Is College important?

[terenc]

<p>

This is useful only to that narrow subset of engineers who are interested in starting their own business AND actually have the inventiveness and techical acumen to create a worthwhile product. For most engineers, the value of the Harvard connection is much less.

</p>

<p>While that may be true that for the general population of engineers, only a small subset are interested in starting their own businesses and have the technical ability to do so. We are talking about Harvard here, which is most certainly not representative of the general engineering population. </p>

<p>If you are able to get into Harvard as an engineer, it (with exceptions like legacies, etc.) means you are a self-starter, a leader, and someone with strong technical skills.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

True, but it’s engineering ranking is much much lower than its overall ranking, and for many people it is possible to get a higher quality AND cheaper education elsewhere -

</p>

<p>But that then naturally raises the question of what education ‘quality’ actually means and how important it actually is at the undergraduate level. Let’s face it - for most high school seniors, the specific ranking of any particular college program is a relatively minor concern. Most high school seniors are unsure what their major will be anyway. What matters far more to them are the general brand name prestige of the school, along with the accompanying networking and recruiting opportunities, along with general lifestyle concerns.</p>

<p>Nor should this be surprising. What if you turn down a well-branded school such as Harvard for another school for its strength in a particular major…only to discover later after trying it that you’d rather major in that field anymore? You can’t simply declare a mulligan and decide that you’d rather go to Harvard after all. You would now have to apply as a transfer, of which Harvard admits only a tiny few. </p>

<p>

This is useful only to that narrow subset of engineers who are interested in starting their own business AND actually have the inventiveness and techical acumen to create a worthwhile product. For most engineers, the value of the Harvard connection is much less.

</p>

<p>But we’re not talking about all or even most engineers. Sure, I can agree that somebody who barely got admitted to a 4th tier engineering school probably won’t be particularly inventive. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about that particular tiny subset of exceptional engineers who were also good enough to be admitted to Harvard (whether or not they chose to go). It would seem to me - certainly after the launch of The Social Network film - that quite a few of them would be highly interested in entrepreneurship. </p>

<p>

Engineering firms want ambitious people, but not all ambitions are focused on management. Many ambitious engineers want to create something great, discover something new, or take something flawed and make it perfect - companies DESPERATELY want those people.

</p>

<p>I would argue that the above statement is incomplete, at least within the engineering career track in the United States. {It may hold true in nations such as Japan and perhaps South Korea, although even that’s unclear.} The history of disruptive innovations, as documented by Clay Christensen and other business luminaries, is that most such innovations are usually first secretly developed as side-projects by engineers at established incumbent firms, in the face of indifference or outright discouragement from the leadership of those firms. Some of those engineers became frustrated enough to leave those incumbents to launch their own firms to commercialize the technologies that they developed, others unhappily vent to their engineer (or engineering-grad-student) friends, and those friends similarly then launch new firms to commercialize those technologies. Only rarely are incumbent firms able to successfully launch disruptive technologies and in the rare cases that they do (such as IBM with the first PC that disrupted their own mainframes) are generally achieved by effectively creating a spin-off division entirely quarantined from the power structure of the greater organization. IBM PC’s division was not only founded in Florida, an entire continent away from headquarters in New York, but also reported directly and only to the CEO of IBM and operated in secrecy from the rest of the company under the code name of ‘Project Chess’, all in an effort to avoid the meddling and political machinations of IBM middle managers. </p>

<p>I would therefore ask - if (incumbent) engineering firms truly desperately want engineers who, as you say, want to develop new and great technologies, then - perhaps Apple inside - why exactly do incumbent engineering firms have such a poor record of launching truly new, disruptive technologies? Why do such technologies generally have to be launched by new startups? None of the established mainframe computer firms such as IBM, Burroughs, and UNIVAC were amongst the first to build the successful mini-computer market, which had to be fostered by startups such as DEC, Data General, and Prime. In turn, none of the successful minicomputer firms were amongst the first to build the successful microcomputer market, which was instead developed by startups such as Commodore, Tandy, along with a (resurgent) IBM (which as I said, did so through a secret Florida skunkworks which was effectively a startup). None of them in turn was able to launch the workstation market, which was instead developed by startups such as Sun Microsystems, Apollo, and Silicon Graphics. </p>

<p>{Heck, even Apple - which did successfully launch the disruptive smartphone and tablet, may not be a true exception if you consider the fact that its innovation may have been tied specifically to Steve Jobs. Apple was not particularly innovative during its wilderness years of the late-80’s/early 90’s when Jobs was not running the firm. Now that Jobs is gone, it’s unclear whether Apple will continue to be able to disrupt itself.} </p>

<p>It seems to me that rather than engineering firms desperately wanting engineers to develop new, great technologies per se, what they actually want are engineers who will build incremental innovations that won’t threaten their present organizational structure and business model. </p>

<p>

Many, perhaps MOST, are so focused on their own superiority and time table that they will abandon their current company in a heartbeat to take that next stepping stone somewhere else - this has been discussed at length in my company, the number of mediocre engineers who bail after a few years because they were not being promoted for their inner brilliance and managerial potential.

</p>

<p>Which only naturally raises the question - where exactly did those ‘mediocre’ engineers bail to? Presumably, they bailed to another company who was willing to provide them with career advancement opportunities despite them being, as you say, mediocre engineers. Or perhaps they bailed to an MBA program with which they would they be hired by a firm - perhaps in consulting or banking - that would similarly provide them the fast career track that they desire, again, despite being mediocre engineers. </p>

<p>I then must ask, if those firms are able to offer fast career tracks to mediocre engineers, why can’t your firm do the same? </p>

<p>

Particular attention was called to the money lost in recruiting and training these individuals who often leave before actually generating a net profit for the company, and how we should simply try to avoid hiring them in the first place.

</p>

<p>Which then only raises the question of why consulting and banking firms feel no such reticence. The overwhelming majority (certainly over 75%) of new college graduates who join consulting and banking firms are going to stay for only 2-3 years. Everybody knows that, including those firms themselves. So either those firms are nevertheless willing to swallow the net loss in training all those armies of new graduates who will leave shortly, or they are somehow able to extract sufficient profits from those new graduates in that short period of time to compensate them for the training costs. Or perhaps those professions simply require relatively few training costs in the first place, but then that only raises the question of why then are clients willing to pay multi-million dollar fees for consulting or banking services that don’t really require much training. {Think of it this way: consulting and banking firms are willing to employ even humanities graduates right out of school, yet clients are apparently willing to pay high prices for those services rendered anyway, and those new humanities graduates turned consultants and bankers make more than typical engineers do.}</p>

<p>Either way, why can’t engineering firms do the same? If consulting and banking firms are able to extract sufficient profits out of their new hires, most of whom had never previously been trained in business or finance and who will likely be there for only a few years anyway, then why are engineering firms unable to extract sufficient profits from their new hires, most of whom presumably actually majored in engineering and hence should enter the job with some relevant knowledge? </p>

<p>

Sales, finance, marketing, consulting, anywhere BS is flung freely and in great volume will tend to favor someone who pops out with a BS and declares that they are ready to manage within a few years… nor now!

</p>

<p>And now I think you just unwittingly highlighted one main reason why ambitious people perhaps should not work as engineers. </p>

<p>

As a bit of an anecdote, I was in a training program at my very large employer, oriented towards “ambitious” people who had an interest in leadership and management. As part of this program we gained a lot of access to managers and executives in the company. Late one night at an overnight training session several of us were clustered around a VERY respected engineering manager when a topic similar to this came up. He told us that one of his great regrets was advancing one particularly management-ambitious engineer into a management role too early - lacking the technical chops and the leadership skills, the kid not only bungled the program but also burned his reputation in the company and beyond, as both an engineer AND a manager. He said it set the kid back years, and made him very wary of those rushing to management.

</p>

<p>Nevertheless, he was still selected for the accelerated program. Plenty of other people presumably wanted to be selected for the program and were never even given the choice. </p>

<p>The upshot is that ambitious people want to advance, and so they’re naturally going to choose a career path that allows them to advance quickly. If your particular engineering firm won’t offer that opportunity, then they will prefer to work for some other engineering firm that will . If the entire engineering profession won’t provide that opportunity, then they will find another profession that will. </p>

<p>But the issue remains that if engineering firms want ambitious people - whether that’s ambition in terms of promotion to management or developing truly new technologies - then they will have to provide appropriate opportunities. Otherwise, they will have to admit to themselves that they don’t really want ambitious people at all. For example, it’s easy for a firm to declare that they want engineers who develop truly new technologies. But what really matters is how the firm reacts when one of its engineers actually does try to develop some truly new technologies. And that is something of which established firms have a conspicuously mediocre record. </p>

<p>If established firms were truly so capable of fostering engineers to develop new, great technologies, then, frankly, we wouldn’t have such a burgeoning startup tech structure. Silicon Valley would be entirely dominated by large firms, and venture capital would be a miniscule industry.</p>

[mrutter]

<p>Here are some places that Harvard grads in CS & Engineering have ended up (since 1984). (And for a case example, consider Alan Taub, head of Global R&D at GM. [Plenary</a> Speaker Tuesday June 7, 2012 - The 43rd ACS Central Regional Meeting](<a href=“http://2012cerm.sites.acs.org/alantaubphd.htm]Plenary”>http://2012cerm.sites.acs.org/alantaubphd.htm)) </p>

<p>033 Asset Management · 2Wire Inc. · AAA Northern California, Nevada, Utah · Ab Initio Software Corporation · Acccenture · Accel Partners · Accenture · Access Global Partners · Action Verb LLC · Active Endpoints, Inc. · Acumen Fund · AdNectar · Adobe Systems · Aegon · Agile Communications, Inc · Agilex Technologies · AIG · Akamai Technologies · Alliance Growth Equities · Alverno College · Amazon.com · Amdocs · American Express · Andera, Inc. · Angelo, Gordon · Apple, Inc. · AQR Capital Management · Aravo Solutions · AristoDigital · Asprova Corporation · AT Kearney Inc · Athenahealth, Inc. · Authoria, Inc. · Autodesk Inc · Autonomy · Bain Capital · Bainwood Huang & Associates · Barclays Capital · BBN Technologies · Beaver Lakefront Resort, Inc. · Bee North, LLC · Bellevue Hospital Center · BessemerVenture Partners · Big Tent Design · Bingham McCutchen · Blackhorse Asset Management · Bloomberg, LP · Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina · BlueCrest Capital Management Ltd · Booz Allen Hamilton · Boston Consulting Group · Boston Harbor Ship Yard and Marina #F3 · Boston University · Briar Rose LLC · Bridgewater Associates · Bronto Software, Inc · Building Educated Leaders for Life · CA, Inc. · California State University - Hayward · Caltech · Cambridge Semantics · Cardozo School of Law · Carnegie Mellon University · Children’s Hospital · Ciplex.com · Citigroup · ClearNow, Inc. · Clever Machine · Cliff Island Software · CNA Insurance · CoBu Technology · Code Red · Cognex Corp · Colorado Technical University - Kansas City · Columbia Presbyterian Hospital · Columbia University/Harlem Hospital Center · CommonMind LLC · Computational Models Inc · Computer Partners Inc · Congregation B’nai Torah · Contra Costa Community College District · Council on Spiritual Practices · Credit Suisse · Credit Suisse First Boston · CrossTech Group · CTB/McGraw-Hill · Cuil · D. E. Shaw & Co. · Daiwa Securities America · Dangermarc Studios · Daniel’s Jewelers ·Danoo, Inc. · Dartmouth Medical School · Data Deletives · Davis Polk & Wardwell · DE Shaw & Co. · Deloitte & Touche · Department of Justice · DeSales University · Deutsche Bank · Diamond Management & Technology Consultants · Dimagi Inc. · Dixie State College · DOE/National Nuclear Security Administration · DoubleClick Inc. · DoubleDyno, Inc. · Dowling & Partners Securities, LLC · Draper Fisher Jurvetson · Eastport Analytics Inc · Eastwan Kodak Co · Effici LLC · Electroactive Inc · Ellington Management Group · EMC Corporation · EMC*2 Corp. · Endeca Technologies · Entelos, Inc. · etrials Worldwide, Inc · Evans Griffiths & Hart, Inc · Facebook · FAS Computer Services · Feith Systems & Software, Inc. · Feldman Gale, P.A. · Fidelity Investments · First Potomac Realty Trust · Fish & Richardson P. C. · Five Oaks Technologies, Inc. · Flixster, Inc. · Fluidnet · Flybridge Capital Partners · Fore Research and Management · Forest View Elementary School · Franklin W Olin College of Engineering · Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center · frog design · GaoHua Securities Limited · Gartner, Inc · Genentech, Inc. · Goldman Sachs · Google · Goose Networks, Inc. · Greater Greater Washington · GreenRoad Technologies Inc · Greenwich Capital · Guardian Technologies International, Inc. · Guidewire Software · Harvard Business School · Harvard College · Harvard University · Hasbro, Inc. · Highland Financial Holdings Group · HLCSoft · Holland & Davis LLC · Horizon Asset International Limited · Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin · Hyperion Solutions · Idiom Technologies · IL2000 · iLike · Imagen Incorporated · IMakeNews, Inc. · Immunity, Inc. · Index Ventures · Industry Aspect LLC · Information Builders Inc · Ingeeni Studios, Inc. · Integrative Bodywork · Intel Corporation · Intel Semiconductor Ltd · Interactive Factory · InterfaceThis · International Air Transport Association · International Business Machines · Intuit · ISI · iSkoot, Inc. · J P Morgan · J2 Interactive LLC · Jamison Group · Janus Capital Group · Jefferies International Limited · Jones Day · Joy Health & Wellness, LLC · Juniper Networks · KANTOR Management Consultants · Katzenbach Partners LLC · Keane, Inc · Khosla Ventures · Kiva Microfunds · Knesset of Israel · Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP · Kowintec, Inc · Krauss Dermatology · La Quinta High School · Legacy Investments, Inc · Legg Mason · Linden Lab · LinkedIn · Liquid Machines · Lithium · Lonely Planet · Lontra · LookSmart · LucidEra · Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects · Mage Sports, LLC · Marathon Asset Management · Marin Academy · Marin Software · MarketMind Technologies · Marsh Croft Property Group, LLC · Masergy Communications · Massachusetts General Hospital · Match.com · Maveron · McKinsey & Company · McKinsey & Company, Israel · McMaster-Carr Supply Company · MDCIV, Inc. · MDT Advisers · Medtronic · Mercatus LLC · Mercer Management Consulting · Metacapital Management · Metaphor Computer · Micro Office Solutions · Microsoft · Microsoft Research · Mindworks Software LLC · MIT · MIT Computer Science and AI Lab · MIT Lincoln Laboratory · MLB Advanced Media · MobiTech 3000 LLC · Morgan Stanley · Morgan Stanley Smith Barney · Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton, P.C. · Mozilla Corporation · MySpace · Nassau University Medical Center · National Institute of Standards and Technology · National Institute on Aging · National Institutes of Health · Network Appliance · Network Appliance, Inc. · Neufeld Scheck & Brustin, LLP · New Enterprise Associates · New Mountain Capital LLC · New York Law School · nextstop.com · NFL · Nintendo Technology Development, Inc. · Northeast Orthopaedic Specialists, PC · Northeastern University · Numeric Investors LLC · Ocala Eye · Olympian Gaming, LLC · OPNET Technologies · Opnet Technology · Optaros Inc · Oracle / BEA Systems / Plumtree Software · Oracle Corporation · Orange Academy · Orion IT Services · Outbound Light Group · Outcome Sciences, Inc · Parfums Christian Dior · Passport Technologies · Patterson Harkavy LLP · Paulson & Co., Inc. · PDI/Dreamworks Animation · Peerspin, Inc. · Philadelphia VA Medical Center · Phillips & Nelson Media · PictureCode · Pittsburg Unified School District · Pivot Inc. · Pivotal Labs · Pixar Animation Studios · Pleco Software · Pluralsight · PopCap Games, Inc. · Positive Energy · Princeton University · Procter & Gamble · Project Einstein, Inc. · Protea Systems · Publishers Circulation Fulfillment, Inc. · Pyramid Research · Qualcomm Flarion Technologies · Quia · Quorum Federal Credit Union · QVT Financial LP · Random Walk Computing · Raytheon · RBC Capital MarketsCorporation · Reach Network · Rembrandt IP Management, LLC · Renaissance Technologies · Reservoir Labs · Resource Capital Group · Richland District Two · Robbins Russell Englert Orseck Untereiner & Sauber LLP · Round Two, Inc. · Salt River Project · Samasource.org · Sears Holdings, Inc. · Seaweed Systems Inc · ServiceMaster Chesapeake · Sevanta Systems · Sharpcast · Shaw Systems Associates Inc · Shelflink Inc · Shumway Capital · SiBEAM, Inc · Sienna Ventures · Skyward Mobile · Slide · Small Business Administration · SmartDraw.com · SmartTurn · SNiP · Solid Concepts Company · SRI International · St. Catharine’s College · St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital Center · State Street Associates · State Street Global Advisors · Stentor Inc · Strake Jesuit College Preparatory School · Suburban Radiologists, S.C. · Sun Microsystems · SunGard Higher Education · SunTrust · Symantec Corporation · Tandberg · Techcelerator · Tellme Networks · Teradyne Inc · The Cutler Group · The Invus Group LLC · The Walt Disney Company · Third Sky Inc · TIBCO Software Inc · Ticketmaster Inc · Tom Stone Gallery · Topix.net · TrafficBroker · Treehouse Enterprises · TripAdvisor Inc · TTI-C · Tudor Investment · Tufs University · Tulane Law School · Two Sigma Investments · Tykhe Capital LLC · U.S. Federal Government · UBS Financial Services · UCSF · Union College · Univ. of Southern California · University of Auckland · University of California, Berkeley · University of Maryland · University of Maryland, College Park · University of Michigan · University of Minnesota · University of New Hampshire · University of Pennsylvania · University of Washington · US Agency for International Development · US Foodservice · US Secret Service · Vanderbilt University · Vanderbilt University Medical Center · Venrock · VidaTech Incorporated · Viewlogic Systems · ViPS · Virgin HealthMiles, Inc. · VistaPrint · Visto Corp · VMware, Inc · VMware, Inc. · Washington State 8th District · Weight Watchers International · Weill Cornell Medical College · Windward Mark Interactive · Wireless Generation · WorldChain Inc · Xaraf Management LLC · Xaverian Brothers High School · Yahoo! · Yale University · Yam’s Electronics Fty Ltd · Yieldex · Zantaz Inc. · Zappos.com, Inc. · zeo Capital Advisors, Inc. · Zyasoft LLC
Document Actions</p>

[cosmicfish]

<p>

Here are some places that Harvard grads in CS & Engineering have ended up (since 1984).

Not sure what this is trying to show, since it appears that very few of these companies even offer engineering positions. There are a lot of hospitals, venture capital firms, consulting groups etc. But, as an example, of the “big 4” defense contractors, only 1 (Raytheon) is present. Boeing, a massive corporation that actually makes big important things, hired NO Harvard grads?</p>

<p><a href=“And%20for%20a%20case%20example,%20consider%20Alan%20Taub,%20head%20of%20Global%20R&D%20at%20GM.%20Plenary%20Speaker%20Tuesday%20June%207,%202012%20-%20The%2043rd%20ACS%20Central%20Regional%20Meeting”>quote</a>

[/quote]

Not sure how this is a case example, since Alan Taub’s only CS or engineering degree came from Brown, not Harvard.</p>

[cosmicfish]

<p>

Nor should this be surprising. What if you turn down a well-branded school such as Harvard for another school for its strength in a particular major…only to discover later after trying it that you’d rather major in that field anymore? You can’t simply declare a mulligan and decide that you’d rather go to Harvard after all. You would now have to apply as a transfer, of which Harvard admits only a tiny few.

And this really is one of the advantages of larger universities in general and Harvard in particular - while it may not be the best school for any particular field, it does offer a strong education in a wide variety of fields if you change your mind. Harvard then represents a “safe bet” where you won’t get the best engineering education but will be well set if you should drift into another area.</p>

<p>

But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about that particular tiny subset of exceptional engineers who were also good enough to be admitted to Harvard (whether or not they chose to go). It would seem to me - certainly after the launch of The Social Network film - that quite a few of them would be highly interested in entrepreneurship.

There are doubtless more entrepreneurial types at Harvard engineering than in other skills, not because of admissions standards but because Harvard is where the money people go. Harvard’s admissions policies do not seem to favor future entrepreneurs (being essentially the same as every other college, just more so), and the few Harvard grads I know never voiced entrepreneurial ambissions.</p>

<p>

I would therefore ask - if (incumbent) engineering firms truly desperately want engineers who, as you say, want to develop new and great technologies, then - perhaps Apple inside - why exactly do incumbent engineering firms have such a poor record of launching truly new, disruptive technologies? Why do such technologies generally have to be launched by new startups?

You have the basics down in your reply - business is business, and it does a company no good to develop a new, disruptive technology if they are unable to profit from it. The fact that they want innovative people does not mean that Boeing can, should, or wants to develop a new and more realistic novelty fake vomit puddle. And if someone comes up with a technology that is disruptive to THEM, such that it is not in their best interests to develop it … why would they exactly?</p>

<p>

It seems to me that rather than engineering firms desperately wanting engineers to develop new, great technologies per se, what they actually want are engineers who will build incremental innovations that won’t threaten their present organizational structure and business model.

Yes, that is exactly what they want, what they SHOULD want, and what most innovative engineers are in fact capable of delivering. The job of EVERY business is to make money, and a new idea that will generate less new profit than it will require in costs and lost revenue streams is a BAD idea for that company! Some times they miss opportunities this way, but sometimes they also back technologies that never go anywhere, so it evens out a bit.</p>

<p>The good news is that the truly transformative ideas you are thinking of are extremely rare. Most people will never have a truly innovative idea at all, and most of those who innovate do so by incrementally improving something that already exists - that thing you seem to be disparaging. Coming up with a truly revolutionary idea is not even a function of engineering per se - ANYONE can have an idea for a product, engineering is just the process of turning an idea into reality. So if you are one of those extremely few engineers who has a truly transformative, practical idea, go the entrepreneurial route - and remember that 99% of the time your idea will be crap, and only about 0.00001% of the time will you find real wealth and fame.</p>

<p>Oh, and Steve Jobs was essentially a business guy - he was never an engineer, the closest he ever came was a brief stint as a technician clinging to Wozniak’s coattails.</p>

<p>

Which only naturally raises the question - where exactly did those ‘mediocre’ engineers bail to? Presumably, they bailed to another company who was willing to provide them with career advancement opportunities despite them being, as you say, mediocre engineers.

To other companies that will not truly discover their mediocrity until it is too late. Seriously, hiring experienced engineers is a big gamble, simply because you have few ways to truly find out how effective they really are. In many cases, people jump ship to get that promotion their current employer offered, and then, having demonstrated their true mediocrity, must jump ship AGAIN to get promoted the next step. This makes each step more difficult, but it is still a faster means for advancement for those who are poor engineers but good at BS. That is not a failing of the original employers, but rather a failure of the SUBSEQUENT employers.</p>

<p>

Or perhaps they bailed to an MBA program with which they would they be hired by a firm - perhaps in consulting or banking - that would similarly provide them the fast career track that they desire, again, despite being mediocre engineers.

And which they could have had by any of many non-engineering routes. For that matter, if a mediocre engineer skips to a different field… what mistake did the original company make? And how would promoting this mediocre engineer with aspirations to banking have helped them?</p>

<p>

I then must ask, if those firms are able to offer fast career tracks to mediocre engineers, why can’t your firm do the same?

Because we use up all our fast career tracks on the GOOD engineers? Why can’t NASA offer astronaut jobs to everyone with a Private Pilot license? Why can’t universities offer tenure to every single PhD graduate? The answer is that the purpose of exceptional career tracks is to take advantage of and reward exceptional individuals. Mediocre individuals will always find ways to game the system, that does not make them exceptional.</p>

<p>

Which then only raises the question of why consulting and banking firms feel no such reticence. The overwhelming majority (certainly over 75%) of new college graduates who join consulting and banking firms are going to stay for only 2-3 years

Presumably because whatever training or development cycle these individuals go through is short enough that 2-3 years is enough time for the individual to develop a net profit for the company. In many cases, it appears that the primary requirement of many individuals in these positions is the ability to (a) have an “elite” degree and (b) parrot whatever their genuinely competent and much more highly scrutinized superiors say.</p>

<p>

Either way, why can’t engineering firms do the same? If consulting and banking firms are able to extract sufficient profits out of their new hires, most of whom had never previously been trained in business or finance and who will likely be there for only a few years anyway, then why are engineering firms unable to extract sufficient profits from their new hires, most of whom presumably actually majored in engineering and hence should enter the job with some relevant knowledge?

Why can’t newly minted doctors go out and perform surgery? It is the same question, with the same answer - the college degree represents only the first stage of the education, not a warrant of complete competence. This is not true for some fields and some industries - the arts, for example, generally produce fully competent graduates. Engineers working as engineers take years to develop.</p>

<p>

And now I think you just unwittingly highlighted one main reason why ambitious people perhaps should not work as engineers.

If their sole ambition is to amass fame and wealth regardless of the likelihood of success, then I agree. They should become rock stars, reality TV personalities, and professional athletes.</p>

<p>

Nevertheless, he was still selected for the accelerated program. Plenty of other people presumably wanted to be selected for the program and were never even given the choice.

And it worked out terribly for him, so how is this an argument? If he had taken a less-ambitious route he would have achieved greater success. And there was no program - he was simply give an accelerated promotion, so many others WERE given that choice, just not until later when they (like he should have) had better demonstrated the ability required to actually do the job.</p>

<p>

The upshot is that ambitious people want to advance, and so they’re naturally going to choose a career path that allows them to advance quickly. If your particular engineering firm won’t offer that opportunity, then they will prefer to work for some other engineering firm that will . If the entire engineering profession won’t provide that opportunity, then they will find another profession that will.

And that is fine. If you really think that your innate awesomeness justifies making you a manager 2 years after college, why would I mourn the loss of your arrogant, barely-competent backside? Let some other company figure out (despite your highly-polished resume) that you didn’t REALLY develop that new widget all by yourself or that your “leadership” of that design team was limited to being the guy who made the PowerPoints.</p>

<p>

For example, it’s easy for a firm to declare that they want engineers who develop truly new technologies. But what really matters is how the firm reacts when one of its engineers actually does try to develop some truly new technologies. And that is something of which established firms have a conspicuously mediocre record.

Well, there is only so much money to go around, and my company literally cannot afford to fund all the great ideas that our engineers produce within our actual product lines - there is a risk in innovation, and most ideas will suck up money and produce nothing. So once we have spent all our R&D budget on areas that we (a) know and (b) can exploit, we just don’t have money to spend on curing cancer - we would love to be a part of that, but we lack the ability to evaluate those ideas from a technical standpoint, lack the infrastructure to exploit them, and have already spent all our money on ideas that actually work for our company. So if some other company starts up to do so, good for them!</p>

[sakky]

<p>

The job of EVERY business is to make money
and a new idea that will generate less new profit than it will require in costs and lost revenue streams is a BAD idea for that company! Some times they miss opportunities this way, but sometimes they also back technologies that never go anywhere, so it evens out a bit.

</p>

<p>Then let me put it to you this way, since we’re talking about the labor market for the subset of engineers who are the most likely to produce groundbreaking-technologies. Imagine a set of employers who employ people who nobody would doubt comprise some of the most brilliant engineering minds in the world and to research and develop many of the most groundbreaking new engineering technologies in the world. Also imagine that not only do said employees generally treat profitability as at best only a secondary consideration at best, but so too do those employers. Indeed such employers will often times knowingly, willingly, and happily support numerous such research projects that are never projected to ever generate even a single penny of profit for that employer, and sometimes may even specifically instruct those employees that their primary goal should not be to produce profits! Indeed, those employees who persist in completing groundbreaking but unprofitable projects are not only not sanctioned or terminated by those employers, but are sometimes even granted lifetime employment security by those employers. Nor are these employers considered to be incompetently managed and unprestigious, but on the contrary, are surely some of the most prestigious and famous engineering employers in the entire world.</p>

<p>Ridiculous, you say? Well, then allow me to introduce them to you, despite the fact that they clearly need no introduction at all, for the readership of the collegeconfidential engineering subgroup seems to know them quite well. Members of this august category of engineering employers include: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, California Institute of Technology, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Cornell University, and their ilk.</p>

<p>Wait, sakky, no fair - you might reply - as universities are not firms. And indeed they are not firms (and for which I agree to take some of the blame for my previous posts unnecessarily restricted the discussion only to firms ). But so what? Despite not being firms, universities nevertheless are key participants - arguably the most crucial participants - in the labor market for the best engineering minds in the world. The top-ranked engineering schools collectively employ thousands of engineers who are supposed to be producing the world’s most groundbreaking and innovative engineering research (for if they are not, then why are those departments considered to be top-ranked?). </p>

<p>Generally speaking neither those professors nor the departments that hire them treat profit as their primary driving motivation, but rather prioritize the “discovery of knowledge” (however defined), or, more mundanely, the publication of papers in “top” journals. If anything, the driving force is therefore not profits per se but rather intellectual status. Research papers published in the academic journals, rather than being kept secret and mined for profit potential, are available for perusal by anybody with a journal subscription, which generally means anybody at a respectable research university or corporate R&D department A junior engineering professor at MIT or Stanford whose research has profit potential but who never has any papers published in top academic journals is far less likely to be granted tenure than one whose research can never hope to generate any profit but who nevertheless publishes a slew of highly cited and groundbreaking papers in top journals. Tenure represents an employment guarantee for life, barring moral turpitude or the university deciding to close the department, which, let’s face it, is very unlikely to happen at a top engineering school. {And even after such an extreme event, as long as your research is still respected and cited, you can surely obtain a tenured offer at a competing school.} </p>

<p>Furthermore, whether we agree with it or not, professorship at a top program represents the pinnacle of status for many, almost certainly, most engineering researchers, at least within the top PhD systems. Not only do PhD students naturally emulate the professors who supervise and chair their dissertation (and can therefore decide whether they even graduate at all), but the entire social incentive system within engineering PhD programs serves to encourage the best performers to become professors at the top programs. Many (probably most) corporate R&D PhD engineers consist of people who failed their tenure reviews as junior engineering faculty and hence were fired, or simply could never be hired as faculty in the first place. </p>

<p>Now, if you disagree with the above characterization, then you have to ask yourself, why then exactly are certain engineering schools such as MIT considered to be top-ranked, if they don’t actually employ some of the best engineering researchers and innovators in the country? </p>

<p>The same logic holds true for the national laboratories, NSF, NIH, and similar government research arms that represent another significant source of employment for the top engineering innovators & researchers in the country. They are not tasked with ‘maximizing profit’, nor should they be. I don’t think anybody would actually want the government to actually ‘maximize profits’, for it could surely do so today by simply only providing services to those who can afford to pay (for example, the government could maximize profits by providing police protection and criminal justice services only to those Americans who can pay, and if you can’t afford it and you’re attacked, too bad for you). Rather, we want the government to provide for the common good, which I recognize is an ill-defined concept, but is surely far more desirable than a government that is out to maximize profits. And that philosophy extends to government-funded research as well. For example, if a bioengineer at the NIH discovers the cure for cancer, that discovery should be published and made available to everybody, not just exploited to maximize profits for the government. </p>

<p>Why this discussion is crucial is, again, we’re not talking about the average engineering student, who I agree probably won’t become a top innovator. We’re talking about those engineering students who were good enough to be admitted to Harvard (and, like you said, might also be good enough to be admitted to Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, and other top engineering schools). Such a student has a disproportionately high chance of eventually becoming faculty at a top engineering school or researcher for a government agency. The upshot is that such people are therefore rather likely to be developing innovations for which profit is not a primary goal.</p>

[cosmicfish]

<p>

Why this discussion is crucial is, again, we’re not talking about the average engineering student, who I agree probably won’t become a top innovator. We’re talking about those engineering students who were good enough to be admitted to Harvard (and, like you said, might also be good enough to be admitted to Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley, and other top engineering schools). Such a student has a disproportionately high chance of eventually becoming faculty at a top engineering school or researcher for a government agency. The upshot is that such people are therefore rather likely to be developing innovations for which profit is not a primary goal.

It may be the early hour, but I am honestly not sure what any of this has to do with anything. How does any of this matter to the OP’s issue or any subsequent point?</p>

<p>

Many (probably most) corporate R&D PhD engineers consist of people who failed their tenure reviews as junior engineering faculty and hence were fired, or simply could never be hired as faculty in the first place.

And you base this on what, exactly? I know a lot of corporate R&D PhD engineers, and most of them knew before starting their PhD’s what they wanted to do. One department where I was accepted (PhD program) told me outright that their graduates aspired to corporate positions, not faculty. My first officemate in grad school was one of the top students in the department and could certainly have competed for a faculty position, but chose a national lab instead. I am a PhD student in a highly-regarded department, and I had no aspirations to academia when I enrolled. I know several junior engineering professors going through tenure review right now, and none of them have mentioned bailing to the corporate sector - their back up plans are to go to other universities and try again! So where do you get that most corporate R&D engineers are academic rejects?</p>

<p>Academia is a very unique profession, and while the research freedoms are unprecedented and the prospect of tenure very tempting, there are a number of quirks and issues that make it undesirable for many, even most PhD engineers.</p>

[NeoDymium]

<p>Keep in mind that tenure-track work makes you very often dependent on grants and the like, which pretty much means you’ll only get funding for popular projects. That’s one pretty annoying constraint.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

The job of EVERY business is to make money, and a new idea that will generate less new profit than it will require in costs and lost revenue streams is a BAD idea for that company!

</p>

<p>Actually, I would dispute even this point. Perhaps the job of every business should be to make money - which is ultimately a philosophical question and likely beyond the scope of this thread. But the reality is that many (probably most) businesses do not actually behave as if their primary goal is to make money. </p>

<p>As a topical case in point, Facebook openly [declared</a>](<a href=“http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebook-ipo-letter/]declared”>Facebook's S-1 Letter From Zuckerberg Urges Understanding Before Investment | TechCrunch) in its official S-1 letter that served as the precursor to its IPO that: “Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services” and “We don’t wake up in the morning with the primary goal of making money.” Investors are then free to decide whether to invest in Facebook or not, and while many in the last week have apparently decided not, I doubt that that would deter Facebook’s behavior. After all, Zuck, either through his own shares or through arrangements with other ‘silent’ investors’, controls the majority of the voting power and the concomitant board seats of the company, and that likely won’t change anytime in the foreseeable future. Facebook is therefore going to do whatever Zuck wants it to do, and let’s be perfectly frank, he probably doesn’t really care about maximizing profits. After all, if you were worth $15 billion before the age of 30, would you really care about maximizing your wealth? Even if you were to then lose 99.9% of your wealth, you and your family would still have enough money to retire very comfortably for the rest of your lives. When have that kind of wealth, you’re probably more incentivized to accomplish other life goals. I know that I would be.</p>

<p>One can also look at many of the largest businesses in the world. The most valuable oil company in the world is not ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, or BP. Rather, it’s Aramco, which reputedly may be worth over $3 trillion - an order of magnitude larger than ExxonMobil. The valuation is admittedly problematic because Aramco isn’t strictly speaking a private company at all, but rather owned by the Saudi royal family - but that’s the point. Many of the largest ‘businesses’ throughout the world are owned partly if not wholly by national governments and are therefore not strictly attempting to maximize profits alone but also to serve the aims of the government, whatever those aims may be. {I would argue that many of the nation’s largest banks became explicit extensions of the national government back in 2008-2009 when they accepted government bailout funding and are implicit extensions today as any potential collapse of those banks will surely be stemmed by another government bailout.} One of Aramco’s tasks is to provide employment to Saudi nationals, and will do so even if it means the loss of profits. Similarly, one of the goals of Chinese state-owned enterprises, despite some of them being publicly traded, is to alleviate social unrest, even at the expense of profits. </p>

<p>But even putting aside the whims of the owners such as Zuck or governments in influencing the behavior of firms, we still have to contend with arguably the most important determinant of all, which is the whims of top company managers. And while managers will always say that their ultimate goal is to maximize profits, what actually matters is what they actually do. </p>

<p>As a case in point, when has company management have ever declared that, after a comprehensive review of the company’s operations, the company management has declared that the biggest problem that the company faces is the top management itself and that the most profitable step that the company should take is to immediately layoff and replace/outsource all of the company’s top management? I would guess probably never. Even more interestingly, top company management never seems to be shy when it comes to laying off and outsourcing thousands of other employees, supposedly for reasons of profitability. Apparently, according to top management, it’s always other employees that drain profits and therefore ought to be laid off and outsourced. It’s never the top management. </p>

<p>The upshot is that even if you take the philosophical stance that the role of business is to solely to maximize profits - a hotly debated topic within the business ethics and sociology community - what matters far more is whether businesses actually maximize profits, or are simply behaving according to the diktats of owners and managers, who themselves are not attempting to maximize profits. </p>

<p>

There are doubtless more entrepreneurial types at Harvard engineering than in other skills, not because of admissions standards but because Harvard is where the money people go. Harvard’s admissions policies do not seem to favor future entrepreneurs (being essentially the same as every other college, just more so), and the few Harvard grads I know never voiced entrepreneurial ambissions.

</p>

<p>I don’t think it really matters why Harvard people may be more ambitious. I would hypothesize that the readily available access to the venture capital community sharply increases their entrepreneurial acumen. It’s far easier to start a company when you know that you can at least secure a meeting with potential investors. But even if that hypothesis is false, nevertheless, as you said, something accounts for the fact that Harvard graduates tend to be more entrepreneurial than most. </p>

<p>

You have the basics down in your reply - business is business, and it does a company no good to develop a new, disruptive technology if they are unable to profit from it. The fact that they want innovative people does not mean that Boeing can, should, or wants to develop a new and more realistic novelty fake vomit puddle. And if someone comes up with a technology that is disruptive to THEM, such that it is not in their best interests to develop it … why would they exactly?

</p>

<p>And you similarly have the basics down in your reply - as you are now basically agreeing that companies don’t really want the hire the most innovative engineers, because innovation often times indeed means producing a truly disruptive idea. Rather, companies prefer engineers who are willing to innovate within the strictures of the company’s existing business model. But such engineers are often times not really the most innovative engineers, who are likely to be far better off either at a startup or in academia/government. </p>

<p>

The good news is that the truly transformative ideas you are thinking of are extremely rare. Most people will never have a truly innovative idea at all, and most of those who innovate do so by incrementally improving something that already exists - that thing you seem to be disparaging. Coming up with a truly revolutionary idea is not even a function of engineering per se - ANYONE can have an idea for a product, engineering is just the process of turning an idea into reality. So if you are one of those extremely few engineers who has a truly transformative, practical idea, go the entrepreneurial route - and remember that 99% of the time your idea will be crap, and only about 0.00001% of the time will you find real wealth and fame.

</p>

<p>First off, even if such ‘transformative’ ideas are indeed rare, again, remember, we’re not talking about the average engineer. We’re talking about the engineer who was good enough to be admitted to Harvard (whether or not he actually chooses to attend). Such an engineer is far more likely to develop a transformative idea than, say, somebody who was barely admitted to a 4th tier engineering program. </p>

<p>But more importantly, it doesn’t seem as if highly innovative idea are all that rare. Like I said in my previous post, many of the (supposedly) most innovative engineers don’t work in industry at all, but rather work in academia or government where their primary goal is to publish in high-status engineering academic journals. While I can agree that some of those research articles are not innovative, I have to believe that quite a few actually are (for otherwise, why are those journals considered to be ‘high-status’?) I would also further surmise that anybody who is promoted to tenure at a top-ranked engineering school probably has developed at least one highly innovative engineering idea, for otherwise, why was he granted tenure (or, why is that school considered to be top-rank, if they grant tenure to people who didn’t actually develop highly innovative ideas)? Yet there are hundreds and hundreds of tenured faculty at the top engineering schools - the MIT EECS department alone probably has ~50. </p>

<p>

To other companies that will not truly discover their mediocrity until it is too late. Seriously, hiring experienced engineers is a big gamble, simply because you have few ways to truly find out how effective they really are. In many cases, people jump ship to get that promotion their current employer offered, and then, having demonstrated their true mediocrity, must jump ship AGAIN to get promoted the next step. This makes each step more difficult, but it is still a faster means for advancement for those who are poor engineers but good at BS. That is not a failing of the original employers, but rather a failure of the SUBSEQUENT employers.

</p>

<p>Sure, but so what? From the viewpoint of the ambitious engineer who wants to quickly be promoted to management, employers who fail to properly scrutinize their new management hires/promotions is exactly what you want, right? After all, if a company shall make mistakes, you would prefer that the mistakes would accrue to your benefit, not against you, right?</p>

<p>Put more bluntly, who doesn’t want to be overpaid? You, me, and everybody else would like to be overpaid. If I’m an engineer working for company X for the “correct” salary of $50k (because that corresponds to the value that I generate), and company Y wants to promote and offers a $100k salary, sure, company Y is stupidly overpaying me. But why is that my concern? If I want to maximize my career, shouldn’t jumping to Y be exactly the right move for me? </p>

<p>

And which they could have had by any of many non-engineering routes. For that matter, if a mediocre engineer skips to a different field… what mistake did the original company make? And how would promoting this mediocre engineer with aspirations to banking have helped them?

</p>

<p>It simply means that people then have less incentive to become engineers in the first place. </p>

<p>

Because we use up all our fast career tracks on the GOOD engineers? Why can’t NASA offer astronaut jobs to everyone with a Private Pilot license? Why can’t universities offer tenure to every single PhD graduate? The answer is that the purpose of exceptional career tracks is to take advantage of and reward exceptional individuals. Mediocre individuals will always find ways to game the system, that does not make them exceptional.

</p>

<p>Um, I don’t see how jumping to another company that offers higher pay and a faster path to progression is ‘gaming’ the system. ‘Gaming the system’ implies people making ethically dubious decisions to advance themselves. If some other firm is willing to offer me better pay and promotion opportunities than your firm, why is it considered to be ‘gaming the system’ if I take that offer? Isn’t taking that offer exactly what I should do if I’m ambitious? Why is doing so ethically dubious? Shouldn’t we all be rationally trying to advance our careers? </p>

<p>I’ll give you an example. I’ve always dreamed of playing pro baseball, yet my dreams were sadly dashed by my utter lack of talent. But hey, if the Boston Red Sox were to offer me a roster spot, I’d take it in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t be consumed with worries over the ethical quandary of whether I am taking the spot from somebody more deserving. Nor would I see taking it as somehow ‘gaming the system’. All that matters to me is that I’ve been offered the spot, and if I want to fulfill my dream, I’d better take the spot. If anybody could be said to have made a questionable decision, it would be the Red Sox management for offering their spot to an untalented person. But that’s not my problem. </p>

<p>The bottom line is that if other firms are offering superior opportunities to their employees compared to your firm, then it is entirely rational for people to prefer to work for those other firms. You might deride those other firms as being foolish for offering opportunities to employees who don’t deserve them. But hey, that’s not the fault of those employees, and I therefore entirely fail to see how those employees are ‘gaming the system’. </p>

<p>

Presumably because whatever training or development cycle these individuals go through is short enough that 2-3 years is enough time for the individual to develop a net profit for the company. In many cases, it appears that the primary requirement of many individuals in these positions is the ability to (a) have an “elite” degree and (b) parrot whatever their genuinely competent and much more highly scrutinized superiors say.

</p>

<p>Which then only raises the question of why engineering firms can’t do the same - at least with respect to those engineers with ‘elite’ engineering degrees (e.g. MIT, Stanford). </p>

<p>Again, let’s be clear about what we’re talking about here. New consulting and banking analysts often times have little relevant undergraduate training that translates smoothly to consulting or banking work. Indeed, many of them were humanities/arts majors. In contrast, an engineering major is supposed to be somewhat related to actual engineering work (and if it isn’t, then that’s another problem entirely). Nevertheless, consulting and banking analysts are paid just as much, and often times much more, than are engineers.</p>

<p>If it truly is so easy to train new consulting and banking analysis, then why are clients willing to pay so handsomely for their services? After all, those high consulting/banking pay packets must come from somewhere, right? Conversely, if engineers are really so difficult to train, then why aren’t senior (trained) engineers paid more? Presumably, engineering firms would want to pay them highly so that they don’t quit or switch to another career, which would then force them to foot the expensive training costs for a new engineer. </p>

<p>The bottom line is that the mystery endures as to why companies are willing to pay so much for consulting and financial services, yet willing to pay so little for engineers. </p>

<p>

Why can’t newly minted doctors go out and perform surgery? It is the same question, with the same answer - the college degree represents only the first stage of the education, not a warrant of complete competence. This is not true for some fields and some industries - the arts, for example, generally produce fully competent graduates. Engineers working as engineers take years to develop.

</p>

<p>Yet apparently not consultants or bankers, who can apparently produce competent high-value services - or at least be paid as if they were providing competent high-value services - right out of undergrad, often times with just a humanities/arts degree? </p>

<p>Well, if that’s true, then that’s just another reason not to work as an engineer, but rather to work as a consultant or banker. </p>

<p>

If their sole ambition is to amass fame and wealth regardless of the likelihood of success, then I agree. They should become rock stars, reality TV personalities, and professional athletes.

</p>

<p>Or apparently consultants/bankers. </p>

<p>

And it worked out terribly for him, so how is this an argument? If he had taken a less-ambitious route he would have achieved greater success. And there was no program - he was simply give an accelerated promotion, so many others WERE given that choice, just not until later when they (like he should have) had better demonstrated the ability required to actually do the job.

</p>

<p>I don’t know - did it work out terribly for him? I suspect that he could have probably jumped to another company or headed for a top MBA program, leveraging his ‘accelerated promotion’. They’re not really going to know what really happened, and he’s certainly not going to volunteer such information. At the end of the day, he has what appears to be a high-value experience on his resume - certainly more so than somebody who simply spent a few years simply working as a low-level engineer without any promotion at all. </p>

<p>

And that is fine. If you really think that your innate awesomeness justifies making you a manager 2 years after college, why would I mourn the loss of your arrogant, barely-competent backside?

</p>

<p>I hardly see how that’s any worse than newly minted arts/humanities graduates being hired as highly paid consultants and bankers. </p>

<p>

Let some other company figure out (despite your highly-polished resume) that you didn’t REALLY develop that new widget all by yourself or that your “leadership” of that design team was limited to being the guy who made the PowerPoints.

</p>

<p>And that only seems to be yet another reason for people not to work for your company. Like I said, perhaps those other companies shouldn’t be hiring those supposedly incompetent people. But hey, that’s not the fault of those people. </p>

<p>But even all of that is ultimately missing the point. The real question is, given your insistence upon competence at your company, I now have to ask you a direct question: does your company pay its experienced engineers very well? If not - and from how your posts have sounded throughout the years, it doesn’t sound like it - then it seems to me that your employer demands an extremely high level of engineering competence…but doesn’t want to pay for it. Then exactly what incentive do people have to work for your employer, if they have the choice to be paid better at some other employer even if they are mediocre? </p>

<p>

Well, there is only so much money to go around, and my company literally cannot afford to fund all the great ideas that our engineers produce within our actual product lines - there is a risk in innovation, and most ideas will suck up money and produce nothing. So once we have spent all our R&D budget on areas that we (a) know and (b) can exploit, we just don’t have money to spend on curing cancer - we would love to be a part of that, but we lack the ability to evaluate those ideas from a technical standpoint, lack the infrastructure to exploit them, and have already spent all our money on ideas that actually work for our company. So if some other company starts up to do so, good for them!

</p>

<p>Actually, if you believe pure financial economics theory, there is never “only so much money to go around”. Rather, investment capital will always be attracted to expected positive net-present-value investment opportunities. R&D budgets should therefore elastically respond to whatever opportunities happen to be available, and if you need to procure more capital, you simply raise that capital through the financial markets through selling equity or floating bonds. {Again, we are presuming that these are expected positive NPV opportunities so that raising more capital should not be an issue.}</p>

<p>Nor should the lack of infrastructure be an issue. To take the example of curing cancer, right now there are hundreds of tiny biotech startups who are investigating potential cures for cancer. Practically none of these tiny biotech startups has any significant infrastructure to speak of. They entirely lack any distribution, any sales/marketing, any manufacturing capacity, even any clinical trial apparatus - nothing more than a few (cheap) labs and some intellectual property rights. The business plan for almost all of them is to partner with an established pharma firm if they do manage to devise a promising drug candidate. Your firm could presumably do the same.</p>

<p>But of course that’s all presuming that you believe pure financial economics theory, but as we are well aware, economics theory has the maddening tendency to entirely discount the inner workings of firms - usually treating them as mere ‘production functions’ - and in particular, to ignore the intra-organizational frictions of firms. </p>

<p>In particular, the problem is not that disruptive technologies are not profitable in the long-term for incumbents. For example, minicomputers disrupted mainframe computers, but that’s not because minicomputers were not highly profitable. Indeed, mainframe manufacturers such as IBM eventually did enter the minicomputer market (after startups had already established the market) and garnered large profits from finally doing so. The problem is that individual employees within the mainframe manufacturers resisted the shift to minicomputers. If you’re a mainframe engineer, then the shift to minicomputers represents the existential threat of obsolescence of your technical knowledge that represents your power base. If you’re a mainframe salesman, then the shift to minicomputers represents the obsolescence of your existing client list, thereby necessitating that you build new client relationships. If you’re a middle manager who rose from the mainframe ranks, then the shift to minicomputers represents the downgrade of a market that you know well. It is then the vested interests of individuals within the incumbent that will serve to denigrate such disruptive opportunities at every step. </p>

<p>What disruption then actually refers to is not really the disruption of long-term profits of the firm - for indeed, the disruptive technology often times actually proves to be more profitable than the technologies it replaces. What is being disrupted rather is the existing internal power structure of the firm. Disruptive technologies rarely succeed within incumbents because existing employees don’t want them to succeed. And with good reason, as those disruptive technologies may precipitate a loss of jobs for those existing employees, or at least, a loss of internal political power within the firm. </p>

<p>For those who disagree, I would ask a simple question: name me a single company (that employs more than, say, 10 people) that doesn’t suffer from office politics. I won’t hold my breath waiting. Every single company suffers from individual employees trying to position themselves internally to maintain their status and power.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

It may be the early hour, but I am honestly not sure what any of this has to do with anything. How does any of this matter to the OP’s issue or any subsequent point?

</p>

<p>Hey, this thread offshot started a long time ago. Seems to me that that began around post #20 when we started discussing the pros/cons of ambition, and what exactly ambition even was. </p>

<p>To reiterate, you argued that employers prefer not to hire the most innovative engineers who ambitiously pursue truly disruptive ideas because of a lack of profits. My reply is that many employers who hire the most innovative engineers aren’t even profit-seeking companies at all, but rather are universities or the government who are not primarily incentivized by profits, nor should they be. </p>

<p>

And you base this on what, exactly? I know a lot of corporate R&D PhD engineers, and most of them knew before starting their PhD’s what they wanted to do. One department where I was accepted (PhD program) told me outright that their graduates aspired to corporate positions, not faculty. My first officemate in grad school was one of the top students in the department and could certainly have competed for a faculty position, but chose a national lab instead. I am a PhD student in a highly-regarded department, and I had no aspirations to academia when I enrolled. I know several junior engineering professors going through tenure review right now, and none of them have mentioned bailing to the corporate sector - their back up plans are to go to other universities and try again! So where do you get that most corporate R&D engineers are academic rejects?</p>

<p>Academia is a very unique profession, and while the research freedoms are unprecedented and the prospect of tenure very tempting, there are a number of quirks and issues that make it undesirable for many, even most PhD engineers.

</p>

<p>Um, I base this on one simple fact: given the explicit choice between an actual faculty job offer at a top engineering department (e.g. at MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Berkeley, etc.) vs. a corporate R&D position, I strongly suspect that most new PhD’s would take the former, if for no other reason, for the prestige of being able to say that you at least were tenure-track faculty at a top department, if perhaps only for a short while. That represents a strong resume boost, for it represents that you were at least good enough to get the offer. </p>

<p>Let’s face it - anybody who can state that they were on the tenure-track engineering faculty at MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, or their ilk generally has their pick of plenty of corporate or government R&D positions. Top-department faculty positions are akin to a Supreme Court judicial clerkship, which very few law graduates will turn down for, if nothing else, it secures them the opportunity for a top law firm or government placement afterwards. </p>

<p>Now, to be clear, this obviously only applies to the top engineering departments (which I forgot to mention in my previous post). Clearly a tenure-track position at some no-name school probably doesn’t get you far. But given the choice of tenure-track at MIT, I highly doubt that many people would turn that down.</p>

<p>To be clear, that’s entirely different from people who actually try to obtain such positions. The vast majority of engineering PhD students know full well that they have no serious shot at tenure-track at MIT, so they won’t even waste time trying. But if such an offer was somehow handed to them, I think few would turn it down. Keep in mind that nobody is forcing you to stay at MIT until tenure review. You can leave at anytime. But the fact that you had the job signals to the market that you’re (supposedly) one of the very best engineering researchers in the world. </p>

<p>

I know several junior engineering professors going through tenure review right now, and none of them have mentioned bailing to the corporate sector - their back up plans are to go to other universities and try again!

</p>

<p>Sure, and what if they don’t get such an offer? Or what if they do, and fail tenure review again? Or what if they end up at a government lab, and perform poorly there as well (as not everybody at government labs is allowed to stay)? Eventually, if they don’t make it, they are likely to wind up in corporate R&D.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Keep in mind that tenure-track work makes you very often dependent on grants and the like, which pretty much means you’ll only get funding for popular projects. That’s one pretty annoying constraint.

</p>

<p>Sure, but those grants are generally not dependent on future profitability of the research question at hand. Or at least, I hope not. A NIH research grant to discover a cure for cancer is not predicated on producing a trade secret that will maximize the profits for the NIH through selling a cure only to only those who can afford it. I hope that such a grant would produce research that is freely disseminated to all cancer victims.</p>

[cosmicfish]

<p>

y, this thread offshot started a long time ago. Seems to me that that began around post #20 when we started discussing the pros/cons of ambition, and what exactly ambition even was. </p>

<p>To reiterate, you argued that employers prefer not to hire the most innovative engineers who ambitiously pursue truly disruptive ideas because of a lack of profits. My reply is that many employers who hire the most innovative engineers aren’t even profit-seeking companies at all, but rather are universities or the government who are not primarily incentivized by profits, nor should they be.

We were, up until this point, talking about engineers in general, not the small percentage from even top programs who go on to get a PhD. You have taken this onto a tangent relevent only to that small group, and I would wager that most of the entrepreneurs and inventors you were touting a few posts ago are relatively sparse on doctorates.</p>

<p>And while professors are not really limited in the scope of their studies, researchers at the national labs and other research institutions are still limited to the focus of their organization. The limitations are mandated, rather than profit-driven, and are still tightly controlled.</p>

<p>

Let’s face it - anybody who can state that they were on the tenure-track engineering faculty at MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Caltech, or their ilk generally has their pick of plenty of corporate or government R&D positions. Top-department faculty positions are akin to a Supreme Court judicial clerkship, which very few law graduates will turn down for, if nothing else, it secures them the opportunity for a top law firm or government placement afterwards. </p>

<p>…</p>

<p>But the fact that you had the job signals to the market that you’re (supposedly) one of the very best engineering researchers in the world.

Law is not engineering. In my experience, engineers rarely even mention crossing that academic/industrial line - professors don’t mention that they were once in industry, and industry PhD’s don’t mention having been professors unless it somehow becomes relevant. While law school is very broad, graduate study is very narrow, and companies are more concerned with the depth, rigor, and applicability of your research than they are whether or not you got a tenure-track position.</p>

<p>And remember one of the selling points of those professorships - you are not tied to profitability, which means many professors simply are doing anything that industry really cares that much about. And for most of the rest, industry is happy for them to stay where they are, developing foundational ideas through the labor of poorly-paid grad students. An attempt to hire a professor away from academia is a relatively rare move, prompted by a desire to lock up some particular technology.</p>

<p>

Now, to be clear, this obviously only applies to the top engineering departments (which I forgot to mention in my previous post). Clearly a tenure-track position at some no-name school probably doesn’t get you far. But given the choice of tenure-track at MIT, I highly doubt that many people would turn that down.

I think UIUC generally counts as a “top” engineering department, and I hear few people aspiring to be a professor even among the top students who could conceivably have a crack at those MIT professorships. Being a professor is a unique and different type of job, and many people don’t want it - even at MIT.</p>

<p>

Sure, and what if they don’t get such an offer? Or what if they do, and fail tenure review again? Or what if they end up at a government lab, and perform poorly there as well (as not everybody at government labs is allowed to stay)? Eventually, if they don’t make it, they are likely to wind up in corporate R&D.

I have had this dicussion with a number of tenure-track faculty, and the goal is always tenure. First school, second school, third school, and after that go for a non-tenure position and try to climb that way, often through the administrative ranks. There may be some who will take industry as an “escape route”, but I think they are rarer than you think and constitute only a small number of academic hopefuls and an even smaller number of industry PhD’s.</p>

<p>Remember that academia is ridiculously obsessed with rankings, and most top-5 PhD grads looking for professorships will eventually find one SOMEWHERE.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

I think UIUC generally counts as a “top” engineering department, and I hear few people aspiring to be a professor even among the top students who could conceivably have a crack at those MIT professorships. Being a professor is a unique and different type of job, and many people don’t want it - even at MIT.

</p>

<p>And I would say that you’re deeply mistaken. The social pressures to remain within academia while as a PhD student at MIT for those who are legitimately qualified to do so are immense. Indeed, I can think of a number of such students who have chosen to deliberately conceal their lack of interest in academia until they’re fairly sure that they will obtain the necessary dissertation adviser approvals to graduate, for fear that the truth of their sentiments would result in reduced time and resources provided by said advisers. </p>

<p>

I have had this dicussion with a number of tenure-track faculty, and the goal is always tenure. First school, second school, third school, and after that go for a non-tenure position and try to climb that way, often through the administrative ranks. There may be some who will take industry as an “escape route”, but I think they are rarer than you think and constitute only a small number of academic hopefuls and an even smaller number of industry PhD’s.

</p>

<p>Actually, I think it’s safer to say that people eventually exhaust their stamina, either because they generally realize that they won’t be able to obtain tenure at any school that they would want, or - more commonly - personal matters (read: spouse and children) intrude and they decide that they won’t subject their family to the instability of perennial untenured facultyhood. </p>

<p>Like I said, not everybody’s going to obtain tenure, at least, not anyplace that they or - perhaps more importantly, their spouse - would agree to live in. For example, I know one recent MIT PhD grad who could not seriously consider taking a position at Cornell, regardless of how prestigious the school may be, simply because he could not override his wife’s veto, which was predicated on the fact that she could not advance her career in Ithaca. </p>

<p>

While law school is very broad, graduate study is very narrow, and companies are more concerned with the depth, rigor, and applicability of your research than they are whether or not you got a tenure-track position.

</p>

<p>Sure - if they can find such a person with highly relevant research. But it seems to me that you alluded to this fact yourself - most research pursued by new PhD graduates or junior faculty is not directly applicable to the company at hand, and the company can’t/won’t hold its breath waiting for the rare bird who does have such highly applicable research. Rather, they generally have to hire whoever happens to be available and has demonstrated the general ability to perform research at a PhD level, regardless of how unrelated their specific research might have been. </p>

<p>To invoke MIT once again, off the top of my head, I can think of at least 10 recent eng PhD grads or junior faculty working in industry who are basically working on topics that are at best only tangentially related to their academic research. </p>

<p>

We were, up until this point, talking about engineers in general, not the small percentage from even top programs who go on to get a PhD. You have taken this onto a tangent relevent only to that small group, and I would wager that most of the entrepreneurs and inventors you were touting a few posts ago are relatively sparse on doctorates.

</p>

<p>Well, look, if you don’t like a particular subtopic, you were always free to simply not reply to it. Nobody is forcing you to reply, or even read it. I certainly don’t reply to subtopics that don’t interest me.</p>

<p>

And while professors are not really limited in the scope of their studies, researchers at the national labs and other research institutions are still limited to the focus of their organization. The limitations are mandated, rather than profit-driven, and are still tightly controlled.

</p>

<p>Yet now we’re getting to brass tacks: innovation is not entirely driven by the profit motive, but are also largely determined by social and political forces. In the case of research labs, somebody with political power deemed that a particular research topic is deemed to be worthy of study, regardless of how unprofitable the free markets deem it to be.</p>

<p>But I’ll put it to you even more starkly. Within the realm of academia - and even research labs and institutions - why exactly are economics and finance professors paid more than are engineering professors? At schools with both top-ranked economics/finance and engineering departments such as MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Michigan, UCLA, etc. - economics and (especially) finance professors are paid substantially more than are the engineering professors of the same ranking. And most economics/finance junior faculty obtained their positions straight out of grad-school with no need for a low-paying postdocs (and even those rare econ/finance postdocs that do exist often times pay shockingly well: sometimes 2x that of an engineering postdoc). I doubt that anybody - not even the economists - would seriously argue that that’s because the economists are somehow simply more talented than are the engineers, nor that the economists have produced a more reliable body of knowledge about the world than the engineers have, as the unending serial embarrassments from the 2008 crash to this present day have so miserably demonstrated. </p>

<p>Nor is it clear that the economists and finance professors are so well paid to deter them from pursuing value-generating opportunities in the private sector. Medical school professors, or at least the ones holding MD’s, are understandably paid well because most of them could legitimately launch their own practices or be hired at a non-academic hospital (and indeed, many med-school professors are themselves practicing physicians in conjunction with their faculty positions). Law school professors are well-paid because, for better or worse, the legal expertise that they’ve developed probably can aid a law firm or a client to win cases. But it’s not at all clear that economists generate any private sector net value at all. Like I said, the financial services industry employed armies of economists, yet practically all of them failed to predict the worst financial catastrophe in 80 years that resulted in the failures of hundreds of firms and precipitated unprecedented taxpayer bailouts. </p>

<p>Nevertheless, the high salaries in economics academia refuse to die. I can think of several newly minted economics PhD graduates who took assistant professorships that pay over $200k a year (including summer support), with no need for postdocs. There are tenured full professors of engineering at top programs who don’t make that. </p>

<p>It’s hard not to conclude that the disparity in pay between economists vs. engineers within academia (which is not a profit-seeking enterprise, nor should it be) is simply due to cunning maneuvering by the economics/finance community to attain greater political sway and legitimacy within the zeitgeist of society. While the engineering professors were busy engineering new technologies, the economists were busy engineering our nation’s public discourse to grant themselves greater power. Your assertion, derived from Milton Friedman, that firms exist solely to maximize profits - which you stated as established truth but is actually a long-standing point of contention within the social sciences and is ultimately a philosophical, normative statement - is a direct demonstration of the power that economists wield in determining the parameters of the conversations that society has. </p>

<p>Allow me to provide the clearest example of all. What if instead of the $trillion+ financial bailout, including the $800 billion of TARP and the additional hundreds of billions of value that the Fed provided in emergency liquidity facilities, which served to bail out all of the economists who worked in the finance industry, we instead spent that trillion dollars on engineering jobs? With a trillion dollars, we could have created 500,000 engineering jobs that each paid $200,000 a year for the next 10 years. People would be coming out of the woodwork to become engineers.</p>

[YoungVeggies]

<p>It may matter, just a little bit. But for the most part, it does not. It all depends on the student. I will go straight to the point: It depends on your GPA and how much you want to get employed.
I went to a pretty less known state school (but well known for Agriculture). And anyways, I work with someone from Georgia Tech in a huge company, and I am pretty darn sure our pay are really close. If yo go to a state school, you can easily join a well-known company in your locaility if you maintain a good GPA(you don’t have to be the best student). Because the company will definitely be a big recruiter at your school. Even so, I got offers from companies that never recruits from my school by just applying on their website. They are really big top-engineering companies so they definitely consider students from all backgrounds.</p>