Because you'll run smack into the wall of age (and possibly sex) discrimination, right when you should be entering your prime earning years?
Because you've got to eternally compete in the job market with 20-year-olds who will always be more proficient with new technologies, and willing to work at lower wages?
Come on, that's not the typical experience of most engineers outside the IT/software sector, and as far as I'm aware, most engineers don't work in IT. I'm an EE in oil and gas and it's definitely a "pay your dues" industry where often, the young people are the ones that are marginalised. Believe me, a guy with 30 years of experience isn't competing with 20 year olds, and their payscales are astronomically different (obviously in favour of the experienced). Furthermore, most of the middle managers and top level executives are engineers (eg. Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon is a civil engineer, van der Veer, CEO of Shell is a mechanical engineer, etc).
I'm told it's a similar story in the mining and manufacturing sectors also.
I think that engineering disciplines where professional certification are required tend to do a better job of rewarding experience. So do most professional degrees.
(That said, my father's an EE, and I know that age discrimination is a problem in his industry, too...it's just posed as a question of salary discrimination.)
Not quite. My father was an aeronautical engineer. He hit his 40s and.. that was it. He was, thankfully, offered voluntary redundancy and they replaced him with someone half his age.
Thankfully, he had it in him to go back to college and retrain. He's now an analytical chemist, making far more and doing less work ;)
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Because you'll run smack into the wall of age (and possibly sex) discrimination, right when you should be entering your prime earning years?
Because you've got to eternally compete in the job market with 20-year-olds who will always be more proficient with new technologies, and willing to work at lower wages?
Come on, that's not the typical experience of most engineers outside the IT/software sector, and as far as I'm aware, most engineers don't work in IT. I'm an EE in oil and gas and it's definitely a "pay your dues" industry where often, the young people are the ones that are marginalised. Believe me, a guy with 30 years of experience isn't competing with 20 year olds, and their payscales are astronomically different (obviously in favour of the experienced). Furthermore, most of the middle managers and top level executives are engineers (eg. Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon is a civil engineer, van der Veer, CEO of Shell is a mechanical engineer, etc).
I'm told it's a similar story in the mining and manufacturing sectors also.
I think that engineering disciplines where professional certification are required tend to do a better job of rewarding experience. So do most professional degrees.
(That said, my father's an EE, and I know that age discrimination is a problem in his industry, too...it's just posed as a question of salary discrimination.)
Not quite. My father was an aeronautical engineer. He hit his 40s and.. that was it. He was, thankfully, offered voluntary redundancy and they replaced him with someone half his age.
Thankfully, he had it in him to go back to college and retrain. He's now an analytical chemist, making far more and doing less work ;)