The problem is not about engineering as a profession, but about engineering as a profession in Singapore.

Singapore is too small to be a self-sustainable market for manufacturing industry, too small to have enough talent to accumulate technology core-competency. Unlike finance and business where intellectual property is not crucial, unlike doctors and lawyers that have fundamental demands wherever there're people, engineering, or more general, technology industry tends to aggregate to the two end, labor-intense l like China and other developping countries, and core-IP-repository like US/Japan and european countries.

Singapore has none of the two. As a small city nation, Singapore has no cheap labor. And the small population means that in terms of smart people, we also cant produce enough. If you look at the top schools in US, Europe, Japan, they have a much larger population to gather top talent from. Without talent, without IP, without cheap labor and self-sustainable market, how big is the chance of making a successful technology company here?