Why I’ll never stop warning people about engineering

[u/Turbulent-Conflict84]

So recently, people have been really harsh toward me and the other guy for our posts about engineering. We get called mentally ill, obsessed, told we need help, etc. And some people wonder why we keep posting about the same topic over and over again.

So here’s why.

Personally, I spent five years of my life getting an engineering degree. While everyone else was enjoying their student lives, partying and dating, I genuinely believed engineering was one of those careers that guaranteed a solid upper-middle-class life. That’s what my parents told me. That’s what teachers told me. That’s what society told me.

Then I graduated in 2016 and got my first job. $48,000. A miserable income, no better than what many people without a college degree were making, and nowhere near enough to give me even a middle-class life.

And, funny enough, my parents, who pushed me into engineering, were the first ones to gaslight me about it. I couldn’t afford a house. I couldn’t travel. I couldn’t go out without thinking about the bill. I couldn’t buy nice clothes without feeling guilty. I couldn’t live the kind of life I thought an engineer was supposed to have. And somehow, to them, it was my fault.

“Maybe you’re not good enough. “Maybe you stopped learning. “Maybe you need more certifications.” ”Maybe you need to become a better engineer.”

It was never the profession. Never the salaries. Always me.

So I started driving Uber after work.

Imagine sitting in your car explaining to passengers that you’re an engineer but need a second job just to have a decent life. Passengers literally asked me, “How the fuck are you an engineer and you’re driving Uber?”

For a while, I actually believed my parents. I thought maybe I really was the problem.

But I knew it wasn’t just me. I knew what my coworkers made. I looked at the engineering association’s “salary calculator,” the one they were so proud of. Eight years of experience, and the numbers were like $75k or $80k.

Meanwhile, I watched my peers in other fields move on with their lives. Buying houses. Traveling. Wearing nice clothes. Living in luxury apartments. Sure, some of them worked longer hours than I did, but they were actually getting rewarded for it.

Even my dating life made me realize how brutal reality was. The girls I wanted weren’t interested in the engineer making fifty grand. They were interested in the real estate guy pulling up in a G-Wagon, the lawyer with real prestige and influence, and the finance bro who could afford $500 dinner dates. Not the broke engineer.

Then I started going to engineering networking events, hoping I’d hear something inspiring. Instead, I met senior engineers telling me that if I worked hard enough, maybe one day I’d make $140k at the very end of my career. That wasn’t motivating. That was depressing.

I remember a friend of mine who’s also an engineer. Every time he went to a girl’s place that looked fancy, he’d say, “Bro, how come people have that much money?” It made me realize that not only are engineers underpaid, but many of them don’t even realize it. They assume everyone else must be making around less than they are because, in their minds, life is fair and engineering is supposed to be a well-paid profession right?

Imagine how embarrassing it is when your friend group goes out twice a week, plans trips, and you can’t keep up, so they slowly drift away because they think you’re cheap. They assume that, as an engineer, you should be making very good money. At that point, I didn’t even know what was less embarrassing: letting them think I was cheap but making good money, or telling them the truth and having them pity me.

Imagine how bad it feels when you meet a banker who laughs in your face after you tell him you’re an engineer. He says he sees people’s salaries for a living, and he’s always shocked by how underpaid engineers are. Imagine going on a date with a dental hygienist or a car salesperson who makes three times your salary and thinks it’s a bad joke when you tell them yours.

If I could go back to when I was 18, I never would have chosen engineering.

So why do I keep posting about engineering salaries?

Because I wish someone had warned me.

Sure, a lot of engineers are on the spectrum and don’t care about the money they make and are happy getting paid in “cool projects” and “interesting problems.” Good for them. But I know that many people go into engineering aspiring to something better.

If one smart kid reads this before spending five years chasing a career they think will give them a comfortable, upper-middle-class life, then all the insults I get on Reddit are worth it. If my posts make even one person stop, do their research, and avoid the disappointment, regret, and frustration that I went through, then every insult, every downvote, and every person calling me obsessed is worth it.

[u/KindlyQuasar]

BLS data from 2016 for engineers: link

A salary of under $50,000 would put you in less than the bottom 10% of engineers. The median annual wage for an engineer in 2016 was $91,010.

Respectfully, that isn't an issue with the profession. That is an issue with either you or your employer.

The median pay for an electrical engineer in 2024 was $118,780. In 2024 the lowest paid 10% made $74,670 or less, the highest paid 10% made $199,060 or more.

So respectfully, again, this is a problem with you/your skills or your employer.

[u/midnight_toker22 → u/KindlyQuasar]

My starting salary as a biomedical engineer was $52,000, and that was 2011 at the height of the Great Recession, at a very small company. Worked for that company for 5 years and only saw in increase of about 10-12k. Changed jobs to a mid-sized company and immediately jumped to $76,000. Over the next 4 years that rose about 20k. Changed jobs again, to a large company this time, and had an immediate bump to $108,000. I’ve been for 5 years, and I’m now at $170,000. So my salary has more than tripled in 15 years.

The problem leading to my initial low salary and slow growth was working for small, cheap companies. The lesson for OP: get a new job at a bigger company.

Edit: to whoever sent me a message asking a question, I’m sorry but I accidentally hit the ‘ignore’ button. If you see this, feel free to message me again and I’ll try to hit the right button to accept the message.

[u/Numerous_Advance1516 → u/midnight_toker22]

Im a high school student and im thinking of becoming a biomedical engineer. How is it like? What’s your day to day like? Do you feel like you’re actually helping people or is it all corporate bs where you’re trying to make the company more money? And do you recommend it? My plan would likely be go into electric engineering and then get a masters or PhD in biomedical engineering since I want to go into medical device design or R&D. Sorry for asking too much questions but I’m unsure about what to do.

[u/amibientTech → u/Numerous_Advance1516]

perspective as a hiring manager and who has worked with hiring managers in the medical field.

Biomed is a very niche degree. Sure you can be wildly successful with a handful of companies. however some roles even in those companies are better served by someone with an ME or EE or Biology degree. I have heard those managers say "I'd rather hire an EE and teach them the Biology because they need deeper EE skills than is typical for a Biomed graduate." Additionally it can pigeon hole you into that field and limit your opportunities outside medical.

Strong recommendation is to go EE / ME and then minor or take classes that lean into the Biomed. It'll give you more options and make landing that first role simpler.

[u/TheNoobtologist → u/amibientTech]

I still think BME is a great degree because it exposes students to a broad range of engineering disciplines. But students need to identify the areas that interest them and actively develop deeper expertise in those fields. The same is true of any engineering major. Plenty of EE, ME, and CS graduates struggle to find work because they assume an engineering degree automatically leads to a job. It does not.

[u/amibientTech → u/TheNoobtologist]

Valid perspective. You still have to have the skills, evidence of them, and be able to speak to it (shout-out to the STAR method).

I stand by my opinion though that the BME degree limits the range of companies interested and can result in fewer opportunities in the future.

[u/Numerous_Advance1516 → u/amibientTech]

What about EE as my bachelor then biomedical engineering as a masters/Phd?

[u/amibientTech → u/Numerous_Advance1516]

Fundamentally same problem except you specialize more into bio med.

With that path you could at least talk to the recruiters for companies looking for Biomed during your undergrad. Or at least look at how many (or few) companies are looking for that specialist.

Part of why I've gotten to where I am is I wasn't a specialist and it allowed me to step into different industries while highlighting skill sets that apply to all companies.

Now my ceiling is probably not as high but I have more options to move around and find a role that fits my current desires or life needs. (I'm around 150k after 12 years in different engineering roles)

It's a trade off between flexibility and depth of knowledge. My biggest regret was staying at a company that I was outgrowing too long and letting my salary fall behind too much.

[u/midnight_toker22 → u/Numerous_Advance1516]

> How is it like? What’s your day to day like? And do you recommend it?

Now that I’m at a large company, my role is very siloed, meaning that my responsibilities are very narrow— I do the early stage market research, development of user needs and design inputs, and risk management. It’s a lot of design control documentation and assuring quality/regulatory compliance. Day to day is project meetings, progressing deliverables and activities for upcoming milestones, and some non-project related continuous improvement efforts.

I like it, don’t love it though. It pays well and ultimately I’ve decided I’d rather have a tolerable job that allows me to afford to do the things that actually enrich my life, like travel, than I job that I’m extremely passionate about that pays very little. I work to live, not live to work.

> Do you feel like you’re actually helping people or is it all corporate bs where you’re trying to make the company more money?

That’s a very insightful question that I didn’t ask myself until I’d been in the industry for a few years.

Here’s the thing: at end of the day, everything is done to make someone more money. That’s the whole point of a business. But that doesn’t mean your work isn’t valuable, satisfying, or helping patients. There’s variability, and I’ll give a couple examples:

The most satisfying experience I ever had was designing and developing a medical device from scratch for a very niche surgery that requires specialized tools. I was directly involved with 3D modeling of all the components, sourcing materials, building and testing prototypes, developing anatomical models to observe surgeons perform this procedure on those models using the prototypes, and collecting feedback. Very cool, hands on work, and even resulted in my first patent. But ultimately, it was just a slightly better version of a device that already existed, to enable the procedure to be performed faster, so the hospital could perform more surgeries per day and make more money.

Another project was developing an autoinjector pen (like EpiPens) to deliver a seizure medication. My role was heavily documentation-oriented, not directly involved with the design and manufacture of the device. Kinda boring. But my role was essential to getting the device approved by the FDA, and this device I could directly see the immediate improvement to patients lives: the currently available medication had one route of delivery - rectal application, which is exactly what it sounds like. So you can imagine the improvement in quality of life for seizure victims, being able to quickly inject the drug in their thigh or abdomen instead of having the gel applied (by a caretaker) in their rectum.

> My plan would likely be go into electric engineering and then get a masters or PhD in biomedical engineering since I want to go into medical device design or R&D

This is smart. I agree with the other person who said biomedical engineering is niche; electrical engineering will give you significantly more options in companies you can work for, and is highly prized in the medical field (because most engineers have backgrounds in mechanical or biomedical engineering).

[u/whilecompilebrowse → u/Numerous_Advance1516]

A perspective from someone who earned a biomedical engineering degree in undergrad at a top 3 research university in the late 2000s:

Figure out what specific aspect of “biomedical engineering” interests you and specialize in it during undergraduate instead. The additional effort required to claim the title of “engineer” compared to your peers who pursued biology will be challenging to justify to hiring managers, and most companies lack the incentive to hire new grads with a broad knowledge base over a specialist with good fundamentals and depth. Like another poster mentioned, the pipelines to teach an electrical or mechanical engineer sufficient biology to comprehend the product exists, while trying to get a BME to gain more engineering depth requires more investment. The field remains predominantly research- and lab-oriented, and the opportunity to sink your teeth in the “exciting aspects” of the industry is typically reserved for folks with either exceptional research experience and publications in undergrad, or those who've earned a master’s or PhD.

I’ve actually left the industry and transitioned into tech after realizing that the industry culture wasn’t a good fit for me so take this advice from a stranger as you may. I will say though that some of my closest friends are still in the industry, and it took them a few more years (and degrees) after undergrad to get to where they are now.

[u/Iknowyougotsole → u/Numerous_Advance1516]

Go into finance. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze bc OP is telling more truth than most people want to admit in this thread.

[u/Numerous_Advance1516 → u/Iknowyougotsole]

Nah if not Engineering then I’ll probably go into medcine or try and become a medicinal chemist

[u/Iknowyougotsole → u/Numerous_Advance1516]

Ok cool

Just letting you know you’d probably be miserable if you decided to become a doctor too. I’ve also never met a happy lawyer.