Yes, it's becoming unrelenting. On the one hand you have pieces like this lamenting the "high" pay of engineers. Nevermind how much value they add or CEOs that make orders of magnitude more money. On the other we have articles like the one yesterday saying how _so many_ qualified women are being passed up on engineering positions due to the patriarchy (technical interviews) -- directly contradicting this article stating talent is being aggressively hoarded.
There's a push by the media and investors in every direction to lower engineering salaries (through shame or increasing the supply of engineers). Some is profit motivated, some is probably motivated by jealousy but together there's a theme that engineers are in some way privileged and undeserving of what they earn. Given how incredibly difficult and time consuming it is to become a good engineer I suspect all this whining will not accomplish much.
Yep an Engineer no matter what the prestige of their university or their degrees will always be considered "blue collar" in the UK. Everywhere apart from the City that is, ironically.
I think this is due to the fact the word "Engineer" historically was meant in the sense of "Technician", "Repairman", if I'n not mistaken.
From Wikipedia:
"In the UK, "engineering" was more recently perceived as an industry sector consisting of employers and employees loosely termed "engineers" who included the semi-skilled trades. However, the 21st-century view, especially amongst the more educated members of society, is to reserve the term Engineer to describe a university-educated practitioner of ingenuity represented by the Chartered (or Incorporated) Engineer. However, a large proportion of the UK public still sees Engineers as semi skilled tradespeople with a high school education."
There's a push by the media and investors in every direction to lower engineering salaries (through shame or increasing the supply of engineers). Some is profit motivated, some is probably motivated by jealousy but together there's a theme that engineers are in some way privileged and undeserving of what they earn. Given how incredibly difficult and time consuming it is to become a good engineer I suspect all this whining will not accomplish much.