Frankly, IT and engineering jobs are overrated and overpaid. So you can program in C. So you can crunch numbers for structural fatigue. So?
I know "engineers" that do nothing but give presentations a few times a week, and the expect 70-90 large a year...they have the education, or so they say. Or the same job can be H1B'd to Raul, he only expects 30 large for sitting on his duff, playing with Windows and posting to FR between presentations.
When your plumbing freezes in the middle of the night and blows your pipes to pieces, who do you call? A plumber, he'll charge whatever he darn well pleases and you'll be happy to pay so you don't have to crawl around in the freezing water and sewage yourself. Unfortunately, most "professional" jobs aren't this critical, I can do without my latest update to windows for much longer than I can do without water.
And yes, I'm an electronic engineer.
"Frankly, IT and engineering jobs are overrated and overpaid. ... And yes, I'm an electronic engineer."
I don't know what you do that your own job is overrated in your eyes.
My job requires a ---- of a lot more than knowing how to spell C. It requires a critical and inquisitive mind, a strong knowledge of all the background concepts that underlie IT, a top-notch memory, and a command of the English language.
Maybe your job or someone else's job is overrated because a mistake means someone's cell phone blinks three times instead of two when powering up. If I mess up very large quantities of money get sent in strange directions and people don't pay their bills or eat. If the materials engineer down the road messes up a bridge collapses and people die. Somewhere else, someone makes a tiny error in programming and a guided missile drops in the wrong place making the whole U.S. look bad, or a several billion dollar space mission is wasted.
Now, compare that to the management goof whose job primarily consists of fiddling with MS Project or finding ways to figure out what makes him look good or isn't his fault any more and attending 6 meetings a day. Which one is overrated and overpaid?
It isn't the engineer ... or the plumber. By the by, I have time to write this because not only is my own work done, but I've finished another project that a ... can you guess it? ... H1-B couldn't do.
The real payoff for companies and H1Bs is in consulting. There, the host company hires a bunch of these guys at 60% 'prevailing' wage, bills them at full rate, and works them all hours to partially compensate for the fact that they're 10x slower than a regular employee.
I know "engineers" that do nothing but give presentations a few times a week, and the expect 70-90 large a year...
This trivializes it, but often a lot of $$ hangs on those presentations. And yes, once you get to a certain level, a lot of "engineering" is attending meetings trying to convince management why something needs to get done or working out issues in groups. When I was younger, I thought this was a total waste of time and the "real work" was coding. As I've matured (and worked on larger projects), I've come to appreciate how important communication is to getting things done right. What good is being a Java wizard if you're designing to the wrong specs? Yes, it may seem like a waste of time to be paying those guys big $$, but often you are buying experience. After is certain point, what people know is more valuable than what they can do.
And yes, I'm a computer scientist. I also teach part time. And I can tell you that many academic disciplines do NOT teach kids how to think or solve problems--even at the most elementary level. [You haven't seen it all until you see some English major trying to use a doing calculations BY HAND to insert the right values into a spreadsheet.] Computer science and engineering do.
Considering the profit that they are making for software companies, I would say they are underpaid.