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I was in EE a couple decades ago, and employment was a hot topic near the end of every schoolyear. It was determined that municipal power engineers had as good an income as electronics engineers, and a lot more certainty of continued employment. Tradeoff was lack of glamor. The mechanical engineers down the hall and the civil engineers probably had equally good chances of steady employment and income, but of course even less glamor. It's a tradeoff--food or fame. Tough choice.

"It's a tradeoff--food or fame. Tough choice."

Power engineering (from what I've heard second hand) is still a good steady job. One of the reasons for this is that the job function cannot be easily outsourced, anymore than a plumber or somebody that hangs drywall.

There is however a huge difference between what's going on now and the tradeoff that you and your buddies made a couple of decades ago. Back then the wage disparity between electronics and municipal power was due to a risk-reward ratio; there was never any job security in commercial IT stuff, even before H1B's or outsourcing...but some level of Econ-101 was still at work.

Now the risk-reward balance has been completely obliterated in order to maintain the overpriced burden rate (on a global basis) of U.S.-based management, government, education and legal functions. Basically the U.S. has a huge oversupply of zero-sum "middlemen" whose cost on a global economic basis (with un-fettered free trade) is completely out of line with their value-add.

It's a tradeoff--food or fame. Tough choice.

The chip or gizmo the electronics guy worked on is outdated in 6 months. Besides, nobody can really see, or envision it. A building on the other hand is a nice landmark, that you can say, "I did that".