Electrical engineer career

Today, more electrical engineers are at work than ever before. Indeed, it is likely that more people are now employed as electrical engineers than the total of all who worked as electrical engineers prior to the mid-twentieth century. The great increase in the number of electrical engineers along with ongoing developments in technology, organization, and government have markedly changed the nature of engineering. Today’s engineer belongs to a profession that includes Villard de Honnecourt, Han Gonglian, Leonardo da Vinci, John Smeaton, and all the other great engineers, but there is much that is different about engineering today (Mcllwee and Robinson, 23). This paper considers the benefits of being an electrical engineer in the contemporary world, professional and social status of electrical engineers, and some of the challenges they face.
What are the direct benefits of becoming an electrical engineer? Can people of this profession claim the same occupational status as doctors and lawyers, or is it more appropriate to group them with social workers, nurses, schoolteachers and other occupations whose aspirations for professional status are yet to be realized? The issue is not simply one of terminology. Professions differ from other occupations in a number of significant ways; in particular, high occupational status has “set professionals apart from other workers” (McMahon, 89-93). The effort to establish electrical engineering as a profession encompasses most of the major issues surrounding the working life of today’s engineers.
In the modern world, a person’s occupation is the most important determinant of his or her place in society. An occupation is what sociologists call an “achieved status,” a position one attains through merit and accomplishment (Whitaker, 56). Moreover, the attainment of an achieved status may allow for upward social mobility, the process through which individuals attain statuses higher than the ones held by their parents.
The participation of electrical engineers in management has been of crucial importance in defining the careers of individual engineers and the status of engineering in general. At the same time, however, the eagerness of many electrical engineers to leave their field in order to join the ranks of management seems to indicate that electrical engineering has not achieved an occupational status on a par with the traditional professions (Whitaker, 56). Yet electrical engineers generally enjoy relatively high incomes and occupational status and, thus, their position as true professionals is well recognized.
Electrical engineering shares a number of characteristics with established professions, most notably rigorous training and the application of theoretically grounded expertise. Professions distinguish themselves through their practitioners’ knowledge and application of specialized information.

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