Engineering firms are operating in what should be a fucking golden age. Backlogs are strong. Revenue is growing YoY. Infrastructure spending is accelerating. Governments are talking about reshoring supply chains, rebuilding domestic industrial capacity, securing critical minerals, expanding energy infrastructure, and preparing for a more fragmented, post-globalized world.All of that should be an absolute dream for engineering consultants. Instead, the stocks are getting fucking annihilated. Jacobs. AECOM. Tetra Tech. AtkinsRéalis. WSP. Stantec. The market is increasingly pricing these companies as if the engineering profession itself is being structurally destroyed.And the bear case is brutally simple:>AI attacks the fundamental unit economics of engineering consulting: billable human hours.>These businesses have historically grown by hiring more engineers, billing those engineers out at a markup, and increasing rates over time.>If one engineer with AI can do the work that previously required three engineers (and the market is betting it can), the client isn't going to let the consultant keep billing for three people. >Then every engineering firm has to compete for the same work by cutting rates.>Utilization becomes less important because there simply aren't as many hours to sell.>And suddenly the industry's biggest asset, its enormous engineering workforce, starts looking like a massive cost base.I've also heard internally that WSP is considering significantly lowering rates in 2027, with greater reliance on AI tools and outsourcing, including work performed in India. If they are succesful, its fucking OVER for engineering. It's a slow-motion deterioration of the profession:The end game: low salaries, limited opportunities for new graduates, another formerly 'good' career which is now shit.
>>62743257>engineering firmsit sounds like they are financial consulting scammers more than they are engineers.
>>62743257>here's why objectively good thing is a bad thing
>>62743266You think its a good thing for society that the value of labour plummets?Are we all supposed to become streamers and onlyfans whores in the future?
>>62743272>engineering>labor
>>62743257>Engineering firms are operating in what should be a fucking golden agelol no>because muh aiHas nothing to do with it.You still need engineers to even understand what ai tells you to do not to mention actually do it.People are almost never willing to spend money on quality engineering and future proofed products. They do not see the difference between a system which barely works and a system which works well and is easy to maintain.Governments universally run on the cheapest shittiest old crap and want it maintaining on a shoestring budget because all their funds go to the adult daiper department and pension fund and the government is a bigger and bigger player. Doing any public works is a consistently painful experience of dealing with too many cooks all of which are hopelessly incompetent.Most private firms have had their accounting and operations completely divorced and it is countless people's job to try and chip the price of everything down. They don't know what it is they're haggling over but they do know they can buy something which claims to be similar from China for half the price. The longevity of things often doesn't matter anyway because they are only concerned with a 5-10 year time horizon after which they plan to sell everything anyway.
>>62743302t. retard who doesnt know anythingyou need 1 guy to read and understand the deliverable and take responsibility for it. The point is you dont need 5 juniors under him fucking around with spreadsheets anymore.
>>62743257those companies are fake and gay. real companies have their own shit, not fake consultants hired because a govt contract
>>62743257>including work performed in IndiaY'all need to organize and target this, specifically. Fighting AI is a waste of time whether you think it's going to take over the world or if you think the bubble is going to pop. But outsourcing is something that is simultaneously inevitable if the suits have their way, and something you can fight.You need to get the high-productivity folk who would survive the purge on your side. Perhaps through industry events.
>>62743309you never needed those people they were just trainees
>>62743272consulting leaches should die
>>62743302I work on the contractual side of a large engineering corporation. The entire industry is a race to the bottom. Every contract and subcontract is procured by lowest offer bids, so companies that offer the cheapest bid in the most feasible timescale possible. This means that the companies building your HVAC system, designing your structure, planning your electrical system etc. are not the most efficient or skilled but the ones with the cheapest market rate that cut corners in every possible way.AI isn't really a factor into this at the moment but offshoring definitely is. Lots of companies are quietly offshoring administrative departments or procedural work like calculations offices. Indians are fine at performing procedural tasks if you define the procedures clearly for them but they and other thirdies cannot perform any task that requires initiative or outside the box thinking.
>>62743257nice chatgpt thread nigga
>>62743257>And the bear case is brutally simple:chatgpt aah quote
I like AECOM, Stantec, Quanta, and Primoris right now. Good entry points.
Engineering firms are full of ideas guy retards these days. Very few engineers are worth the title nowadays and most of them are in hands on fields like working in manufacturing.
>>62744919>The entire industry is a race to the bottom.This is just the nature of every competitive bid business. Plumbers and concrete restoration is also a race to the bottom.The difference is that engineers have a very high standard of education, code and legal requirements that keep them in check. >>62745443I've got 17k in WSP stock so I hope they turn around. I bought the "dip" which OP interprets as an AI slaughterhouse. I also work with a lot of engineering firms, and used to work in engineering myself, so I think the companies are great, and they are not getting killed by AI.There's a lot of shit AI can never be trusted to do. Lots of engineering with custom produced spreadsheets doing highly complex code checking work that AI cannot do. Also lots of engineering design requires complex engineering programs - and AI can't just re-invent itself as an engineering program overnight. Seriously the amount of stupidly retarded mistakes I see AI make when asking it basic chemistry questions, its not going to replace engineering software.
>>62743309The juniors unironically make the firm the most money, their utilization rates are typically 90-100% versus the seniors having to gab on the phone with retard clients and chase down new projects which drags their utilization rate way down. Once their bill out rate is high enough they can hardly bill any hours anyways without completely destroying project budgets
>>62743257>Governments are talking about reshoring supply chains, rebuilding domestic industrial capacity, securing critical minerals, expanding energy infrastructure, and preparing for a more fragmented, post-globalized world.Are they though?
>in my 30s>trying to change careers>"lots of date center engineering jobs"Should I just start scamming people? Boomers, I mean, not really people.
>>62743302>You still need engineers to even understand what ai tells you to do not to mention actually do it.MBAs don't understand thisFire all the engineers, we'll save so much having Rajesh in hyderabad email us what we need to do :)
>>62745780They’re not, they’re giving lip service to Mr mango until he’s out of office and their stooges can right the course
It's only golden if you have something to sell that no one else does. How many firms in California can I call to draft up a design for a strip mall parking lot? How many could build a system to economically recover gallium from mine waste?>>62745780Talk, yes. Follow up, it depends. I work for a firm that makes machines that remove metal from wastewater and a lot our customer base in the US comes from the push to reshore production of critical minerals, as well as the build out of chip fabrication. Lots of demand from semicon this year and more forecasted in the next 2-3, notably divorced from AI shit. I won't believe a serious critical minerals push is here until I see non-chinese advanced economies agree to nationally back-stop their local REE, W, Ge, and Ga production and heavily tariff the Chinese supply. I think only policy wonks like you or I really notice or care about long range issues like demographic collapse or the end of low-risk global trade, because the world has spent nearly 65 years eating the yummy cookie instead of its veggies and cannot conceive of choosing pain now to avoid more later.
>>62743257>engineering consultantsThat's the problem. Consultants. Do you even know how useless they are? Always have been a massive scam. Actual solution/product providers are doing just fine.
