Shock at low pay for high skill

There was a lot of starry eyed hope for the future back then, a brave new world needed built and some leaps of faith were required

He would have been well warned... and chose to ignore those warnings

Later on as the Soviet influence spread we helped Israel get onto the A-bomb ladder

Britain is always up to something somewhere, it's in the DNA of whitehall people people who seem to live lives filled with paranoia, it's certainly not something the general population gives two hoots about

Edited By Ady1 on 11/07/2021 18:39:35

What the point is of joining a forum and immediately denigrating members is a mystery to me.

Those of us who have to work for a living get paid what our employers, oe clients, think we are worth. Whether one thinks that rewards the skills we have is another matter. If we think we are underpaid there are two choices. One, do something about it, like expand skillsets, ask for a rise or find another job. Two, sit back and moan.

Andrew

If you have a job you enjoy and it pays enough to have a comfortable lifestyle then it’s happy days.

Mike

Hello.

I have been following most of this discussion, and Bazyle made a couple of interesting comments.

In my years as an Engineer, the ability to use higher mathematics (Algebra) was necessary. I cannot see how an engineering designer can design a piece of equipment if he cannot prove to himself and more importantly the client that it is 'fit for purpose'. There were times where an even 'higher' level of mathematical skill was required and we had a 'Stress Office' to provide guidance to the designer and/or fulfil that function.

The main problem I saw was not the ability to perform mathematics but the ability to actually understand how a component or structure is loaded when in use. Not all loadings are the 'text book' example we may think they are.

Degrees are regarded by industry as essential, but many of the degree qualified engineers are unprepared for industry. This is NOT a criticism of the graduate engineer, but a criticism of some (not all) employers who expect graduates to know ALL the answers. Some gentle mentoring of a new graduate by an experienced colleague(s) can make such a difference to the graduate AND the success of that company.

Do employers check that their employees have the qualifications (Degrees) they claim?

I would hope so and as part of the company's Quality Accreditation they are supposed to 'back check' with the issuing University (who should provide 'hard copy' evidence/proof). For large contracts, the CVs of those 'highlighted' to be working on the project are (usually) included in the bidding documents. Well ..... they were at one company I worked for.

I do however share Bazyle's concerns about whether employers make sufficient checks about a persons qualifications. But that is where the Auditors for the company's Quality Accreditation Organisation verify that the company is maintaining the necessary quality processes to retain their accreditation.

Alan.

I can't get worked up about a skilled machinist calling himself an engineer. I have quite a few letters after my name, but I wouldn't pretend to even have a clue about driving (for instance) a horizontal borer, especially cutting an internal thread. Similarly I'd be quite worried if the horizontal borer guy set about doing the sums for designing a bridge. And yes I do realise that some highly skilled shop floor guys will move into the more theoretical roles.

Many moons ago there were sandwich courses, where aspiring graduate engineers did a mix of industrial and academic time, including starting off by at least learning what various machine tools and other processes could achieve. This has always seemed like a very good idea to me, Unfortunately I wasn't made aware of this until too late, but on leaving university I got myself a shop floor job. Only basic stuff, and not for very long, but it has been immensely useful over the years, especially when some production engineer was trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

What does get up my nose is the "sales engineer" in the shiny suit with the company car who goes around agreeing with the customer to supply something that can't be made within the timescale or cost quoted. Then he gets a bonus for increasing sales and the poor engineers get blamed for being over budget and time.

Would I advise my son to go into engineering? Well I did, and he's doing well. What's not to like about using other people's money to make whizzo machines

I few comments not really as a response to anyone just general thoughts.

If I look at my own career, educated to degree level (electronics) via HND and CEI Part2 and not moving around much (Marconi Avionics and then the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology, I can either be disgruntled because I have been paid less than many other less skilled jobs generally and specifically less than equivalent posts in industry in the same job or I can be pleased that I have had a satisfying career doing interesting things with enough money for modest needs and having access to a contributory pension scheme which will keep me comfortable in retirement.

Both views are valid and whilst I have been known to grumble a times about comparative rates of pay I choose to dwell on the second view of things acknowledging that I am happy where I was and had no great inkling to shop around for jobs.

As a more direct response to an earlier post as to would I recommend engineering to an offspring, I would recommend that they choose something that will satisfy them whatever it is. The worst you can do is follow someone elses idea of the right career.

regards Martin

Many large companies take on more graduates than they need so they can find the ones who can deliver what they require. Many graduates will leave of their own free will when they realise what the job requires is not for them and the ones who don’t see their own shortcomings will be fired which will leave the company with the people they were looking for. I suppose this sorting process applies with non graduates as well. I served a craft apprenticeship and there were a few who didn’t complete and then quite a lot who left within a few years, I was the only one of our group to go the full distance, after promotion I settled into a job I really enjoyed and could get up every morning keen to go to work.

Mike

Yep, blame is common whatever sort of engineer you are. Mismanagement is more easily hidden in many other jobs, and simple folk think they understand mechanical failures, and ignore anything remotely complicated like poor customer decisions, bad planning, supply chains, skills shortages and financial issues.

Sir Thomas Bouch got all the blame to the Tay Bridge disaster, even though the Board of the North British Railway were thoroughly culpable too. Guess who ordered the cheapest possible bridge, failed to maintain it properly, and allowed a passenger train to run over it during a Force 11 storm.

Not that Sir Thomas was innocent! Although he discussed wind pressures with the Astronomer Royal (who at the time was Government Chief Scientist rather than a mere star-gazer), the pair of them boobed. On the principle that British is Best, they failed to consult recent Continental and American advice. American engineers in particular had much experience of collapsing railway bridges, and their up-to-date figures showed the Tay Bridge's wind safety factor was too low, even assuming the design, materials, build quality and maintenance were all spot on, which they weren't. The Tay design was also flawed compared with similar bridges in that fixings were weakened to make assembly quick and therefore cheap. Small bolts in big holes are easy to fit but allow the structure to move sideways.

Despite apprearances, I'm not sure engineering is especially difficult and poorly paid compared with other jobs. If there were lots of dead easy high paid jobs available, we'd all be doing them. Brutal truth is most of us have to work hard to make a living, and most jobs aren't properly appreciated. Consider, Nurses and Pensioners. After coping with Covid, skilled professionally qualified Nurses who have gone the extra mile are rewarded with a 2% pay rise. Pensioners get 2.5%. Why are pensioners more valued by society than nurses?

Dave

In NZ, milk tanker drivers earn more per annum than toolmakers do. Not saying there is no skill in driving a tanker, but it certainly does not take 4 years.

re Tay bridge. I think that was the last major structure to be designed empirically so to a certain extent it had to happen at some point. There were also so fairly major frauds going on at the foundrey with blow holes in casting being filled with iron filings and beeswax rather than being rejected, as SOD has alluded to.

regards Martin

> milk tanker drivers earn more per annum than toolmakers do

Yes, but milk tank drivers need (I presume, I don't know NZ's road licensing regime!) a specific ticket to drive a milk tanker, which are more dangerous than other tankers because they are unbaffled for hygiene reasons. Apply that on top of the fact that HGV drivers in general are always in short supply, and that you are always a heart murmer away from having your career cut short by the doctors, and you can see why the market is as it is. Skills and experience are part of what makes up a market salary, but not all of it.

Until now I have stayed away from this conversation. I have been a mechanical engineer all my working life (even in retirement). Except for four months, after my official retirement, I worked as a salaried member of staff, not a contractor. My comments, for what they are worth, are:

1. Engineering is a very broad church. I spent most of my life designing, testing, analysing and support engine parts. Others were team leaders, sales engineers, manufacturing engineers and even chief engineers. Some used a lot of their college education, others did not (so what).
2. Most enjoyed their work. Those who did not soon left and probably became supermarket managers earning more money.
3. It was intense work and a lot was expected of you. The work load was around 150% and you set your priorities. You received no real help or respite from your customers, in my case chief engineers. It was recognised by all that you were burnt out, of little use, by the age of 60.
4. Operating in a capitalist society, it was general practice to take on an excess number of junior staff and encourage the useless ones to leave. Every so often the ones that did not were made redundent. This always sapped the morale of those who remained. Later it became practice to recruit a limited number of good staff and to use contractors to take up any slack. In general, but not always, the contractors were of poor quality (some were unbelievably bad).
5. The pay was not good. It seemed to be pegged to teachers' pay. We had very senior engineers that had been teachers and took pay cuts to join the company. If a company was well known and respected it generally paid less.
6. Would I repeat my working life? Yes and I would not repeat the mistakes (not technical) I made. Other than falling out with almost everyone at one time or another I throughly enjoyed my work. I still see quite a few of my collegues. None were idiots.
7. I would recommend engineering to anyone interested. By all means go to university but if I did it again I would still start as an apprentice. As an apprentice, if you are any good and inclined you could be sent to university on full pay and without any future debts.

Enough said.

JA

Edited By JA on 12/07/2021 13:26:08

Been there, done that, in most companies where I've worked.

It takes a certain type of person to be a contractor, flexibility is key. Contractors are a bit like immigrants. You get the restless mavericks at one end who do excellent work in short bursts and then move on (that's me) and the unemployable losers at the other end who want it all but aren't prepared, or able, to work for it. What you don't get are the middling, but stolidly competent, people who are happy to plod along doing the hours and getting paid a steady but unspectacular salary.

When I want to annoy a millennial I tell them I got paid to go to university. I did a thick sandwich course with MoD. A year at RAE Farnborough, three years at university (working in MoD or their suppliers during the summer) and a final year working in MoD establishments with the aim of joining the PTO grades, ie, chargehands and up. At university I didn't get an LEA grant, but got paid a regular salary. And since the university was a long way from my home base (RAE Farnborough) it was classified as detached duty so I got travel allowances. Even better MoD would pat half the cost of any textbooks on the official list. So I bought all of them on the grounds that when you really needed them (at exam time) the university libraries would have dozens of students fighting over limited copies.

Andrew

LEA = local education authority

PTO = professional and technical grade as opposed to the parallel scientific grades

well said JA, thats what I did. I wouldnt swap my apprenticeship for £1,000,000. The epxerience carried me through the whole of my life and gave me the edge over "paper" engineers, I used to do the milk round some 20 years ago and I was appalled at the low standard of applicants

I explained how learning doesnt stop when you graduate, in fact it persists at a punishing rate throughout your career.

An engineer has to be able to think through all the data around a problem so I asked them to guess what the mass of the air was in the room, then they were given density 0.1 lbs/ft3 (approx for round figures vs .08). The room was 10'x20'x10' to be estimated by students eye ie 2000ft3 so mass should be calculated as ca 200lbs

Many were thrown by being asked to think on their feet and clammed up, Many were annoyed at being challenged. Out of 20 I saw only 2 rose to the challenge and made an informed guess and both estimated 10-20lbs and were surprises at 200lbs

These bright hopes were clearly focused on management fast track scheme. The rest probably wouldnt make bus conductors (that job post has long ceased)

I'm not surprised - it's a poor question, unlikely to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Say I'm interviewing you for a recruiting job and ask what's wrong with that sort of question. Do you have a good answer?

Dave

I remember the milk round at Cambridge back in the 80's.

Bunch of soon to be graduates from the University and 3 of us from the Tech all going for the same jobs. We walked in to see a group of hopefull graduates in suits drinking sherry. The chap in charge took one look at us lot, jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said the beer is over there. We actually went down very well. (So did the beer.)

Martin

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Edited By duncan webster on 12/07/2021 17:04:10

I served an Apprenticeship, by choice, and ended up with practical experience and an Engineering qualification equivalent to a degree.

What i saw and heard around the factory, whether in a humble role at the start, or as I moved from department to department, and then to subsequent employers, always stood in good stead.

In later life, a colleague, who had followed a similar path, and considered to be in a lesser role when investigating a machine that failure to perform on test as required. After all the high level Engineers had discussed the various possible theoretical reasons for the problem, my colleague asked if it was connected in any way to the fact that parts of the machine had been assemble upside down!

There needs to be a combination of theory and practice.

Remember, during development of the Atom bomb, the physicists wanted a higher muzzle velocity, to bring the two slugs of Uranium to critical mass more quickly. The naval gunnery expert vetoed the idea, saying that the bore would be worn out after the second firing.

He had failed to realise that there would be no second firing, since the barrel would be vapourised milliseconds after the first!

Being an Engineer may not lead to the highest pay, but it can provide an awful lot of job satisfaction.

The gag is to know how much to charge the people beating on your door for the better mousetrap!

Howard

I like it as a question, the answer is immaterial what’s golden is seeing the thought process. That’s why it’s deliberately obtuse.

Well SOD you come up with a question to test thinking on your feet

a) applicants are nervous dont frighten

b) dont be a smartarse question much be general

c) let the question show why you are asking

BTW do you think I would have employed you? If its your own business BTW, its that much more pointed "will I profit from employing this person?"

Classic Steve Jobs - Hire people smarter than me - he did that

Read biography of Richard Bransen Tom Bower - be prepared to be shocked at the scoundrel gambling with other peoples money(terrible business man) but he had a knack for hiring smart managers - paying a pittance, treating them like dirt and convincing them they were part of a big family