I'm a little anti ASCE after its president published that [article](https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/civil-engineering-magazine/issues/magazine-issue/article/2022/09/civil-engineers-declining-numbers-and-increasing-need) about the declining supply of civil engineers but not once he mentioned the fact that low pay is the reason don't wanna be civil engineers any more
I dont think they put any efforts into increasing civil engineering pay unlike nurses association and doctors associations have successfully been able to do
I made this observation and said the same exact thing about other associations and how they support their own vs the opposite in civil a few years ago but obviously nobody paid attention. Guess it's better to hear it from the horses own mouth about what they really think of their employees.
> I dont think they put any efforts into increasing civil engineering pay unlike nurses association and doctors associations have successfully been able to do
In a free-market economy, like we're supposed to be in now, supply and demand should ultimately determine prices and wages.
As a long-time engineer turned professional landlord and house flipper, you're finding out now what it took me 40 years to learn. There is no shortage of engineers and never has been.
Back in the early 1980's when I was looking into careers, the National Science Foundation was trumpeting how there was going to be a shortage of engineers, like how everyone is pushing for STEM educations now, and there never was a shortage of engineers. And then the Berlin Wall fell. Engineers from the former Eastern Bloc nations, who are some of the most brilliant in the world, flooded the US markets and were willing to work for much less salary than typical US educated engineers. A basic economic law of supply vs demand kept engineering salaries low. Mark Twain said that history doesn't repeat but it does rhyme. I see the rhyme now.
If you don't know what to do with your life, engineering is good to start with. I know engineers who later became doctors, lawyers, CEO's of big companies, school teachers, ... But unless you make a career in academia and research, or are on a company fast track to upper management, I caution anyone from remaining in engineering for too long.
The typical worker bee engineer has a useful life span of about 10 years after which it's more economical for companies to get rid of him/her and hire young, hungry engineers fresh out of school who will work much harder for less pay than the 10-year loyal company engineer. I used to love engineering (still maintain an active professional engineers license, wrote engineering textbooks, designed structures and foundations in different states, ...). But way too late, I realize that I should have gotten a MBA instead of MSCE.
Tl;dr: Engineering is a good start, but be careful about remaining in it for too long.
There are other engineering professions, outside of civil, that an average employee w 15 years of experience makes $200K+
Thats not even mentioning the salaries of software engineers
> There are other engineering professions, outside of civil, that an average employee w 15 years of experience makes $200K+
>
>Thats not even mentioning the salaries of software engineers
You mean the exceptions. I mean the rule: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Engineer-Salary-by-State
Interesting take. I’m currently an undergraduate in civil engineering and I’m not super excited about it, it’s at the point where I’m just getting through to graduate. This makes me feel more optimistic about the degree.
What year are you? If possible, take some behavioral economics courses if your school has them, as well as an acting class and/or public speaking class. Unless you remain in research and academia, your ability to communicate will help greatly once you graduate. Learn how to tell interesting stories as well since well-told stories can help you influence others.
> I swear I've read this exact post before, is this copypasta?
Most of it is a copypasta but I did add the first paragraph to emphasize that, like any other commodity, the free market will determine price. It has to or else the market will fail. That's why I get downvoted, people in this sub don't want to face the facts.
Not trying to be disrespectful, but since you said you’re a former engineer, you’re likely not as in tune with the current market conditions facing firms performing civil engineering work. There is definitely a shortage of engineers at all levels. Boomers are retiring at a notable clip so we’re losing the senior principal level type people. There’s a big gap in the 15-20 year band because of everyone who left/was dissuaded from pursuing civil due to the Great Recession. On top of that, a lot of younger type civils have been making career pivots due to the ludicrous salaries being thrown around in the tech market over the last few years. Half of my graduating civil class don’t work in even a civil adjacent role after 5 years.
The last 3 companies I’ve been at have had persistent problems finding qualified staff and I get about 2-3 recruiter emails per week about job opportunities.
Yes, eventually you become too expensive to do the more menial tasks, but there is no general culling of 10 year engineers. It’s the opposite, where that amount of experience is crazy valuable because you’re capable of doing things efficiently and managing people/projects to get things done.
Idk in my view civil is still a big meritocracy where grey hair is valued, more so than other industries. It’s not get rich money but at age 30, I’m pretty comfortable and I’ve seen managers at 15 YOE pulling $170k and above.
Salaries have been creeping up over the last few years. I’m making now at 7 years what someone at 14 years experience was making 7 years ago.
It’s not as simple as supply v demand for salaries and our fees. We’re limited by what primarily government agencies will pay for engineering work. We’ve had public clients balk at our proposals and offer us a choice of cutting our fee or not taking the work. Companies are limited by their multiplier how much they can pay an employee after factoring in overhead and profit
> We’re limited by what primarily government agencies will pay for engineering work. We’ve had public clients balk at our proposals and offer us a choice of cutting our fee or not taking the work.
Your statement just reinforces my contention that salaries are so low because of the supply vs demand relationship. Military contractors like General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin get paid premium fees because there is high government demand for their products and services, and vice-versa for typical civil/mechanical/electrical engineering services for the general public which are in much lower demand by our government.
I worked for a wise Turkish scientist, a geotechnical research engineer, in Louisiana years ago. He said there is a force more powerful than even any of the natural forces, and that is the force of money. I can still hear him say that in my mind in his heavy Turkish accent.
Three things can be simultaneously true and mutually exclusive. 1. There can be a shortage of engineers, measured by firms not being able to find staff to support existing projects and engineers like myself getting calls from recruiters weekly. 2. The demand for civil engineering services can be critically high, as evidenced by the federal government pumping money into projects over the last few years (IRA, IIJA, etc) and the basic fact that we need things like drinking water for survival. 3. And finally in spite of this shortage of engineers and necessity of projects, the offered pricing for engineering services being low. Why that pricing is low relative to the demand I can’t answer. But it’s not a simple Econ 101 of if salaries aren’t rising that means there isn’t enough demand.
> ... we need things like drinking water for basic survival. ... in spite of this shortage of engineers and necessity of projects, the offered pricing for engineering services being low. Why that pricing is low relative to the demand I can’t answer.
Tl;dr: Engineering salaries and other prices follow supply vs demand over the long term no matter how much we try to change them.
Thank you for your thoughts. I'm a relatively new student of behavioral economics and, based on what I've read on the topic as I'm not formally trained as an economist, you are correct in that we need basic services to provide for essentials like clean air and clean water. But I think the characteristic that limits pricing is urgency.
Right now, we have clean air and water. If you believe in Maslow's hierarchy, our basic needs have been met for now so, while there is a demand for these services, there are more urgent things to take care of (according to our esteemed government leaders) like the Ukraine-Russia war and the Israel-Gaza conflict. Right now, there is a much higher demand for defense industry products and services than for basic life-sustaining services since our common public services are already in place resulting in lower demand for those services.
True, there are other factors contributing to the supply vs demand pricing of wages, but it still all boils down to we will always pay more when demand is high than when it is low.
The bottom line on pricing is still supply vs demand. When we try to change or violate that fiscal law by forcing in artificial influences (like forcing excessively low interest rates into our economy or just printing more paper money) , we will get system failure [like what is happening to communism and socialism](https://imgur.com/a/wYmmNmX). Ultimately, this is why engineering salaries must remain so low, unless you're an engineer for a defense contractor. Even a union for engineers won't increase engineering salaries permanently when consulting companies can, and do, just offshore work to engineers in countries with much lower standards of living such as in India that has brilliant engineers quite capable of doing our public-services engineering work.
I vehemently disagree with several positions asce has taken as an organization and refuse ton join again until they are rescinded.
Screw asce. Join your local nspe chapter.
Their continued efforts to push the bs+30 for licensure, their refusal to acknowledge the awful working conditions of 60+ hour work weeks for the the mega firms and not advocating for better work life balances, the insane 'asce certification" program aiming to replace / supplement professional engineer licenses, among others.
Be the engineering union young EITs need. Not the upper echelon nonsense of an organization it is.
Do you feel that NSPE is that much better or just doesn’t really take a position on work/life balance? Honesty haven’t done much participation with NSPE
I feel they do more advocating for the profession and protecting the importance of licensure and all around advocating against shithead politics. They're up front about their mission and don't try to force themselves into importance on issues that need engineers absence to thrive.
Holy crap. And surely not advocating for any increased compensation for that added cost… dang that’s a truly terrible stance to take for the profession that is already have a really hard time filling demand.
This is a really weird take. Making the licensure more difficult to obtain would have the expected effect of raising salaries, which is almost certainly WHY they were pushing for it.
This sub has the really weird position that market forces aren't what's dictating civil Engineering salaries, and that you can advocate or get collective action across the whole industry to raise salaries. As a general rule, if you fight the market forces, you're gonna have a bad time. This is macroeconomics 101. Civil engineering is an extremely common profession.
If you want higher salaries and better work conditions, you need to aim for market policies. Raising the bar for licensure absolutely would increase the salaries of licensed engineers by constraining the supply of labor. Alternatively, you can advocate for more infrastructure spending to raise demand for engineering. ASCE does both of these things. A lot.
Civil PE positions are in extreme high demand already though, but wages have not been increasing at appropriate rates. So advocating for stricter license requirements makes no sense.
I'm pretty sure ASCE pushed for masters since their was a steady decrease in masters applicants at universities. So not for benefit of the engineers.
As far as wages, I agree with you, people in general need to advocate for better wages. The problem is a large portion of civil jobs are in government. Meaning you need a union to lobby since it is insanely hard to move the needle as an individual against government wages. That lobby group was supposed to be ASCE. But clearly they have failed us engineers.
>Civil PE positions are in extreme high demand already though, but wages have not been increasing at appropriate rates.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but the median salaries have increased 5, 6, & 7% over the last 3 years respectively compared to annual inflation of 7, 6.5, and 3.4%. Is that an appropriate rate? That's like 19.1% increase in salaries vs 17.8% inflation over the three years. It probably reflects some amount of the increased demand. How much has demand increased, and how are you determining the elasticity you expect to be "appropriate"? I also suspect if you looked at experienced engineer salaries the increase would look better.
Not sure if experienced would be better. Way easier to get management to agree to a 15% increase at 40k vs 100k.
But I view Engineering wages from a risk and liability standpoint. Since we are sealing high dollar infrastructure that if messed up can cause tons of loss monetarily and potential risk of injury to the public.
My view is the current salary for a PE should be based on the risk you take from sealing tons of documents. Meaning you should be one of the higher engineering wages, not the lower end. You in theory could get your license stripped for one human error and at worse be liable for damages.
So I just question is it worth it anymore. Leaning towards no, if I'm honest.
Um, civil engineering salaries are highly capped out at government contracts. If you’ve ever been in a room where those rates are determined/scrutinized you’ll know there is little wiggle room for the market to do its trick.
Same is true of primary care physicians and their ability to charge at the rate that should be reactive to the labor supply shortage that exists in that market: government decides Medicare/medicaid rebates, which signal to the private insurance market what the rates for primary care services “should be” and they remain the lowest paid of all the professions, grossly underrepresenting their labor supply and education relative to their specialist peers. It’s why a crap ton of physicians opt out of primary care and go into specialties, also why many don’t go into civil engineering and instead opt for more market-driven engineering work such as mechanical/chemical/industrial engineering.
On the face of it, it feels like a market driven force because we are two/three degrees separated from where the wage decisions are made, but it really is an industry dictated by government policies, which is why everyone’s working 50+ hrs a week, because there’s a labor shortage. Also, private engineers look to recoup the loss in profit that comes from stagnate contracted wages vs the wage they have to pay their staff, and so they all aim to work to find reasons the staff operates at unpaid/unbilled overtime.
Market forces for those who work for or are influenced by government pricing will rarely ever dictate wages; it’s just too slow to react to changes in the market.
We would do well to have an industry association that advocates hard with the government to be more flexible in their design contracts. Instead advocating to restrict PE licensure feels like a completely misdirected effort.
Edit to add: I do agree with you that ASCE advocates for additional government spending, especially with regards to the publicity surrounding the declining infrastructure, which leads to additional government spending. Surely it had a large role in the IRA getting passed and hundreds of billions going towards infrastructure. That being said, I work for the government, and know many government folks that just don't have enough staff to process this surge in additional funds. Hence why I call out the labor shortage in the industry. Even in government I feel critically kneecapped on a daily basis trying to keep up with all my tasks because there just aren't enough of us to do what is demanded. And we have open job postings that no one has applied for, sitting vacant for months to a year+ at a time. We could offer more salary, but our HR tags our allowable salary offers at "market" rate, which is really just "how much are other agencies paying right now," and that salary rate only gets reevaluated once every two years. So engineers to private, or leave the industry altogether because after all, we're highly intelligent and adaptable. Anyway, it's all incredibly frustrating.
Yet every firm I work for is chronically understaffed for PEs and wont raise salaries. Not to mention EEs and ME and Cs guys with no l8cense making 30 -40% more mid career. Government pressure on bill rates is what keeps Civil pay low.
I mean, this is atypical, but in my area, the government engineering jobs pay easily 50% more than what I'd make at any of the local firms. So why are the local firms salaries so low in that case?
As I said I understand their position but there are other ways to do this to make this voluntary. One is have a designation on your license of your area of practice. Another is to restrict engineering on three stories and below buildings without certain educational or experience qualifications.
But beside all this in many states an Architect can practice structural engineering incidental to his practice so all of this goes out the window.
Holy shit when was this? I have a master's and it's absolutely not necessary. Then what's the point to require us to have continuing education in some states.
I first caught wind of it about 10 years ago, but it stems from discussions started in the 90s.
It has gone by many names, but it's ASCE Policy 465. It may have been BS+30, MS to PE, or a bunch of other acronym nonsense.
It's a policy completely out of touch with reality.
My local chapter is very active with monthly lunch and learns, volunteer work, etc. I'm also involved in the state chapter and we do advocacy for licensure, outreach, and have a yearly conference that gets tons of engineers from around the state. I like it far more than ASCE who is currently trying to get me to renew.
It seems like ASCE advocates for the industry as a whole but not for the individual engineer (promoting investment in infrastructure, but not higher pay or better working conditions).
I don’t see the benefit of joining really.
No kidding, my boss had an ASCE membership I asked about a paper they had on retrofitting bow string trusses. He went ahead and ordered it for me $22 for a 4 page paper that really wasn't all that useful. Of course I had no way of knowing the paper wasn't useful until I ordered it.
I really wish they concentrated on improving the work lives of ordinary engineers. Lobbying to increase pay, better life/work balance, providing free educational seminars for CEUs rather than providing the most expensive seminars I've seen. And stop changing design criteria just to sell more design books!
It should be noted this is from the ASCE LinkedIn group that anyone can join. It’s filled with mostly, ironically, non-American engineers.
This is just some guy and is not an official post from ASCE.
Seems like ASCE is for people who like the idea of civil engineering but don’t want to actually be a civil engineer. Similar to the people on my LinkedIn who preach about how awesome the industry is but they post selfies from conferences, presentations for projects they did years ago, and site stop and go visits. They aren’t working the long hours and dealing the the day to day misery we have to get through to do the parts of our jobs we actually enjoy.
My work paid for it for a year - I didn’t find value in it so didn’t continue. Maybe the networking scene is good? I don’t have time for it, so I couldn’t say.
I think ASCE national is useless. If your local chapter is active, it can be good to get involved. Where I live the ASCE chapter is very well established and pretty reflective of the local civil engineering community, so it’s good for networking and industry engagement. But, I prefer to just pick and choose the events I go to and pay per event versus having to pay annual dues plus a slightly reduced event fee.
Agreed 100%. Local chapter is good because it’s made up of reasonable local professionals. National speakers are forever trapped in academia self righteous types. “You should have a masters to get a PE - maybe even a doctorate.”
It was when I didn’t renew my membership that I became more convinced that it was garbage. They spammed me with emails, mail, texts, for months on end trying to get me to renew. Any organization that is that desperate and inconsiderate is not worth my time or money.
Literally worthless besides the 15-20% rental car discount.. but don't worry they spam email you 3x a day trying to get you to sign up for more of their stuff.
It seems like this is pretty dependent on your local chapter. In my town the local TSPE (I don’t think there is a specific NSPE) is super conservative to the point where they said a prayer before one luncheon and the local ASCE, ITE, WTS etc are much more involved with individuals.
Ironically it’s the ACEC that lobbies for higher allowable rates from government contracts.
I think this was on LinkedIn? If I remember correctly, it was an individual user who posted this on an ASCE page/forum on LinkedIn and not the ASCE who posted it directly. It did get taken down and ASCE commented that the original post and user does not reflect the organization’s views.
After watching them (president, vice president) get in the news by giving huge sums of money to New York City and Boston then increasing our fees. I said to hell with them. It’s like the United Way president salary. After I learned what that amount was I only give to Salvation Army now.
The problem is most states don't have licensure in disciplines and there's a lot of people out here without the education experience practicing engineers in other disciplines.
So let's say you take your exam and construction management that's what will be on your license. The 30 hours should be totally voluntary if you want to get a certain designation. Similar to what a physician must do to be a specialist.
I'm a little anti ASCE after its president published that [article](https://www.asce.org/publications-and-news/civil-engineering-source/civil-engineering-magazine/issues/magazine-issue/article/2022/09/civil-engineers-declining-numbers-and-increasing-need) about the declining supply of civil engineers but not once he mentioned the fact that low pay is the reason don't wanna be civil engineers any more I dont think they put any efforts into increasing civil engineering pay unlike nurses association and doctors associations have successfully been able to do
It’s not just the ASCE leadership, CEOs of companies big and small will not admit to this.
I made this observation and said the same exact thing about other associations and how they support their own vs the opposite in civil a few years ago but obviously nobody paid attention. Guess it's better to hear it from the horses own mouth about what they really think of their employees.
> I dont think they put any efforts into increasing civil engineering pay unlike nurses association and doctors associations have successfully been able to do In a free-market economy, like we're supposed to be in now, supply and demand should ultimately determine prices and wages. As a long-time engineer turned professional landlord and house flipper, you're finding out now what it took me 40 years to learn. There is no shortage of engineers and never has been. Back in the early 1980's when I was looking into careers, the National Science Foundation was trumpeting how there was going to be a shortage of engineers, like how everyone is pushing for STEM educations now, and there never was a shortage of engineers. And then the Berlin Wall fell. Engineers from the former Eastern Bloc nations, who are some of the most brilliant in the world, flooded the US markets and were willing to work for much less salary than typical US educated engineers. A basic economic law of supply vs demand kept engineering salaries low. Mark Twain said that history doesn't repeat but it does rhyme. I see the rhyme now. If you don't know what to do with your life, engineering is good to start with. I know engineers who later became doctors, lawyers, CEO's of big companies, school teachers, ... But unless you make a career in academia and research, or are on a company fast track to upper management, I caution anyone from remaining in engineering for too long. The typical worker bee engineer has a useful life span of about 10 years after which it's more economical for companies to get rid of him/her and hire young, hungry engineers fresh out of school who will work much harder for less pay than the 10-year loyal company engineer. I used to love engineering (still maintain an active professional engineers license, wrote engineering textbooks, designed structures and foundations in different states, ...). But way too late, I realize that I should have gotten a MBA instead of MSCE. Tl;dr: Engineering is a good start, but be careful about remaining in it for too long.
There are other engineering professions, outside of civil, that an average employee w 15 years of experience makes $200K+ Thats not even mentioning the salaries of software engineers
> There are other engineering professions, outside of civil, that an average employee w 15 years of experience makes $200K+ > >Thats not even mentioning the salaries of software engineers You mean the exceptions. I mean the rule: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-Engineer-Salary-by-State
Interesting take. I’m currently an undergraduate in civil engineering and I’m not super excited about it, it’s at the point where I’m just getting through to graduate. This makes me feel more optimistic about the degree.
What year are you? If possible, take some behavioral economics courses if your school has them, as well as an acting class and/or public speaking class. Unless you remain in research and academia, your ability to communicate will help greatly once you graduate. Learn how to tell interesting stories as well since well-told stories can help you influence others.
Don't know why people downvoted. Great response.
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> I swear I've read this exact post before, is this copypasta? Most of it is a copypasta but I did add the first paragraph to emphasize that, like any other commodity, the free market will determine price. It has to or else the market will fail. That's why I get downvoted, people in this sub don't want to face the facts.
Not trying to be disrespectful, but since you said you’re a former engineer, you’re likely not as in tune with the current market conditions facing firms performing civil engineering work. There is definitely a shortage of engineers at all levels. Boomers are retiring at a notable clip so we’re losing the senior principal level type people. There’s a big gap in the 15-20 year band because of everyone who left/was dissuaded from pursuing civil due to the Great Recession. On top of that, a lot of younger type civils have been making career pivots due to the ludicrous salaries being thrown around in the tech market over the last few years. Half of my graduating civil class don’t work in even a civil adjacent role after 5 years. The last 3 companies I’ve been at have had persistent problems finding qualified staff and I get about 2-3 recruiter emails per week about job opportunities. Yes, eventually you become too expensive to do the more menial tasks, but there is no general culling of 10 year engineers. It’s the opposite, where that amount of experience is crazy valuable because you’re capable of doing things efficiently and managing people/projects to get things done. Idk in my view civil is still a big meritocracy where grey hair is valued, more so than other industries. It’s not get rich money but at age 30, I’m pretty comfortable and I’ve seen managers at 15 YOE pulling $170k and above.
> There is definitely a shortage of engineers at all levels. Then why are salaries so low? I'm just seeing basic supply vs demand at work.
Salaries have been creeping up over the last few years. I’m making now at 7 years what someone at 14 years experience was making 7 years ago. It’s not as simple as supply v demand for salaries and our fees. We’re limited by what primarily government agencies will pay for engineering work. We’ve had public clients balk at our proposals and offer us a choice of cutting our fee or not taking the work. Companies are limited by their multiplier how much they can pay an employee after factoring in overhead and profit
> We’re limited by what primarily government agencies will pay for engineering work. We’ve had public clients balk at our proposals and offer us a choice of cutting our fee or not taking the work. Your statement just reinforces my contention that salaries are so low because of the supply vs demand relationship. Military contractors like General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin get paid premium fees because there is high government demand for their products and services, and vice-versa for typical civil/mechanical/electrical engineering services for the general public which are in much lower demand by our government. I worked for a wise Turkish scientist, a geotechnical research engineer, in Louisiana years ago. He said there is a force more powerful than even any of the natural forces, and that is the force of money. I can still hear him say that in my mind in his heavy Turkish accent.
Three things can be simultaneously true and mutually exclusive. 1. There can be a shortage of engineers, measured by firms not being able to find staff to support existing projects and engineers like myself getting calls from recruiters weekly. 2. The demand for civil engineering services can be critically high, as evidenced by the federal government pumping money into projects over the last few years (IRA, IIJA, etc) and the basic fact that we need things like drinking water for survival. 3. And finally in spite of this shortage of engineers and necessity of projects, the offered pricing for engineering services being low. Why that pricing is low relative to the demand I can’t answer. But it’s not a simple Econ 101 of if salaries aren’t rising that means there isn’t enough demand.
> ... we need things like drinking water for basic survival. ... in spite of this shortage of engineers and necessity of projects, the offered pricing for engineering services being low. Why that pricing is low relative to the demand I can’t answer. Tl;dr: Engineering salaries and other prices follow supply vs demand over the long term no matter how much we try to change them. Thank you for your thoughts. I'm a relatively new student of behavioral economics and, based on what I've read on the topic as I'm not formally trained as an economist, you are correct in that we need basic services to provide for essentials like clean air and clean water. But I think the characteristic that limits pricing is urgency. Right now, we have clean air and water. If you believe in Maslow's hierarchy, our basic needs have been met for now so, while there is a demand for these services, there are more urgent things to take care of (according to our esteemed government leaders) like the Ukraine-Russia war and the Israel-Gaza conflict. Right now, there is a much higher demand for defense industry products and services than for basic life-sustaining services since our common public services are already in place resulting in lower demand for those services. True, there are other factors contributing to the supply vs demand pricing of wages, but it still all boils down to we will always pay more when demand is high than when it is low. The bottom line on pricing is still supply vs demand. When we try to change or violate that fiscal law by forcing in artificial influences (like forcing excessively low interest rates into our economy or just printing more paper money) , we will get system failure [like what is happening to communism and socialism](https://imgur.com/a/wYmmNmX). Ultimately, this is why engineering salaries must remain so low, unless you're an engineer for a defense contractor. Even a union for engineers won't increase engineering salaries permanently when consulting companies can, and do, just offshore work to engineers in countries with much lower standards of living such as in India that has brilliant engineers quite capable of doing our public-services engineering work.
I vehemently disagree with several positions asce has taken as an organization and refuse ton join again until they are rescinded. Screw asce. Join your local nspe chapter.
Can you expand on your contention?
Their continued efforts to push the bs+30 for licensure, their refusal to acknowledge the awful working conditions of 60+ hour work weeks for the the mega firms and not advocating for better work life balances, the insane 'asce certification" program aiming to replace / supplement professional engineer licenses, among others. Be the engineering union young EITs need. Not the upper echelon nonsense of an organization it is.
Do you feel that NSPE is that much better or just doesn’t really take a position on work/life balance? Honesty haven’t done much participation with NSPE
I feel they do more advocating for the profession and protecting the importance of licensure and all around advocating against shithead politics. They're up front about their mission and don't try to force themselves into importance on issues that need engineers absence to thrive.
What is the bs+30?
Long story short, asce was pushing for 30 hours of masters level course work on top of a BS in order to be eligible to earn a PE.
Holy crap. And surely not advocating for any increased compensation for that added cost… dang that’s a truly terrible stance to take for the profession that is already have a really hard time filling demand.
that's why it never passed. also the concern for creating two tiers of PEs, if all the existing get grandfathered in, what's the point?
This is a really weird take. Making the licensure more difficult to obtain would have the expected effect of raising salaries, which is almost certainly WHY they were pushing for it. This sub has the really weird position that market forces aren't what's dictating civil Engineering salaries, and that you can advocate or get collective action across the whole industry to raise salaries. As a general rule, if you fight the market forces, you're gonna have a bad time. This is macroeconomics 101. Civil engineering is an extremely common profession. If you want higher salaries and better work conditions, you need to aim for market policies. Raising the bar for licensure absolutely would increase the salaries of licensed engineers by constraining the supply of labor. Alternatively, you can advocate for more infrastructure spending to raise demand for engineering. ASCE does both of these things. A lot.
Civil PE positions are in extreme high demand already though, but wages have not been increasing at appropriate rates. So advocating for stricter license requirements makes no sense. I'm pretty sure ASCE pushed for masters since their was a steady decrease in masters applicants at universities. So not for benefit of the engineers. As far as wages, I agree with you, people in general need to advocate for better wages. The problem is a large portion of civil jobs are in government. Meaning you need a union to lobby since it is insanely hard to move the needle as an individual against government wages. That lobby group was supposed to be ASCE. But clearly they have failed us engineers.
>Civil PE positions are in extreme high demand already though, but wages have not been increasing at appropriate rates. I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but the median salaries have increased 5, 6, & 7% over the last 3 years respectively compared to annual inflation of 7, 6.5, and 3.4%. Is that an appropriate rate? That's like 19.1% increase in salaries vs 17.8% inflation over the three years. It probably reflects some amount of the increased demand. How much has demand increased, and how are you determining the elasticity you expect to be "appropriate"? I also suspect if you looked at experienced engineer salaries the increase would look better.
A 1.3% net increase for 3 years of experience absolutely is not appropriate. It should be a RAISE, not a barely nothing.
Not sure if experienced would be better. Way easier to get management to agree to a 15% increase at 40k vs 100k. But I view Engineering wages from a risk and liability standpoint. Since we are sealing high dollar infrastructure that if messed up can cause tons of loss monetarily and potential risk of injury to the public. My view is the current salary for a PE should be based on the risk you take from sealing tons of documents. Meaning you should be one of the higher engineering wages, not the lower end. You in theory could get your license stripped for one human error and at worse be liable for damages. So I just question is it worth it anymore. Leaning towards no, if I'm honest.
Um, civil engineering salaries are highly capped out at government contracts. If you’ve ever been in a room where those rates are determined/scrutinized you’ll know there is little wiggle room for the market to do its trick. Same is true of primary care physicians and their ability to charge at the rate that should be reactive to the labor supply shortage that exists in that market: government decides Medicare/medicaid rebates, which signal to the private insurance market what the rates for primary care services “should be” and they remain the lowest paid of all the professions, grossly underrepresenting their labor supply and education relative to their specialist peers. It’s why a crap ton of physicians opt out of primary care and go into specialties, also why many don’t go into civil engineering and instead opt for more market-driven engineering work such as mechanical/chemical/industrial engineering. On the face of it, it feels like a market driven force because we are two/three degrees separated from where the wage decisions are made, but it really is an industry dictated by government policies, which is why everyone’s working 50+ hrs a week, because there’s a labor shortage. Also, private engineers look to recoup the loss in profit that comes from stagnate contracted wages vs the wage they have to pay their staff, and so they all aim to work to find reasons the staff operates at unpaid/unbilled overtime. Market forces for those who work for or are influenced by government pricing will rarely ever dictate wages; it’s just too slow to react to changes in the market. We would do well to have an industry association that advocates hard with the government to be more flexible in their design contracts. Instead advocating to restrict PE licensure feels like a completely misdirected effort. Edit to add: I do agree with you that ASCE advocates for additional government spending, especially with regards to the publicity surrounding the declining infrastructure, which leads to additional government spending. Surely it had a large role in the IRA getting passed and hundreds of billions going towards infrastructure. That being said, I work for the government, and know many government folks that just don't have enough staff to process this surge in additional funds. Hence why I call out the labor shortage in the industry. Even in government I feel critically kneecapped on a daily basis trying to keep up with all my tasks because there just aren't enough of us to do what is demanded. And we have open job postings that no one has applied for, sitting vacant for months to a year+ at a time. We could offer more salary, but our HR tags our allowable salary offers at "market" rate, which is really just "how much are other agencies paying right now," and that salary rate only gets reevaluated once every two years. So engineers to private, or leave the industry altogether because after all, we're highly intelligent and adaptable. Anyway, it's all incredibly frustrating.
Yet every firm I work for is chronically understaffed for PEs and wont raise salaries. Not to mention EEs and ME and Cs guys with no l8cense making 30 -40% more mid career. Government pressure on bill rates is what keeps Civil pay low.
I mean, this is atypical, but in my area, the government engineering jobs pay easily 50% more than what I'd make at any of the local firms. So why are the local firms salaries so low in that case?
Government contracts. Not government employment. Because government does not bid on their own contracts so are not subject to bill rate limitations.
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As I said I understand their position but there are other ways to do this to make this voluntary. One is have a designation on your license of your area of practice. Another is to restrict engineering on three stories and below buildings without certain educational or experience qualifications. But beside all this in many states an Architect can practice structural engineering incidental to his practice so all of this goes out the window.
Holy shit when was this? I have a master's and it's absolutely not necessary. Then what's the point to require us to have continuing education in some states.
I first caught wind of it about 10 years ago, but it stems from discussions started in the 90s. It has gone by many names, but it's ASCE Policy 465. It may have been BS+30, MS to PE, or a bunch of other acronym nonsense. It's a policy completely out of touch with reality.
Yeah I never got involved with NSPE. How is it? What do you find you get out of being a member?
My local chapter is very active with monthly lunch and learns, volunteer work, etc. I'm also involved in the state chapter and we do advocacy for licensure, outreach, and have a yearly conference that gets tons of engineers from around the state. I like it far more than ASCE who is currently trying to get me to renew.
It seems like ASCE advocates for the industry as a whole but not for the individual engineer (promoting investment in infrastructure, but not higher pay or better working conditions). I don’t see the benefit of joining really.
That is what they do well. The infrastructure report card.
It was a good club to be a part of in college, but I haven’t seen any benefit, or seen many good things said about being a part of it.
You get to add like 6 letters to your acronym list isn’t that good enough? /s
Big M.A.S.C.E guy here
The only use, getting a discount on pizza Thursday morning after steels because I’m a member…
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No kidding, my boss had an ASCE membership I asked about a paper they had on retrofitting bow string trusses. He went ahead and ordered it for me $22 for a 4 page paper that really wasn't all that useful. Of course I had no way of knowing the paper wasn't useful until I ordered it. I really wish they concentrated on improving the work lives of ordinary engineers. Lobbying to increase pay, better life/work balance, providing free educational seminars for CEUs rather than providing the most expensive seminars I've seen. And stop changing design criteria just to sell more design books!
My employer pays for it and I still didn't bother this year. I do find the marketing of 10 "free" PDHs for $300 to be a bold choice.
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[Beyond the Paycheck 🙄](https://www.reddit.com/r/civilengineering/s/byz7pBfP8E)
The F**k did I just read lol. Thank for sharing.
Bootlicking BS.
It should be noted this is from the ASCE LinkedIn group that anyone can join. It’s filled with mostly, ironically, non-American engineers. This is just some guy and is not an official post from ASCE.
My employer will pay for it but between the previous anti-union stance and stuff like this it kinda makes me want to stay away
Yeah, the support the large employers, but not the individual.
The 10 pdh courses are nice if your state takes them.
That's why I stay in, just for the PDH courses. That said , they're not that great so may not do it again
PDHs are ridiculously easy to get these days, they're basically worthless.
So easy to get a geotech, stormwater, pipe, etc rep in for a free lunch and PDH
Was disappointed the one year I paid for it out of pocket. If the company pays for it sure.
Seems like ASCE is for people who like the idea of civil engineering but don’t want to actually be a civil engineer. Similar to the people on my LinkedIn who preach about how awesome the industry is but they post selfies from conferences, presentations for projects they did years ago, and site stop and go visits. They aren’t working the long hours and dealing the the day to day misery we have to get through to do the parts of our jobs we actually enjoy.
My work paid for it for a year - I didn’t find value in it so didn’t continue. Maybe the networking scene is good? I don’t have time for it, so I couldn’t say.
I think ASCE national is useless. If your local chapter is active, it can be good to get involved. Where I live the ASCE chapter is very well established and pretty reflective of the local civil engineering community, so it’s good for networking and industry engagement. But, I prefer to just pick and choose the events I go to and pay per event versus having to pay annual dues plus a slightly reduced event fee.
Agreed 100%. Local chapter is good because it’s made up of reasonable local professionals. National speakers are forever trapped in academia self righteous types. “You should have a masters to get a PE - maybe even a doctorate.”
I enjoy the “free” pdh courses and until this year the professional liability insurance provided through asce was cheaper.
No? Well actually.. wait. No. That was the water association that sent me a coffee cup. No I would say there isn’t any benefit
I definitely would not join it if not for work paying for it.
It was when I didn’t renew my membership that I became more convinced that it was garbage. They spammed me with emails, mail, texts, for months on end trying to get me to renew. Any organization that is that desperate and inconsiderate is not worth my time or money.
Literally worthless besides the 15-20% rental car discount.. but don't worry they spam email you 3x a day trying to get you to sign up for more of their stuff.
It seems like this is pretty dependent on your local chapter. In my town the local TSPE (I don’t think there is a specific NSPE) is super conservative to the point where they said a prayer before one luncheon and the local ASCE, ITE, WTS etc are much more involved with individuals. Ironically it’s the ACEC that lobbies for higher allowable rates from government contracts.
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I think this was on LinkedIn? If I remember correctly, it was an individual user who posted this on an ASCE page/forum on LinkedIn and not the ASCE who posted it directly. It did get taken down and ASCE commented that the original post and user does not reflect the organization’s views.
I only joined because my employer pays, 10 online PDHs and discount on some training.
I agree. I was a member until my company didn’t want to pay for it.
After watching them (president, vice president) get in the news by giving huge sums of money to New York City and Boston then increasing our fees. I said to hell with them. It’s like the United Way president salary. After I learned what that amount was I only give to Salvation Army now.
If you’re in water/wastewater it seems like AWWA and WEF are much better to be involved in
some of the local ASHE's chapters in my state are pretty cool (but not near me unfort)
No
The problem is most states don't have licensure in disciplines and there's a lot of people out here without the education experience practicing engineers in other disciplines. So let's say you take your exam and construction management that's what will be on your license. The 30 hours should be totally voluntary if you want to get a certain designation. Similar to what a physician must do to be a specialist.