First of all, the salaries in Cyprus for Engineers of all sorts start from 1300-1400E (BSc. degree award or equivalent) vs. 2000+GBP in the UK (even more if your work-place is in a big place like London). If you compare this salary to a sales person for example, which requires no degree whatsoever, the difference is simply remarkable. It is true, that he who sucks up goes forward in Cyprus, and we, geeks, possess no such skill, so we are doomed to stay forever at the base of the pyramid.

In Cyprus, my dear reader, nobody cares about the person who is sweating to get the work done. In Cyprus always takes the credit the one that manages to sell your product that you’ve build. The management doesn’t care how much effort you’ve put in (hence, no engineer is awarded a bonus when the network is rock-solid, but sales people are awarded a bonus on top of their fat salary if they manage to sell a part of it), as long as its working and we can sell it. I am not saying that a sales person isn’t putting effort to sell something, but at the end of the day if your product receives enough marketing exposure and it is better quality and competitive priced against the competition it practically sells itself. However, if you don’t have capable engineers, people to make the best out of the budget you assign to them, people to make a living network out of a bunch of fibre patch-cords and life-less switches and routers you can’t sell anything. And if you can’t maintain it, you’ll end up loosing everything you’ve sold.

Your knowledge goes completely unappreciated. If you don’t work to build something from the bottom up, but you enjoy the end result, you just take it for granted. Who cares about the engineers that constructed the plane I am on? (But you always remember them when something goes wrong). Its like you’ve been given the knowledge to build networks, to build planes and cars, to program computers from birth. Its no lie that you have to spend a considerable portion of the best years of your life studying hard to begin scratching the surface of the science you love. Its no lie that you have to spend years studying, reading, understanding, practicing before you fully understand the complexities hidden under the hood of your car’s engine or whats going on on the other end of your computer monitor, deep inside a complex and nested computer network. It might take 1 hour and a few words in a terminal to solve your problem and it seems simple, but to get to that point you need years of hard-work. But when something goes wrong, then you magically become the king of the world. You become the centre of the universe, and they remember where your office is. Please, enough of the irony.

And lets face it, engineering is not for everyone. Not everyone can handle pressure, deadlines, an upset customer, the risk of a decision, the skill of troubleshooting and the skill of making a computer understand him. As an anonymous cleverly put it:

There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary, and those who don’t

Please, take a moment and try to imagine you, living in a world without engineers. Without technology and innovation. Start thinking what you would do without electricity, your car, planes, internet, computers, mobile phones, houses and bridges. Your dependancy on engineers can not be hidden, and lets face it, they make YOUR WORLD TICK.

Dear reader, don’t get me wrong. We are not doing it for money or fame. We are engineers because we like challenges. We are engineers because we enjoy lifting the world on our shoulders and push it forward, even if we end up being the invisible force that magically does it for the rest of you. We are engineers and we won’t tolerate any more abuse, verbal or otherwise. We are engineers because knowledge is power.

Disclaimer: The above post has no relation with any real person or work environment.

PS: There is no place like ::1