IRstuff - I think there's an argument to be made that it doesn't really devalue the end product there. I think that shows in your statement "Specialists are in a separate category." If an NP can provide the standard of care to nearly all of the patients who come through the door at a family practice, what extra value is added by having an MD in the same place? Assuming the NP is properly trained to recognize his/her limits, they should be able to handle what they can handle and refer the remainder to the physician in charge. If that weren't the case, why don't you see the same thing in specialties? I don't dispute the fact that you're salary is built more on being a medical office manager than a doctor in that position, but it is a means to provide more care to more people for less money (or at least that might be the case if we didn't have a really screwy health insurance system - but that's something else entirely). So long as the standard of care isn't reduced in the process, the value will at least remain constant. I realize this is somewhat idealistic - my wife is in the medical game and not me, so I only know about it through what she tells me and what I occasionally read myself. So while the application will be polluted by the implementation, I'm confident the economic principles behind it are sound.
Back to engineering: with technicians who are knowledgeable about engineering and design and not just geometry converters, you can shift some of the labor off of the engineers. This would allow them to 1) produce more in the same amount of time, 2) produce the same in less time and have improved mental health (where people suffer from such deficiencies), or 3) produce less in the same amount of time but can be more thorough in the areas that need it, resulting in better designs and work product. Through proper QA/QC procedures the standard of care can still be maintained, and through competent management/administration the salaries of the engineers can be increased while either maintaining or even increasing value to our clients and to end users.
A lot of the complaints in this thread can be traced back to the manpower shortage that engineering is experiencing. Engineers with about 10 years experience are unicorns, and have been for a few years. They simply don't exist in the wild. Biggest reason - we're 13 years post 2008. A lot of potential junior engineers never even got on the boat, and a lot of junior engineers either jumped ship or were thrown overboard to keep the ship afloat. Combine it with pandemic and a lot of people throwing in the towel and retiring and the sudden surge of work and we're all feeling a tight squeeze. We have an opportunity to shape our profession. We can either force open the flood gates and produce an excess of young engineers now who won't be able to contribute much as engineers for the next 10 years (and then we have to deal with a surge in supply and probably further reduction in fees and/or salaries in 10 years), or we can explore alternative business structures that leverage other labor sources to accomplish the work within or above the current standards of care and, if done properly, increase our salaries. I vote for the latter option.
![[cheers]](/data/assets/smilies/cheers.gif "[cheers] [cheers]")
