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But the pay is substantially less than other professional occupations like doctor or lawyer.

The educational requirements for engineers to enter that profession is nowhere near that of doctors and even lawyers. An engineer can begin working after four years of college; lawyers seven and doctors eight plus various lengths of time in residency.

Those aren't really comparable.

The educational requirements for engineers to enter that profession is nowhere near that of doctors and even lawyers. An engineer can begin working after four years of college; lawyers seven and doctors eight plus various lengths of time in residency.

My undergrad degree is in Electrical Engineering (1968) and after a few years working as an EE, I went back to school and became a lawyer, JD in 1976.

Engineering undergrad degrees at the time required about 20% more credit hours than for other majors, so it was really a five year program crammed into four years.

I personally found law school easier than master's level EE classes.

I took a 25% pay cut, by the way, between my last paycheck as an EE and my first one as a newly minted lawyer. However, after a few years of hard work, my income as a telecommunications lawyer was substantially more than it would have been had I remained in engineering.

Jack

You're right, they're not comparable. The technical competency required for engineering exceeds those other fields.
I've known so many engineers who've quit and gone into less time consuming areas like law with the secondary benefit of making considerably more.