Engineers truly are a conflicted bunch. Only 40% of the respondents to our 2006 survey feel strongly secure in their job, and fewer than half (47%) believe that a career path in engineering and the potential for salary advancement are as promising as they were five years ago. Yet 80% would recommend engineering as a career path to a young person looking to choose a profession.
Similarly, most respondents say their company outsources engineering work. A majority also believes that outsourcing results in fewer engineering job opportunities. But three out of four have little or no concerns over losing their own jobs to outsourcing. Is this any way to make a living?
"Engineering allows you to get creative and have fun while doing it," said one engineer who responded to the survey. "Plus, there's the satisfaction you get from applying scientific and engineering principles and seeing them come to fruition before your very eyes. What better ways can there be to spend the majority of your time than to use your talents for their best possible use?"
According to our 2006 Reader Profile Survey, 61% of you feel adequately compensated for the work you do—up slightly from last year's earnings satisfaction figure. What's more, four out of five engineers are still willing to trumpet the profession to students considering an engineering career. "Engineering can provide a more rich and varied career path than almost any other profession I can think of," beamed one engineer.
Why are there such high grades for a profession that's clearly being challenged on so many fronts? Another engineer put it this way: "It's very rewarding to create new things. Salaries have consistently been in the upper-middle-class range for 50 years, and there is no sign of that changing."
In reality, the engineering profession offers a fairly high degree of job security these days—although individual engineers may not always feel secure in their jobs. The good news is that only 9% of survey respondents said their company planned to scale back engineering staff this year, and nearly 40% said their companies planned to increase the number of engineering jobs in the coming year. "Engineers will always have jobs," noted one reader. "Changing technologies might require retraining, but that's true of most disciplines."
Yet despite the seemingly rosy outlook, 60% of those surveyed said they felt some degree of uncertainty about their own job security. As one engineer put it: "Compared to other fields such as medical, business, or service professions, job security in engineering is unstable and rewards pπare much less given the hours expended."
Nearly 78% of engineers saw their paychecks go up in 2006, and 40% believed their company was more focused on employee retention this year than a year ago. According to one survey respondent, "Our company is concentrating on keeping employees in long-term relationships. Now we have a good medical plan, 401(k), pension, tuition reimbursement, and more competitive compensation."
But the majority of respondents still felt that the opportunity for advancement isn't as strong as it used to be. "I feel that our senior management is constantly looking to cut personnel and costs, but for the time being they can't cut more engineers without cutting programs," said one engineer.
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