To answer your questions, the market starts around 1200$ for all kind of engineering, and it is really low why? let me give you a simple example:
In and average month you have 21.7 working days, and if you have 8 working hours per day => ~174 working hours per month, if they pay you 10$ per hour you should get paid 1740$ per month ! There are few companies who do that, and I can think only of two or three (But the fact that they pay you that much, in Lebanon, is that you go there learn their system and their product and you loose any experience you had and any other future experience in another market/company, you end up stuck their).
I mean no offense to any engineer, but a simple worker hours is close to 10$, the worker who cleans homes take nowadays 7$ per hours which is more than the 6.8$ that you get per hour when you get paid 1200$, ironic no ?
Whose to blame? the engineer or the employer who accepts to work for 1000 / 1200 $ for more than 4 5 years....
Whose to blame? the engineers syndicate who doesn't force a minimum salary. Like the doctors syndicate who enforces a minimum of 50 000L.L./consultation if the Dr has a standard MD and a min of 75 000 per consultation if he has additional specialty.
Whose to blame? the employees of a certain department. Imagine a software engineering department with 10 employees getting paid between 1000 and 1400 $ per month. Imagine one day they decide we won't write any single code line without getting a raise. Imagine it on a higher scale... the 50 employees of a company, the private sector companies cannot afford to stop working like the public sector... yeah it might sound rebellious... so be it ( Switzerland law's force now 6 hours of work max per day... and you work your butt off for 1200 $ and end up with tidbits at the end of month )
Stygmata wroteI have a telecom engineer trainee in my IT department.
He is an idiot and knows nothing about IT or telecom .. What do they teach them in university
Universities teach you nothing,You called the trainee an idiot, then you gave him the causality for being one...the university. Don't call him an idiot, he is not to blame. And beleive me he probably knows he is under-qualified and inside his head he is cursing the day he took that related course with that teacher.
In Lebanese university for example (branch2) there is no software engineering, there is telecom engineering and a couple of software course. What they thought us in telecom was remote sensing/radars and old shitty courses (The so called doctor, has a course in his hands with the papers color turned into yellow, literally 30 years old courses), the network course was a book, that the teacher would just go over the slide and you read the book at home; and no technical practice whatsoever. The students rely on training to gain experience, so please don't call him an idiot and instead try to teach him something : )