Confessions: I’m A Young Filipino Engineer and I’m Barely Surviving
This letter may come off as a rant about my condition now but I don’t think I’m alone in what I’ll be saying.
I am a young Filipino engineer and I know a lot of millennial engineers share my sentiments. But if you’re a Pinoy engineering student reading this, I hope it wouldn’t discourage you from pursuing this profession. Being an engineer is one of the noblest professions.
I am a Young Filipino Engineer, Struggling to Survive
I’ve been a civil engineer for three years already. I work as a production supervisor in a manufacturing and distribution company based in Manila for two years.
This is my second job since I graduated.
I quit my first job because the pay wasn’t good enough.
I am from the Visayas region and went to Manila for a greener pasture, a better or more promising situation compared to my life in the province.
But I live in the most expensive city in the country yet the money I earned was barely enough to help me survive my daily expenses every month. The cost of living in Manila is very expensive, ridiculous, and exponentially high. Yet my pay grade could not cope with the high inflation.
This means that I earn less than my expenses. I believe this is the story of every young Filipino engineer out there!
So when I went out to look for another job, I expected I’d find good opportunities in the city.
The only problem was that there really wasn’t a lot of them out there. Due to the economic crisis brought by the pandemic, construction companies and the entire engineering industry went to a standstill.
There are too many fresh graduates and not many job opportunities. For a young Filipino engineer like me, how can I compete? How the hell am I going to get a job during a global pandemic?
So I ended up getting a job that paid a little bit more than the first one I had.
I want to try if I can get promoted after a few months.
The workload was okay. I get to leave the office at 5 pm and have a social life (that is if we can get out and socialize during the new normal)
But for someone who needs to earn more, I am forced to work overtime just so I’d get paid more.
To be honest, living in Manila has always been challenging for most of its people. Especially for young Filipino engineer like me who lives in the province and took a big gamble in the big city.
For its engineers, we are paid a lot less than what we deserve. The competition is so tough that finding a job here is considered a blessing already.
I don’t know why most of us are only paid the minimum wage.
Looking at my wallet, I don’t have enough money to even buy my family a fancy meal.
Everything just goes to bills and food now. While I am thankful that I’m surviving but this is not the life I’ve wanted for myself.
This is not the life most fresh graduates in engineering had envisioned for themselves.
But what can I do? Somehow, this is the situation other young engineers and I face right now.
A lot of them are even considering working abroad just to earn more there.
Last night, I told a friend about how we earn so little as an engineer, and what struck me the most in his response was the question he asked me, “Do you think you’re in the wrong country to be an engineer?”
It got me thinking. Am I in the wrong country to practice this profession?
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