Posted on 04/16/2025 2:00:06 PM PDT by zeestephen
If your goal is to make money right after college, majoring in engineering is one of the safest bets.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Until I got far into “the self-directed career” I never took notice of the connections / advantages people had. Engineers who had them did not talk about them.
Later in life in casual conversations with others (not the engineers) someone would say “Jocko the engineer’s father was VP over in Department X.” Or “Bluto the Engineer’s father was college roommates with the the CFO ... got Bluto an interview, hired and mentored him.” Frankly, it all made sense. They weren’t very good engineers - the apple fell far from the tree, they needed the connection to get a job, and prove the Peter principle as true as time went on. The real engineers - they ate, drank 24/7 the Fourier transform, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, tore things apart and put them back together , etc etc. They became successful on their own merits - even left the company for bigger opportunities.
Good luck getting through the Calculus. It makes or breaks a lot of Engineer wannabees.
3 semesters of calc about killed me, save for 1 where I had a great instructor. Had to follow that with differential equations, which I was dreading, but found to be a breeze.
ChE
Pshaw! Anyone with an engineering degree will tell you Calculus was the easy stuff. Gets much harder when you hit the engineering courses.
I have a degree in software development
My daughter has a degree in Art History
She makes more than I do in advertising.
He’s fortunate. Once youre at a certain level its easier to keep it. Don’t let him take a paycut for a new oppurtunity unless the new experience compliments his/her life goals.
My salary peaked mid-career and hasnt moved in spite of my decent resume. I’m an aerospace engineer with1/2 mechanical experience. Product development.
“....a lot of guys that failed out of fluid mechanics went into medical.”
That causes me concern. I’ll start asking every doctor after he tells me the results of my urine specimen what his grade was in fluid mechanics, and whether it was the compressible gas equations that did him in.
Field Service Engineering (construction yes, but repairs, modifications, servicing and updating, replacing in-process components, and -especially high-paid/high demand - testing and re-certification AFTER an outage or turnaround period - are 140,000.00 to 180,000.00 annually. But require travel, require the long shifts to get that much.
7x12 shifts, 6x10 shifts, 7 x 10 shifts. All out of town at the customer’s sites.
The power plants are screaming for grid and power production engineers - especially electrical and mechanical and controls and I&C.
-PJ
Our child, two years out of college with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering, has a six figure salary and equity in a small company.
If a guy works those heroic hours / travel and family sacrifices, he deserves the big bucks! :)
FIL worked over seas project managing LNG projects. That was lucrative for him.
LOVE IT!!!
Algebra was tough until I started calc...lol.
“I’ll never use this stuff!!”
Petroleum geologists, geophysicists, and engineers are over six figures by that age group.
My VA nurse practitioner makes a $135,000 a year.
please, please, please tell me Underwater Basket Weaving isn’t in the list ... i had a choice to major in that or computer science but stupidly chose to major in computer science ...
So what are these great careers in a globalized world Americans are now getting?
Well, I do not have a degree— I am fairly young and I “works with me hands.” I hit 6 figures last year and this year is skyrocketing. Degrees are great, but somebody still has to build and fix stuff and lift heavy things in the heat. ha
You mean ‘Gender studies of the African Sahara region’ ;p
I remember that...I was flabbergasted when we tried some math in Excel and got wrong answers, for something quite simple.
I’ve worked in software for over 35 years...reached Sr. Director level, can’t complain.
That said, I do believe that having a good attitude, good ‘build and fix’ talent, and the ambition to build a business, having employees, is a very lucrative, long term, possibility.
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