The big problem is that the American workplace doesn’t make technical jobs attracitve enough. The pay is okay, but less than that of other professionals, like lawyers. And the working conditions for engineers and scientists are generally quite poor — too much Dilbert, not enough Skunk Works. They act as if there’s a positive conspiracy to take all the fun out of it, according several of my friends who work in the area.
The tendency to denigrate the positions of those who actually make things work is endemic in the American business culture, which even after decades of supposed “streamlining” is top-heavy with a relatively useless management structure.
In Hollywood, writers are treated like dirt, even though the script is skeleton and skin on which everything else rides. In industry, engineers and scientists are treated like replaceable components - certainly not as valuable as the hotshots who dictate the creation and marketing of the products they apparently think they can summon up with the snap of a finger, or MBAs whose sole concern is manipulating corporate stock prices.
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“The tendency to denigrate the positions of those who actually make things work is endemic in the American business culture,”
I would modify that line a little, it seems to be endemic to American culture not just business. It seems that currently anyone that actually produces a hard product is looked down on as the job not being worthy of recognition. The industry that I am in has an almost impossible time finding young people willing to come into it.
Empirical evidence to someone-me- who is both a scientist and an engineer suggests that you are spot on with that analysis. Also, the working conditions aren’t ideal. Too much hidebound “we’ve always done it that way” attitudes are driving some of the younger engineers into other fields. My response to them is that retirement will fix most of those problems within the next 10 years or so. Unfortunately for us, not many are willing to wait that long.
This is well documented in the book
“Putt’s Law and the Successful Technocrat: How to Win in the Information Age” You can find it on Amazon.
Putt’s primary law is: Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
this creates what is known as a competency inversion.
It isn’t so much disdain for the technical workers as it is opportunity. Management decides who gets what.
Management allocates the captial resources - money, moolah, bread - to the various activities of the corporation. When conditions permit they simply allocate a large portion to themselves.
Why not? Nothing prevents it, boards are passive, the top dogs are getting their millions, and all is well.
In startup ventures carrying a heavy management burden is normally not possible. These firms often produce innovative products quickly and value technical skills.
I work in a chemical R&D lab and can only say the characterization you give above is right on the money. The sales and commercialization group is the tail that wags the dog. They make all the money and we do the innovation.
The problem with government work is that the government insists that you do everything the government’s way–painstakingly slow, document every possible thing that can be documented, record every time that you even THINK about a design change, and oversight oversight OVERSIGHT. The government requires that, basically, all analysis be done twice–once by the contractor, and once by The Aerospace Corporation. And TAC has no incentive to make things work, so they just throw a 50% required margin on top of everything and then bitch about how you’re overweight and under-strength.
Seriously–government oversight is getting out of hand. At a recent CDR, the Aerospace Corporation contingent was almost as large as the customer, contractor, and subcontractor groups put together! We (the contractor) actually had to have people PHONE IN TO THE CDR because we couldn’t afford to send them–but there were Aerospace Corporation people present who slept through the whole thing.
The big marquee companies don’t want to actually build anything anymore, unless there is absolutely no alternative. They just manage the process of putting together pieces built by others. I had to learn the hard way that if you want to actually design and build something, you need to be very careful before you take a job at a Boeing or a Lockheed. 90% of what they do now is really subcontract management, not engineering.
Such management and “system integration” activities are a lot harder to quantify and therefore less prone to rationalization and streamlining than, for instance, manufacturing a wheel. Boeing’s top management made a mess of the 787 doing things this way, but do you think anyone will get fired? It’s too hard to pin the blame on any one person or process, unlike if you were under contract to them to manufacture a wheel and you couldn’t make it the right size.
DensityDuck, government oversight is a mere shadow of what it used to be. It is not the problem. The reason those Aerospace guys were sleeping is that they know they have no influence any more, so why bother paying attention?
The primes have been pushing to get Aerospace off their backs for years, and it worked. They argue that the government should manage by requirements instead of by getting in the prime’s pants. But this is a self-serving argument. The primes themselves do not manage their important subcontractors by requirements - they get in their pants. There is no other way to do it. It is exactly the difference between actually doing the work (twice, if need be) and sleeping through a CDR.
How true. Just about any kind of enginneer out there from geophysicists to the IT sector are kicked around like footballs.
My brother got so sick of it, he just said to heck with it and opened up a couple of franchises totally unrelated to his training.
6 years in the Navy doing nuclear engineering, 4 years at the Colorado School of Mines and he had less than ten years in the private sector before they booted most of them out. They just get the new herd of graduates. Many young men and women today who have the aptitude, don’t want to spend that kind of time training just to sit, as some of you said to sit in a cubicle and be job hunting every 5 years at that.
This country is now designed to punish producers and reward parasites and pure Machiavelllian parasites.
We are all Hephaestus now.
Just to play the Devil’s advocate, engineers often think that marketing and sales departments are full of airheads and jocks whose presence is almost pure overhead given that it’s the product coming out of engineering that drives everything.
A friend of mine who runs his own law firm complains all the time that all of his lawyers think that cases just magically appear on their desks every day. They don’t see all the hustling he has to do to get clients in the door.
Small and large companies are good at different things. Small companies can deliver very high returns on small amounts of capital in specific niches. Large companies usually can’t come close to the returns, but they can handle much larger amounts of money and do much larger things with it. Give Boeing $20 million and ask them to build anything bigger than a breadbox and you’ll get knocked over by the laughter. Give Burt Rutan $5 billion and tell him to bring a large commercial airliner to market and you might well kiss it goodbye.
If you’re really a super-valuable innovator then going out on your own and finding one of those niches might well offer the best returns. In the process you may find a new appreciation for _good_ sales and marketing folks.
First question: how many lawyers? A dozen?
That would make the management to worker ratio 1:12. I think most of those posting here would find a management ratio like that an absolute blessing, compared to the sort of top-heavy, over-managed, pointy-haired platoons they currently endure.
I posted on this topic some time ago. I think it relevant:
…3. The geek will not inherit the Earth, contrary to underground geek prophecy.
3.1. The ambitious already own the Earth. None is left to be inherited.
3.2. The ambitious are not inclined to share any more of the Earth than they absolutely have to.
4. The ambitious reproduce quickly enough (remember, they’re ambitious) to rule out any likelihood that they will die out, allowing the geek a chance to inherit the Earth.
4.1. Geeks do not. Remember, they’re geeks.
5. But the ambitious will still need geeks to run things for them. In consideration for this service, they are willing to share some of the Earth with the geek.
5.1. As the world becomes more complex, the dependence of ambitious on geek will intensify. More geeks will be needed to keep things running at a level the ambitious expect.
6. The ambitious will inherit Mars too, because, well, they’re ambitious. They might not get there first, but they’ll plant the flag and get their picture taken with it.
6.1. Inhabiting Mars involves even greater complexity than inhabiting Earth, so even more geeks per capita will be needed to run things there than here.
6.1.1. A geek will be operating the camera, another will be transmitting the image back to Earth, and so on.
7. If you’re a geek, accommodate yourself with the fact that you will not inherit the Earth.
7.1. Unless you get ambitious and start reproducing.
The only way to get the good jobs at good pay in engineering is contracting.
Why? Contractors get called in for problems the corps top guys couldn’t handle.
You will be given resources and whatever else you need. And management will get out of your way. Procedures will be violated. why? Because there is trouble. And. It. Is. Costing. Money.
Anecdotal material.
I work at a production plant. Quite a lot of people with the title of Supervisor or Manager - who still actually do the work. The titles, like everything else, are eroding. However, the Marketing - and accounting types run things. I will note that projects that have had a bad time because of poor management - are blamed on engineering or maintenance. Projects that fair well - are due to the farsightedness of Management.
Once upon a time I worked for a very large, privately owned engineering company. You know the name. Engineers (with MBAs sometimes) ran the company - and it was worse, not better.
A few things that might help.
(1) Do not make your engineers, designers and innovators sign a contract that says if you invent something patentable, we will take it all and ask you to work harder. If you invent it within five years of leaving here, we will come after you with lawyers. A 50/50 contract would encourage real developement and innovation.
(2) If a project is on time and budget, reward the engineer first, then the managers who did not actually do anything.
(3) Along with that, giving us all magic ponies to ride to work over the shiny rainbows would cut down on pollution and make every day better.
Cynical? Sure, but as I learned decades ago, the engineers creed is “You mean you will pay us to make stuff for you? And we can use power tools? Cool!”
Technical jobs aren’t attractive because there is no security. Tech jobs are, in most companies, a cost center. Even in sales a tech position is the first to be eliminated or restructured.
In some ways this is a good thing, like when technical people move to startups, but most of the time it leads to tech folk keeping their heads down so they don’t get noticed. I know, I’ve been laid off three times in the last twelve years. My kids don’t want anything to do with tech other than gaming and I can’t blame them.
Maddad,
My experience is similar - but my wife did the business side in A&E firms and had a similar pattern. Our kids simply know that lifetime employment outside of being a school teacher does not exist, unless you own the company, it succeeds and you do not sell it - ever.
They want to invent the next Warcraft and retire at 28.
Or play for the NFL.
Either one.