Career Engineering — Trivia & Interesting Facts¶
Surprising, historical, and little-known facts about career engineering.
The average person will have 12 jobs by age 52¶
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Longitudinal Survey, individuals born between 1957-1964 held an average of 12.4 jobs from ages 18 to 54. Nearly half of those jobs were held before age 25, suggesting that career instability is front-loaded rather than evenly distributed.
The concept of a "career" is only about 500 years old¶
The word "career" comes from the French "carrière" (racecourse). Before the Industrial Revolution, most people inherited their occupation — your father was a blacksmith, so you were a blacksmith. The idea of choosing and progressing through a sequence of jobs is a remarkably modern invention, really only becoming widespread in the 20th century.
70% of jobs are found through networking, not applications¶
A frequently cited figure from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and LinkedIn data suggests that 70-80% of positions are filled through personal connections or internal referrals rather than cold applications. A 2016 LinkedIn survey found that referred candidates are 4x more likely to be hired than those who apply through job boards.
The "Peter Principle" was meant as satire but turned out to be real¶
Laurence J. Peter's 1969 book The Peter Principle — "people rise to their level of incompetence" — was written as organizational humor. In 2018, researchers at the University of Minnesota analyzed sales performance data from 214 firms and found that the best salespeople were indeed more likely to be promoted to management, where they performed significantly worse. The satire was empirically validated.
Software engineer career ladders were pioneered at DEC in the 1980s¶
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was one of the first technology companies to create a formal dual-track career ladder, allowing engineers to advance to "Senior Consulting Engineer" or "Distinguished Engineer" with compensation parity to management. This model was adopted by Microsoft, Google, and most major tech companies.
Salary negotiation adds $1M+ over a career¶
Research by Linda Babcock at Carnegie Mellon (published in Women Don't Ask, 2003) found that negotiating a starting salary of $5,000 more at age 22 results in over $600,000 in additional earnings by age 60 (assuming standard raises compounded on the base). For higher-paying fields like tech, the lifetime impact easily exceeds $1 million.
The "skills gap" is largely a myth of employer expectations¶
A 2014 Wharton study by Peter Cappelli found that most claims about a "skills gap" in the labor market were driven by employers offering below-market wages, requiring unrealistic combinations of skills, or refusing to train. The study found that the real gap was between what employers wanted to pay and what qualified candidates would accept.
Promotions favor those who are visible, not necessarily those who are best¶
A 2012 study in Administrative Science Quarterly found that employees who engaged in "self-promotion" behaviors — making their work visible, volunteering for high-profile projects, and building relationships with senior leaders — were promoted 20-30% faster than equally skilled peers who kept their heads down. The researchers called this the "visibility premium."