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?

Singaporean engineers aren't paid as well as American engineers because they lack the entrepreneur spirit. They do only what they are expected to do. They don't actively look for opportunities to make money or create value. This is why local engineers jobs are easily outsourced to foreigners.

The second difference is:

Locals look at certs and degrees; Americans look at real skills. Tech startups in silicon valley don't care if you are a college dropout or a high school diploma holder. If you can solve the company's problems, you are in.


If you can't make money as an engineer, it's probably your fault.

More local engineers need to see posts like this.

The average base salary for a software engineer at Google is $128,000, plus cash bonus of $21,000 and stock bonus of $31,000.

And Google is not paying the top salary for engineers. Linkedin and Yahoo pays their employees even higher salaries.

What's more, these engineers work normal office hours compared to investment bankers who work far more hours.

I realised every time in this forum, when we talk about engineer's prospect/pay, you always get people in finance flaking their cannons lol.

Sometimes I really find it very funny when people try compare their pay and trying to be superior against their one another.

Fact is be it in finance or engineering, you are still a salaried worker at the end of the day. the word 'L' still shines very brightly on your forehead whether you take MRT to work or you drive your BMW to your workplace.

The real winners are people who are not reporting or accountable to anyone but themselves and earning money while enjoying doing what you like.

Remember JOB = Just Over Broke.

Just my 2 cents worth of thoughts (:

Classifying everyone who do some sort of engineering as "engineer" is not useful info at all. There are so many different kind of engineering earning very different pay.

For e.g. a experienced mechanical enineer in a factory maybe make 50k annual, a marine shipbuilding enginner could make 100k and a oil&gas exploration engineer can make 300k p.a.

The sad thing for singapore is most people studied engineering disciplines like IT, mechanical, EEE, civil etc. which are somewhat the most lowly paid type of engineers out there.

After going through this thread, I'm starting to doubt my career path. I finished my A-Level this year and I was planning to do an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering then a masters in Biomedical engineering. Does anyone know how Biomedical engineers are treated in Singapore and if it is a good career choice? I would love to be a Biomedical engineer but I'd rather do something else if i'm going to have to struggle with a bad pay and a job with no security for the rest of my life.I would really appreciate anyone's advice and insight.

You are better off doing chemical engineering. Singapore is a small country where what you study can have a huge impact on your career choice which would affect your livelihood in future.

It's diff from other countries like the US or Europe where engineering is respect as a serious profession like any other profession and pays reasonably well.

I'm planning to do mechanical engineering coz I would like to be involved in the mechanical side of biomedical engineering.

You say that engineers are well respected in the US or Europe but I'm not sure about migrating to those countries because there aren't many biomedical engineering jobs and I'll have to compete with the locals.

If ur thinking of doing chem eng in SG, better make sure you get at least 3 As for A Level subjects and at least A2 for the remaining AO subjects. Anything less than that is no hope to get in one.

If you are so sure that you want to be in biomedical engineering, by all means take the engineering degree. Mechanical,materials or whatever its not important. You will need a PhD to get anywhere anyway as the field is very focused on research. So as long as you like research and are good at it, there are plenty of opportunities as local postgraduate programs are very unpopular with locals. As long as you have 2nd upper it wont be a problem. Of course if you want the prestigious overseas unis PhD programs you'll have to do better. Money wise in the sector it is not too bad, and if you have a breakthrough product you will really do well.