Posted on 06/17/2021 7:26:41 AM PDT by fireman15
Sometimes, when deciding on a career path, it can be difficult to know how your chosen industry will fare in the future. Are wages likely to increase? Will jobs be hard to come by? Much can feel unknown. To put your mind at ease, NewEngineer is here to help, crystal ball in hand. In the field of engineering it's clear that the current trend is towards information technology and automation, and this is set to remain the case for the foreseeable future – entering these sectors is as safe a bet as you could hope for. While traditional fields such as civil and petroleum engineering are still in high demand, the fastest growing fields are clearly those in the IT sphere. So, without further ado, here are 2021’s most in-demand engineering jobs and the salary potential one should expect from each.
(Excerpt) Read more at newengineer.com ...
Note that EE’s starting salary is quite low in this list, which is entirely a result of the H1B invasion.
40 years ago, a double E could write his / her own ticket. It stayed that way until the last 15-20 years as the weight of Indian and Chinese engineers crushed wages. One of the brightest young EE’s I’ve met told me he sent out 130 resumes before he ended up being hired as a tech, where it became obvious he was way more capable then that.
The jobs shown will be inundated by foreigners, with only defense jobs being “safe” from the onslaught.
The area that I see as providing the greatest potential for future engineering students is biomedical engineering. There are amazing new treatments that are emerging such as Novacure’s Tumor Treating Fields that will transform the practice of medicine.
Most fascinating is the research that Michael Levin is doing at Tufts University to understand and eventually program the electrical patterns of the body that determine how cells communicate in biochemical “networks” to collectively organize themselves to fight cancer and other diseases.
He is working on developing the equivalent of a source code compiler for the body that will design the specific electroceudicals to influnce how the body regenerates damaged parts the same way lower animals like gekkos do. Advances like this could extend human lifespans enormously. They will need engineers that don’t exist today to develop this industry.
Ha.
Back when I started in mechanical the starting wage was expected to be somewhere around 35K.
That is if you assume that most kids are making choices based on which degree will provide them with the best income. Out of about ten college age nieces and nephews this is the only one who went after a degree where she got any job offers immediately after graduating... The rest of them all pursued basically worthless easy to get feel good degrees. And you are correct... almost all of her competition was from foreign kids.
Its SO rewarding to have management crush your projects and bean counters whittle away your budget.
A great memorable quote from the Office Space movie - Tom Smykowski: Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don’t have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can’t you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
Just say no to pointy hair.
“Locomotive Engineers” LOL!
You’re going to have to have 2 or 3 skills that are different from each other to diversify the risk, much like a stock portfolio.
Wait, I thought the rewarding part was idiots with their Business Communications degrees who talk to customers about the product and then tell you the most stupid requirements they think the customer wants.
I am an engineer and for these average earnings I’d go get a trade license and start a business within a few years. Why? For starters and just off the top of my head:
1. Probably better pay or lifetime earnings than these averages.
2. Everybody has to satisfy customers but at least in a trade you usually know what to deliver instead of playing guessing games for some oaf who only knows what he / she does not want.
3. You will never be part of corpocracy or diversity training. All you have to do is produce good product at a competitive price.
4. Stuff breaks all the time and you will probably never be out of work. If you are an engineer you will mostly be last hired and first fired and you will probably never see the bullet coming.
5. While rewarding at times, if you get into a creative role, line engineering can be awfully repetitive. Problem solving and inventing are fun but a lot never get to do either.
6. Most of the time, to get into a place where you can make good money you have to get into management and you will learn then that all your problems have two feet.
7. For the degree of effort to become a really good engineer you can become a really good something else that probably pays better. If you want a decent 9-5 job being an engineer is not a bad gig. I never worked 9-5 and most good and successful engineers don’t either, more like 7-5 or 7-7 most days.
8. You rattle around in an office a lot of the time and if that is your cup of tea, have at it.
9. Most engineers are just technicians. They follow a protocol seldom using their training outside that box.
10. In a trade and your own business you are pretty much inflation proof since you set your rates and do not just have your compensation determined. As an employee of a corpocracy you will eventually find that your late career salary is similar to your inflation adjusted starting salary. My late Father said that big companies can pay big benefits but not all do. Stock options and such can add up in longevitiy pay if you live long enough.
11. If you build a business you will either have something to pass on or to sell one day.
Can’t say a thing about the computer related fields. A lot of them are not engineers anyway.
Petroleum Engineers were once at the top of the compensation heap but they are in slim demand these days. That work ebbs and flows and if you join it you will have a career much like a gold miner mostly from one camp to another in and out of work or expecting the next layoff. That is the way it was from 1982. About half of my 40 years were not salad days.
I was a consulting petroleum engineer the last 20 years of my 40 year career. I traveled the world drilling holes in the earth, had a lot of fun, invented a few things, solved a lot of challenging problems and I think was successful and made good money doing it all. I also was able to get out before anyone tried to make me diverse or truly fell victim to diversity discrimination. Most people in my business made a whole lot more than these averages. Even a non-degreed subsea tech or driller made at least double these averages for a time while employed.
If you are a white male these days and don’t want to be a lick-spittle or meekly conform you had better find a trail you can travel alone and not join a corporation or especially any giverment employment.
That’s the way I see it.
Software "engineering" as a career is facing the consequences made twenty years ago where CEOs and CFOs thought IT could be treated like their other "human resources". The CEOs and CFOs didn't want to pay IT staff such high salaries (despite the amount of skill they needed to do their jobs) and undercut them every chance they could. These CEOs and CFOs don't care that every piece of software and supporting hardware gave their company significant abilities and advantages.
I know many former-IT individuals who'll never go back into the field because you can't work for ignorant management who doesn't grasp the intellectual demands involved. Scott Adams, the author of 'Dilbert' made a fortune poking fun at the corporate truths, many involving IT vs Human Resources.
These companies wanted to hire rocket scientists at office admin wages. Since the smart ones have abandoned the field, we've been living with increasing regression in software and hardware interfaces over the last 10-15 years. It's not coincidence that hackers and ransomware run roughshod over the outsourced IT security at so many companies - you get what you pay for from an industry that actively went out of their way to suppress wages.
These companies really believe you can hire an expert to build a powerful but complex system and then turn it over to the mouth-breathers to run it. Companies that are offering what appear to be high IT salaries aren't honest that they're expecting 24/7 coverage for outdated or poorly run systems from your under-skilled but low-cost predecessor.
“Adjusted for inflation, those numbers are lower in purchasing power (and in some cases dollars) than the published numbers when I graduated”
A common starting salary in the early ‘80s was $26-27K / yr for mech/ee/aero; bit higher for chemE/PetE.
Taking a simplistic scale factor of ~ 5X inflation since then (mostly home price), starting salaries now should be around $100-125K. Obviously they are not. There are some notable exceptions for companies that offer stock options, but that’s a small group. In general the result is that engineering salaries are lower across the board.
Pet peeve of my veterinarian wife who went through all the advanced schooling to see people with no education make more and retire after 30 years
Example posted: Late life wages for engineers 95-100k
Underground coal miners with no education in my area are making $125-130k with minimal overtime and coal demand is actually increasing and they are looking to hire miners right now
The coward cop from Broward was making $110,000 year in retirement what was he making before he retired with full pension at age 50, meanwile the engineer is still having to work.
It’s fuarked up.
A career in Engineering is pretty much “up or out”, you have to move onto management if you want to continue your career, it’s very hard to have an entire career in engineering as an “individual contributor”.
Thanks for the quote...it looks like my wife and I will have to watch the Office Space movie. It does remind me a lot of my youngest daughter. She first wanted to be a nurse like her mom and grandmother but she realized that she doesn’t like touching people.
How is it that a person who has a long history of berating others is chosen to become a personnel director? She says she was chosen because she lays down the law. I think that it is more likely because she can act sweet and BS with whoever is interviewing her and then she can do the job well enough that they keep her anyway.
Spot on. My wife and I are both self employed.
Lot of hassles though also being self employed. When self employed you are on the job 24/7. When we go on vacation, vip clients still call and want something taken care of yesterday. More than once I have spent a half day or longer on the phone in a hotel room while on vacation trying to get a problem taken care with a vip customer.
I have a commercial drivers license and a couple other blue collar certifications. No degree. No trade school certs.
I made just barely under 70K last year and turned down as much overtime as I could.
I do Help Desk work 40/hrs a week. I reset passwords mostly now as our dept has been dumb down. The new hires come from a temp company. They work 30/hrs. I get paid pretty well and I know the company would replace me with a temp at 1/3rd less then I make in salary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.