Inexperienced "Engineers" Are Massively Overpaid Whilst Seasoned Engineer's Are Underpaid

I made this its own topic as I think it is an interesting point.

I think what I was eluding at is that real engineers understand how things work, how to carry out real fault finding (split-half technique) and can contextualise a fault. A newbie tech only seems to know about a couple of manufacturers, Google/YouTube and a tech help line. Do they understand induced AC, how a Fresnel lens works or even how a capacitor can break down with age? Can they spot a dry joint, poor back focus or even understand the effect of sodium lighting an a CCTV image? Most don't even know how to physically install an external device with cable loops to stop water ingress and what wall fixings to use. The criticism isn't of their ability - we all had to learn somewhere along the line. The criticism is of they massively inflated opinion of their worth and recruitment agencies creating an entirely fictitious skills shortage in order to pull up rates and their commissions. There is precious little acknowledgement of time served engineers without whom - many of us wouldn't be where we are today.

Recruitment agencies thrive on overselling and underdelivering. Perversely this ineptitude fuels the throughput of mediocrity and only works to their advantage. According the CV's I get every day - everyone is a security expert these days - even with 12 months experience having previously worked at McD's - and that really is not an unusual CV.

Just occasionally we have a shining star. A new tech who sits down and tries to work something out, tries to understand why something failed and how to avoid it happening again. This is the tech we need to nature and cherish and give then a goal of becoming a high earning engineer.

The statement about compensation vs experience is really two different things.  I have written about this in another thread.  New technicians and employees, in general, don't have an inflated sense of self-worth (at least in my opinion) and it is not limited to our industry.  This is prevalent in nearly every walk of life.  We are not teaching the value of experience.  We were taught that you have to put in your time, learn your trade and as you got better, the compensation followed.  Today's new workers ask why and they ask it all the time about everything.  One problem is most of us don't have the right answers.  

We, yes all of us, are not teaching today's new employees the value of a full and enriched education.  We are not setting realistic goals for advancement and relating that to industry education and experience.  Frankly, I think we are at fault, not them.  We have yet to connect these concepts in a meaningful way, and no, I don't have the "answer" either.  I am looking for it feverishly.  

Back to the original point, and I have said this before, today's new workers want to be compensated well.  They expect it.  I cannot stress this enough; to them, their time (and free time) is worth X dollars and they don't really care if they are in the field for you, behind a PC slinging code or in the kitchen at MCd's.  A job is a job is a job and they do not value one field of endeavor over another.  You can take exception to my statement if you want, but I assure you I have talked with them honestly and that is how they see it.  They have taken the old adage "time is money" and just flattened it out.  

Here's a couple of questions for the OP:

If what you say is true - that the value of seasoned engineers is under-appreciated by business owners (at least financially) - then why is that?

Are business owners getting dumber?  How are they being consistently fooled by the profiteering recruitment agencies to surrender earned profits?

If you - as a seasoned engineer - can so easily see your value over someone who has a year on the job, then why can't the business owners perceive this?

Why are they sacrificing profit by hiring inexperienced engineers?

There are only 2 real answers to these questions:

1.  Business owners who employ engineers are myopic and don't understand how to use your skills to maximize their own profits, or...

2.  Your accumulated skills are not as valuable as you imagine.

I like this topic. I like to take engineers, sales reps, technicians and even some customers that think they know design just because they have a CPP(lol); I grab these folks in any given scenario and take them to the white board.

Have that individual draw out the logic, flow, process, dependencies, sequence, formula, pie chart, analysis or what ever it is they are conceptualizing.

Once they are done, take a picture then erase it. Tell them to come back tomorrow, next week, month and draw it again.

The pictures or charts drawn will unveil the knowledge they actually have. Anyone can sit there and bump their gums all day with an elevated ego on how great they are. 

Most every industry faces the same thing. The rapid assimilation of technology has made many things less difficult but on the back side added considerable responsibilities on businesses to stay up to date. Accepted pricing and margin models were not established on the vast increases in costs associated with this technical responsibility, as the market was already established. Therefore employees in place were originally recruited and compensated based on those models. Price pressure drives everything from final sales to employee recruitment.

I truly believe every business owner or hiring manager would gladly pay any employee everything the employee desired if he could instantly apply that cost increase to his final sales pricing. It isn't that they are greedy, it is simply a fact that markets don't typically allow  rapid or dramatic  price increases. Therefore true business managers are constantly adjusting everything they can to provide for a long term survival of employment (which is never taken into consideration until recessions hit).

Many of our present younger generation are simply fools whom had no real parenting or meaningful mentorship as it relates to reality ( trophies for all), money (I need more for less), or their future. The entertainment they absorbed as youth, and still are, makes being totally ignorant of anything some kind of cool cache.  

Finding good help for a fair price has always been difficult. When dealing with fools, it only makes it more difficult. Hard times do indeed teach many lessons.   

I have said this before and I will say this again,

There are many fine techs out there who truly do want to do a good job.

However, there are many bad ones. The bad ones do not know technology. The bad ones could not find their way out of a paper bag with GPS, seeing eye dog and a good tracker.

Try being an end user and having a service call and the tech shows up leaves and the problem is still there. Not because he/she ordered parts but because he simple has no clue how to trouble shoot. The service ticket is closed and he claims there no issue. 6 months later you have the same issue and have had 15 service calls.

Or you have a tech come out and look at the system and tell you there is no issue. You point out to him that you have the same deployment at three other buildings within the city (same DVR, same cameras, same install date, serial numbers extremely close in range) and you do not have the same issue you are observing at this location. Then you ask so, if i do not have the system doing this at three other sites with the same deployment and it is doing it here are you sure i do not have an issue. He responds, well let me look one more time. He then calls multiple manufactures and gets on a three way with them and low and behold there was a programming issue and it is now fixed. If I had been an end user with no knowledge of my own system and had not insisted that system most likely would have remained like that for years.

How about the time (no this story goes back to the days when cameras were sent off you repair versus simple swapped out. service call placed for ATM dome camera not working. This ATM had two cameras a dome camera and a face camera inside the ATM. tech arrives and asked tells the employee i am here to look at the ATM camera. Employee the dome camera. Tech replies no the ATM camera. Please let me inside the ATM i need to look at and see if i can fix and if not i must send it in for repair. Employee who knew what camera as out says would you like to look at the head-in unit first? Tech says no. No need to look at the head-in unit. Employee lets the tech inside the ATM room. After 30 minutes tech exits with the one good working camera in his hand telling the employee he does not know why its not working and can't seem to get it to work and will need to send it in for repair. From there he leaves with the one working camera in hand and the broken camera still in the dome not having looked at it once.

Or the time a tech arrives to look at a DVR that was not working properly. Calls the manufacture after an hour. Apparently the manufacture asked the tech a question he could not answer and he says to them, hold on let me put you on speaker so another tech who knows more about the system then me talk to you. He then says to me can you answer their question. My immediate thought was why am i paying this guy to be here? Oh that's right because the manufacture had a strict policy of not speaking to or dealing with end users. You had to be a certified/licensed tech from one of their integrator resellers.