Engineers have no prestige

I hold a M.Sc in CS & Engineering and I absolutely love my job. The working conditions are fabulous, salary is awesome and work life balance couldn’t had been better.

However, I have noticed that engineers have really low prestige compared to doctors and lawyers.

I should probably care less, but I happen to live in a part of the world where people size you up based on what you work with. Here people will ask you about your job, before they even ask your name…

Voting Results
18% Normal
Based on 11 votes (2 yes)
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Comments ( 7 )
  • CountessDouche

    Oh you should. It's one of the most incredibly complex specialties out there & you basically have to be an expert at like a bajillion things.

    Meanwhile I just saw a post about people making bank designing paper aeroplanes. So, i guess even fake engineers get more props.

    I see you though.

    Very proud

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  • dude_Jones

    I am a retired engineer with a long successful career writing software for military applications, and later for the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. Engineering is an introvert's game. You work 60 hours per week because you are too socially inept to enhance anyone's impression of you in the first place. Basically, as a person you don't matter. You get a high salary because nobody else in the population understands the math you use to make the "rubber meet the road."

    Enjoy your anonymity; work until bedtime; volunteer for business travel; and invest your high salary carefully. You will never have a life, and you will be laid off in your mid 50s. But, if you do it right, someday you can have a damn nice early retirement.

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  • donteatstuffoffthesidewalk

    doctors & lawyers spend their time bailin peoples ass outta bad situations

    engineers only ever get considered when they fuck up

    and when they do theres a linea doctors and lawyers waitin to let the engineers know how bad the fuckup was

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  • Tommythecaty

    Errr why do you equate your job to either of those professions to begin with....doctors save lives.

    Are you under the impression that you are owed prestige, that you deserve it...

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  • hauntedbysandwiches

    I don't understand it because engineer's are far more intelligent on average than any primary doctor or lawyer I ever met. Doctors go through a ton of schooling but you can be dumb as anything and still pass if you work hard enough (I'm not talking surgeon or neurologist, just a general/primary doctor) same goes for lawyer although I think lawyers are slightly higher than doctors in my view but to be an engineer, you need to have intelligence so to me they are top tier

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  • 1WeirdGuy

    As a truck driver it is the same way. I make quite a bit more money than most people who went to college and they have a higher social status than me. But I see engineers as being quite high on the social status scale. You had to do a lot of schooling so you're quite educated. I have had smartass people say to me before "oh you're just a truck driver" or something smartass but I often make double than them and have no student loans.

    I work for a big shipping company and we have engineers and everything there who basically just sit around all day and talk to the drivers coming through, they're all really nice. I rarely see them working and I assume they're probably making 120k+ being at my company that pays pretty generously. Sometimes ill see them like staring at a machine and talking to a maintanance worker. I have always looked at them as if they had some prestige but I guess thats because I'm a truck driver and I'm not a doctor or something.

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  • olderdude-xx

    In the USA most engineers get downsized out in their 50's...

    Some of them find work as consultants or with gig work. Most have to find something else to do.

    The American Colleges have been graduating 4 times the number of engineering jobs for years. 25% never get a job as an engineer. 25% get flushed in 5 years. Then another 25% bet slowly flushed over the next 20 years. This has been known for decades.

    While there are a few specific engineering specialties that does not apply to, most engineers are not in those areas of expertise.

    Both my brother and I were downsized out. I know dozens of others in my age range also downsized out. My brother says the same where he lives.

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