Anyone regret their engineering decision?

[Johannes]

Hmmm... as it seems to be most of the people here are talking about the situation in the US. Well, in Germany (and I guess all over western Europe alike) the situation is different. Here the lawyers and doctors ( at least most of them) are under payed and the scientists and engineers make big money. Also the job perspectives for physicists and mathematicians are great. Graduates from all sciences are the most highly demanded job, while business and law might be considered a "waste of intelligent" if someone is smart enough to master a science or engineering subject.
I never thought the differences were so big.
Are lawyers really the well paid in the us? I mean on average, or course in Germany, if you pass your final exam with an A, which means you belong to the best 1 - 1,5 % , you will get jobs starting at 60 - 80 k Euro, but for most of them it just sucks.

 

[RufusDawes]

Hmmm... as it seems to be most of the people here are talking about the situation in the US. Well, in Germany (and I guess all over western Europe alike) the situation is different. Here the lawyers and doctors ( at least most of them) are under payed and the scientists and engineers make big money. Also the job perspectives for physicists and mathematicians are great. Graduates from all sciences are the most highly demanded job, while business and law might be considered a "waste of intelligent" if someone is smart enough to master a science or engineering subject.
I never thought the differences were so big.
Are lawyers really the well paid in the us? I mean on average, or course in Germany, if you pass your final exam with an A, which means you belong to the best 1 - 1,5 % , you will get jobs starting at 60 - 80 k Euro, but for most of them it just sucks.

Americans like to sabotage their economy for the sake of faulty market principles so it probably is a bad as they are describing here.

Does Germany have a minimum wage yet ?

 

[TMFKAN64]

Are lawyers really the well paid in the us? I mean on average, or course in Germany, if you pass your final exam with an A, which means you belong to the best 1 - 1,5 % , you will get jobs starting at 60 - 80 k Euro, but for most of them it just sucks.

http://www.nalp.org/content/index.php?pid=543 gives you some idea of what a newly minted lawyer makes in the US.

http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/career.html gives you some idea of what a newly minted BS in physics makes in the US.

This isn't quite comparing apples and oranges (lawyers have a graduate degree), so you might want to look at http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/emptrends.html to see the salaries of the Ph.D. class of 2003.

 

[Cyrus]

I'm in ME right now. Does anyone know if it's fun, or is it like all about the Physics and applying it. I heard you hardly ever use Physics, but only once in a great while...

You heard wrong. You will use physics in every single class you take!

 

[mcknia07]

You heard wrong. You will use physics in every single class you take!

Ok, thanks Cy. I'm just now starting to get into the Physics, it's ok, but I wish we had more labs I could learn a little bit easier...

 

[Cyrus]

Ok, thanks Cy. I'm just now starting to get into the Physics, it's ok, but I wish we had more labs I could learn a little bit easier...

Physics and engineering will start to depart from each other around sophomore year. Engineering will do the classical stuff, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, materials, structural analysis; whereas, physics will go into more modern stuff: electrodynamics, stat. theromdynamics, nuclear physics, astrophysics.

You will be doing a different kind (and more application based) physics, than the physics majors.

 

[Bull Killgore]

At the end of the day, all professions suck, and you will hate your job no matter what it is. Those who deny hating their jobs are LIARS. Engineering is a huge waste of intelligence; i.e. for the same amount of intelligence, you could be making more money as a lawyer or dentist. And yeah, right now the oil patch is doing well, but it won't last forever.

You should just go for the money - make a list of the most lucrative professions you can tolerate, then move your way down until you find one that works. Trust, me, you'll be glad that you did.

Because intelligence is only being used if it is earning income. How high-minded.

 

[╔(σ_σ)╝]

I am EE and I sometimes regret not going into math. But my regret vanishes when I think about the fact that, I can , actually, get a real job after my Ugrad.

 

[General_Sax]

^ your username is frickin awesome btw.

 

[johng23]

I majored in materials engineering and I kind of regret that. Don't get me wrong, the things that materials engineers learn are mostly pretty interesting, but I wish I had done physics. I guess I thought engineering would be more applied and give you more job opportunities, etc. But I went to grad school so that point is pretty much irrelevant, and the type of research I do and the interests I have would have been much more suited for a physics major...

I'm in kind of a tough situation now because I doubt I'm at a high enough level to jump into grad level physics classes, but even if I wanted to go back and take undergrad classes that would seem like a backwards movement and I wouldn't get credit. And sure, you can learn and catch up if you set your mind to it, but at the same time, I've got plenty I need to be doing on my actual research. I can't be spending all this time learning basic physics just because I'm a wannabe physicist.

 

[clope023]

*raises hand*

I went into electrical engineering based on things I read on these forums that EE had lots of overlap in physics and that turned out to be blatantly wrong, but I think that's more of a factor of my specific school rather than the EE field as a whole. EE is interesting however, I rather like my electronics and controls courses so far but overall I would like to learn more science and think I would've been more intellectually satisfied if I'd done a physics bs and an engineering ms instead of what I'm currently doing. If my uni had an engineering physics program I would've been all over that but it doesn't and I can't transfer so I'll probably just take more physics courses as electives so I can go into a physics heavy area of EE (solid state devices) in grad school. I've thought about going back to physics and using my engineering courses as electives and speaking to a few physics professors I have some background that could work in research but I think it would just take too long to finish at this point.

 

[Topher925]

I regret going into engineering and wish I would have gone into physical chemistry instead. Engineering is fun, and will probably pay much better, but I much rather enjoy finding new catalysts or inventing new solar cells rather than just studying transport phenomenon all the time.

 

[Astronuc]

I started in Physics and ended up in Nuclear Engineering. I actually love my job, because I work with many wonderful colleagues across the industry, both suppliers and users of the technology, as well as scientists and engineers in R&D and application. And I get paid quite well - maybe not as much as a doctor or lawyer - but well enough.

At the moment my work involves both design and engineering, which is a great blend. Whereas in the past, I'd strictly do analysis, creating a design from scratch and implementing the knowledge of engineering and physics in the design process is a lot of fun, as well as a challenge. In addition to physics, my background includes aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering - all of which I've employed at various times.

I strongly urge engineers to take as much physics as possible.

One (of many) of my current tasks involves the fluid dynamics involved in the operation of a control system. The work involves taking the designs of two systems and materials properties for the fluid interface, and developing and solving some differential equations and ultimately coming up with displacement and velocity (speed) as a function of time and distance, while meeting the time constraints and ultimately an impact load between two components.

Many of the older folks in my profession were physicists who ended up doing a lot of applied physics (engineering), simply because there were few, if any, nuclear engineering programs 40 years ago. One of my professors majored in engineering physics. One colleague who recently retired after 40+ years in the industry is now pursuing his interests in astrophysics, which is what had studied in university.

 

[NeedsHelp1212]

I started in Physics and ended up in Nuclear Engineering. I actually love my job, because I work with many wonderful colleagues across the industry, both suppliers and users of the technology, as well as scientists and engineers in R&D and application. And I get paid quite well - maybe not as much as a doctor or lawyer - but well enough.

At the moment my work involves both design and engineering, which is a great blend. Whereas in the past, I'd strictly do analysis, creating a design from scratch and implementing the knowledge of engineering and physics in the design process is a lot of fun, as well as a challenge. In addition to physics, my background includes aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering - all of which I've employed at various times.

I strongly urge engineers to take as much physics as possible.

One (of many) of my current tasks involves the fluid dynamics involved in the operation of a control system. The work involves taking the designs of two systems and materials properties for the fluid interface, and developing and solving some differential equations and ultimately coming up with displacement and velocity (speed) as a function of time and distance, while meeting the time constraints and ultimately an impact load between two components.

Many of the older folks in my profession were physicists who ended up doing a lot of applied physics (engineering), simply because there were few, if any, nuclear engineering programs 40 years ago. One of my professors majored in engineering physics. One colleague who recently retired after 40+ years in the industry is now pursuing his interests in astrophysics, which is what had studied in university.

sounds very complicated.. lol.

 

[nlsherrill]

In the U.S., at least, I do not think engineers are underpaid. And most seem to enjoy their work. Any who don't are simply ungrateful and they fail to see the bigger picture; there are billions of people in the world who would kill for such an opportunity, even if the wage was half of what it is now.



No, a good use of intelligence is a use of it in such a way that will benefit society. I can't stand the "every man for himself" mindset in this world. It is precisely that selfish mentality which will destroy humanity.

At any rate, I think my "hostility" is warranted when you are so arrogantly presumptuous as to say that anyone who claims they enjoy their job is lying.

I think I agree with these two sentences more so than anything else I have read on this forum since I have been writing here. I agree 100%, and it really is sad to see so many people with this mindset.