[radiohead]

Ok, I'll bite. To what do you attribute the lower pay for blacks? When I first looked at the stats, I thought it might be because there haven't been that many black engineers over the past 20 years or so (tho I've known a lot of black engin majors over the same time period). But Hispanics make more? I can't imagine there were many of them in engineering, either.

When my son was in undergrad in the mid/late 90s, he knew a lot of Vietnamese who were engineering - not because they wanted to be, in fact, many of them hated it. However, they were dutiful Asian children and their parents demanded that they major in a field that could get them a job.

Just curious, not looking to start an argument.

[nwrep]

To what do you attribute the lower pay for blacks?

Radio, I would guess it is a statistical artifact of this survey. There were so few black respondents, that the results for black engineers are not statistically valid.

[oceanview]

that's easy: they have fewer years of experience in the positions they hold, and thus earn less.

and regarding the highly paid indians: they have management slots in which they are responsible for offshoring their co-workers jobs, so they get good bonuses for that (not a joke).

[e_engineer]

I once worked with a Vietnamese engineer who spent most of his time avoiding work. He would sit conspicuously at his desk all day (when he should have been in the lab) playing with a folded paper "football". (This was before the internet)

When rumors of layoffs started flying, we pulled him aside one day and suggested that he should at least learn how to look busy if he wanted to keep his job.

He laughed and said "I'm trying to dispel the stereotype of hard working Asians."

He got canned in the first round of layoffs in spite of his great sense of humor.