engineering graduate school question

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Now the critical point of the whole tale is 'How were your relations with that particular boss affected'. If they improved, kudos to all. If you had to go job-hunting, boo.

Did you (do you) work there? Sounds like you witnessed this first hand. Are you sure it was nepotism if more than one person has the same last name? Why were all the engineers fired?

Neither, actually. He worried that I might take his job or try to, but I wouldn't have touched it. By the time he actually realized that, I had arranged to move on. I took a year off to be with my first wife in her last year. We traveled while she could, then we relaxed at home. After a breather with my sister in Texas, I got another research lab position with Siemens, from which I eventually retired for the third and last time.

Jerry

Or perhaps one day I will start using the spell checker.

fg

Such eloquent words!

Sounds like an awful place to work. Did you try to explain to them the error of their ways? The folly of firing all the engineers and replacing them with business analysts? You should have told them, explained to them that the world _needs_ electrical engineers. Tell them, make them see that 1 engineer is worth a dozen--no, 100-- business analysts. We would still be living in the Middle Ages if it weren't for the electrical engineer, who harnessed the power of electricity for the comfort and convenience of man. Out of all 300 of those managers, surely there were some who would see the light! You should find one or two competent managers, and make a case for keeping those engineering jobs.

bg

And they will laugh at you - as you know full well. If a company is making something for 100GBP and selling it for 95GBP - it's being run by an engineer. Engineers invent something brilliant which sells in their millions - but 99.9% of the sales go to a cheap Chinese rip-off.

Give an engineer an engineering problem and he's as happy as Larry. Give him a financial and marketing one and he rolls over and falls asleep.

Engineers can go home happy that their ethics are respected. Financial and sales people know that their ethics are a luxury that they can't put on their expense sheet.

Even sewerage engineers don't live in the sewer and have to play footsie with the rats every day..unlike their management team..

As an engineer you can wear what you like, drive what you like, live where you like, eat what you like, befrieind who you like... but your salary is only there because of those in the scunge works..

The middle ages were long over before electricity was anything more than a drawing-room curiosity. The credit you wish to bestow probably belongs to millwrights.

Jerry

The invention of the printing press is also probably high on the list of developments that fostered the exit of the middle ages.

The development of printing was certainly important. The press itself had been in use for a long time as an artist's tool. Printing as we know it was made possible by the development of movable type, which in turn depended on the metallurgy of type metal. That alloy of lead, antimony, and tin was made possible by an extensive mining and transportation infrastructure. Its special properties include expanding upon cooling so as to make sharp castings in metal molds, being hard enough to make many impressions, and being soft enough to be planed with steel tools to uniform height. Although the press itself came to symbolize the process, Gutenberg's invention was the details of a type foundry. It seems probable that someone else invented the actual metal composition.

Jerry

If sales is run by engineering everything will work but nothing will be shipped.

If sales is run by marketing everything will ship but nothing will work.

Jim

That may be, but presumably a savvy salesman is well aware that he needs to be selling a decent product if he expects any *repeat* business... and I think that's really where the money is, in most industries (well, that and maintenance fees).

I don't think there's anything immoral about changing the model number of your product if you think it'll make it sell better. Sure, "10,000" might somehow imply that the unit is better than the "7,000" model, but I don't have much sympathy for anyone who would buy a product based on the name alone and doesn't look at the specs.

In most cases I think it's more a matter of they just don't care. :-) Many engineers are perfectly happy to be given puzzles to solve and proceeding to solve them -- what the marketing department does with those results is of little concern to them, as long as they get to keep solving new and interesting puzzles. Be glad you don't work at Initech!

Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. Bob Porter: Don't... don't care? Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now. Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon? Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses. Bob Slydell: Eight? Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

---Joel

So how many of us has not figured out that this is just part of the standing residue of witch doctors and thug rulers. Damn few should remain unedified after this.

Go to work for awhile (if you can), see what you like and don't like.

You might discover (like I did) that the money is in Project Management. Depends on the industry though... in interest of full disclosure, I'm a chemical engineer, not an EE.

Best wishes,

Michael

Yeah, so how old were you when you received yours? Just to clear the air i was over 40, it opened some doors previously closed to me. An MSEE will open other doors, as will a PhD.

fg

According to Le Chaud Lapin, the company he was describing has $1 trillion under assets. Companies don't get that big if they are selling a dollar for 95 cents. The question to Le Chaud is, did this company get this big because of their engineering? Probably not. He said "$1 trillion under assets" as opposed to "$1 trillion in revenues" -- leading me to believe that he is describing a financial institution, say, a bank or investment firm. Those aren't engineering firms, like say, Boeing. In fact I'm not sure what a bank would need electrical engineers for, but Le Chaud didn't say they were electrical engineers, so I'll assume he's talking about MIS engineers. At best, those people play a support role. They are a cost center, not a profit center.

Again, I don't know what the relationship is between engineers and that company's profits, but if it is a bank or investment fund, then engineers are not that important. In all likelihood, they will only be needed until the current project is done. I can see the purpose of a "business analyst" in financial institutions -- they will find new markets and new ways to make money. Le Chaud sounds like he's grossy oversimplifying when he portrays the engineer as the true creative ones, and the business analysts as the idiots. I know plenty of sharp, intelligent "business analysts." and I've met plenty of idiots who are engineers. They usually get weeded out, once they show that they never produce anything but stupid ideas, like reinventing the wheel, only...rounder.

Engineers also roll over a fall asleep when you serve them warm milk and read them the bedtime story "The Little Circuit Board That Could."

Engineers can go home happy if at the end of the day, their jobs haven't been sent overseas...

• fisted stopped.

When my kids leave school I hope that will do something for a year before college. All the people I know who took a break between school and college got a lot more out of college. They had a much better perspective on why they were there.

Steve

It does rather depend on how they spend that time. Staying at home and working behind a counter all year, in order to buy a car/expensive holiday/etc may not alter their perspective on life very much at all.

I've known quite a few change their minds totally about what they wanted to study at Uni and what they wanted as a future career - after a few weeks experience of what the career (or a different one) involves.

IMHO - the gap year is an invaluable part of the education process and well worth a bit of effort getting it right. There is an unrepeatable opportunity.

Steve,

I think that it depends on the person. I started college (well, DeVry's 3-year program) two weeks out of high school and was finished and working at a Silicon Valley company (GTE Government Systems) at

1. I was the youngest engineer they had ever had. I thank my father for putting the boot up my ass (actually at a much earlier age than

I count myself lucky, however. Most kids that age don't know what they want to do. Even so, if a child of mine took some time off right after high school before going to college, I would want it to be productive, e.g., going into the military for a couple of years would be a great option, IMO.

Tick-tock - time is passing, even at 18.

No matter what we think or hope, they are going to do what they wish at that age. The best thing a parent can do is train them properly from 0 to 18.

... snip ...

There are varying views on that. I did, because I finished high school at the age of 14, and took a year off. I then took another off after the first year of college. But I have unconfirmed doubts that it was a good thing. It encouraged me to diversify early. Of course in those days college didn't cost the world, so it was relatively easy ($250 annual tuition!).