Posted on 12/18/2004 8:23:06 PM PST by hripka
Applies on this side of the pond too.
As long as the engineers stick to engineering, fine. When they venture outside there "scope of work" into business or finance... disaster!
Yes, but isn't diversity MUCH more important than any of that stuff he talks about?
This fellow is afflicted with common sense and wide-angle vision.
If you want to read more on the real TV guys. Not that fake RCA guy
Philo T Farnsworth
http://philotfarnsworth.com/
http://www.farnovision.com/
The World's Earliest TV recordings
http://www.tvdawn.com/index.htm
John Logie Baird
http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/FINE/juhde/hills961.htm
http://www.mztv.com/newframe.asp?content=http://www.mztv.com/baird.html
http://www.mztv.com/newframe.asp?content=http://www.mztv.com/televisor.html
Yeah... You just wait until we get a "Wake-up Call" from the Chinese, when they (with their hundreds of thousands of science and engineering graduates) start producing military technology that completely obsoletes our entire military in the twinkling of an eye.
There'll be an insatantaneous 1960's-Sputnik-launch-style panic to "Reform The Educational System" so we can "Close The Technology Gap" - but this time, it will be too late.
By that one phrase alone, your attitude is exactly the ruination about which Mr. Dyson warns. Keep us in our cages, eh?
bvw: You can't "engineer" the bottom line, anymore than a CFO could "balance" stress tolerances. That's why financiers should finance things and engineers should engineer things.
I read this far. I suspect part of the problem one sees in the 'outsourcing' craze, especially in the technology sector, stems from a lack of understanding of the scope of what engineers do. I have said it before in this forum that engineers tend to be the Atlases of the business world, and I still think this is so.
Bookmarked for later reading.
We are no certain exactly what YOU mean by your novel definition of "engineer" except for that clear aspect of your usage.
Now what be you? A lexicographer for the vanity published Dictionary of Belittlements? Why do you make us guess?
Engineer: P.E., M.E., C.E., etc. When someone needs a mechanical, technical, chemical solution they call for an "engineer." This is what I am referring to. Not trying to scorn/belittle engineers at all.
What horsecrap.... I'm sitting here in the heart of the Silicon Valley, a place founded by engineers who weren't happy at their big corporate jobs, so they decided to form their own company.
'Nuff said.
Engineering is working with things to make them work. It is an art that involves deep understandings of dynamic processes and skills in mathematics. Engineering differs from a mathematician's pure trade, or that of a physcist in that an engineer is concerned with actual practise, with developing practical systems that perform as intended.
Those things are exactly what a CEO needs -- to make things work in actual practise, usually with some representation of real processes in models. The same skills in fact as a CFO.
Most CEO's and CFO's are competent engineers in that sense of applying mathematical representations of business and market process to acheive practical goals.
Your usage of "engineer" as a verb was entirely in a belittling sense. You meant that the art and practise of "engineering" was something that hobbles a person, makes tham unable to perform. Why is that? We do not know, you refuse to tell us how that is.
Engineers: From the Drafting Room to the Board Room
NEW YORK CITY, OCTOBER 1 - Every year, a new management fad seems to emerge that "guarantees" success to those who apply it. But, those looking to succeed in the upper levels of management may want to consider a more traditional approach that many of today's top executives have used - a degree in engineering. According to a recent ranking by Business Week of CEOs of the top 1,000 publicly held US companies, more chief executive officers majored in engineering - not marketing, not finance, and not law - than any other discipline.
To determine why engineers are "suddenly" leading major corporations, perhaps one first needs to look back in time. In fact, at the height of the industrial revolution in the late 1800s and early 1900s, engineers were much more visible as business leaders. These entrepreneurs - such as Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and the Wright brothers, to name a few - not only invented new products, but developed the means to produce them. As a result, new corporations were formed to manufacture, market, and distribute their innovations. These organizations were usually led by the engineers who founded them. Succeeding generations of leadership often possessed many of the characteristics of their founders, including an engineering background.
Today, a second industrial revolution, this one involving communications, is also being led by engineers. Like their predecessors, they are also founding and leading large corporations that are at the forefront of the communications revolution.
Nice little corporate caste system you've got there. Hope it works for you.
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