7 ms·
All my finance friends make about 10x what my engineer friends make and work equally hard. If you compare engineers to lawyers, doctors, and executives we are v
by swilk 14y ago
All my finance friends make about 10x what my engineer friends make and work equally hard. If you compare engineers to lawyers, doctors, and executives we are very much underpaid.
- nilkn 14y agoI don't see the point. There's always going to be someone making far, far more money than you make. It doesn't matter if you're an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, an executive, or the president of a country. That doesn't mean that you should feel so inherently entitled to the compensation that you do get. While some executive may be making 10x your salary, you're probably making 10x the salary of someone else who works just as hard as you do.
- bennyg 14y agoExactly, I know plenty of people in the food industry that work harder than some engineers I've seen.
- khuey 14y agoYour income is not determine by how hard you work. It's determined by how much value you create and how strong your negotiating position is for capturing that value.
- nilkn 14y agoHas that not been my point all along? ...
- khuey 14y agoPerhaps I misread you, but you seem to think that this is unfair. Why?
- nilkn 14y agoUnfair may not be the right word. I just think I'm fortunate to enjoy something which, as a side effect, makes me valuable to companies. If I were to say there is unfairness in the matter, it would be because not all activities are valued the same. There are obvious reasons for that which I don't contest, but the distribution of interests across different people is more or less random and pays no attention to whether those interests will lead to high-value skills or not. I view myself as lucky to have an innate interest in something which makes me financially valuable to at least some companies. Some of my friends or family members don't have interests which tend to lead to high-value skills. As a result, for them to get a similarly paying job, they'd have to choose a career in something they don't enjoy. I don't believe anyone is acting overly entitled for wanting to get the best compensation they can convince a company to pay them. Maybe I misread the original article, but I got the sense from the author's tone that he feels entitled to much more than simply being paid his worth, though. He just doesn't appear to be even remotely grateful for any of the fortunes he has to even have the option of turning down companies all over high-paying jobs which he enjoys greatly. I suppose this is a case where words speak louder than actions. His actions--maximizing his expected compensation--are perfectly fine in my book. But his words betray a deeper level of entitlement which I don't think is justified. Just my two cents.
- walshemj 14y agoyep same in the uk the average GP (family doctor) makes $180k which is far higher than the Average engineer makes.
- nilkn 14y agoI don't know what the debt is like in the UK, but a doctor in the US can expect to go into upwards of $200k of debt. The average engineer will have far less (or no) debt and will only need a BA/BS.
- bearmf 14y agoHmm do all your finance friends around $1mil per year? This is huge even for finance.
- nilkn 14y agoI've noticed a tendency of people outside of finance to exaggerate the salaries inside of finance. You're right: $1m/year is very rare overall even for the world of finance. And I assure you someone with that salary on Wall Street is working 80 hours a week at minimum and has been for quite some time.