Why NOT to Major in Civil Structural Engineering 

Honestly being a structural engineer sucks. Super underpaid and overworked smh thinking about switching to software 😢

@@BrandoDennispeople that haven’t worked the industry don’t understand how bad it is. The whole business model needs to change. How that happens, I don’t know

The pay is lower because the employers also have to pay the overhead for you the you'll have to pay when you're on your own.

@Xailow true, the overheads for a sole trader are much lower, while the risk and stress are much higher

the dream

The advantage of working for yourself is that you get paid for your expertise. If you work for another company your salary after 10 years is not much higher than what the company has to pay for new graduates but you can do the work 2 or 3 times as fast as new graduates can. If new graduates were paid for what they were capable of doing the pay would be so low that they would never go into structural engineering. My pay after 30 years is only about 50% higher than what new graduates are offered but I can do more work than 3-5 of them. All of the people with 10 years of experience starting their own companies is why engineering fees are so low- they need projects so they will do projects for lower than any other company so fees can be low due to this competition.

In the private sector only. It's virtually impossible to start a new firm in transportation. You need to start a DBE firm to even stand a chance. Contracts in transportation are far too big for anyone to just up and start a firm on their own.

Thank you and thanks for sharing this!

So am I 😂

So am I 😂😂😂

Same here

Guys don't worry, I've gone a down a rabbit hole of this ooo civil engineering is the worst major ever when i started college, why havent i gone in computer science etc. but now. I LOVE IT. I would'nt have it any other way, once you actually get to starting solving structures and understanding what you actually are doing, for me it was around 3rd yeard out of my 5 year college.

Civil/Structural work is very gratifying and real. Some disciplines never really "see" the final product.

Thank you!

Architecture has the same problem with deadlines and manhour requirements as the engineering that goes into the same projects but architects have a lot more control over the fees. The architect is at the top of the food chain, they collect the entire fee, then they give out small amounts of the fee to the consultants that work for them. The architecture firm working on a building can easily collect a fee for themselves that is 6 times what the structural engineering fee is. I think our fees were typically 1/10 of the total design fee that the architect collected. I was going to suggest that you ask her how much fee her company gets for a building and how much of that fee they pay to the structural engineer but that reminds me of an even more depressing thing. The real estate agent that sells the building gets the same amount of money that all of the architects and all of the engineers got for designing the building. Large buildings can take 50 people 6 months to design and in a few weeks a single real estate agent can get the same amount of money just for selling the building.

100% agreed

Why bro, were u considering to join civil? I am considering.

Thanks :)

Why not you 😊

Thanks!

Hi! The type of projects is going to depend on where you work, there’s lot of options here. Pay here is much better than other parts of the world considering our economy but isn’t that big. Work satisfaction is completely up to you, do you enjoy solving problems and being challenged? Construction management and structural engineering are two very different jobs. I would figure out what you would enjoy working in more

How did you do it please enlighten me

Thank you!

@@BEngHielscher your Welcome ❤️

A mess why? I just started my program

Change if possible. Civil engg is dead.

If you're doing cookie cutter engineering work it won't pay very well. If you specialize, and do more blank sheet design your services are more valuable.

The race to the bottom affects that too. You’d be surprise how many people think that $500-$1000 to design a house is a reasonable fee, when it should be more like 5-12k depending on the complexity. People will pay 300k for renovations and expect us to design stuff for nothing. It’s a terrible career imo

A big reason no fee gets charged is to maintain good relationships with clients/builders as good relationships and reputation often leads to more work

It's supply and demand- there are an excess number of companies out there willing to take the project if you won't do it. 50 years ago it was different, engineering companies were in demand and they had the power to charge extra for things like this. There was a big recession without much construction and engineers lost that power, they had to beg for every project they could get. With the push by colleges to graduate more and more engineers the market is flooded with engineers and there is so much competition that fees get pushed down.

Thanks!

Can we start our own firm after getting the experience.

I agree. I was always amazed at how EE's and ME's could get by with simple diagrammatic drawings with schedules but little or no detail. Structural drawings have to be representations to scale with numerous details for connections. Every floor needs its own plan with every member size called out. Every beam, column, slab and truss, etc. must be drawn and specified.

In your turkey situation could bad but in my country it's worst

The good part of that is once the "target" has been destroyed we get to design a new one.

Everything has pros and cons. I think it’s important to talk about both