought (and treated me as if) I was smarter than what I really am (it was nice).
But yes....I do agree that the study course is way too rigid, way too demanding, way too hard and way too unforgiving.
If there is a lack of engineers, it is only because schools kick so many out.
But then, if you are going to be making airplanes, elevators, factories, spaceships, cars, machinery, building, bridges, etc, etc,........Don't we want ONLY the very best at it? Because failure in those things could translate to dead people.
Can we afford the luxury (and the risk) of graduating mediocre engineers?
I say no....but then again, that is easy for me to say since I did survive. (I might have a different opinion if I didn't)
Was going to do the engineering school in the US and I saw the pay. The effort didn’t seem worth it based on the salary
@@robertsanders5873 Been hearing this more and more lately
I feel like even if you love something the job isn’t always the part that you love. Also working conditions can make you love something less. I love cooking but I could never work in a kitchen as a chef. Loving cooking and being a chef are a dichotomy you would not understand unless you worked in a restaurant kitchen.
I am European too and I’ve been doing IT for 31 years now. And pay is dreadful compared to USA or the Emirates. This didn’t use to be like that. When I started I earned 3500 guilders a month gross and I was living the high live. Now as a freelancer I earn 4 times as much and there’s often just a couple of 100 euros left to save. So things just gotten horrendously expensive and taxes are fucking insane! And above that, the sick American management culture made its way here. And it’s often that the politics and processes are more important than the solution. I literally spend 15-20% engineering a solutions and the remain timing doing useless paper work and I loathe it. To make matters worse younger colleagues are so much less well educated and experienced so I’m also mentoring them. It takes the fun out of it. When I was sick at home I knocked out a whole nice video game in less than 2 weeks, during the hours I could actually do something. And I was like: “how can I write a relatively complex game with all the graphics the music (I’d written and recorded already) in 2 weeks and the most simple thing at my banking customer takes literally weeks?!
And frankly I think engineers need to be worshipped because we actually solve problems and make live easier. We should recognize that.
There will always be a market for people who can do real work. Think of doctors. There will always be a market for people with the skill to open up someone’s chest and fix their heart. Not just anyone can do that and not many people do it. On the other hand, what skill is there in taking patient information, taking blood pressure and putting on a band aid that a nurses assistant does. Both types are health care professionals but one type of job is definitely harder and riskier and correspondingly better paid.
A similar thing is happening for engineers. Frankly, not many engineers have the skill to just do something on their own. They are just a cog. They don’t have the knowledge or experience to design an engine or a semiconductor, that an actual company can use, they can just work on one little narrow part of the project like test a component and log the data. These graduate engineers are not the engineering equivalent of the heart surgeon, they are the equivalent of the med techs or nurses assistants. In the past even these people were paid well but not anymore. However the engineers who truly make everything run will always find a job and be compensated.
Marine engineering is very solid right now as well. It requires a regimented school rn. But the money and seeing the world is great.
Sounds like a good gig!
Is that what you do?
@@FaCiSmFTW yep
Most of engineering is grunt work
In my 2nd year on engineering school because im "smart and good at math". My grades are good but i find it pretty boring right now. My true interest is health, but i disagree with the allopathic/pharmacutical model, and holistic health careers require extensive schooling. Usually its additional school on top of medical school and i just dont have the time for that. So idk what else to do but finish my degree. Maybe I can move to another country where im compensated enough to make engineering worth it.
Oh nvm I watched the rest of the video. I'm in the US
people are just jaded and negative about everything these days. ask them to come up with an alternative and they'll struggle to answer.
Because corporate culture and inflation suck us dry
thinking that people have no better alternative is kinda jaded and negative too lol
@@GauruvVirk well my point is that during bad times you have to find the silver lining and people just don't seem to do that. They just snipe at every individual thing instead of acknowledging that engineers etc don't have it so bad _compared to_ a lot of other people.
Parts of it are great. You do get engineer brain which is a super power. You also get to work on projects with authority.
Its trash to live through until mid life