Reason #4: The Default Degree

 Ask a group of first-year engineering students why they chose mechanical engineering and the answers start to sound suspiciously alike. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted.” “It seemed the most general.” “It kept my options open.” In other words, mechanical engineering is often not a calling, but the default.

This reputation as the “undecided engineer’s major” feeds directly into the oversupply problem (see Reason #1: The field is oversaturated). When tens of thousands of students who could not decide between civil, electrical, or computer engineering all funnel into mechanical, the result is a massive surplus of graduates competing for the same limited pool of jobs. You are not part of an elite guild; you are part of the most crowded line in the job market.

The irony is that the supposed flexibility of mechanical engineering rarely materializes in practice. Employers do not look at your degree and imagine limitless potential; they look at your résumé and see another candidate in an endless stack. The “broad foundation” pitch you heard as a freshman turns into a liability when recruiters assume your skills are unfocused. Worse still, if you take an extra year or two to finish the program (see Reason #2: The four-year degree that takes five or six), you end up graduating later and hungrier into an already glutted market.

Choosing mechanical engineering by default often means you never chose it at all. And employers know it. They can sense the difference between someone who picked a discipline out of passion and someone who fell into it because it was the safest box to check. Mechanical engineers pay the price for that indecision with weak prestige, saturated markets, and degrees that promise far more flexibility than they ever deliver.

References

American Society for Engineering Education. (2023). Engineering and engineering technology by the numbers. Retrieved from https://ira.asee.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Engineering-Engineering-Technology-By-the-Numbers-2023-27-October-2024.pdf

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024, April 17). Mechanical engineers. Occupational Outlook Handbook. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mechanical-engineers.htm

Reddit user mechanicalthrow. (2022). “I picked ME because it seemed the most general.” r/EngineeringStudents. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/EngineeringStudents/

Reason #3: Prestige among strangers, pity among engineers

Tell a stranger you’re a mechanical engineer and you’ll get the familiar reaction: eyes widen, heads nod, someone says, “Wow, you must be smart.” At grocery store lines and family reunions, people imagine rockets or robots and assume you are wealthy or ingenious.

Inside the profession, however, the myth collapses. Among other engineers, mechanical engineering is a fallback, not a flex. One early-career ME summed it up: “write documentation; fix CAD; explain why something is late; write email” (u/wtbengdeg, 2025). That is not glory work, it is office drudgery dressed up with a title.

This is the inverse hierarchy of prestige: the farther you are from actual engineering, the more impressed people are with your degree. Your aunt thinks you are Tony Stark. Your coworkers know you are a glorified drawing updater.

Most mechanical engineers do not design rockets or build the next big thing. They tweak CAD models, chase BOMs, wrangle vendors, and sit through endless meetings. The “creative genius” image lives only in glossy brochures. The daily reality is summed up by one Reddit engineer: “Write documentation, fix CAD” (u/wtbengdeg, 2025).

Respect in this field is not tied to your diploma. It is tied to whether your company logo is recognizable, whether your name is anywhere near real innovation, and whether your role can be simplified into a TED Talk. Most MEs live behind the curtain, not on the stage. You are not building tomorrow. You are updating a drawing that goes from Rev E to Rev F.

The Prestige Ladder:

• Layperson: “Wow, you must be a genius.”
• Engineering student: “Nice, ME is a solid choice.”
• Civil engineer: “So what do you actually design?”
• Electrical engineer: “Mechanical is useful, just not very scalable.”
• Software engineer: “Wait, you still use AutoCAD?”
• ME with 10+ years: hands you a drink and sighs

References

u/wtbengdeg. (2025, April). write documentation; fix CAD; explain why something is late; write email. Reddit. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalEngineering/comments/1k45td6/mechanical_engineers_what_do_you_actually_do_at/

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024, April 17). Architecture and engineering occupations. Occupational Outlook Handbook. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/home.htm

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2023). Science and engineering indicators: Engineering workforce data. National Science Foundation. Retrieved from https://ncses.nsf.gov/indicators