Engineers Working Harder for Their Paycheck

Editorgirl35 writes to tell us Design News has posted their annual engineering salary survey. While it does offer encouraging results with salaries up a bit from last year it also shows that engineers are, on the average, doing a lot more to earn that paycheck including supervisory and budgetary functions. From the article: "Kody Baker, a 28-year-old mechanical engineer agrees, "Yes, we are doing far more than just designing products," he says. He's a project manager, manufacturing engineer, product designer, R&D engineer, test engineer, CAD systems specialist, CAD instructor/mentor, and more, juggling many roles in his job as a mechanical application engineer at Honeywell."

Welcome to life

[Tweekster]

and the fact that your actual job duties will entail far more than what your job description said.

Seriously, someone managed to write an article about this concept?

Re:Welcome to life

[NIK282000]

Agreed, ask any trades person if their job consists only of work discribed by the name of their trade.

Engineers not the only ones...

[Stephen Tennant]

But to earn that paycheck, you're doing more than ever.

As I understand it, people across America have been working harder for the same pay for some time now. This trend is exemplified by less vacation time taken by Americans, greater hours worked for the same relative pay, and fewer benefits offered than even a decade ago.

I believe the Economist had a special on this a while ago, showing that Americans are four times less likely to achieve high net worth status than Canadians, even though they work more hours and take on more responsibilities.

Yes, They are fucking us to death

[unity100]

compared to the workload they dump on people 30-40 years ago. however less pay.

The real world

[Anonymous Coward]

As a mechanical contractor, working with Honeywell products, and having to apply the engineering to real world application, I find, that the leadership that many contractors are looking for, is lacking. Many times, actual project engineers are sub-par, and it is the contractors' experience that get's the job done, with the engineer walking away with not having to use his insurance to cover mistakes.
It is not that the engineer is not intellegent, but in fact is he/she is over worked, dealing with multiple projects, with impossible dead lines. Many contractors are able to get away with sub-par work, because the job for the engineer is very stressed. Many engineers don't understand what they are engineering, since mechanical engineering is a wide field. They use rule of thumb. And when the contractor uses rule of thumb, we have a recipe for disaster.
More engineers need to go in to the real world, as a helper, or technician. Understand the way things are done, and then become the leadership that a company and a project needs.

60 Minutes - CBS

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it, people across America have been working harder for the same pay for some time now

It was just on a rerun of 60 Minutes tonight saying the same thing. Thanks to technology (especially the Crackberry) and this social more were quantity is more important than quality - hence all of the stupid meetings and being in the office for the sake of being there. It's too bad that the jobs that pay based on results are only in sales. I'd go there, but I suck at it.

Re:Engineers not the only ones...

[mordors9]

I think the reason we are less likely to acheive more net worth is because we all spend like drunken sailors. We spend every dime we get and when that isn't enough, we run up credit card debt at 20-30% interest (the mafia gives better rates). As an aside, we then wonder why our government carries on the same way. We get what we deserve.

Re:Welcome to life

[Stephen Tennant]

Important to note that in most places, if you're in management, you cannot join the union, or start one, for that matter, as you're not representative. The REAL management may nominally promote its workers pre-emptively just to avoid workers organizing.

De-commoditising engineering

[EmbeddedJanitor]

If you want to be just a commodity engineer with a job description then don't cry when your job goes to China/India/whatever. To stay competitive, you have to add value beyond working to a job description. Welcome to the new millenium. Get over it.

Re:Average pay is far from real life

[Anonymous Coward]

Given your use of the English language I'm not surprised.

I hate this kind of response. I would think many slashdotters speak English as a second language, and may have less than perfect grammar. This is an accomplishmnet that should be respected and admired, not scorned. Please, show a little respect.

oh wait, ... I must be new here.

Only 40% with a Bachelor's?

[uarch]

FTFA:

On average, engineers are working 46 hours per week and more than 40 percent have a bachelor's degree in engineering.

Wait a minute... That implies ~60% don't have at least Bachelor's degree.
Is this article talking about real engineering or does it simply accept that anything with the word engineering in the title falls under engineering (eg. Refuse Disposal Engineer)?

If hours and salary are constant I'll do whatever

[patio11]

I got my current job on the expectation that I'd be doing mostly non-engineering work. My main day to day function is being a research, to the extent that I introduce myself as one rather than give my actual title (because people wonder "Then WTF are you doing in front of the computer all day"). In any given workweek I might do PR presentations, translate documents, interpret for clients, hold an internal lecture about SEO, help the web team out a bit, or actually do some research/programming. And you know what? It doesn't matter to me. I'm still getting the same salary we agreed on and I'm still working the (absurdly low) number of hours they request from me. My thought is if they're paying me for my brain and my time then they can use both however they want to, within reason.

Re:A book I read once said

[Millenniumman]

But if you only do one thing very well, and that becomes obsolete (not rare in technology), you can't do anything of value. It is best to be competent in many areas and excel in one.

Re: spending

[jellomizer]

scrape together some kind of lifestyle we aren't ashamed to have around our friends and family

And we hit the point of debt. We are trained to live the correct life style we need things to show off status. Debt allows us to show this status to friends and family to make them feel like you did something with your life. If we realized our standard of living is not a G/god given right, then we may be able to stay out of debt. So lets assume you live in the North East US not NYC. What you need.
Shelter: Studio Apartment $300, Heat $100, a good working car $150 an average of 30 miles travel day at $4:00 a gallon $256, food $320, electricity $100, medical $200. So living comfortable and safely can be at $17,112 a year or about $9.00 and hour at full time. This is assuming you are living by yourself. And I tried to keep the estimates on the higher side. So most engineers make at least $15 an hour and most of them (at my area) make $25-$35 an hour). We as Americans need to learn to put their pride aside and learn to lower their standard of living, if we want to get out of debt.
At first I was wonder what I was doing wrong, other people who make as much as me seemed to have a higher quality of life, then I realized the average person is $30,000 in debt, so I know I am actually better off and I can live comfortably without worrying about debt.

It's a puzzlement

[crmartin]

I'll grant I've only been an active engineer since about 1978, but I know a bunch of guys who've really been at it a long time, and none of them remember a time when a reasonably senior engineer wasn't expected to be a decent drafter (we called them draughtsmen and used pencils, but it's much the same), do his own computations, supervise junior engineers, make budgets, and do costing.

Other than another demonstration that people writing for magazines think "time immemorial" is anything before about 1994, I don't see much surprising here.

Re:Average pay is far from real life

[ncmusic]

You're thinking median not average. It's possible to have an average where say 10% of the people make more than average.

The World IS Changing

[florescent_beige]

I started in the '80's at a large Canadian aerospace company which a couple of years after I arrived got sold (er, given) to a family of the Canadian Establishment. They promply thereafter exported all the materials R&D work I was doing to Ireland. Then they started playing games trying to lock me into a pension plan, to which I replied screw this, I'll do my own. That didn't go down well.

When I left to become a (much better paid) contractor, my boss took me into his office and told me, "You know, I can't approve of this." Apparently, what bosses really mean when they say they want you to show initiative is "Do what I want even if I don't know what it is, oh and make my life easier and make me look good." Well I know thats true, I'm a boss now too.

The real issue as I have come to know it is not that people are being multitasked like crazy (they are), but that its not easy enough to take that kind of experience and translate it into a startup of your own. Companies want their people to act and think like entrepeneurs, but they don't actually want them to become one, and the governments IMHO help them out with that.

When do we......

[mindcruft]

.....Take a stand. I always hear everyone complain, sometimes including myself. We generally do as we are directed but there is a point where you just say no, hire someone else if you want that done!

Re:Wait up, you have a job in this economy?

[MalleusEBHC]

Have you ever considered personality might have something to do with it?

Re:De-commoditising engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the memories, I well remember that flavour of Koolaid. It's in a company's self interest to create the belief passively withstanding tremendous abuse in the name of profit is strength. Here's a helpful hint, I wish someone had told me decades ago: it never ends. You think it's about the 'new millenium'? I heard the same sales pitch last millenium. Reducing staff and expanding job descriptions were big twenty years ago. Companies will push and push until pushed back, otherwise they'd be happy working you to death and using the remains for dogfood if it went unpunished.

What do think gave us the weekend, paid vacation and the end of child labour? The touch of the invisble hand and natural generosity of CFOs? Somehow being told to 'take it like a man' as the best approach to being corn-holed by an employer just doesn't do it for me anymore, you know?

Re:Most Managers have to be teachs to...

[glwtta]

Eh, that's how highly skilled professions work. There is no substitute for actually learning these skills in the field, so the schools basically don't even pretend to try. Rather, they try to (theoretically) teach the theoretical underpinnings of the given field, as well as produce well-rounded, more or less cultivated individuals who will be able to do well in their field; once they get some actual work experience under their belts.

Universities are not vocational schools.

Exactly

[UbuntuDupe]

My "job" is to analyze the structural integrity of various components in an aircraft. In reality, in a given week, I will probably do the following:

-set up shortcuts for really old workers on their desktops so they can more easily get to the files they need
-document a drawing that's missing that is needed for the project, and what is missing
-write a tutorial for a new software package we're using, or explain to someone else how to use it
-set up the printers for someone's machine, and explain what each goes to.
-sort out what's different between two documents and briefly summarize it
-chase down a person in IT responsible for fixing some problem that has arisen with some software
-gripe to some tech support guy about why the software we bought doesn't do what they say it will
-and more I probably can't think of.

So, yeah, just thought I'd share my side. Like with you, none of that bothers me. If it got the point where my job is to vacuum all the offices, yeah, then it would start to bother me. But I don't consider doing any of those tasks to be "working harder"; it's just "working different".

You want to know what kind of job there is where you ONLY do your narrow, specific job function? A union shop. And while in theory, that's supposed to make your job better, in reality, you'll get written up for moving your computer or desks around, and you're employer will quickly tank as they spill money from having to hire a new person for every little task.

Re:Only 40% with a Bachelor's?

[ClamIAm]

That implies ~60% don't have at least Bachelor's degree.

No, it implies that 50-60% of "engineers" don't have a Bachelor's degree in engineering. The article is unclear, but the following possibilities exist:

• people with a master's or doctorate in engineering
• people with a non-engineering degree (sciences, math, etc)
• people who are certified engineers yet did not get a degree in it
• people whose job title is "engineer" but don't do any actual engineering

Re:Welcome to life

[yintercept]

and the fact that your actual job duties will entail far more than what your job description said.

I think the article was trying to say that the number of job duties foisted on engineers was increasing. You are right, if all the article said was that people do things outside their job requirement, then the article says nothing interesting. I believe the article is trying to say that people are doing more things outside their job duty. This second statement (the differential) would be something interesting. The differential would be worth studying.

Unfortunately, the article in question is based on a survey that sounds highly subjective to me. It doesn't sound like they have a substantial data set to substantiate the claim of increased work loads. I suspect many people feel like their work load increases with time; a survey based on feelings would not be sufficient to substantiate a claim of an increased work load.

Re:De-commoditising engineering

[stilwebm]

They are getting paid more. More than Indians, Chinese, and Eastern Europeans doing just the engineering work. The Americans are paid for their competency, managing the ideas behind the engineering. The engineers complaining about some of the other work, such as having to train and mentor other employees, are arrogant and selfish. If they don't want to help improve their company's talent pool, the company will move jobs to places where people are very eager to take these jobs - and mentor workers.

We are compensated by shifting lower skill jobs to cheaper places. It increases productivity, lowers the cost of goods and services and increases profits that are repatriated. As a whole, it forces entire workforces to move to higher value jobs, in this case jobs that manage ideas not just implement them. Only those unwilling to adapt to globalization will be left behind in the long term. Meanwhile we improve the standards of living of educated workforces in places like Bagalore, who buy things like HP and Dell PCs with Microsoft operating systems (I know, I know, Slashdot readers don't want Microsoft to make money), Proctor & Gamble household products for their homes, mobile phones using European and American technologies, etc. It makes the middle class wealthier in both the country outsorcing and providing the outsourced service.

Re:Engineers not the only ones...

[RMB2]

What you point out is only one facet of the present American socio-economic system.

It might be Trickle-down Economics, but it's a firehose going back up.

What I find even more interesting is that so few people are bothered by this information. With all the technological developments of the last XX years, people still have to work harder than before? What is the point of the technology, then? If the PDA means I only have to work 37 hours a week instead of 40 to get my requried work done, that would seem like a benefit. But the way things are now, the PDA is supposed to save those extra 3 hours, so Big Co. expects me to be that much more productive every week, and still be in the cubicle 40 hours. The real winners here are the elite few already in control; the rich get richer. For a democracy, it sure doesn't seem like very many people have the power. People having to work harder, be they engineers or HR, begs the question: Why? Is what we get in return worth what we are giving up?

Sorry, I seem to have strayed somewhat from the article, but this is exactly what I think of when I read statistics about working-class employees.

Re: spending

[mmortal03]

I am not criticizing your overall cutting of corners, because I don't know what you are already doing, but sometimes when you think that you can't cut anymore corners, you actually can. You gave the example of Subway, and what the price is now. I actually go to Subway as well, but I don't get a drink; I drink water. If I want chips, I buy my own chips in bulk at the supermarket instead. That saves more than you might guess. It gets the price down to about what you used to pay for the meal with the drink. Yes, you did originally get the drink for the same price, but that doesn't mean that you really ever needed to. We Americans "just get the drink" due to habit, and this applies to many other categories of our spending in our daily lives as well. And, back to the Subway example, it is true that most businesses really do get your money with the pricing of their drinks. Speaking of which, all of the fast food options have high fructose corn syrup in them, which isn't good for us anyway, and extra calories.

Obviously, the above is not a solution to all of your problems, and I am not meaning it to be, but instead I am simply reminding everyone that EVERYTHING adds up, not just the big purchases. Good Luck!

It happens because we want it...

[ChronosWS]

... or we don't know what we want, and just let it happen to us. Worse yet, some of us do know what we want but do nothing about it for fear of losing our precious jobs. Now, for those of you with kids or other serious obligations, there is a certain logic to this. For the rest of you, the simple fact is that you've let it become expected of you and your testicular fortitude is too weak to potentially risk your job over saying 'no.' Several years back it finally dawned on me - I was not born to serve my boss' every stupid whim. So I don't. And you know what? It works. Be good at what you do, but don't tolerate the situations where you are making up for someone else's (planning/financing/hiring/designing/etc.) shortcomings unless there is a significant reward for you for doing so - more than just keeping your job. Eventually, they will learn and stop repeating their mistakes (or rather, having you clean up after them) or they will fail and exit your life (by quitting, suiciding, taking the company down with them, etc.) On the other hand, if you enjoy watching others use your superior talents (read "gullability") to cover for them, by all means, continue to remind everyone how much they are working while failing to do anything to correct the problem.

Re:That's simple

[geminidomino]

You're not Libertarians... you're corporate statists. You prefer a nation governed by and for the corporate elite. I've talked to Libertarians who even prefer that voting rights be removed from the masses and restricted to the landed gentry. I've a link to the forum if you don't believe me.

Which suggests that neither you, nor they, actually know what the word means.

Those aren't libertarians (difference in capitalization noted), they're Republicans without the Jesus gene.

A more realistic example

[Ogemaniac]

would be the choice between being the average American, who makes $40,000 and saves $500, and the average Canadian, who makes $35000 but only spends $33000. Note that again, the American is clearly richer, while the Canadian has more savings.

The low net worths of Americans indicates that we aren't saving enough, not that we are getting paid less than our fair share, which the OP tried to imply. Almost every time variations of this statistic are cited, this same illogical mistake is made.

Poor Guys at $73k/yr

[nuggz]

At an average wage of $73k/yr, or about $36/hr you might have some added responsibility.
When you're making over $0.50/minute isn't it reasonable to expect some larger responsibility and decision making ability?

Re: spending

[Don853]

For those numbers to have a chance of working you're going to have to expand "not NYC" to "Not within 50 miles of NYC, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Baltimore, Long Island, or the entire state of New Jersey". Otherwise you're never going to have a chance to get that kind of rent payment, and the high price of auto insurance throws your working car calculation off.

Not that I disagree with the general idea of living cheaply, but some of the prices you've listed aren't really possible in some areas.
Also, that's $17000 after taxes, and doesn't leave *any* leeway for "Oh, shit!" kind of expenses, which seem to pop up from time to time.

Re:Wait up, you have a job in this economy?

[RendonWI]

All those degree's and you have no job? And you blame "this economy" last I checked unemployment is at or near an all time low. Maybe the problem is YOU.