4 ms·
Senior year of Mechanical Engineering undergrad, professors would legitimately get upset with students for taking jobs in finance and consulting. They wouldn't
by boltzmannbrain 6y ago
Senior year of Mechanical Engineering undergrad, professors would legitimately get upset with students for taking jobs in finance and consulting. They wouldn't hold back, saying quite literally "this is a waste of your education."
- ashtonkem 6y agoIt’s easy to say that when you’re on the side lines, and not making decisions about career growth and net worth. Its also easy to say that when you don’t have student debts. People go into finance for extremely rational reasons. Getting upset at them for that is folly.
- MiroF 6y agoOn the contrary, I think social stigma and pressure can definitely influence what careers people go into and the suggestion that most people make decisions as purely rational money-making machines seems somewhat facile.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI agree that humans aren’t totally rational in these decisions, but the key point is that the professor is totally ignoring a large amount of what drives people to go into finance: money. It’s much easier to say how someone should use their skills, when you don’t have to live off of the salary those skills bring.
- MiroF 6y agoAh yes, the professor gets to live off of the luxurious salary provided to academics.
- ashtonkem 6y agoCome now, don’t make up my argument. That’s bad style. Professors aren’t rich, duh. But they’re also neither in the job market, not starting their career off. Their students need to build wealth, worry about long term earnings potential, and pay back the large student debt that they just incurred. Unless if the professor is actively planning on quoting soon, none of these are incentives that the professor are subject to personally, meaning their advice will probably underweight them.
- MiroF 6y agoI agree that this is a flaw with advice from elders and one that one should keep in mind. I disagree that this is a unique flaw of advice from professors and more just a flaw with advice? Those who have more experience are going to be more distanced from your exact circumstances, as a function of having more experience. Advice can be useful nonetheless.
- therealdrag0 6y agoHaven't there been commentary about finance struggling "more" to find talent more in the decade after '08/ Occupy Wall Street? Now a lot of that talent has gone towards ad-tech probably, which now is itself getting the negative press. So ya agree with you about the social pressure! Let's keep it up. But we also need to find ways to align our financial incentives with social incentives!
- rumanator 6y agoThose are entirely different concerns. A professor dedicates his career to advance his field of expertise. If you spend 5 years of your time and resources on a student teaching him to be a leading mechanical engineer but in the end after he graduates he decides to pursue a career as a pastry chef, you'd feel you wasted your time with him as well.
- irishcoffee 6y agoName me a profession where people don’t feel like they wasted their time. Who cares.
- rumanator 6y agoPeople care. That's the point.
- irishcoffee 6y agoWaste of energy
- xiaolingxiao 6y agoIgnore him. Not because finance/consulting is glamorous or high paying (it really isn't on average), but because 1. there's many ways to get value out of an education, 2. your professor won't be there for you when you need the money or want to live in a certain city. In general when people give advice but don't bear the risk, the value of their advice is dubious.
- MiroF 6y ago> In general when people give advice but don't bear the risk, the value of their advice is dubious. If they are a mechanical engineering professor at a good university, they pretty much have borne the risk of their own advice. Most people in upper-level STEM academia could easily get a higher paying job in finance/consulting and have chosen not to.
- xiaolingxiao 6y agoA priori, it's not guaranteed these people would last long enough in corporate to see a higher total life time income. And the professor is not asking OP to be a professor, but to become a corporate mechanical engineer, which is a very different profession.
- MiroF 6y agoI think they would likely have more burnout from the academia job than the corporate job. And at least at my school, pretty much any professor that left could immediately get a higher paying job in industry. You're right it's not "a priori guaranteed," but when talking about empirical realities, what is?
- xiaolingxiao 6y agoYeah fair. I guess the original point to OP is: just to live your own life :), and don't feel obligated to live up to anything others set forth for you.
- melq 6y ago
- chroem- 6y agoIs it though? The alternative being an exciting career in HVAC, which many MEs find themselves in. Those air conditioners don't install themselves. I've been there and done that, and really I have no regrets moving on from an underpaid, underappreciated field of study.
- generatorguy 6y agoMechanical engineers also play a large role in power generation
- boltzmannbrain 6y agoFWIW much of my class went on to Boeing, SpaceX, GE (wind turbines, not appliances), Shell, NASA, ...
- meddlepal 6y agoThose professors are narrow minded. There's no such thing as a wasted education unless you do something like commit suicide or get yourself thrown in solitary confinement for life.