As akward as this question may sound, as an Engineer myself who have majority of his friends as fellow Engineers, I must agree that most Engineers who didn't break away from the engineering profession don't always end up rich.

Mind you, rich here doesn't imply those Nigerian Engineers working with IOCs and earning good salary in Nigeria's terminology though, we are talking of rich as in millionaires, billionaires controlling major stock of successful companies and corporations.


You can hardly find a professional Engineer who remained in the engineering field and profession that is rich, and this was something that bothered me for years before I decided to quit working as an Engineer and dived into personal development and entrepreneurship because I really crave and wish to be on rich list before I return to my maker.


Now, enough of my rants, one responder to the question said and I quote:



Answer by: Chris Schleich, Engineering Manager at Industrial Automation

It’s basic economic supply and demand. Engineering does pay better than most regular jobs, but there are enough of us to where compensation doesn’t get out of control.

Anybody has to provide more value than they cost, otherwise there is no job (except in cases where the economics get distorted, like in the public sector, or financial industries). Does a screen designer create $1,000,000 for the company on their own? Rarely.

In addition most people don’t become rich because they have bad habits and push investing/saving to “tomorrow”. Even people who are paid well. My opinion is it’s part of human nature. Delayed gratification is not a mindset your average person has mastered, or even tried.

A funny thing happens as your compensation grows, so do your expenses! A bigger house, a nicer car, more gadgets, new gym memberships, more credit cards. Some people get trapped in that cycle, and don’t recognize it. How can a doctor live paycheck to paycheck?! It happens.

I had my eyes opened when I went shopping for a new car. I hadn’t had a car payment in 8 years. When I did the math for what an average car costs, I was horrified. I lost touch of those economics. I’m an engineer and my wife is a nurse. After doing the math and budgeting for new cars, a house, expenses, emergency saving, and retirement - it was very clear to me that many people I see in our area with two large brand new large and/or luxury cars, a house, and lots of gadgets do not likely have much savings. There just aren’t as many doctors and lawyers in the world as there are BMWs, Escalades, and lifted trucks in our area. Before that exercise I assumed everyone made more than we did in our area, but most likely the people I see are spending their money on debt payments. Plus the saving statistics of our country prove that.

For those of us that make enough money to save, it is crucial, for family stability, providing better opportunities for our kids, and teaching them how money works!

UPDATE:

There are other things to consider as an engineer to make sense of headlines. The tech sector, and computer science engineers, sometimes have different economics. A programming engineer may get lucky and get stock options at a startup that make them rich later as the company grows. But, if you read enough articles, you’d see many engineers chasing such windfalls never attain it, because the startups they work for fail, and/or they are not allowed to sell their shares. Yes there are many dozens of examples of companies that made their early engineers rich, but thousands of examples where it didn’t happen.

A vast majority of us engineers working for companies will not get rich working for someone else. Your definition of rich matters a lot for this conversation. Most engineers are not going to see much more than $125–150k at peak career salary staying in a technical role (2019 dollars). To get in that upper range you need to be good at what you do, and you need to stay educated on the market to make sure you can negotiate every dollar you are worth. If that’s not rich to you, start a company.


For more interesting answers to this vital question check quora via this link https://www.quora.com/Why-are-most-engineers-not-rich