This 4 March, we mark World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development, a UNESCO international celebration that highlights the achievements of engineers and the importance they have to play in building a liveable future.
But despite helping shape our lives, not everyone knows about the important work of engineers — not even their children.
We sat down with seven Engineers Australia members and their kids to find out what the children of engineers think they do. Hint: sending emails and talking to people came up a lot.
Find the rest of our World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development celebrations here.
If engineers are so vital to the world and build everything, then why are they paid so poorly? It is merely impossible to reach the pay level of the doctors and the executives. What is the taboo behind this?
A wonderful feature – challenging but important to explain our calling. ps; Anant, I’d be an engineer irrespective of remuneration as I just love what I do. Rewards follow passion … and the compelling value proposition.
I agree with Anant. Chris, yes we enter the profession because we like to resolve problems but when you see that not only the pay is low but there is the issue of “who’s takes the accolades” and is very rare that an engineer would be recognized.
Perhaps the pay gap can be explained by the low public interactions by engineers.
Doctors and lawyers work more directly with the public and therefore have a higher public profile.
Not to say some engineers don’t work directly for the public but in general do not.
Therefore the ‘market’ for engineers is more limited.
If engineers want to get paid like surgeons, we have to be political like the Australian Medical Association -the Union for doctors. This is really something IEAust should be doing front and central, and if they are, it is not working. When I read my IEAust reading, its all about bringing more engineers into the profession -which will reduce our renumeration incredibly. Also allowing builders and architects to do strucutral design? Hhmm sounds like a disaster as big as the fire ratings for building cladding issue. I’m also not sure what is being done to prevent Aus engineering being offshored and being done by email in some OS community at $5/hour, but I’m sure our big multinationals are deep into this. eg XXXXXX sends most engineering work to USA, to name one company with a small office in Aus and a big office OverSeas.