Engineers are awful at advocating for themselves, and that’s why they study and work twice as hard as lawyers and finance, have less perks (travel, food, cars, private offices) yet they get paid half as much.
The majority of people in finance are working in low paid back office or retail roles. Less than an engineer on average. You only hear about the outliers.
These finance jobs are low paid because they're not that skilled and many people can do them. Same basic reason as why fast food temp worker is low paid.
It's no surprise that the companies with all the money and influence over government have managed to manipulate the general public to turn against the things that could get in the way of those same companies exploiting their workers and screwing over everyone else in the process. I'm just surprised that such weak arguments were what ended up being actually effective!
On one side they tell you "You'll get Weekends off! You'll get more money! You'll work fewer hours!" and other side says "You can't talk directly to your boss! Corruption could happen in your union if you do nothing to stop it! Lazy people might keep their job unless HR documents the problems!" and somehow people are like "Man, I'd much rather spend less time on my family and hobbies than not be able to go directly to my boss!"
Same with regulations. One side says "Have clean air and water! Don't get screwed over by companies who poison you!" and the other side says "Billion dollar companies would have to pay more to not poison you! Look at all these terrible regulations we already bribed lawmakers into passing! Regulations BAD!" and people just eat it up.
It makes me wonder how much more extreme they could take things before people stopped falling for it.
Just take company secrets and walk over to competitors. That is the greatest perks every engineers have but don't exercise it. Some literally become billionaires. You think China overnight taught of everything by themselves? Go ask what did the Japanese and SKorean senior engineers did over the weekends from 90s to 2010s. Law is only effective if it can be proven in a court and judge sentenced it. Vast majority never even reach the lawyers ear. You advocate means you most likely will divulge. The quietest and least "smart" engineers probably are the smartest and riches.
These finance jobs are low paid because they're not that skilled and many people can do them. Same basic reason as why fast food temp worker is low paid.