Posted on 12/26/2002 2:03:20 PM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
CHICAGO (CSM) - Paul Porter is closing the door on his engineering career - even though he's only 29. In recent weeks, his wife and five close colleagues were added to the more than 50,000 employees axed by his employer, Nortel Networks. That was the catalyst that prompted the New York native, already disgruntled with his choice of profession, to look into attending either business or law school.
"I spent seven years in school, and it resulted in a six-year career," says Porter, who feels his master's degree in engineering is little more than "a base."
It's a pattern that's recurring with surprising, and disturbing, frequency in a profession long known for job security.
Dissatisfaction with the field is growing rapidly. Layoffs, the influx of foreign workers, and offshore outsourcing of jobs have caused the pocket-protector set to either leave the profession in large numbers or seek new careers after being laid off.
And if that isn't enough to make engineers' neckties curl in Dilbert-style desperation, there's the nature of the work itself. In an era when high-tech gear becomes obsolete almost as fast as dairy products, many in the field feel they must advance at a steady pace or risk being cast aside.
It's a far cry from the era when engineering skills were a ticket to a lifelong salary and, some say, it raises questions about America's ability to remain at the forefront of technology.
"For people who view this as a career, engineering is in worse shape now than it's been in years," says LeEarl Bryant, president of the Institute of Electronic and Electronic Engineers, which represents 235,000 professional members.
The downturn in the profession has taken many by surprise. In the '80s many felt there was an engineering shortage in the United States to compete with Japan's dominance of technology markets. Then, the commercialization of the Internet created a hiring frenzy in which high-tech corporations gave huge bonuses to new hires and the employees who referred them. The IEEE-USA reports that such bonuses pushed the median salary for its members to $93,100 at the peak of the dot-com era.
But all that changed with the dot-com bust and the recession. This year, for example, telecommunications and computer makers have already slashed nearly 400,000 workers - and that's down from last year's 500,000 layoffs - according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Even Dilbert creator Scott Adams, himself a former engineer, has an eye on the trend. "The general balance of power has swung. Engineers had it for a while, now the bosses have it back," says Adams, whose comic-strip boss has hair shaped like a pair of horns on either side of his balding head.
Adding to the frustration of some engineers are the numbers of foreigners competing for jobs. In 2000, near the end of the high-tech boom, industry CEOs convinced Congress to nearly double the number of H-1B visas, allowing up to 195,000 skilled workers from India and elsewhere into the United States. Some engineers contend that those CEOs kept many of those H-1B workers while cutting higher-paid U.S. citizens.
"About 80,000 engineers were unemployed a few months ago. If you take out the H-1Bs who came in, you'd have jobs for all of them," the IEEE-USA's Bryant says. The organization is lobbying Congress to lower the number of H-1B visas issued.
But U.S. companies may continue to rely on foreign workers as the number of people entering the profession shows signs of decline. Demand for engineering courses is down in the United States, according to the National Science Foundation statistics. In 2000, there were just over 59,000 engineering graduates, compared to 63,000 students in 1996.
Not everyone is gloomy about prospects in the profession, however. "Salaries are up, and we're faring better (concerning layoffs) than many other professions," says Win Philips, chairman of the American Association of Engineering Societies.
Many engineers are facing a challenge of a different sort. Graying engineers who have decades of work experience are as rare as a black and white television. Even those under 40 are often considered old: A computer-science professor in California has statistics to show that programmers have careers not much longer than pro-football players.
"The half-life of engineering knowledge, the time it takes for something to become obsolete, is from 7 to 2 1/2 years. Lifelong learning is critical in this profession," says William Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering. Still, he says, engineering is "an incredibly exciting and rewarding profession."
I'm up to my armpits in projects where mediocre engineers without ethic or ownership seek to churn out a deliverable without even making field verifications or to the contrary, hone a professional skill to evade cyclical review processes in hopes for milking a dry cow for modifications.
Good money won't turn a bad AE good.
Unfortunately for the profession, too many people with access to PCs, a spreadsheet, AutoCAD, and a handful of past drawings believe they have the acumen to design as professionals. Concurrently, every tradesman and his brother now believes they have the ability to design because they can afford a spreadsheet, copier, ACAD, and can knock out a plot plan or elevation or detail.
In the last 10 years, I've seen the profession slip considerably. Construction projects get knocked out today with about 10-20 cents on the dollar of actual value as compared to 20 years ago.
One advantage to this situation is that the lack of professionalism inherant in many designs today, insure job security for engineers in the future.
A disadvantage is that so much of the professions have become codified, that innovative unique productive design improvements are difficult to find today, simply because the bulk of financial obligations are directed to off-the-shelf, codified methods installed by tradesmen.
Same thing goes for guys with degrees in Physics or Chemistry or Mathematics. I have no doubt that those who matriculate, especially from most competitive institutions with those degrees are far better qualified than many marginal engineers, but unfortunately the people who initially screen resumes rarely comprehend the distinctions or 60%-95% of the screeners of resumes lack the ability to discern your abilities with those degrees.
Contractually and legally, in the practice of engineering one needs the PE. However, there are plenty of niches to perform work where the engineering skills provide an upper edge in contracting.
Much of the electronics and computer industry sidestepped the professions simply because demand exceeded supply of those skill sets, but IMHO, a handful of major computer and electronics firms need to be hauled into court to pay massive fines for avoiding the professions and assisting in their demise economically. Corporations which hired EEs to design their systems under the direction of non-engineering staff, IMHO, have set the industry and profession backwards 20 years. By promoting unqualified personnel into senior level positions they have promoted inefficient design mechanisms and instead have promoted a lower middleclass of technicians from the limited resources the nation had to create professionals. I suspect the next 20 years in the electronics and computer industry is going to weed out the money managers and MBAs, because the EE is in the critical path and the money is going to go elsewhere. Competition will drive the industry back towards professionalism, but not before a handful of tragic episodes I suspect where the guilty are praised and the innocent are blamed.
I digress, though,...Civil Engr, MechE, ElecE, CompSci/MathSci or Architect are the stable undergrad enginering related degrees for future growth. Some multidisciplinary programs exist, but I'd recommend securing one of the basic degrees either at the bachelors or master's level.
5-7 years academic work, hopefully coincident to field work to identify tools of the industry, then 2-4 years of professional caliber work experience works well.
Only problem is that we've experienced a generation where the PC has interrupted the professional experience workflow and experience development of junior engineers.
30 years ago an EIT or equivalent (prior to the EIT exam) might work as a draftsman to a registered PE in producing deliverables for the profession. This work coincidently provided hands-on experience and opportunity to follow professional identification and problem solving skills. Last 20 years, good PEs were able to design on the fly with PCs. Older PEs still tend to make notes on scratch paper and then direct draftsmen to churn out the drawings, but by no means is this the norm for younger PEs.
The industry tends to demand rapid designs, cyclical review, and focus on satisfying the funding source.
IMHO, the industries financing engineering efforts have not been stable enough to insure longevity in the supervising authorities sufficiently to recognize the merits of good to outstanding engineering efforts over the producables from mediocre design product. When the financing industries become more stable, engineering mediocrity will disappear. But show me one industry that hasn't undergone 'rightsizing/downsizing/layoffs' and I'll show you an area where some actual good design has evolved.
Bingo. After a lot of hard spent soul searching and observation I attribute this mainly to the advent of the PC and high productivity software. All the professions must render a value to society. The mechanics of producing the deliverables in those professions all hinged upon the first the professional skills and then the mechanics to communicate those evaluations, frequently by paper.
For every seasoned professional, there were 10 to 100 tradesmen or subprofessionals in the same industries who aspired to perform work, past predicated upon professional review, but now a echanism existed where subprofessional work could generate just sufficient communication to direct workable solutions (at least short-term workable solutions viable for perhaps 1-4 years without professional approval)
Then the MBAs/yuppies marched into play seeking mammon.
The response time of the clients to identify subprofessional insufficient design was greater than the longevity of the clients directing work.
Doctors were redirected into PPOs or Coops and HMOs merely as well educated technicians and their prognoses were replaced by JCAHO standards.
Accountants were redirected to corporate mergers and due diligence evaluations of competitors to seize marketshare, while their accounts became spreadsheet manipulations by bookkeepers.
Lawyers had their actions prepared by paralegals and codified rulings promoted out of court settlements over sincere dedication to the law.
Engineers have had their designs codified and regulated to the point that well engineered designs today are frequently not approved because they aren't understood by subprofessionally trained inspectors only familiar with local codified standards and municipal funding mechanisms.
IMHO, The professions are still more stable and robust than their counterparts in the trades.
There are enough laws on the books emphasizing the exclusivity of engineering work to the domain of registered engineers to entice a plethora of trial lawyers to go after every major consumer product firm and provide ample financial justification to re-establish the profession.
IMHO, the professions have been targets as a sideproduct of political machinations of socialists from communistic leanings. The ol' bougeousie to be first eliminated. Notice how all the functions of Environmental Engineering were the prior domains of Civil Engineering, Chemistry, Biology, and Architecture. Yet the cofers which should be directed to those professions are redirected to subprofessional regulators controlling 'Environmental Engineering'.
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