This is for real, most my friends went into engineering, I had a large social circle, several of them who graduated near the top of their class have left after 2-3 years because of no job and are now successful lawyers. Mainly Nortel (the equivalent of enron for canada right in toronto except the execs never went to jail) flooded the market along with a few other major bankrupt or near bankrupt mega tech firms who either went bust, went broke, or had huge down turns.
This is a canadian website kind of like the city data equivalent of it, there are lots of engineers on it like mark 77 and another whose name I forget. But every now and then in the careers section the question comes up. Its known you must be smart to be an engineer so people think it must be good. But the industry is under going radical transformation in Canada. Basically engineers at the top want to not add more engineers to keep the profit for themself.
Just a sample
"Here are the annual numbers for 2010-2018, according to a labour market survey/prediction of a couple of years ago by Engineers Canada:
Graduates entering the labour force: 8,254
Immigrants: 5,472
Replacement demand: 4,004
- It is estimated that there are 100 000 unemployed or underemployed engineers in the GTA[greater toronto area].
- Fewer than 35% of engineering graduates are employed in the engineering field according to the 2006 Census.
- Fewer than 30% of domestic engineering graduates in Ontario are able to find internships that lead to a license to practice."
"Its a pretty sad situation out there. When you have employment rates in the 35% range (which seems pretty accurate), of some of the brightest graduates to come out of the universities, in one of the most difficult undergrad programs, that points to a massive amount of lost economic potential.
One giant problem I've observed is that not only are engineers *not* getting hired, but their career paths are being truncated as there are fewer routes to top management and alternative levels of management available to them. "Engineering" is increasingly compartmentalized and outsourced, rather than an integral part of businesses. Certain Calgary oil and pipeline firms actually boast of having almost *zero* engineers in their employ, purchasing contract engineering services for nearly everything -- while the actual oil company is a bunch of accountants and investment decision makers sitting in offices making decisions.
I think the point lost on politicians, lost on even certain RFD posters, is that engineers, at the end of the day, are human beings. Unemployment, which is basically a form of societal rejection, is not only emotionally hurtful, but also gives rise to many physical health problems. Business grads and management types run around saying, "engineers are a dime a dozen" when it comes to salary negotiations, which is very true -- but so are business grads and management types. Not all engineers will produce groundbreaking inventions, or provide massive cost savings -- but as a society, the price of keeping our brightest, our innovators, our creators, and our producers on the sidelines, is certainly to be quite enormous."
Engineers, would you advise young people to study engineering? - RedFlagDeals.com Forums
Generally speaking, Canada does not build that much stuff, the demand for engineers is actually quiet low because we do not really invent things. We tend to just copy them or by them elsewhere. At best we assemble things but creation, innovation, its not something done alot here. Sure we might pieces for the pipelines but the engineers are either german, or american or dutch and they just send the designs to canada because its cheaper to hire a foreign firm to give you a design than to make one from scratch. Canadians are very risk averse, it stretches to all areas of the economy, you will not see anything like the crazy design towers in dubai here. With the exception of a brief glip in the 70s when toronto was trying to surpass montreal as canada;s main city canadians will not build anything too elaborate, we hardly build a road more than 2 lanes anymore. We will build 10 condos, but the condos are all designed by american engineers and built by the chinese and then shipped and assembled in Canada. No need for an engineer.
We have no equivalent of silicon valley because Canadians are risk averse. No one is going to lend some 19 year old kid money to finance facebook or twitter, go to a venture capital fund here and ask for money to finance that and you'd be laughed out the room.
Canadian VC firm: You think I am going to give you money to take pictures and put them on the internet, get real kid
American vc firm: Ok, I'll give you 50k and if your successful I want xy%
I read donald trump book, he gave 500k to two guys he met once to start a restaurant. The guys restaurant became successful but they didn't pay him back his share, trump didn't sue them but said it was uncool. No Canadian billionaire is giving two guys he met once 500k period. Your restaurant could make 250k a year no one is lending you that money in canada period. They'll tell you what you want 500k for, to disappear.
Also when there are 3 times the engineer coming in than needed of course you will have a horrible market. My cousin became an engineer, the pay was feeble, hardly increased and she left and went into teaching. AND she was one of the LUCKY ones, because 2/3 aren't going to get jobs to begin with so its not like she was just dumb or didn't try.
If you are thinking of engineering then maybe become a geologist or oil engineer and try alberta they have oil jobs. But if you are just a regular engineer like computer, or civil forget about ontario, bc and quebec that is for sure
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