Quote:
Originally Posted by GLOW
on a serious note, engineering is a bit of a catch 22. rare are those jobs you grad and get a great salary unless it's in government with an EIT program.
most will start at the bottom doing grunt work, learn the industry, and in the lower mainland b/c of saturation, will pay 30%+ less. you can get a better job moving to less desirable/boonies areas. i assume it's still like this now.
like choosing a degree, i'd argue choosing the right discipline helps. when i had a random office job to pay back loans coincidentally a coworker was a new grad in aerospace engineering. sounds really cool right? imagine how limiting career options are in canada? i could probably count the firms that i know of on 1 hand.
likewise a classmate specialized in power, right out the get go hydro was hiring and boom, great job/career as it was very in demand.
a lot of times it's timing of industries as well unfortunately. my friends that graduated around the .com bubble bursting and telecom crashing that specialized in telecom, gg for them... i remember one of the asshole profs was "laughing" at them sarcastically telling them 'good luck'
a lot of it is really just career counselling and building a career path. we didn't get a lot of that in the past and i didn't have any mentors until much later in my career (old school you're on your own sink or swim attitude).
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Yeah it's kind of unfortunate in engineering, how drastically your experience will vary just based on specialization vs geography & market conditions.
One would argue that you don't have to choose until the end of 1st year (not that you'd know much better by then), but even that's not really true. Your choice of
school already limits you to a subset of disciplines.
Compounding on this, your luck & timing w/ co-op & first job out of school: the severe consequences on opportunities that this has on the entire rest of your career. It's savage.
There really needs to be an effort to get people in industry to visit schools and tell the kids how it really is out there. Even to tell them what questions to be asking themselves.