Economist vs. Engineer?

**reject_wolf** · 02-23-09, 09:26 PM

I plan to be graduating in 2012 as an engineer ironically.

And yeah, if you don't like math and science, don't go into engineering like it has been said so many times. I was chatting with a few of my friends in engineering, and we started talking about our classes. One guy then said, "Man, I hate calculus... and thermofluids... and physics... Why am I taking engineering again?" Right now he has averaged a 65% on all of his midterms giving him a 6 GPA, which is just enough not to get kicked out of the faculty. On the other hand, I love math (I almost majored in math) and do well in the science/engineering classes (mechanics, fluids, chemistry.) You can tell everyday that he doesn't want to be taking engineering, and seems to be there just to make his parents happy. I plan to go into Civil Engineering, but I still might change to Mechanical since the prerequisites are the same for all engineering disciplines except Electrical, which gets an extra class this semester. At my school, I am pretty sure I have no electives, so I lack a bit of freedom there, but it doesn't stop me from spotting in on random lectures in Biology and History classes. I pay more attention then some of the people actually enrolled in them.

**asianator365** · 02-23-09, 09:33 PM

Originally Posted by reject_wolf

but it doesn't stop me from spotting in on random lectures in Biology and History classes. I pay more attention then some of the people actually enrolled in them.

Do most colleges allow you to just hop into random classes/lectures to listen? That sounds like something I may do quite a lot of.

**reject_wolf** · 02-23-09, 10:18 PM

Originally Posted by asianator365

Originally Posted by reject_wolf

but it doesn't stop me from spotting in on random lectures in Biology and History classes. I pay more attention then some of the people actually enrolled in them.

Do most colleges allow you to just hop into random classes/lectures to listen? That sounds like something I may do quite a lot of.

Depends on how large the class is. In a classroom that can fit more than 100 students and there are still seats left open, go for it. Hell, sometimes I just want a good place to sit and do work with ambient noise, so I'll walk into the Vector Calc lecture. After the first week of school, many students don't bother going to class anymore, leaving a lot of open seats. Right now I go to the Modern Europe class before Chemistry. I think I have asked more questions than people actually in the class.

**jmw_man** · 02-24-09, 09:57 AM

Originally Posted by RudyTheRocka

1. Do you feel that engineering jobs are harder to get due to the increasing amount of college students majoring in those fields?
2. Do you feel that economic jobs will be more needed and sought after 7-8 years? Will my chances of being headhunted be increased?

Yes and no, it depends on the engineering field you are referring to. As for Civil Engineering, the answer is a definate no, in fact, there is a shortage of engineers. I think overall there is a shortage of engineers. IMO, it is better to choose a science degree over an arts degree. The difference being job security versus pay. Liberal arts degrees can be highly rewarding in pay but the jobs are not of abundance. Different engineering fields pay differently from one another, the scale is pretty broad.

I went to Texas A&M and earned a BS in Biological and Agricultural Engineering, I had a job in the Civil Engineering field before I graduated.

My girl went to Rice University (Ivy league school) and earned a BA in Economics and management. It took her 6 months to find a low paying job with First Franklin. She decided she didn't want to do it anymore and went to grad school at UT Austin. She earned herself a MA in Advertising in a special program called Texas Creative. She spent another 8 months after graduation before she finally landed a job. We make the same amount of money as of right now.

Here's the kicker, many of her old classmates have had much less success. One went to work for a company for free in NYC, another landed a job in Austin and was recently laid off, others are still looking, etc. I spent many nights watching her cry because she couldn't get a job.

Number one, every one of my classmates have a job and number two, there will never be too many engineers because ALL companies love to hire engineers, including companies that normally hire economists.

If money is where you want to go, don't forget about a Finance degree.

**TehSpaz** · 02-27-09, 02:11 AM

Originally Posted by RudyTheRocka

& Right on Tractor.

I will probably hit TAMU-CC or TAMU-K should I decide to go Engineering. If I get a good scholarship to UTA or UTSA then I will go.

It all depends on where I get my scholarship and how stable I will be. I would rather live at home and have my life taken care of and just continue to go to school than be working part time and struggling to keep up grades.

NONONONONO! FUCK NO! NONONO! DO NOT GO TO TAMUCC FOR ENGINEERING! I MADE THAT MISTAKE!

It's not real engineering, it's engineering TECHNOLOGY! it's a fancy way of saying "our program isn't good enough to get engineering-certified".
I learned (at TAMU-CC in an intro to engineering tech course) that a technologist works underneath a real engineer in the work force....

TAMU-K though has a real program, I'd say look into them.

Also, about engineering in general, do Electrical or Mechanical.......there's more readily-available jobs.

As for pay? EE's have been one of the top-3 highest paid bachelors fresh outta college for years, and have been in high demand for decades.

If you have a good EE degree, and don't find a job within a month or two, you're doing something WAYYY wrong! (Hell, many are hired before graduation)

**RottnJP** · 02-27-09, 07:06 AM

Originally Posted by TehSpaz

NONONONONO! FUCK NO! NONONO! DO NOT GO TO TAMUCC FOR ENGINEERING! I MADE THAT MISTAKE!

It's not real engineering, it's engineering TECHNOLOGY! it's a fancy way of saying "our program isn't good enough to get engineering-certified".

LOL I don't know the schools involved, but that cracked me up. Yeah, if you want to be an engineer, be an engineer. Techs edit our prints, scan shit, whatever. Not many of them left because their niche relies on doing things a younger engineer could do, but getting paid less.

If you are destined to be an engineer, you'll know, somewhere deep down in the core of your being. Have you been taking stuff apart your whole life, and putting it back together successfully?

Can you not leave well-enough alone? You just *have* to monkey with stuff and make it better? Someone gives you a boring, redundant job, and you say "Shit, I know how to do this better," and you bust out your PERL or C++ book, code something up that makes a 2 day job take half an hour?

You're s.o. has a problem, and you can't help trying to find a solution, even after she says, "I just need you to listen..." Shut the fuck up, bitch, I don't *listen* to your problems, I *fix* them Goddammit!

If so, you are doomed. You are an engineer. Accept it, and move on. If you knew better, there would be a grieving period, but you don't need to worry your pretty little head about that yet.

Add Econ or finance or mgmt. as a dual-major, and every door you choose in the world will be open to you.

If the idea of a job in which you never actually *create* anything or *do* anything for the first time is O.K. with you, then, sure, go be a fluffer or something. Pure econ or finance can be pretty hit or miss. It's going to require you to be a great networker and schmoozer, and find the doors through other people who know people, and then either get lucky and find an open one, or talk the bouncer into letting you inside "just for a peek" and then finding someone important enough to let you stay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmYDgncMhXw

For reference:
MIT Aerospace Engineer. PSU Master's in Engineering. RPI master's degree in Business (finance concentration) and a degree in Industrial Technology. (Basically a lean flow, Quality, data analysis kind of thing.)
10 years in the Aerospace/defense industry.

**jmw_man** · 02-27-09, 07:28 AM

Originally Posted by TehSpaz

Also, about engineering in general, do Electrical or Mechanical.......there's more readily-available jobs.

As for pay? EE's have been one of the top-3 highest paid bachelors fresh outta college for years, and have been in high demand for decades.

If you have a good EE degree, and don't find a job within a month or two, you're doing something WAYYY wrong! (Hell, many are hired before graduation)

I can agree with the EE but not mechanical. Yes, there are jobs readily available for mechanical engineers but 90% of the time, they are field jobs. Sometimes they require alot of travel and you have strange work hours. If you got a girl or family you want to be near, the field jobs may sometimes be a strain on your personal life. Do some research to learn about field jobs and if you don't want to deal with them, then stay away from ME because I know MEs that are still interviewing a year after graduation.

CEs are hiring like crazy.

I mentioned before that I got my degree in Biological and Agricultural Engineering. Many folks have the wrong idea of what my degree is. If you got a degree in Biological and Agricultural Engineering, it DOES NOT mean you want to be a farmer.

Biological and Agricultural Engineering is a super BROAD degree. We get a bit of learning in many fields from electrical, mechanical, industrial, farming, hydrology, programming, environmental, pollution, resources, civil, food processing, biofuels and other "green" energy sources, etc. There is even a biological material science class where you get to learn how a potato will increase in strength while under stress. The best thing about my degree is that it's not through the Dwight Look college of engineering department, it's through the Agricultural and life sciences department which is small. You get a huge amount of personal experience with professors. Class sizes are super small.

Edit: I forgot to mention that in many of the engineering degrees, you get alot of engineering economics which is very useful.

**RottnJP** · 02-27-09, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by jmw_man

Yes, there are jobs readily available for mechanical engineers but 90% of the time, they are field jobs. Sometimes they require alot of travel and you have strange work hours. If you got a girl or family you want to be near, the field jobs may sometimes be a strain on your personal life. Do some research to learn about field jobs and if you don't want to deal with them, then stay away from ME because I know MEs that are still interviewing a year after graduation.

Ah-roo? That must be something specific to your industry. In my experience, ME's have the broadest perceived applicability. And the only engineers I know who have to travel much are the ones who wanted to have a travel-oriented position, like customer support. In general, engineering gives you less travel than average since most companies don't really want engineers out in the field- It's not where our chief value lies. Any field engineers are ones that are specific focal points for their customer.

If I were doing it over, one of my degrees would have been ME and the other AE. Reason is, your average HR person pidgeon-holes an aerospace engineer, while an ME is viewed as a generalist. An aerospace company knows they can use an ME in almost any position that you'd use an AE. They may need a little specialized training in some area, but not a big deal. Meanwhile a company that is used to seeing ME resume's may look at an AE as out of place just because they don't realize how similar the real training is.

The other thing I'd mention is about math: Honestly I think a couple of the comments in the thread here really over-state the importance of your love for math. Most engineers don't neccesarily "love" math. They like it enough to be willing to learn it, and they are adept enough at it to understand it. But to an engineer math is really just a tool. It's a tool for understanding problems and fixing them. We have to learn the fundamantal principles, and understand how those principles effect our problems, but then we move on.

Sure, back in school I could derive the fully formed Navier-Stokes equasions, but since graduating I haven't hand-calc'ed anything even vaguely like that level of complexity. We joke that once you're out of school for a few years, basic addition and subtraction is all you're expected to know. And, it's funny because it's true.

There are positions that use the fundamental math skills if that's what you want, like computational tool development. Those folks need to know the guts of the CFD and FEA codes, for example. But for the most part the people that really *love* math, and want the practice of higher-level mathematics to be a part of their daily career, go into either pure mathematics (if they are certifiably insane) or physics (if they have a little bit of a practical/applied perspective).

**sprite** · 03-05-09, 04:18 PM

I'm an ME and almost none of my friends are going into field jobs. It really is the most versatile engineering degree since you can still pretty much go into any industry. Almost any company that hires engineers will hire MEs (aerospace, petroleum, petrochemical, auto, power generation). Just be sure that if you are going into engineering, attend an ABET certified school. I wouldn't necessarily look at just the costs, because where you go to school will also affect what companies recruit you (trust me, it matters). A smaller engineering school will not have the network in place that a larger school does. If you are looking to stay in Texas, both UT and TAMU have great programs for any engineering discipline and are affordable.

If you are interested in doing engineering, take challenging math and science courses (especially AP courses if they are available to you) in high school. They won't give you a true taste of engineering, but they will prepare you better for college. Engineering involves a lot of economics, since almost every decision in engineering is not necessarily how can we do something but what is the most effective way of doing something. Plus, with an engineering degree you can always work in design, sales, r&d, project management, and several other types of positions.