I did a degree in Electrcial Engineering, as in volts and amps, as opposed to Electronics Engineering (or Communications, Computer and various other discplines of EE offered).
I now do design related to power, instruments, electrical, controls, equipment design for explosive atmospheres, thermodynamics (steam), lighting, functional safety etc etc - which also means I do networking, software architecture and programming (mostly industrial controllers, but also tools for my own use) and pretty well anything with a wire.
To get to the point where you are designing real stuff, stuff the public might interact with and mis-use or have it harm them, without very tight direction and supervision is:
4 years degree
3 years graduate engineer
3 years junior enginner
and then you are just an engineer, so thats 10 years, same time to become a specialist doctor and easily as difficult to do well.
After that there is senior, lead and then principal engineer. Many peopoe never go past senior in their lives, lead and principal take qualities that start becoming all about personality as much as technical abilities, though a real talent in either direction may well rise.
It's a lot of work, the turnover annually of knowledge is one of the highest there is, based on rule of 72 wiith 6% new or updated knowledge to acquire each year just to stand still without developing means 100% in 12 years, in a full careeer thats the equivelent of 3-4 degrees worth of learning, often totally new concepts, that might need to be made during the working life of an engineer.
In order to do this it probably means you spend a certain amount of your "free time" on related interests, eg ham radio, recreational computing, side projects whatever.
It's reasonably well paid, but in order to really be good at it you don't do it for the money, you do it because you like it, it is calling. You would probably do it for free if they had good work and you were fed and housed comfortably. If that is not the case, then maybe it is not for you.
First year EE graduates are looking at around 90k starting, 30 odd percent start at over 100k according to our local university.
Mining engineering graduates might be looking at 120-150k first year out )remote or fly in fly out) right now, they are being wined and dined by prospective employers starting in first year of studying undergraduate!!!
So it's still probably underpaid though, even though at the twenty year mark EE might stretch to 200-250k pa, more in high cost centres or particular circumstances. but the span of knowledge required and responsibility is very high.
As they say, most doctors only kill one patient at a time (and then bury them), engineers can kill a whole heap of people all at once...