First, all the time and money you have to spend for an education. Then once you have it, all the time and energy spent kissing up to people who have no idea what an engineer abilities really are while you are trying to find a job before you realize its not worth doing this for the rest of your life.
I am an Engineer and have to agree with Matt to a large extent. However, the ultimate key to success is to control your own destiny...technically and economically. That means if you really want to be a person that can create value through design, it behooves you to go one step further and design your economics too. I pissed away a lot of frustrating years trying to get business folks to accept good technology. I wasn't talking their language. Now I apply a new technology, compute an internal rate of return and people are throwing money at me. I can't get enough projects to satisfy these people now. Don't tell your kids to avoid Engineering...tell them to be an Engineer first and add the MBA second. Then work it for all it is worth. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king.
Company executives like Gates & Chambers (Cisco) are like politicians. They tell us there is a shortage of engineers, because they want to be accepted by the public, while they are opening up huge campuses and plants in India & China, and other countries around the world, employing many thousands of qualified, CHEAP engineers & scientists. That way if there is a depression here, they won't be murdered. Scumbags
The problem is these spinsters who have paid political interests lying to the populace as if what they were saying were true and believable, yet they wouldn't take one of those phantom jobs themselves: Crudlow on CNBC at 5pm EST is one of the worst political spinsters..... -- he reminds me of Ed Asner, who traded his artificial TV fame for a political pundit and was banned from broadcast TV as he became politicized. Where's real fiscal results, like Clinton Administration delivered? instead of all these liars spousing their partisan beliefs in exchange for fictitious facts?
I really wish partisan rhetoric could be swept out of all comments of critical issues too. But, I wonder if you noticed that the one professionally commenting on the economic situation is a Republican himself.
yeah, and imagine being a Republican and having this guy as leader..... recently they showed on national TV, the video taped session BEFORE hurricane Katrinz hit, and him on TV, after the hurricane hit, and still saying: "he didn't know...".... caught publically in his Lies.... I don't feel sorry either way, but there were those who kept saying that they were going to ruin the country.... well they have.... Where's Bill Clinton when you need him and his (more favorable, and more moral clean policies) when you need him?