I don't see many engineers quitting their jobs (or majors) to retrain to become RNs. Which means:
1. Nursing salary/perks/working conditions aren't competitive with engineering compensation.
or
2. Engineers can't cut it in nursing.
In either case, I don' see any basis for OP's claims.
alanson wrote:
I don't see many engineers quitting their jobs (or majors) to retrain to become RNs. Which means:
1. Nursing salary/perks/working conditions aren't competitive with engineering compensation.
or
2. Engineers can't cut it in nursing.
In either case, I don' see any basis for OP's claims.
If they are paid equivalently, why would someone who is already an engineer incur the real and time costs of retraining in another field? The fact they they're not doing this is consistent with what you'd expect in the case of similar compensation.
Industry
Entry-Level - Mean - Top 10%
Biomedical Engineering
$59,000 $93,960 $143,000
Civil Engineering
$55,000 $85,640 $126,190
Computer Engineering
Hardware
$64,000 $68,000 $106,930
Software
$104,480 $104,810 $150,760
Chemical Engineering
$66,000 $104,340 $158,980
Electrical Engineering
$63,000 $93,380 $139,400
Environmental Engineering
$54,000 $85,520 $122,690
Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences
Data Not Provided $96,950 $149,070
Materials Science and Engineering
$65,000 $89,930 $134,510
Mechanical Engineering
$61,000 $85,930 $119,480
Registered Nurse
Bottom 10% Median Top 10%
$45,040 $65,470 $94,720,
Please ignore the post below yours. You're right, he's just a jealous engineer who thinks he knows everything.
Professor Catessa wrote:
I'd say that the course work and practicum required to be an RN is no less rigorous than for an engineer.
scientist dude wrote:
I've worked with a lot of lackluster engineers, from many different fields (mechanical, biomedical, software). They all share the characteristic: they are obsessively process-oriented and can't improvise.
I've also worked with a lot of nurses. The best ones are obsessively process-oriented and don't improvise.
Maybe some engineers are working in the wrong field?
This made me laugh.
I'm guessing nurses get paid a lot because our health care costs are grossly inflated and there is a good demand for nurses.
Here is all I know about engineers: I was an exceptional math student in high school, so much that I was bored with the subject and didn't want to study it and sought different challenges in college. Not a math genius, by any means, but enough not having any trouble with college-level calculus.
In comparison, many less mathematically inclined classmates of mine went on to become engineers and probably are getting paid more than myself. So it can't be super difficult.
well worth the money wrote:
I sure wouldn't want an engineer giving me an IV or enema.
Techs put in IVs for like 11 bucks an hour. Any monkey can do a procedure. It takes brains to decide what to actually do after a medication has been given or a procedure has been performed.
You have a severely inflated viewpoint of what nurse's actually know about medicine. They are valuable members of the health care team but think they know a lot more than what they actually know.
They only have to take ONE board exam and never have to recertify. It doesn't test them on very basic things like 1st degree, mobitz 1, mobitz 2 heart blocks. You know, complicated things that second year med students know in their sleep--not to mention residents and attendings.
Source: dokktor
I have an easy criminal justice degree and I make more then both professions (on average). My job offers excitement, ever changing challenges, and a cool sounding title. So I win.
Oh and doctors who posted, get over yourself. I'm glad you choose your profession. We all need you. But you aren't that "smart." The smart ones run the insurances companies that you pay half your salary to. After your loans and premiums, you make a little more than me.
Think about it from a business directors perspective. Many engineering jobs and job functions can be outsourced to a much cheaper area. Engineers are critical to a firms bottom line but many positions can be done for a lower cost. A nurses work on the other hand cannot be outsourced. Perfect market competition is a myth and the dynamics of a newly formed global economy has made things worse.
Why don't practicing physicists or chemists make good money? Their degrees represent a similar level of difficulty and require a similar level of intelligence as an engineering degree. It's because there is not a large domestic need for the work. The work of these two professionals can often be sent overseas.
But we don't do things just for the money. If money was the only thing to consider you could go into the right sales field and make more money than an RN with just a business degree.
I got a BS in chemical engineering and an associates degree in electrical and computer engineering. My BS was from a top UC. I now work in healthcare as a clinical support specialist instructing surgeons on the proper use of surgical navigation equipment for doing spine and cranial surgery. I am there in the OR helping to orchestrate the use of the technology. I am on call often. I make significantly less than an entry level RN in my area. But I like the work and I know what I do helps people and at the end of the year they want me to take on additional business development duties. If I agree, my income will be significantly above an RN. I graduated under a year ago.
I get your frustration. It can be difficult to find well paying and rewarding engineering work in this market. Especially entry level work. It's also annoying that high school students are told engineers are in high demand and command high pay when they really command average pay and are not in high demand.
I use to tutor a lot of nurses (and premeds) in chemistry, math and physics courses and I watched as many of them partied in college while engineers hit the books on their Friday and Saturday evenings. The nursing profession is akin to most trade work. Look at people who go into a pipe fitting union or masonry or HVAC. They make good money, the work is important but they didn't have to work as hard or risk as much (in terms of debt and duration), and the average student is not as intelligent as an engineering/physics student.
Intelligence is not enough to make you more valuable. Nor is being hard working. It makes you unique in the scheme of things, but until you figure out how you can apply those traits to gain the right blend of skills it's not that valuable of an asset in a professional setting right now.
No engineers are not smarter. They don't have to pass boards to practice their trade. I've been a nurse for almost 10 years. I changed careers, and had a master's degree and teaching experience going into nursing school, yet I got modest grades and by no means flew through the boards. In fact, simply getting accepted into nursing school is something of an accomplishment these days, as word got out that you can go to school for a couple years and make $60K+ your first year. Potential earning is well into the 6 digits. My wife makes $120K in nursing middle management, with many administrator positions paying anywhere from $150K to over 200. Yes, there are nurses out there that are arguably dumb as a box of rocks. Typically book smart, but street dumb. They can pass a test, but that's all they can do. I don't imagine engineers are any more intelligent, but they're mostly men, so you don't have the dumb blonde nurse stereotype to factor in. There are idiots in every profession. Every profession. Hell, look who we have in the White House, and I voted for the guy, Nurses work hard doing things most people couldn't do or wouldn't do, and they do it around the clock, 365 days a year. They certainly contribute more to making this country and world a better place than any engineer. When is the last time an engineer saved a life??
Those statistics on salary are interesting. I don't know if I work at an extraordinary engineering company, but we have about 4000 engineers, and I think 90% of us would be in the top 10% according to those statistics.
Another weird thing about those statistics is it lists the entry-level software engineer at $104,480, but the mean at $104,810. That doesn't seem possible unless a huge majority of software engineers are also considered "entry-level".
Statistics aside, I've dated two nurses and as an engineer I made slightly 2x their salary.
According to them, they were among the highest paid nurses in their units. I would say I'm average for salary among my engineering friends.
So, I think the premise of the thread is wrong. RN salaries aren't close to engineer salaries.
Dez wrote:
I have an easy criminal justice degree and I make more then both professions (on average). My job offers excitement, ever changing challenges, and a cool sounding title. So I win.
Oh and doctors who posted, get over yourself. I'm glad you choose your profession. We all need you. But you aren't that "smart." The smart ones run the insurances companies that you pay half your salary to. After your loans and premiums, you make a little more than me.
I've been a cop for more than 25 years. I also happen to be a nurse. Cops don't make more. At best, they might be close if you work for a large municipality. 25 years ago, I'd have said, yes, you win. These days police work is a thankless job where you are a target of everything from social media armchair quarterbacks, to people who literally want to kill you simply because of the title you have. "Cool sounding title"? 30 years ago people were impressed if you told them you were a cop. These days cops are largely considered boorish uneducated racist brutes. The one part I do agree with you about: A CJ degree is far easier than a nursing degree. You can be a moron and be a cop. I know plenty. Nurses get weeded out when it comes time to pass their boards, something cops don't have to worry about.
RN wrote:
No engineers are not smarter.
This statement is mostly correct, as written. Your grammar is poor.
You are correct that no (few) engineers are not smarter than (most) nurses.
The average paid nurse doesn't make anywhere near the average paid P.E. Not even close.
Most engineers (95%) are nerds with minimal personal skills.
This is fact. Look it up.
1. Engineers inventions save far more lives then nurses ever have. The medicine you give to patients was developed by or with the help of chemical engineers. The medical equipment you use was developed by teams of engineers. Nearly all engineers are responsible for lives. They designed the bridge you drove to work over and the building you work in. They designed the sanitation system that lets you drink water safely. If they mess up you die.
2. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “it’s not rocket science”. Engineers literally become rocket scientists. Engineers are smarter and if you don’t believe me look up iq by profession. There are some studies.
3. Engineers do have to pass professional accreditation in most occupations.
4. Yes the iq of both engineers and nurses is a bell curve but the mean of the engineering bell curve is higher.
5. Engineering school is more competitive to get in. Check out average SAT score of admitted students by degree.
So the engineers construct it, but it's up to nurses and doctors to put it to use. Fair enough. Those medications and medical devices are useless without doctors and nurses to use them.
If you drop dead in a room full of engineers who invented the AED, you're still going to be dead if none of them can use it.
Many engineering fields are oversaturated due to "STEM crisis" myth that was propagated for the last decade or so.
The world definitely needs nurses. But where I live an entry level nurse makes $45 an hour and an entry level engineer makes around 25-35 an hour. It’s not that nurse shouldn’t command a good living. But they make much more and for what? A harder degree? No. Doing something better for society? No. I was just trying to help the question asker understand why he is in the position he is in. I am suggesting it is not him or the validity of his work it is simply that his work can now be outsourced and a nurses can not. I’m not necessarily suggesting a nurse should make less just that relative to an engineers pay it is high. Engineers basically either work themselves out of a job or get outsourced. Doesn’t mean a nurse should be penalized. Just sucks and it can be hard to grapple with. It’s resentment/jealousy because they genuinely worked hard to be on top, did things the right and still didn’t get there. But hey if you just want money go into sales or something.
josh1988 wrote:
The average paid nurse doesn't make anywhere near the average paid P.E. Not even close.
Engineer here. Mom was a nurse, and one of our closest friends is a nurse. Brother is an engineer, and most of my friends (and nearly all my colleagues) are engineers. So I'm admitting a probable bias.
Salaries in engineering have a very wide spread. Starting salaries between nursing and engineering may be in a similar ballpark (although this will vary, the starting salary for engineers varies considerably by discipline as noted earlier in the thread).
I don't *think* (nurses please correct me if I'm wrong) that there are a lot of opportunities for nurses to skyrocket to the 7 figures pay scale. By contrast, quite lot of engineers can get there, or into the mid to high 6 figures, through a variety of different career trajectories.
So I would expect that mean and median salaries for the two professions, as a whole, won't be too far different, but a big gap would open up when you look more carefully at sub-groups of people with specific expertise and very long service.
kb96 wrote:
The world definitely needs nurses. But where I live an entry level nurse makes $45 an hour and an entry level engineer makes around 25-35 an hour.
Where in the world do you live?