Hi All,
Looking to hear from professionals in both fields want a career change and both these interest me. Give me the facts and tell it to me straight. Has anyone done a a career change to one of these? What would you change or what advice would you tell someone thinking about doing the same thing. I am mid 30s with plenty of working life ahead of me!
Finance or Engineering?
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I'd get into a trade honestly. There is a very big cash economy, ATO incentives on instant write offs and you could even join a union and join some protests. But in all honesty, I've been in the engineering industry (structural engineer turned project manager) across mining, oil and gas, roads, buildings, nuclear, wastewater, rail etc etc. When I was a grad we started around 60K and now we are mostly in the 160-180K range with 10-12 years experience. In another 5-10 years as an employee you'd probably max out at 250-300K depending on how much of the political games you want to play and how high in the corporate ladder you want to climb. All income is as a PAYG employee so you'll get taxed to the eyeballs unless you have other strategies to reduce tax. Work life balance depends heavily on who you work for and what projects you're on. Government/private utilities, like QR, QUU employees just bludge, work 30hrs a week, get paid for 38 and enjoy life. On the other hand private consultancies might have you working 60hrs a week to keep up with deliverables and only billing 40hrs.
I had a good friend from my engineering course change from engineering to finance about 2 years out of uni. Ended up working for Macquarie bank and moving to NYC. Net worth is in the 7 figure range, has much better work life balance than being a full time engineer in Australia. I'd so go for a trade or finance. Engineering is a glorified poor man's slave job.
160-180k after only 10-12 years experience? Only in QLD or WA, definitely not for the other states.
Yes I am QLD based, but I've lived and worked in WA, QLD and VIC briefly.
This is base rates excluding super. Site based FIFO/DIDO roles are easily in the 200k range depending on uplifts and increased work hours.
Knew it because even engineering managers don't make that much in VIC and NSW unless in energy or resource sector.
@mrvaluepack: I know lots of Senior Project Engineers (5-10 years) on this type of money working for head contractors. Project Managers on 180k+ for Tier 1 companies.
EDIT: This is for civil infrastructure and building in metro Sydney
@Someguyhere: Can second this in Victoria, within infrastructure 120-140k is a typical Project Engineer wage, 160k SPE and 180k plus for a PM. PM would typically have 10 years of experience. There are also a lot of non delivery jobs that pay well like estimating or project planning
Engineering is a glorified poor man's slave job.
I agree but it's fun being the smartest person in the room sometimes listening to idiots who can't use a computer properly and are paid to talk, fire and hire. And pretending to understand the needs of their business while playing psychotic games with their employees.
I love this response. Makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside :)
MFW 250k-300k after 15 years of experience is a 'poor man's slave job'.
I work in engineering but have never heard of anyone besides execs earning that kind of money, and that's not something anyone can just walk in to, only a small percentage of people get into those positions. Even 160k-180k is well above the average full time salary for an engineer (unless you are all FIFO?) - a browse on glassdoor puts salaries for structural engineers betwen 60-120k for most positions.
For the OP - It depends a bit on the field of engineering, but pay is probably slightly above average, but nothing more. If your only goal is to make money, I would have thought Finance is the way to go.
That said, engineering can be very rewarding. Personally, I cannot think of anything worse than spending 8+ hrs a day working with and worrying about $$$ in the finance sector.
My friend is a Facebook Engineer in San Francisco earnign $480k a year. In AUstralia, the pay sucks, but in the USA, the big tech companies fork out million dollar salaries to principal engineers, easily.
Another friend working on a new famous Microsoft project earning $280k a year and she's only 30 years old.
Engineers on $250-$300k a year are those who have been in the company for like 15+ years or they work in mining, petroleum, big civil contracts, specialist software, IT Infrastructure etc.
Of course there are outliers, just trying to speak to the average.
There is money in some of those areas you mention, not sure about mining though these days. I think the pay has dropped off a lot along with the boom.
I can understand software engineers making lots of money. But your friend must still be in a pretty senior position, a browse online shows salaries are high but not insane. Either that or he likes to exaggerate, which is a bit of a chronic problem when it comes to salaries. Especially in a thread like this it is important to be honest so that OP can make an informed decision.
Either that or he likes to exaggerate, which is a bit of a chronic problem when it comes to salaries. Especially in a thread like this it is important to be honest so that OP can make an informed decision.
There's hundreds of videos on youtube describing how much people get paid for working in California at a big tech company. $480k USD is what I meant. It's not exaggerated at all.
Yes he's close to the top of the technical pathway but there are a few technical leaders above him.They get paid with stock options too which are worth hundreds of thousands even above 1 million. For example, principal engineers are earning easily over $1 million USD including stock and bonus options.
@Orico: Well, he/she must be very talented. It's hard enough just to get a job at a place like Facebook.
All I wanted to say was that it's best to talk typical worker and average salary when discussing a question like OP's, so that he can have reasonable expectations. Regardless of what your friend is earning, a job as a software engineer at Facebook is not typical (alreading talking top percentiles at a major company like that), and $480k itself is not a typical salary at Facebook.
I linked a couple of great resources for getting an idea of what a software engineer might earn in the States, or here in Australia. And it's in the 70-200k range depending on experience. Talking about what the highest percentiles could theoretically earn is not of much value - any engineer could become the CEO of a huge company on $20m pa. Doesn't make that relevant to the average salary of an engineer.
Thanks, I thought I was on whirlpool for a second where everyone earns 400k p.a.
Half of it comes down to timing as much as it is personal preference. I wouldn't put myself up there at the math whizz end of things but view myself as highly competent (don't we all though I suppose).
I did BComm/B.Eng(Civil)(hons) and came out when there was peanuts for infrastructure work around the country (~GFC). Spent 2 years job hunting for both a vacation/work exp role + graduate role with no success. Moved over to accounting and had a multitude of offers whilst watching peers persist with the engineering route having varied levels of success in the month/years to come.
As much as I look back and wish I was able to get an engineering role I'm glad I made the switch I did. Personally don't believe we put enough money in engineering to encourage, cultivate and retain new/young talent in tough times. I've had the opportunity to talk to eng grads over the last year and their stories at the moment echo mine - limited roles and high levels of competition (grad vs people with 1-2 years exp who were stood down).
For the record I'm happy with my work and find it challenging in its own unique way.
male grads are disadvantaged over female grads. There appear to be some sort of inverse discrimination going on
Of course, the company wants a 50:50 gender split, even though the classroom is closer to 80:20
It is discrimination for the sake of quotas, that helps the people who least need it. How does giving a female engineering grad even more opportunities help close a pay gap, they already have a degree and a path to a good job.
there should be equality of job opportunity, not equality of outcome.
@Thenarrator: I attended a data analytics conference, sponsored by all the big names in tech (Google, Microsoft, SAS, etc).
One of the sessions was about 'women in tech' where the guest explained that they don't discriminate, after selecting who to interview from a stack of resumes, if there aren't enough women who are deemed suitable for the job, they simply read through the resumes again, looking for women applicants who might be qualified.
You see the standards aren't lower for women, they are just applied more fairly than they are for men.
Thanks for all the helpful replies,
I will now go through and digest them!
Cheers
Flipside88I did a double degree in both. Do finance. I am in engineering.
What type of engineering are you looking at? From my understanding as an outsider, it's a rather broad field.
I also double degreed in both.
Worked in engineering for 6 years, then now working in sales :D
Well, Electronics and Communications Engineer by education here. Most of our batchmates wanted to get into Texas Instruments or the likes back in 1990-2000s and do some real engineering. Recession hit, and we couldn't find many engineering jobs. So instead of waiting for another year, some of us had to grab the Software jobs through on/off campus placements with best of the grad salaries back then. Some decided to pursue hardware courses after that and got into small electronics companies. Many of my grad mates from the software co quit and pursued to their MBAs in Finance from Tier-1/2 unis.
Now when I look around after 20 years, here's where people are:
People in IT
- I gradually moved from a Systems engineer to a Program manager within IT and worked across the globe, mostly within financial domain including some of the Wall street banks and finally ended up in Australia. Recently made a switch into IT Deal solutioning and consulting.
- Many of my friends did not bother to move into management, and they are continuing as IT architects & developers.
- Some moved into Sales and they are the ones who are doing good with the money.
Of the lot who pursued Electronics & Communications engineering:
- One retired from Navy after serving for 15 years as a comms engineer and living a good life, moved into farming. She seemed happiest of the lot to me.
- Couple of them who were in smaller electronics companies eventually ended up in US and working for Qualcomm etc. Pays well.
- Some are working for companies like Intel, Microsoft and they enjoy what they are doing, so much that did not try to switch for 15-20 years.
Most of the folks who did their MBAs and picked up Finance / Marketing are financially the best-off:
- either Exec positions in some big companies, thinking of their own start-ups / consulting.
- or moved onto areas such as Risk management, AI&ML, Data Science; mostly joint start-ups.
This guy knows what he is talking about ^
I'm thinking about doing a CFA
A friend of mine who is from the subcontinent had a similar story
IT (Cyber security in particular or platform development, Oracle, Salesforce to name the few).
I am from Finance with lots of IT friends.
How would you suggest breaking into cybersec with no prior experience and without having to do further (3+ years) of formal education?
I would start by asking what you are interested in? you may not care what the pay is if you hate your job
What about the business of Engineering Finance?
Cloud engineering
120k 2 years out of uniOh that's sweet indeed. I'm looking to get into cloud or cyber security. Please i just want to ask.
Did you do bachelors in software or computer science?
What language should i be looking into if i want to get into cloud.
How is the working schedule, are you able to work from home?PM me.
Do what really interests you. You're unlikely to be good at what you do if you don't care about it - let alone do it for the next 30-40 years without pulling your hair out.
I'm in the software engineering field (studied as an Elec. Eng / Comp. Sci.).
And since we can run technical interviews - it's pretty easy to work out whether someone is good at what they do during an interview.
You cannot BS your way into a 100K+ job in our company.
Supply for 'good' SW engineers at the moment is limited, so it's pretty easy to score high pay with normal 40hr/week workloads IFF you are EXCELLENT at what you do.Pay isn't as good as finance on average, but there's likely to be less politics involved (especially if the company is younger & strong in preventing arseholes getting in).
I earn enough that I literally do not care about getting promoted anymore (at 35), and can just focus on doing a good job and making my team is happy.
I would have no qualms hiring a 30 y.o. as a grad if they explained to me they changed career paths, and probably would factor in your soft skills from your previous experience (i.e. likely pay you more than a grad anyway, cos technical skills are only half the equation).Elec. Eng / Comp. Sci. thats a great combo. Does your company see B.Comp Sci and B. Software Eng as been on the same level?. I want to re-skill into software. I am considering doing a masters or a Bachelors in Comp Sci or Software Eng
You only need compsci or software eng, from what I've seen everyone views these two degrees as equal from a hiring perspective.
Also no one cares about masters, I would opt for the bachelor degree since it's almost guaranteed to be a better taught degree.
Source: did bachelor of compsci and on 180k+ in my second year
Cool thanks. Bachelors is the way to, others have saids its well put together aswell. 180k damn that's nice, which field of software is that?.
Agree with @portard - only a Comp. Sci. / SW Eng. is needed.
Masters may be potentially a faster route, but you'd have to work hard & find a strong group of study colleagues to get the knowledge you need in a single year. I'm not saying it's impossible though, but I certainly don't want to study that hard anymore at 30 :P.
I only did an EE degree as I did NOT know what was going to interest me more. I still like Elec Eng / Computer Eng, but not enough to want to do it as full time work. There's also not as much variety in those fields of work here in Australia, and I could easily see SW was going to have more potential here in the long run. (first iphone came out in my final year).
As a SW Eng, I've had the opportunity to change fields in every job change: medical devices, a short stint in gaming, and now settled on cloud-based web-services. All companies were mature enough to realise they needed to train me into what they wanted.
I did luck out finding a company that was willing to take me into the cloud services business with 0 experience.
(Although I do find parallels between cloud computing and embedded engineering - It's funny watching SW engineers 'discover' things at a cloud scale that resemble ideas already done in the embedded world)@wimphrel: Thanks. Thats really nice, a little bit of luck is always good and its good thing they were willing to train you. I will make sure my electives are in web and cyber tech thats my area of interest. I will use my free time to get some practice in C programing and html before my course start in first semester.
did bachelor of compsci and on 180k+ in my second year
You're clearly not normal. You sound like you graduated at the top of your class or you're just a math genius.
@Orico: I'm quite average actually, getting a good job in tech is all about how well you interview plus a bit of luck/connections, also applying for the right kinds of places (i.e a company that will pay you in equity too because equity will go up much faster than your salary) Never been asked for grades for any company I applied at so marks don't matter at all. You don't even need to be good at maths to write code. I'm actually behind most of my peers who started around the same time as me.
@Orico: Higher than my friends but quite similar. Comp Sci, quite average, not geniuses or anything.
@[Deactivated]: (Sorry meant for Orico, but it's too hard to fix)
There's a big variance across companies & industry stream - I don't want to set the expectation of a guaranteed $180K pa to all newcomers to the SW world.It IS achievable, but I wouldn't say average across all fields of SW engineering.
In a milder company where they're making stable profits, and not having double digits growth every year, I'd expect grads to be onboarding at $80-90K and principals to be at around ~$170K (with the Seniors in between). Money isn't everything to all engineers, and some companies just don't offer much to the worker bees because of older HR models, shareholders, high supply of that field of engineers, etc….
Now this is 'mild'. You can get more: Consultancy / Fintech / Any awesome companies where founders value their employees.
It took me 5 years to get past $100K because I didn't like any of the high paying jobs at the time -> suits, talking BS, PPTs more than coding, handling non-engineer managers, high stress.
Lucky that has since changed and there is so many SW/Tech startups that they are throwing $$$ at any engineers that can help them produce working software as fast as possible :D.
suits, talking BS, PPTs more than coding, handling non-engineer managers, high stress.
My friend works 5-6 hours a day and pretty chill, no suits, no ppts, genuinely interested in what they're working on. Even before covid, he could go to work when he wanted or WFH if he didn't have any meetings. I mean the company is a culture company after all. But he said he could get the same salary in other places.
I'd expect grads to be onboarding at $80-90K
I mean if you're expecting grads at 80-90k, I don't know why 180k is unreasonable, maybe depends on the state, I'd imagine something like this to be more in Sydney and maybe 150k Melbourne equivalent.
Lucky that has since changed and there is so many SW/Tech startups that they are throwing $$$ at any engineers that can help them produce working software as fast as possible :D.
Yeah probably this haha. Do you think its possible to have the same career and career progression being self taught rather than going to uni? I really don't want to go back for another 3 years. What's the best way to do this/how long do you think it would take? Say if I spent 4 hours a day on it.
@[Deactivated]: It might be that I'm just older :D.
When I graduated, startups were places where founders would entice & underpay employees, but offer equity as compensation - you could get rich if you worked your arse off and helped the company get big. This obviously limited your hiring pool, as not many ppl wanted to take this risk (especially those with families to care for).
I remember hearing stories about IBM giving out bonuses based on a competition about the amount of OT engineers put in, but now-days most managers in sane companies wouldn't reward this kind of self-destructive 1990s behaviour (although I'm sure some older companies & managers still expect this to be productive). In fact, I never see IBM mentioned much anymore when I google stuff… (maybe Thoughtworks?).
Nowdays - investors are smart, they adequately fund SW startups & make sure the Founders attract the best talent -> High pay, good culture & job security is where it's at.
That said - I was merely pointing out that $180K is unlikely to be the average across the board. It's DEFINITELY achievable, just not average.
I know many SW Engineers with more than 10 years of experience that are below $150K - it's really down to how much money the company makes, what they sell, and the size of the market they are selling in, and whether they have a Elon Musk-like rich white guy to help increase speculation in your company's stock :D.
Personally investment banking. I have an engineering background who ended up in IT. Then out of personal interest, moved to the magic world of investing. Outsourcing may be a factor to reconsider engineering unless you have a very strong passion there. As a side note, passion is quite hard to figure out, could change, often misunderstood, passion may not make a living so consider pursuing passion on the side etc etc
You can't outsource an onsite engineer (not easily anyway), but definitely design work.
I haven't looked at the statistics but I guess the demand for engineers in western countries would have tapered down in most industries.
Super underrated comment negger.
passion is quite hard to figure out, could change, often misunderstood, passion may not make a living so consider pursuing passion on the side etc etc
especially for all the people saying follow doing what you love. its just not always possible
Depends if you want to improve the world or spoil it.
Engineers build great things.
The finance industry just pillages the planet.
Of course you will make a lot of money in finance, but if you're in 30s maybe think about what you want to actually achieve in life.
At the end of the day the finance industry offers nothing except accrual of cash. That's not a measure of a life for me.
I am in Civil Engineering as a Senior Designer. The engineers do the project management, budget, deal with clients and slightly dable in the technical space. Whereas I specialise in the technical side amd dable in the rest. This is not to say engineers are not technical just the design works isn't generally done by the engineer.
As a senior designer I do all the technical designs from roads, housing developments, stormwater, sewer, water, traffic signals etc. I work along side an engineer. My degree is also less years with the opportunity to do a cadetship, work fulltime and study part time. There is a real lake of quality designers in the industry as it isn't as well known.
My pay has also been similar to the engineers
I work with.its a grey area and depends on your company set up. There are definitely engineers that as you described who i would describe as progressing into a project manager path. There are also other engineers who are progressing into technical manager path. They publish papers, attend conferences and stay on the technical route eventually becomming technical director. There are designers who are progressing into the path of an engineer which is what it sounds like you are doing and there are designers who just do modelling and progressing into the path of documentation and drafting and staying clear of engineering work.
Some companies control strictly what a designer can/cant/suppose to do and some give freedom.
Studied both, worked in both.
In finance there are a lot of people who adopt a fake it till you make it mentality. The finance degree is not hard at all and designed to churn as many students through university as possible very much catering to international students. They were courses I used to break up difficult engineering courses.
In engineering there is little maths despite the course being maths heavy. Its all about problem solving whilst maintaining compliance. A lot of egos but you do not need the gift of the gab to shine.
learn about crypto
Finance, hands down. I did a dual Engineering (Civil) and Economics at uni, went down the path of thinking that I would do my 3-5 years as a grad engineer get that experience etc etc, but left before even 1 year had passed. Moved into a trading role (got somewhat lucky) and have never looked back. Engineering is low paying, involves lots of boring report writing that no one actually reads and most companies don't have the budget to train you/for you to learn. 2 years into the trading role and I have learnt way more than I did in 6 years of uni and <1 year as an engineer. Honestly learnt way more in my first month then I did in 10 months as a grad engineer. Finance is a lot more stimulating (to me) and challenging. Engineering also sucks because of your value being per hour you work, and all that billable hours bs (hence why its hard to get proper training etc). Pay has tripled compared to engineering salary already after 1 year.
In saying this, I know people that absolutely love engineering and they don't do it for the money etc. but this is like anything and you have to be super super super passionate to be in the bucket of people. The sort of person who would read an structural engineering textbook on the weekend for fun. Also im more talking along the civil/mech/chem pathways, not so much the electrical/computer engineering as that would be different all together.
Side note: if i had my time again I would've studied data science or similar instead of engineering, along with a finance related degree.
All Facts about the Engineering stuff. I would study software if i do uni all over again. By trading you mean financial markets( shares, equity etc)?
I've seen engineers move into finance without a new finance degree, the opposite wouldn't happen.
I worked in corporate finance and my senior co-worker had an engineering degree before he went into investment banking.
In my team I'm developing an engineer in a finance role.
Supply chain is a mix of both
Always have to move boxes around from a to b
Boxes cost money
There are laws to moving boxes aroundMy wife did a career change from Software Developer to Finance. She left job few months back and focusing full time on Finance related stuff.
The real reason for her, while working as trader she feels more happy, satisfied as compared to working in IT.
She didn't need any degree, just lot of reading, watching youtube videos, following right people, etc.
P.S. She is Software Engineer with 15 years of experience. The only reason she didn't like IT was because she fell in love with Technical Analysis on Trades.
Make your own industry: Financial Engineering
Oh wait…
Neither. Get into med school and be a doctor.
Perhaps pre-sales engineering, for the best of both.
financial engineering
Study engineering if you want to do difficult work that nobody else understands or cares about.
I have degrees in both and worked in both, but currently work in finance.
If you enjoy project management become an engineer.
If you like numbers you are better off working finance. You will likely (but not necessarily) get paid more in finance.
Do not work at an investment bank. There seems to be some confusion in the comments here, so let me clarify. There are actually two main jobs that people could mean if they refer to themselves as investment bankers, they either work in an M&A team or are a trader (it's almost always M&A). Both are incredibly competitive to get into. Trading can pay well but usually doesn't until you become senior (if you make it that long). M&A does pay fairly well upfront and goes up but you can expect 100hr + weeks for basically the rest of your working life, even if you move to Private Equity (which is a common career path). All of my friends who did investment banking M&A eventually quit. There are other roles at investment banks but most of them are relatively similar to commercial bank (like NAB) equivalents (e.g., Operations, Markets Sales, etc.).
If you want to work finance I'd recommend applying for a grad position with a big four commercial bank in an area that covers larger customers (like BHP, Woolworths, etc). They can and do hire older candidates and often provide you with 'rotations' to let you get a taste for different areas.
I have passed my CFA exams and probably wouldn't recommend you go straight to this option. Whilst it is probably the fastest way to get a solid finance 'certification' it would be incredibly difficult to do this without prior finance knowledge. Level 1 will be very difficult for you; you will need a lot of spare time to read and understand the material. If you already have any degree there is nothing stopping you applying for a grad program (you can do your CFA while being a grad too…).
Finally, if you work to work in any finance and pass an interview, you must read the AFR every day. As a minimum read the front page and back page (Chanticleer, Rear Window). If you want to work M&A you will need to read Street Talk as well. I'd recommend reading the Financial Times as well if you have time (a student subscription is very cheap).What does a career path as a trader look like for mature entry?
If you are in M&A at an investment bank you could probably move over to a similarly senior role in trading. Otherwise it's extremely difficult to move into trading at a reputable firm. One possibility would be to gain access directly via a grad program, but these are incredibly competitive. Check out the process for Optiva for example. Another way would be a grad program at a commercial bank and try to get a Markets Trading rotation, much easier to pass the interviews but getting the rotation is rare. They may offer you a job after your rotation, otherwise you will have experience and contacts so you could try elsewhere. Needless to say for all these options you need to move to Sydney (or better yet, Singapore).
I think a super important question to ask is WHY are you changing your job? Is it because its boring and mundane? Is it because its not a good work-life balance? Is it not mentally stimulating enough? Don't want a 9-5 life? Does it not pay enough?
Engineering pays chump change in Australia and some senoir engineers are not even making over 150K. Positions are somewhat limited in pure engineering R&D which is what everyone wants to do as an Engineer (Like actual engineering). That being said the skills that engineering teaches you though are so priceless and really enable you to solve any problem presented to you. Simply due to the pay I wouldn't suggest you do into it at your age as you'll already be behind and won't make a decent wage for several years. The worst thing I can think of is being mid 40s and not being able to provide for a family.
Unsure of how Finance is but I've heard the pay isn't great unless you're an investment banker working stupid hours. Work is boring dry and mundance and you just look at numbers all day. Very few people make it to the big bucks and many people quit after a few years due to how intense it is.
At the end of the day, do something that you actually enjoy doing that you would do on vacation. Honestly you'll probably make more money and more importantly feel more fulfillment that way.
If you're getting chump change as a senior engineer, you're in the wrong industry/organisation or are bad at your job.
Like most people have said, it would best to ask yourself about your motivations and what you want in life.
Having friends and family who are in engineering and finance, I would say - neither. Both Engineering and Finance have a glut of people working in the industry and most people don't get paid well. Very few people make it big, and those that do, do really really well.
IT is probably a better option, especially if you are in the technical and programming space.
Or even better, become a tradie. Being an apprentice is hard (cause the pay sucks), but once you have enough experience and start your own business, you will earn a lot more than a normal finance or engineering salaried person. Plus, you don't even need to spend on expensive uni fees and 3/4 years studying full time.
A friend of mine used to be a lawyer. After about 10 to 15 years in the profession, he changed his career to being a plumber. His rational was that he significantly increased (double or triple) his salary and had a lot less working hours. So, higher income + reduced working hours being a plumber over a lower income + longer working hours being a lawyer.
My next goal is to pick up some tradie skills!
Another thing you can do is become an electrician and spend the next 20 years working at the new Western SYdney airport in Badgeries Creek.
Did 1 year civil engineering at uni couldn't catch up on the maths (did general maths to boost UAI, I'm also asian) switched to finance. Now working in govt as analyst, six fig salary + super. Cruisy job, under 40 hours a week, really good work life balance. Gets boring sometimes, but then I'm a person that prefers minimal work/headache to maximum salary ratio. I'd prefer to be challenged/stressed and spend laborious hours on passion projects and hobbies.
Depends on what you want out of a job. If you just want money, I have a couple of friends in computer science/software engineering getting 120-150k within 2-3 years of graduating. Engineering can be really satisfying though, building stuff and watching big constructions get built.
I made this move and at around the same age also. The decision was much clearer for me though, I would have never considered finance and I didn't make the decision purely from an income perspective, so maybe what I say wouldn't be useful anyway. If you enjoy problem-solving, go for engineering.
However, I think you can see from some answers that the true answer really isn't so simple. Like some say, engineer wages are both low and high. I think if you're committed and passionate, you'll be successful in either. The key is finding this motivation because once you have it, the journey isn't challenging at all and is quite fun. I really enjoyed it and I still do!
Take a cleaning job, find a quiet place meditate, and learn algorithms, all day and every day:
Monte Carlo algorithm,
A* star algorithm,
Stack algorithm,
Every algorithm you can think of, see it visually, understand the translation from code -> psudo and notation visually into what other languages (don't focus on speed) until you know algorithm.The language of God.
And you'll be what ever you wanna be in life
You may need to explain why you are on ozb
He could be working 42 hours a week, including both Saturday and Sunday and earns around $50k per year like me. Cant see an issue if he wants to change into something better since he is still very young.
Any type of talent in any industry can make good money. The question actually is which one do you like?
I'm an engineer since graduating. If I were pivoting my career and had the choice of eng or fin in my 30s… Fin. Eng is not well respected in Australia. It's all about fin, law, pol.
If you have an interest in software programming, I don't think it's too late to pursue the software engineering path. Other engineering disciplines are pretty much saturated and money wise, you'd be better of as a trades person or managing your own business. I agree with eek above - but not really sure if Finance is a good alternative to Engineering. It's still arduous and political. Ultimately it really depends on what you are looking for - work life balance, urge to learn new things academically, work from home etc etc.
My advice, don’t do engineering. Australia is not innovative enough and will be outdone by the likes of USA or China regardless.
Split the two - go into asset management (not financial assets - look up iso 55000). Lots of dual qualified Commerce/Engineers go into that space.
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Change from what?