Is engineering over-valued?
I have a mad respect for engineers as their work during the college years is very hard. I also see that in the US engineering seems to be well-regarded. In India it is the most dominant major. However, does engineering as a career is good in terms of salary, careerprogression? I know that engineers are also present in consulting, finance, and in quant roles. But I suppose many of the engineers studied this major without considering the finance options at first. They wanted to be engineers at first (I suppose so).
Is engineering an overrated major?
P.s. By saying engineering I don't mean Software engineering, I mean fields like chemical, civil, mechanical etc.
Lots of those engineering jobs are safe and have steady growth, extremely low risk, and offer a comfortable lifestyle. Maybe it is overrated, but it’s not a bad life. For those who want no risk, it’s a good path.
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Why does what the Ivy league programs have dictate what is valuable to society?
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Holy cow, this is a shit take. This dude seems like a state school grad right here who failed calc 1 in high school and has hated engineers ever since. This is coming from someone who did not major in engineering.
First of all, every single ivy league has an engineering school and engineering department. The fact that you don't know this tells me you're a non-target grad. Furthermore, Engineering makes up the majority of their institutional spending on research and teaching. Clearly, these institutions value advancement in the field, particularly because they get a shit-ton of grants for it. The U.S. government isn't going to give you a $25,000,000 grant for anthropology research or Shakespearean analysis, they're going to give you those grants so you can develop new aerospace weaponry or model tropical storms with fluid mechanics. Clearly the things people care about, the places where the money is at, are based on engineering. Engineering is literally innovation. The day engineering dies is the day innovation stops -- never gonna happen.
Secondly, engineering, especially at top institutions, is rigorous as hell. No advanced portfolio management, M&A, or investments course in your undergrad business education comes close to it. Companies want engineers for a reason. They literally do the job of a liberal arts major better. You literally cannot comprehend how much taking 4 years of advanced, math-heavy physics courses develops your problem-solving skills. While not engineering, there is a reason math majors score highest on the LSAT for a reason and it is not because they have had a pre-law education like Poli-Sci, etc.
You call engineers conceited, arrogant, ignorant, and bigoted. I don't know how you can classify an entire group of people as shitty like that, that's like me saying all white people are bigoted, ignorant, conceited, and arrogant. Can't believe I'm teaching 1st grade ideas about not making assumptions about entire groups of people to a 1st year ibd analyst but here I am. Not really gonna say anymore on your subjectivity here but its just retarded and untrue.
Maybe we should have more people majoring in anthropology, philosophy, and africana studies so we don't "forget about human judgement and our culture". Too bad the free market doesn't care about that and allocate sufficient compensation to that field.
over hyped as a path to riches like most careers? absolutely
over valued in terms of value to society? depends. just like it takes engineering skills to build the inventions that have changed society completely for the better, it's also possible that you become some dork building an esoteric crm tool for some saas company that adds no value to their clients business. engineering is too broad, all depends on application of said skills, like pretty much every other thing in life. no bad skills, just bad applications
I went to a school that had a good civil engineering program, so am friends with a bunch of civil engineers. I think they knew they were always promised good money, but not super rich money. One of our friends went IB and is now an MD. We discussed the difference in pay throughout the years. But, from my school specifically you had to be a top 10% business major to have good options with like a 3.6-4.0 GPA and the engineers meanwhile only had to get 3.0-3.5 GPA for good career options. But, even the 2.5 GPA engineers had options. So for many engineering programs it is kind of a gauntlet you have to go through in the curriculum and if you survive, you are granted at least some job. With many business programs, if you have a mediocre GPA or something, you're going PWM or better be good at sales.
Engineering is a very honest trade. You study a good curriculum full of best practices and then you do work in your field. Then from this group of engineers certain leaders are born and they become managers similar to Elon Musk leading a large team of engineers. Some people like the engineering work and prefer not to manage, so they stay in their place and they are generally happy with it.
Also, engineers often have tangible work to show for their efforts. This can be very fulfilling as opposed to just being an Excel jockey. Some people in Wall Street don't quite know or understand the value they produce. With engineering is usually is very obvious.
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