Differences between Engineering and Other Professions

Although we have determined that engineering is a profession, it should be noted that there are signifi cant differences between how engineering is practiced and how law and medicine are practiced. Lawyers are typically self-employed in private practice, essentially an independent business, or in larger group practices with

Chapter 2 Professionalism and Codes of Ethics 23

other lawyers. Relatively few are employed by large organizations such as corpora- tions. Until recently, this was also the case for most physicians, although with the accelerating trend toward managed care and HMOs in the past decade, many more physicians work for large corporations rather than in private practice. However, even physicians who are employed by large HMOs are members of organizations in which they retain much of the decision-making power—often, the head of an HMO is a physician—and make up a substantial fraction of the total number of employees.

In contrast, engineers generally practice their profession very differently from physicians and lawyers. Most engineers are not self-employed, but more often are a small part of larger companies involving many different occupations, including accountants, marketing specialists, and extensive numbers of less skilled manufac- turing employees. The exception to this rule is civil engineers, who generally prac- tice as independent consultants either on their own or in engineering fi rms similar in many ways to law fi rms. When employed by large corporations, engineers are rarely in signifi cant managerial positions, except with regard to managing other engineers. Although engineers are paid well compared to the rest of society, they are generally less well compensated than physicians and lawyers.

Training for engineers is different than for physicians and lawyers. One can be employed as an engineer after four years of undergraduate education, unlike law and medicine, for which training in the profession doesn’t begin until after the undergraduate program has been completed. As mentioned previously, the engi- neering societies are not as powerful as the AMA and the ABA, perhaps because of the number of different professional engineering societies. Also, both law and med- icine require licenses granted by the state in order to practice. Many engineers, especially those employed by large industrial companies, do not have engineering licenses. It can be debated whether someone who is unlicensed is truly an engineer or whether he is practicing engineering illegally, but the reality is that many of those who are trained as engineers and are employed as engineers are not licensed. Finally, engineering doesn’t have the social stature that law and medicine have (a fact that is partly refl ected in the lower pay that engineers receive as compared to that of lawyers and doctors). Despite these differences, on balance, engineering is still clearly a profession, albeit one that is not as mature as medicine and law. However, the engineering profession should be striving to emulate some of the aspects of these other professions.