<p>That’s been my point all along, and is precisely why I dragged you into this. You are exactly right: engineering is not special, there are plenty of crappy jobs, and we should not delude ourselves into thinking that it is special. This is why I find the talk about how people prefer engineering to other careers because engineering is an inherently more interesting or exciting career to be wildly off the mark. There are plenty of terrible engineering jobs, i.e. maintaining obsolete MSOffice 2000. </p>
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<p>Uh, no, that’s not my argument at all. Like I’ve always said, engineering is probably a very good job for 75% of the people who are in it because, frankly, they probably couldn’t get anything better. Again, if you’re a mediocre student at some no-name 4th tier school, then getting an engineering degree and getting that $50k starting salary is a supersweet deal. Honestly, what else are you going to do? </p>
<p>The problem is with the very best students. They really do have other opportunities available to them. To paraphrase Nicholas Pearce of MIT, why should I be stuck in a cubicle as an engineer when I can make more money working in a team setting as a consultant?</p>
<p>The real issue to me is that engineering firms simply refuse to improve their jobs. Why not pay better? Why not provide more career opportunities? Companies will complain that they don’t have the money to do that…but then they’ll turn around and pay millions to consulting firms (like Yahoo just did for Bain). Yet who is working for those consulting firms? Ironically, it is often times those very same people who might have worked for those engineering firms if they had been paid & treated better. Hence, if you can afford to bring in consulting firms, why couldn’t you just afford to hire those people directly? That’s just being penny-wise and pound-foolish. To this day, I still don’t have a good explanation as to why companies refuse to improve pay for their employees, yet have no problem in paying millions upon millions of dollars for consultants. {Then to add injury to insult, in return for its millions in fees, Bain recommends that Yahoo needs to save money by eliminating workers. I highly doubt that Bain would recommend that Yahoo save money by simply hiring fewer consultants.}</p>
<p>“To paraphrase Nicholas Pearce of MIT, why should I be stuck in a cubicle as an engineer when I can make more money working in a team setting as a consultant?”</p>
<p>Maybe because some of us aren’t money-centric business pukes by nature? Some of us may actually get satisfaction developing new technologies? Just a guess.</p>
<p>Well, this is just my honest opinion, but it sounds to me like people like Nicholas Pearce shouldn’t have pursued and engineering degree in the first place. Honestly, If I wanted to do business, I would be majoring in business. But I think business is lame. If that is the case, I guess people like Nicholas would shovel turds for a living if it paid well. A person should only be an engineer if they like fix things. Benifiting mankind. Watching projects take shape. Solving problems. If your not the type of person that doesn’t want to help this world and who’s sole pupose in life is to make money, then major in something else. I you don’t like the opportunities engineering can offer, why would you major in engineering in the first place. I like crunching numbers and figureing out how something works. That is who engineers are supposed to be. If I was so concerned about money, I would be going into plastic surgery. Again, with engineers complaining about salaries or their job itself. Well, quit. Just quit. I guess that is what america has become, a land of cry babies. A job is a job. If it was pleasurable it wouldn’t be called a job. It’s work. You get paid. Whoopee. Just go to work like everyone else in this world. You could be starving in africa or you could be living in the 137 degree heat of the Sahara Desert. Honestly, we take all that we have in america and other industrialized nations forgranted. What does it all matter, enjoy life for god sakes. You only have one chance. Their are no extra lives or a reset button. Just live life people.</p>
<p>Then why not make the best of it? In principle, I agree with you Forever LSU, but I strongly disagree with the notion that we HAVE to accept a job because it should be taken for granted. There is nothing wrong with shooting for something higher that is unique, unlike a job.
However, I agree that all those that are “unsatisfied” with engineering should do something about it than complain and endlessly spew their dissatisfaction on internet forums. I thank their input for telling us what they don’t like about engineering, but we have to realize that all people are different, and not everybody will be unhappy, or happy for that matter, with what you have.</p>
<p>But that gets to my other point: Most engineers do not develop new technology. They just maintain old technology. For example, all of the engineers who work in manufacturing: all they are doing is just supervising production of technology that was developed by somebody else. To give you a striking case in point, I know a lot of engineers who work or used to work in the auto industry. Only a few of them actually worked in design and actually developing new vehicles. The vast vast majority worked in manufacturing, that is, where you are not developing any technology. You are simply maintaining the production of an existing technology. </p>
<p>Note, I am not saying that there is anything wrong with that. What I am saying is that we need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that all engineers develop new technology. Most do not. Most engineers are production/process jobs or similar tasks in which the design/development has already been established. </p>
<p>Furthermore, we should also disabuse ourselves of the notion that those ‘money-centric business puke’ jobs (as you put it) don’t have anything to do with development. I’ll give you another example, from the auto industry. One of my friends works as a consultant and has now been assigned to work with one of the US auto firms in Michigan on a number of projects. What was one of his projects? A product development project!. In short, it was helping his client figure out a way to develop a new hit vehicle for 2010 that uses existing chassis and parts so that the client can minimize the money they spend on designing new products. </p>
<p>Think about what that means. It means that this guy, who is an outside consultant, was developing more new technology than most of the actual engineers at his client. What makes the situation even more ironic is that he himself was an engineer (or at least, had an engineering degree). Yet he got to work on product development through a consulting job! Sounds like he hit the jackpot: he gets paid like a consultant and he gets to work on product development. Most of the engineers at his client get paid less and don’t get to work on product development either. That sounds like a lose-lose to me. </p>
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<p>Sounds to me that you’re saying that consultants don’t solve problems, don’t watch projects take shape, and don’t benefit mankind. I too have deep suspicions about consulting, but I must admit that in many cases, they do fix problems and they do benefit mankind. </p>
<p>I simply question why companies don’t just let their own employees do those things, instead of hiring consultants. </p>
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<p>Well, I think that’s a bit unfair, don’t you? Let’s be honest. Most people do not pursue their undergrad major as a career. How many poli-sci majors actually become political scientists? How many history majors actually become historians? How many math majors become mathematicians? I think the percentages are pretty small. So why should we automatically expect all engineering majors to become engineers? </p>
<p>Look, most college students don’t really know what they want to do. As we all know, studying engineering is far different from actually working as an engineer. Some people may like studying engineering, but not actually working in engineering. </p>
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<p>I am not saying that everybody will be unhappy. </p>
<p>I am simply saying that there are problems in engineering, just like there are problems in any other career. Furthermore, we should realize that flexibility is important, which is the whole point of the OP’s question. </p>
<p>The OP asked whether prestige of undergrad school mattered in Engineering. My response is that you don’t really know whether you want to be an engineer, and so prestige is important to maintain career flexibility. What if you turn down an Ivy for, say, Georgia Tech for the superior engineering, and then find out that you don’t really want to be an engineer anymore?</p>
<p>“Think about what that means. It means that this guy, who is an outside consultant, was developing more new technology than most of the actual engineers at his client”</p>
<p>Sounds delusional. This guys sounds like nothing more than an efficiency expert advocating design re-use. Big whoop. </p>
<p>Not all engineers develop new technology (obviously). But if that is your goal…and you want to advance the state-of-the art…publish in journals…develop patents…you are far more likely to achieve it by staying in a pure engineering discipline than by following the money trail into consulting. Further, if you stray down this path with a just an undergrad degree and no work exprience, you likely will never be able to return…for you will never have developed even basic engineering skills required in industry and you will be left far behind before you even leave the starting gate.</p>
<p>Still, consulting is a good route for a lot of people that have the right personality profile and can get satisfaction by following such a path. They just really aren’t engineers.</p>
<p>Having two industrial engineers as parents, I will definitely say that plant design and figuring out what products to create when is very much like designing a new product every single day. There’s similar research into past ideas, how you can improve on them, doing small-scale trial mockups, and eventual implementation of those ideas. Certainly there’s some engineers that will do the bare minimum just to keep their facility running, but they’re also the engineers that, if they were in another field, wouldn’t be striving to create new and better ideas there either.</p>
<p>Hey, I’m not saying that it’s the greatest thing. I’m simply saying that it’s more technology development work than many engineers do. </p>
<p>That’s always been my point: that (sadly), a lot of engineers don’t actually get to develop new technology. Quite a lot of them end up working in production, where they all they get to do is oversee the manufacturing of existing designs. For example, in the auto industry, only a small fraction of the engineers actually work in product development; most of them are out on the production shop floor. Now, don’t get me wrong, some engineers like doing that, and that’s fine. But a lot of engineers don’t. They would rather work on developing technology, and they don’t really get to.</p>
<p>Well, then I you are obviously having a unusual experience in engineering.</p>
<p>Look, the truth is, many (almost certainly most) engineers are engaged in manufacturing/production/servicing. That’s not ‘new technology development’, at least, not as usually defined. You’re maintaining technology that somebody else developed. Don’t get me wrong: if that’s what you like, there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s not really ‘developing’ new technology. </p>
<p>Again, take the auto industry. Only a small minority of the engineers in the auto industry actually work in design. Most of the engineers work in the manufacturing plants. Or take the petrochemical industry. Few engineers are actually developing new technology. Most of them are just maintaining existing unit operations. Granted, they are trying to find ways to boost yields and cut costs of those existing operations. But I still would hardly call that ‘technology development’.</p>
<p>Again, I’m not saying it’s bad. Some people like doing that, and that’s fine. I am simply saying that many engineers don’t end up actually developing new technology.</p>
<p>I think this is a fair question to sakky, just so we are all clear what her idea of the ideal career path is. If you are a high school senior, got into every college, and no idea what to do as a career, </p>
<ol>
<li>Where would you go? What would you major in?</li>
<li>Assuming 4.0, and every career option available, what job would you select?</li>
<li>grad school or no?</li>
<li>What job after grad school?</li>
<li>Ideal position around mid-career?</li>
</ol>
<p>I ask these because I think you play both sides too often, just so I’m clear where you stand on this.</p>
<p>My DS would love to join this argument. He started out at a large just above average state school where engineers were admired and thought to be at the top of the heap. He transferred to a top college where no one thought of engineering as a good job or worthwhile career. The engineering school was the easiest part of the school to get into as opposed to being the hardest part at the school he left. Business school kids were getting the highest salaries as opposed to business majors at his old school who didn’t come close to the $55K engineer salaries. Those in engineering didn’t plan to be functional engineers, their goals included Wall Street, starting businesses and Consulting. Before the downturn MIT was sending a third of every class to Wall Street.</p>
<p>So it really depends on the school.</p>
<p>I would have to agree with Sakky that the vast majority of engineers do not develop anything new.
But what is an engineer and what do they do? Anything they want to and are capable of. A smart anything can go anywhere. DS will not take a rote engineering job but greatly values the training.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, these are not separate questions, but rather all endogenous. For example, if I knew for sure that I would get straight A’s, then I would probably go to MIT and major in EECS. In reality, of course, very few people can actually get straight A’s in EECS at MIT. Heck, plenty of students at MIT can’t even finish the major at all and hence have to switch to something easier (like, heh heh, management at the Sloan School).</p>
<p>But since you’re asking for the optimal career path, I can think of several, and I will also give you the reasoning.</p>
<p>*Undergrad: Harvard</p>
<p>Why? Several reasons. First of all, Harvard is safe. It’s practically impossible to actually flunk out of Harvard. Those who don’t graduate are those who find better things to do (i.e. Bill Gates, Matt Damon), not because they were thrown out. Heck, Ted Kennedy was caught cheating twice by Harvard, and they still let him graduate. Whether we like it or not, we live in a world where you basically need a degree. Unless you’re going to be an entrepreneur or an actor, like the aforementioned Gates or Damon, you need a degree. Nowadays, you can’t even get an interview for almost all decent jobs if you don’t have a degree, and if you don’t, they’re not going to care why. All they will see is that you have a degree. It doesn’t matter very much what you majored in, what really matters is that you have a degree. </p>
<p>A related advantage is that Harvard is also heavily grade inflated. While it is still extremely difficult to get straight A’s, it’s practically impossible to actually get truly bad grades. As long as you do the work, you are going to get a decent GPA. Contrast that with certain other schools that shall remain unnamed in which you can work like a dog and still end up with terrible grades. We’re all engineers here: I think we can all think of plenty of eng students who worked extremely hard yet still ended up with terrible GPA’s that basically ruined all chances of them ever getting into graduate school. {But hey, at least they graduated, as many other eng students simply flunk out completely.} </p>
<p>Secondly, Harvard’s networking opportunities are simply unparalleled. There is an old saying that it’s not really what you know, but rather who you know, and college is the premier networking opportunity for young people. I know of no other school that has such a concentration of the world’s political and economic elites. Access to the alumni database is arguably the most valuable asset that a Harvard education provides. </p>
<p>And then of course there is the brand name. Personally, I think Harvard’s brand name is overrated. I don’t think that the Harvard brand name is really a better signal of quality than that of, say, MIT or Stanford. But it doesn’t really matter what I think. It only matters what others think, and the fact is, for whatever reason, whether we like it or not, the Harvard name has a unique hold on the popular consciousness. If there is one school that people in any part of the world have heard of, other than their local school, it’s going to be Harvard. Even MIT does not hold that kind of power: for example, I know one girl who graduated from MIT and took a job at Harley Davidson at Milwaukee where some coworkers had never heard of MIT and thought it stood for the “Milwaukee Institute of Technology”. Thank God her hiring manager knew what MIT was. But she clearly would not have had this problem if she had come from Harvard. </p>
<p>*What to major in: </p>
<p>Well, frankly, at the top schools, it doesn’t really matter all that much. After all, most people don’t end up pursuing their major for a career anyway. Let’s face it. Most poli-sci majors do not become political scientists, most history majors do not become historians. This is especially true at the top schools: as I have pointed out, a large fraction of MIT and Stanford engineering students do not actually take jobs as engineers.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, if you want me to name my ideal major, I would say that I would probably try to create my own, combining something like computer science, statistics, or applied mathematics combined with, maybe, biology. Hence, a bioinformatics custom major. Or, maybe combined with economics or sociology, i.e. a financial engineering or operations management custom major. I have great faith that the application of quantitative techniques to previously unquantified topics will represent the next great technology revolution. </p>
<p>For example, imagine devising a computer algorithm/simulation that mimics the human brain. You would be able to create artificial people. You would also be able to effectively map people’s minds, store them, and even replicate them, such that not only have you invented (virtual) immortality, but you’ve also invented virtual cloning. </p>
<p>*What job would I want:</p>
<p>I can think of 3, all somewhat related, depending on where in the value chain I would want to sit. I could either be a tenured college professor at a major university (i.e. Harvard, MIT) researching fields that I mentioned above, i.e. the digital simulation of the human brain. I could be a venture capitalist who funds startups in those fields. Or, I could launch that startup myself. </p>
<p>The difference amongst the three has to do with the tradeoff between risk and reward. Being a tenured professor is by far the ‘safest’ route because you can never be fired. If your research project goes awry, oh well, you still have a guaranteed job for life. On the other hand, most startups will fail, but if yours makes it, you’re rich. VC is a middle-ground: you’ll be (very) well paid, but you clearly won’t be as rich as those entrepreneurs who make it. You also can lose your job, i.e. if your VC firm folds due to sustained losses. </p>
<p>But, in general, I am a strong proponent of technology and innovation. I believe that technological innovation is the main reason why standards of living will continue to improve. 3 realms are crucial to the pace of innovation: the basic research, which is usually done at the university level, the entrepreneurs who commercialize the innovation, and the venture capitalists who finance those entrepreneurs.</p>
<p>*Grad school?</p>
<p>Yes. Get a Harvard MBA, for the reasons I stated above regarding Harvard undergrad. Then get a PhD in engineering or science (or perhaps business) at one of the top schools: Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. </p>
<p>*But all of this is unrealistic for most people.</p>
<p>Why? Because most people won’t get their ideal job. First off, most college-age people don’t even know what their ideal job is, and even if they do, they probably can’t get it. Not everybody gets to be a tenured professor. Not everybody will get hired by a venture capital firm. Not everybody will have an idea from which they can launch a viable startup. In fact, only a small fraction of those who want that will get it. </p>
<p>That’s why I place such a strong emphasis on career safety. On risk aversion. On taking a bird in the hand rather than trying for two in the bush. That’s why I’ve said that, for most people, engineering is a good major because it’s relatively safe. Like I said, if you’re just an average student at some average school, then engineering is probably the safest career choice available to you. Honestly, what else were you going to do? Most students are average students. </p>
<p>However, if you go to a top school, and/or you’re a top student, then you really can reasonably consider other careers. For example, if you go to HYPSM, especially H, then getting hired by a venture capital firm immediately upon graduation is a realistic (albeit still small) possibility. </p>
<p>Consulting also offers great potential, notably because you get to see multiple industries and multiple job functions. Consulting is basically like an extended job search, the major difference is that you’re also getting paid well to do it. It doesn’t have to be management consulting. Engineering consulting firms also hire people right out of school. Investment banking also opened numerous career possibilities (although, obviously, Ibanking is trashed right now - but no worse than was CS during the dotcom bust of the early 2000’s). </p>
<p>However, that simply illustrates the importance of risk aversion. For example, if you really could get any job you wanted, you don’t need to go to Harvard or any other name-brand school. You don’t need to do a stint in consulting or Ibanking or any other interim job. You don’t really need graduate school. Unless, that is, you want to be a tenured professor, but if you knew you would get tenure, it doesn’t matter where your PhD comes from. </p>
<p>The problem is, you don’t know those things. You don’t know what is going to happen. You don’t know what kind of jobs you can get. You don’t know what kind of GPA you will get, or whether you will even graduate at all. That’s why it’s important to make choices that reduce your risk. Going to a name-brand school is basically an exercise in risk reduction. If you can’t get into one of them, then getting an engineering degree at a regular school is also an exercise in risk reduction.</p>
<p>But that’s what I’m saying: many (probably most) industrial engineers don’t get to do even that. They don’t get to decide which products to produce. They certainly don’t get to design the plant. They simply execute projects that have been decided upon by their superiors. </p>
<p>Now, certainly I agree that after you have proven yourself, you may be promoted to a position where you can design the plant, or be given the power to decide what the plant should produce. But the fact remains that most engineers don’t get to have that kind of responsibility. Plant design and product strategy decisions have already been made for them, and it is their job simply to ensure that those decisions are executed. </p>
<p>Again, let’s take the automotive industry as an example. The shop floor engineers don’t get to ‘decide’ that GM is simply going to produce more Malibu’s and fewer Impala’s today. The plant manager sets the production schedule, in conjunction with the sales forecast and the cost managers. Nor can the engineers decide to redesign the plant, or even a small part of it, all by themselves. </p>
<p>Now, certainly, I agree that the shop floor engineers can advise and suggest changes to optimize the plant and the schedule. But at the end of the day, it’s the plant manager who makes the decision. Most engineers simply implement processes that others have decided upon.</p>
<p>I don’t think I agree with sakky about everything, but this part is spot-on:</p>
<p>“The real issue to me is that engineering firms simply refuse to improve their jobs. Why not pay better? Why not provide more career opportunities? Companies will complain that they don’t have the money to do that…but then they’ll turn around and pay millions to consulting firms (like Yahoo just did for Bain).”</p>
<p>I don’t know if sakky would agree with my explanation, but here goes. Simply put, it’s not an issue of management stubbornness or oversight, it’s a matter of sound economics. Technical labor has become a lot cheaper because the labor pool for technical jobs has expanded while the demand for them has either stagnated or decreased. The demand for consulting jobs, on the other hand, has increased (on average, over the last 20 years) at a rate that outpaced the supply of labor.</p>
<p>The truth is that engineering and technical jobs can be accomplished by anybody who is technically sophisticated. With the end of the cold war and the easing of mobility of the educated classes, this has allowed technical employers to tap into labor pools that were completely off limits not very long ago. When the supply of labor grows faster than the demand, the wages shrink. Consulting or other business related jobs require a familiarity with the culture (both American culture writ large, and the culture of American business) as well as fluency in American english. Some foreigners manage to pick up the entire package and become great consultants. The vast majority, however, don’t end up receiving the non-technical parts of their education in an Americano-centric environment. Since the foreigners that make it here tend to be among the world’s best and brightest, they end up excelling at technical jobs, even if they don’t become eligible for more lucrative, non-technical ones. Interestingly, the children of these same immigrants tend to pick these jobs up because they have the best of both worlds - they’ve inherited their parents’ intellect and are familiar with the nuances of American culture.</p>
<p>The same has not been true for non-technical jobs. There has been no mass influx of labor from abroad because the skills associated with these jobs are so specific to American culture.</p>
<p>“Again, let’s take the automotive industry as an example. The shop floor engineers don’t get to ‘decide’ that GM is simply going to produce more Malibu’s and fewer Impala’s today. The plant manager sets the production schedule, in conjunction with the sales forecast and the cost managers. Nor can the engineers decide to redesign the plant, or even a small part of it, all by themselves.”</p>
<p>This is true and, I think, shows a major problem with American manufacturing: the people at the top are generally not technically trained. This is in sharp contrast with the most successful manufacturing companies world wide (German and Japanese automakers, for example). In America, we’ve seen what happens when product decisions are made by people with too little engineering on the brain. What happens is that you get efforts to manufacture demand for cars people don’t want to buy in lieu of efforts to engineer cars according to the desires of consumers.</p>
<p>The most classic example of this, in my opinion, was GM in the 1980s. Some corporate honcho got it in his bean that the best thing to do would be to tap into american defense technology and incorporate it into the cars they were making. This was heralded as a “brilliant” idea at the top level because it made so much sense to “leverage” the technical advantages associated with the american defense industry. I’m sure a McKinsey person could add a few more choice buzz-words to make it sound even more wonderful.</p>
<p>While American consumers were busy lapping up sturdy, low-tech Toyotas and Hondas with manual transmissions and hand cranked windows… Detroit was busy trying to make the dashboard of an Oldsmobile look like the dashboard of an F-14 fighter jet. They even used this screen projection technology from the F-14 targeting mechanism (the top gun stuff) to project a digital speedometer onto the windshield. Thing is, the consumers hated it. They didn’t like the digital displays even when they were mounted to the dashboard, let alone when they were projected on the windshield. They preferred the old-style, dial versions that Toyota, Honda, VW and all those companies run by engineers never stopped using.</p>
<p>The issue to me then is, why don’t companies - instead of paying millions in consulting fees - simply hire directly out of college those students who end up working for consulting firms? One way or another, these companies will end up paying these people. The only question is, do they want to pay them directly through their payroll, or do they want to pay them indirectly through consulting fees (part of which will then be used to pay those people’s consulting salaries)? Clearly the former is far cheaper, as consulting firms are not cheap. Yahoo could have hired a lot of people for the money they paid to Bain. </p>
<p>Now, I agree that an engineer and a consultant will do different tasks. But that’s actually also part of the point. Why can’t the engineering students (or at least, the best ones) do the tasks of the consultants? Some would argue that this is a preposterous proposition: to take people right out of school who have never held a real job before in their lives, and have them providing strategy advise to top management. But that’s happening anyway. Again, if you hire Bain, McKinsey, BCG, or the like, they will throw top students directly out of college to work on your consulting projects. So, why don’t companies simply do that directly? Cut out the middleman and hire the same top engineering students right out of college to be their internal consultants. </p>
<p>I simply find it highly bizarre that companies will refuse to pay their employees better, but apparently have no problem in paying millions upon millions in fees to consulting firms. But as long as this keeps happening, the best students are going to continue to migrate to consulting firms. </p>
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<p>I agree, which is why I think engineering education and engineering jobs have to change to accommodate cultural awareness, communications skills, and cross-training. Engineering programs ought to blend in more training in finance, marketing, and especially public speaking. {Let’s face it: a lot of engineering students are nerds who don’t know how to communicate.} Design should be a skill that is taught from the very beginning, not just a single course that you take at the very end of the major. At the same time, the students have to take it upon themselves to pro-actively learn these things. For example, I think that all engineering students should join Toastmasters.</p>
<p>The issue to me then is, why don’t companies - instead of paying millions in consulting fees - simply hire directly out of college those students who end up working for consulting firms?</p>
<p>This is a really good question and, I suspect, there is more than one answer. I tend to be a little cynical. Id say that using consulting firms allows corporate management to dodge tough decisions (#1 reason for layoffs: the consultants made us do it) and to outsource blow-back for failures. </p>
<p>If your business model turns out to be complete garbage, how much would you pay to blame McKinsey at the shareholders meeting? And what are your shareholders going to say? I mean, you used the best consulting firm in the business. Why wouldnt you have done what they said? </p>
<p>On the other hand, if everything works out werent you a genius for suggesting using McKinsey in the first place? </p>
<p>Its heads I win, tails you lose.</p>
<p>which is why I think engineering education and engineering jobs have to change to accommodate cultural awareness, communications skills, and cross-training. Engineering programs ought to blend in more training in finance, marketing, and especially public speaking</p>
<p>Yeah, I find that totally reasonable. I mean, when youre looking at academic or hardcore applied science, personal skills dont matter much. However, there should be more of an acknowledgment that private sector engineering requires a great deal of personal and customer interaction. They should be trained appropriately. </p>
<p>I suppose that part of the trouble here is that the people doing the training are largely academic engineers/applied scientists who dont see why or how personal skills would ever be important. Most of these people have never worked in the private sector or, if they have, its been in a quasi-academic environment like in one of IBM or Lucents labs.</p>
<p>“Again, with engineers complaining about salaries or their job itself. Well, quit. Just quit.”</p>
<p>We do, we just do. </p>
<p>In fact, the trend of American-born science and engineering grads leaving their respective fields for greener pastures has been lamented for over a decade now. See, e.g. “Leaving Science: Occupational Exit from Scientific Careers” by Anne Preston. What’s funny about this is that everybody at the NSF acts like the reason why is some great mystery.</p>
<p>Your post about true engineers being clever, but altruistic souls, who simply want to tinker and fix things… and are happy to do so for a warm cot to sleep on a pot of gruel for sustenance is charming. It kinda makes us sound like characters from a Dr. Seuss book or something. However, I find it a little naive. Engineering is neither the priesthood nor the peace corps. In fact, the kids in the peace corps often go onto much cushier and more lucrative jobs in the US Govt than engineers coudl ever get once their altruistic stints in Madagascar, or wherever, are over.</p>
<p>Even people (like me) who go into the theoretical sciences don’t do so ONLY because we like to solve problems or want to help humanity. Many of us were driven to the fields because of the prestige and, yes, because we’d like to make more money than high school teachers. Even if that reality doesn’t hit you in your twenties, it will hit you in your thirties. I was a true believer in research and thought my ultimate goal was to advance civilization and all that, until I realized that I’d never make enough money even to send my son to the same school I went to as a ugrad.</p>
<p>In any event, we live in a largely capitalist society in which everything, including an education in engineering, costs money. It’s downright silly to expect people to go through 4+ years of rigorous education in the sciences and engineering to end up being paid less than your average legal secretary with a high school education. Even the ones who absolutely adore the tinkering will quit. They’ll use all the extra money they earn from working in the financial/consulting/legal sector to convert one of their four car garages into a home laboratory or something.</p>