1) Why did you decide to become an engineer? Did you have some hobby or other background that you had a passion for, or was it because you thought you could do this degree and make good dollars?
2) If you became an engineer for the right reasons, can you maybe leverage that interest and start an enterprise of some kind? And I don't mean a start-up, I mean a business offering services and/or products to a market that needs them.
I don't see a single reply here at this stage that does not seem to take for granted that upon graduating you must work for someone else.
The idea that "I went to MIT/Stanford/Berkley/whatever, I deserve a job, and a good one that pays fuckloads" seems to permeate the whole thread.
Well I will tell you that College/University for engineering is just a very elaborate hazing ritual, it doesn't get you shit in reality, apart from a possible entry ticket into somewhere where the real learning and work start.
There is potentially fuckloads to learn that you would have never been taught, big differences between academia and industry.
I am in another country, but not that different, and 30 years out the engineers that I studied with that really made bank all basically went straight into starting their own business upon graduating.
As one example, the guy started a business designing mineral processing plant electrical and control systems, started out delivering very small parts of projects, just kept grinding and building capabilities, and now he owns breweries and wineries for fun and is delivering projects all over the world worth hundreds of millions of dollars. There are other examples from my cohort.
If you can't find employment otherwise, what have you to lose? And tbh, if you don't do something like this now, next thing you will look up and you will want to buy a house, or will have a pregnant wife and you just can't risk your job with the man, because the baby, etc etc etc.
So your situation isn't the engineers equivalent of Pretty Lady, or whatever fantasy script society peddles, maybe that could turn out to be a good thing, you never know.
Footnote: I have a four year degree in Electrical and Control Systems Engineering from a University in another country, in the top 100 of the world for Electrical but virtually no one would have ever heard of it outside my state. I graduated in early 90's and only 2 engineers had good "company" jobs to go to, they were both trades who had left their trade to study engineering and were preferred.
I had been working part time my last year and then went full time, after graduating, with the small local electronics design and manufacture company for crap cash. But significant parts of what I learned there in the 2.5 years, I still use today. But, in retrospect I regret not taking my own advice I gave you above, and I am not prone to regrets.
1) Why did you decide to become an engineer? Did you have some hobby or other background that you had a passion for, or was it because you thought you could do this degree and make good dollars?
2) If you became an engineer for the right reasons, can you maybe leverage that interest and start an enterprise of some kind? And I don't mean a start-up, I mean a business offering services and/or products to a market that needs them.
I don't see a single reply here at this stage that does not seem to take for granted that upon graduating you must work for someone else.
The idea that "I went to MIT/Stanford/Berkley/whatever, I deserve a job, and a good one that pays fuckloads" seems to permeate the whole thread.
Well I will tell you that College/University for engineering is just a very elaborate hazing ritual, it doesn't get you shit in reality, apart from a possible entry ticket into somewhere where the real learning and work start.
There is potentially fuckloads to learn that you would have never been taught, big differences between academia and industry.
I am in another country, but not that different, and 30 years out the engineers that I studied with that really made bank all basically went straight into starting their own business upon graduating.
As one example, the guy started a business designing mineral processing plant electrical and control systems, started out delivering very small parts of projects, just kept grinding and building capabilities, and now he owns breweries and wineries for fun and is delivering projects all over the world worth hundreds of millions of dollars. There are other examples from my cohort.
If you can't find employment otherwise, what have you to lose? And tbh, if you don't do something like this now, next thing you will look up and you will want to buy a house, or will have a pregnant wife and you just can't risk your job with the man, because the baby, etc etc etc.
So your situation isn't the engineers equivalent of Pretty Lady, or whatever fantasy script society peddles, maybe that could turn out to be a good thing, you never know.
Footnote: I have a four year degree in Electrical and Control Systems Engineering from a University in another country, in the top 100 of the world for Electrical but virtually no one would have ever heard of it outside my state. I graduated in early 90's and only 2 engineers had good "company" jobs to go to, they were both trades who had left their trade to study engineering and were preferred.
I had been working part time my last year and then went full time, after graduating, with the small local electronics design and manufacture company for crap cash. But significant parts of what I learned there in the 2.5 years, I still use today. But, in retrospect I regret not taking my own advice I gave you above, and I am not prone to regrets.