Ouch!!! Wet rates keep going up!

Engineering is a funny profession though - I believe engineers are
vastly underpaid compared to their professional counterparts (lawyers,
medical professionals, etc.). I eventually decided the pay wasn't
good enough to continue doing something that involved sitting in front
of a computer and going to meetings for 9+hrs/day - now I'm a full
time CFI (and soon to be cargo pilot) and love my job. The pay is a
little worse, but not by that much (surprisingly). Will I ever go
back into engineering? Probably not unless I can't pass my medical or
the pay is substantially increased (by at least 2x).- Hide quoted text -


The reason why doctors and lawyers command better pay is simple: they
have mandatory licensing.

If you don't get AMA certified or pass the board you can't work.
Engineering licensing is voluntary and only required if you want to
hang out your own shingle. You don't have to be licensed to work for
a corporation.

Dean

wrote:
Engineering is a funny profession though - I believe engineers are
vastly underpaid compared to their professional counterparts (lawyers,
medical professionals, etc.). I eventually decided the pay wasn't
good enough to continue doing something that involved sitting in front
of a computer and going to meetings for 9+hrs/day - now I'm a full
time CFI (and soon to be cargo pilot) and love my job. The pay is a
little worse, but not by that much (surprisingly). Will I ever go
back into engineering? Probably not unless I can't pass my medical or
the pay is substantially increased (by at least 2x).- Hide quoted text -


The reason why doctors and lawyers command better pay is simple: they
have mandatory licensing.

If you don't get AMA certified or pass the board you can't work.
Engineering licensing is voluntary and only required if you want to
hang out your own shingle. You don't have to be licensed to work for
a corporation.

Do corporate lawyers have to be licensed? I assume they do, but don't
know for sure.

Matt

..

Do corporate lawyers have to be licensed? I assume they do, but don't
know for sure.

Yes, they still have to pass the bar.

On Sep 23, 9:31 pm, wrote:
Engineering is a funny profession though - I believe engineers are
vastly underpaid compared to their professional counterparts (lawyers,
medical professionals, etc.). I eventually decided the pay wasn't
good enough to continue doing something that involved sitting in front
of a computer and going to meetings for 9+hrs/day - now I'm a full
time CFI (and soon to be cargo pilot) and love my job. The pay is a
little worse, but not by that much (surprisingly). Will I ever go
back into engineering? Probably not unless I can't pass my medical or
the pay is substantially increased (by at least 2x).- Hide quoted text -

The reason why doctors and lawyers command better pay is simple: they
have mandatory licensing.

If you don't get AMA certified or pass the board you can't work.
Engineering licensing is voluntary and only required if you want to
hang out your own shingle. You don't have to be licensed to work for
a corporation.

Dean

True to some extent... But when I was working in the power industry,
it was pretty much expected that you have your EIT/FE and were working
towards your PE (regardless of one being EE, ME, or CE). Civil
engineers are almost always required to have professional licensing in
the form of the PE exam, yet they are typically on the lowest end of
the engineering pay scale.

On Sep 22, 10:03 pm, "Dan Luke" wrote:
"Bob Noel" wrote:

hopefully that statement was soon followed by a quick lesson for the EE.

He was encouraged to seek other opportunities.

My fault, though, for assuming a graduate of a respected engineering school
would understand basic electrical circuits. I didn't give him the
pre-employment electrical test.

Question: There is a job being advertised for $125,000US/year as
software engineer doing kernel-mode programming. How much effort do
you spend testing his technical competence?

Answer: Not a lot.

I went through this experience a while back. A person was being hired
to do kernel-level work. Most of the hiring team had very little
kernel-programming experience. I brought to the interview two exams in
C++ programming and kernel-mode programming, something that I begun to
do about a decade ago to expose a pathology that I am about to
describe.

The interviewer was in his early late 40's or early 50's, and had a
resume that ostensibly made him qualified for the job. On the
interviewing team was:

1. My manager.
2. An engineer who had strong interpersonal ability and knowledge
"packing" ability but very little "wing-it" capability.
3. An older engineer who felt he did not have respect of other groups
in company.
4. An engineer who "worked his way to top", and was highly disinclined
to do anything that would rock the boat.
5. An engineer who was technical lead, and was generally a pleasant
person to be around.

The interview started, and after 30 minutes, it was clear that the
candidate was managing the relationships being formed, in real-time.
The wildcard in the group was #2. He placed a very strong premium on
a candidate's ability to interact well with others. He was the type
of person would does *not* like to be delegated a tasks where he has
to come up with solution on his own, but would rather have meetings,
discussions, etc. The candidate smelt out #2 and rode him, well on
his way to victory.

I pulled out technical exams because I smelled a rat. The exams
offended #2 somewhat, who view me as being rude after it was obvious
that a cordial accord was being formed, and the other engineers did
not see the point of exams since the interview was "going so well".
Since I had only been at company 3 weeks, I withdrew. The candidate
looked me straight in the eye, smirked, and took my (untouched) exams,
and turned them faced down in triumph, then turned back to the rest of
the team.

I sat and listened, how the candidate wormed his way out of every
question thrown at him. I looked around at the other team members
uttering certain things under my breath.

After about an hour, and a couple more times trying to find out of the
guy knew how to engineer, I insisted. I interrrupted one of other
engineers, and said, "Ahem...excuse me...I have an itch that I really
need to scratch...I have these two exams here....and I intend to
administer them...and unless (my boss) objects, I will administer them
right now, and we can discuss afterwards whether it was worth the
effort..." The rest of team could see that I was about to snap, so
they acquiesced.

I asked the questions, 1-by-1. There were a total of 20, 10 C++
questions, 10 kernel-mode questions.

The candidate barely got 2 out of 20 right. A person in his position
should have got 16/20 right. He squirmed the whole time while the
team watched.

After interview was over, we did round-table. When it came my turn to
qualify him as go/no-go, I offered to defer my decision to rest of
team since I had only been there 3 weeks. Simultaneously, 3 of the
other team members snapped and said, "We don't want deferrement, WHAT
do YOU think..", to which I replied, "the same thing I thought when I
was attempting to administer my exam and at the beginning of
interview."

Anyway, the point is that there is a complex dynamic, at least in
software companies with huge amounts of money, where each team member
will not necessarily objectively qualify a candidate because of
perhaps, covert, selfish reasons. In this case, the #2 team member who
was "good with people" could rest more easily knowing subconsciously
that his own position would be boosted by someone who is effectively
technically incompetent, but would cater to the notion that "being
good with people" is an equalizing asset and perhaps more important
than "being able to find the answer." I think the other team members
were just desperate to hire someone and had already decided to hire
anyone who passed a minimum standard, which in their mind, was what
was written on resume, and not what was in the guy's head.

Needless to say, the candidate was denied. The team left the room in
mild state of disgust, realizing that they had been duped and come
very close to hiring a brick for a 6-figure salary.

I think my manager knew what was happening the whole time, and just
wanted to see how everything played out.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

Andrew Sarangan wrote:
You can't design a good airplane if you don't fly airplanes.

R. J. Mitchell had designed quite a few very successful aircraft before
ever getting a piloting certificate.

While you're at it, you might as well assert that you can't design good
rockets if you aren't an astronaut.

"Le Chaud Lapin" wrote:

[snip]
Anyway, the point is that there is a complex dynamic, at least in
software companies with huge amounts of money, where each team member
will not necessarily objectively qualify a candidate because of
perhaps, covert, selfish reasons. In this case, the #2 team member who
was "good with people" could rest more easily knowing subconsciously
that his own position would be boosted by someone who is effectively
technically incompetent, but would cater to the notion that "being
good with people" is an equalizing asset and perhaps more important
than "being able to find the answer."
[snip]

Thanks for another story that makes me want to fall on my knees and thank the
gods that I escaped from a giant, high tech corporation.

--
Dan
T-182T at BFM

[snip]

Thanks for another story that makes me want to fall on my knees and thank the
gods that I escaped from a giant, high tech corporation.

--
Dan
T-182T at BFM

Ditto!

Dean

"Jim Logajan" wrote in message
.. .
Andrew Sarangan wrote:
You can't design a good airplane if you don't fly airplanes.

R. J. Mitchell had designed quite a few very successful aircraft before
ever getting a piloting certificate.

As did Kelly Johnson, who never got a certificate, but did fly as a
passenger in the military jets to gather data.

On 20-Sep-2007, wrote:

The hourly rate on all of the planes in my flying club just went up
again (second time in a year).

Archer II's just went up by another $10 per hour. Flying rates in the
past 6 years have gone up by a factor of 1.6 times yet I am still
making the same salary I was making in 2001. If this keeps up, I sure
won't be flying much...



I think others on this group recently established that all you need is a
minimum wage job to be able to afford to own and fly a Piper Pathfinder. You
can even fly it all across the country, covering distances as far as Iowa to
North Carolina! My guess is you make too much, that's why you're finding
rentals too expensive. Give up your current job and get one that pays less
so you can continue flying with no worries. Owning and making minimum wage
is definitely the way to go if someone earning minimum wage can afford a
nice machine like a Pathfinder!
Scott Wilson