Basially OP your entire post is bang on the money. The risk return profile of Engineering is fucking horrendous. The stress and work load versus the payoff can be truly masochist. I don't think most kids really research this stuff before they go into it though. Reality hits them a few years into their work careers when they say 'Ohhhh Shitttt'.
- Precursor work: study complicated crap for 4 years in an environment of 5% women and <1% attractive women. This compounds on top of the fact that many introvert or socially weak types gravitate into Engineering because of the intellectual attraction. If you want to find most of the 23yo virgins on a campus, go to the School of Engineering.
- Job you get for this: fixed mediocre salary, where the best reward you might get is 'this week isn't quite as stressful as usual' or 'not full workload this week'. Mostly staring at a computer screen for 8+ hrs, under stressful deadlines, and with the computer fighting you every step of the way. Maybe if you hustle enough, you might weasel your way into a promotion, if any are available, to add a few K onto your salary and get different kinds of stress.
Fucking horrible really. Show that to a freshman and he'll shit his pants and become a plumber.
Unfortunately I haven't met many professionals anywhere who say 'yep, this profession is the bomb'. They all complain.
So far the only men I've seen who I was actually impressed by their position, and thought 'yeah this guy is winning', were 40+ specialists who had been reasonably proactive and had their own companies (or 'clinics' in the case of medical professionals).
In the case of Engineering, the following are positions I have observed, where the men are not getting fucked in the ass by their lives, due to 'high stress no reward':
- Those who specialized into something using a higher-degree, but who had researched the value very early. Note: none of these men will stay in Australia, they will leave immediately. Examples: a guy who did chem.eng and then specialized it with a Phd on fuel cells (he had planned this from the beginning), landed a good gig overseas.
- Those who specialized by adding another degree. I met one guy (about 50 but he looked 32) who stopped working in Engineering within a few years of starting, got a Law degree, and went into the patent law business. He became a partner in a firm, was doing about 400k, and then started his own firm with a partner, a combined Japan-US patent law firm. Again, he had researched the demand somewhat. Dude didn't look stressed out whatsoever.
- Guys who 'went out to the shit'. Tar sands guys, mining town guys. The difference here is that the work may be shit, but it is financially rewarding. It is OK to have a shit life if you are being compensated with bulk cash, since that life is temporary. My mate who worked out at a mine said his boss had a specific plan, along the lines of 'I put away about 1/2 mill, then go to Brazil and get a wife'.
- Men who got a degree in Engineering, and then did not do Engineering. Many engineers in America go into finance. At least there you get rewarded based on results, and have a high upside. There was also a kid in Australia who never used his Mechanical Engineering degree, and went into Real Estate agency instead. According to the news article, he was on 800k and he was 27.
-- This includes Engineering Sales. With sales you have a potential upside for succeeding, often a large one, because of performance based pay and networking value. Being able to bring sales to a company makes you massively valuable (it's all they care about in Australia), compared to just being an engineering grunt.
- Software engineers. They didn't have good lives, but they didn't have bad lives either. Mainly because they have higher mobility so they can move to another country where life is nicer, and because software engineering seems to be in high demand at the moment. Software engineers seem to have much less 'pidgeon hole' risk than any other type of engineer.
- Precursor work: study complicated crap for 4 years in an environment of 5% women and <1% attractive women. This compounds on top of the fact that many introvert or socially weak types gravitate into Engineering because of the intellectual attraction. If you want to find most of the 23yo virgins on a campus, go to the School of Engineering.
- Job you get for this: fixed mediocre salary, where the best reward you might get is 'this week isn't quite as stressful as usual' or 'not full workload this week'. Mostly staring at a computer screen for 8+ hrs, under stressful deadlines, and with the computer fighting you every step of the way. Maybe if you hustle enough, you might weasel your way into a promotion, if any are available, to add a few K onto your salary and get different kinds of stress.
Fucking horrible really. Show that to a freshman and he'll shit his pants and become a plumber.
Unfortunately I haven't met many professionals anywhere who say 'yep, this profession is the bomb'. They all complain.
So far the only men I've seen who I was actually impressed by their position, and thought 'yeah this guy is winning', were 40+ specialists who had been reasonably proactive and had their own companies (or 'clinics' in the case of medical professionals).
In the case of Engineering, the following are positions I have observed, where the men are not getting fucked in the ass by their lives, due to 'high stress no reward':
- Those who specialized into something using a higher-degree, but who had researched the value very early. Note: none of these men will stay in Australia, they will leave immediately. Examples: a guy who did chem.eng and then specialized it with a Phd on fuel cells (he had planned this from the beginning), landed a good gig overseas.
- Those who specialized by adding another degree. I met one guy (about 50 but he looked 32) who stopped working in Engineering within a few years of starting, got a Law degree, and went into the patent law business. He became a partner in a firm, was doing about 400k, and then started his own firm with a partner, a combined Japan-US patent law firm. Again, he had researched the demand somewhat. Dude didn't look stressed out whatsoever.
- Guys who 'went out to the shit'. Tar sands guys, mining town guys. The difference here is that the work may be shit, but it is financially rewarding. It is OK to have a shit life if you are being compensated with bulk cash, since that life is temporary. My mate who worked out at a mine said his boss had a specific plan, along the lines of 'I put away about 1/2 mill, then go to Brazil and get a wife'.
- Men who got a degree in Engineering, and then did not do Engineering. Many engineers in America go into finance. At least there you get rewarded based on results, and have a high upside. There was also a kid in Australia who never used his Mechanical Engineering degree, and went into Real Estate agency instead. According to the news article, he was on 800k and he was 27.
-- This includes Engineering Sales. With sales you have a potential upside for succeeding, often a large one, because of performance based pay and networking value. Being able to bring sales to a company makes you massively valuable (it's all they care about in Australia), compared to just being an engineering grunt.
- Software engineers. They didn't have good lives, but they didn't have bad lives either. Mainly because they have higher mobility so they can move to another country where life is nicer, and because software engineering seems to be in high demand at the moment. Software engineers seem to have much less 'pidgeon hole' risk than any other type of engineer.