succint and confirm I''m not the only one expressing these sentiments. Article1 is espec for the draftsmen subscribers

2/19/2004 Machine Design -- Ronald Khol, Editor Send feedback to MDeditor @ penton.com

If you worked in an office, you generally were treated with respect and weren't routinely bawled out by the boss or laid off with every downturn like workers in the factory.

But there was something even better than just getting a job in an office, and that was to become a draftsman. It was a job held mostly by men, and it was a career path by which boys who ordinarily would become mechanics or assembly-line workers became, instead, professional people. Drafting also was the first rung on the ladder to becoming an engineer. Many engineers in this era started as draftsmen and worked their way into engineering without ever setting foot in a college.

In junior-high school at age 13, I was able to take a class in mechanical drawing, and I loved it. I knew immediately I wanted to be a draftsman. Also, my parents told me that if I did well in math, I might get into engineering school, though at the time a dream that grandiose was a bit presumptuous. When I enrolled in college in the 1950s, an engineering degree was a ticket giving blue-collar kids entree into a prestigious profession.

Four years later I had an engineering degree and immediately stepped into a job at an aircraft company where even new graduates were treated as a privileged class. At the time, there was an unwritten dress code for engineers requiring us to show up for work in suits and neckties. We didn't mind, however, because a necktie was a status item. It marked us as being a cut above the hourly workers in the plant. Foremen in the factory had the same dress code, except they wore a shop coat over their dress shirt and tie. The way people dressed pretty much indicated what position they held in the company.

Today, America's corporations are much more relaxed. Neckties are long gone. At the same time, management's focus on quarterly profits and pressures from Wall Street have made the workplace a much more brutal place, even for engineers. Management now often views engineering as an overhead best outsourced or even dispensed with entirely.

If you look deeply enough for the source of the problem, you find we are all to blame. More and more, we flock to Wal-Mart and other stores of that ilk in a cultural and economic race to the bottom. The public relentlessly demands cheaper and cheaper products, and this has driven many manufacturers to the wall. There simply is less room in corporate budgets for decent engineering, an appreciation of which requires an attention span you don't find in most corporate management.

This situation has destroyed a lot of the self-esteem that was part of being an engineer. Except for Dilbert, who still wears a necktie, engineers are ardent proponents of dressing down. But this might be sending the wrong message to management. If your boss thinks you are just a pair of hands easily replaced, your casual dress might reinforce his low opinion of you.

Obviously, the notions of hierarchy and class that engineers had years ago were a form of snobbery. But they conformed to societal norms of the time. And there is no question our feelings of superiority, no matter how snobbish, helped imbue the engineering profession with an aura of prestige and dignity you simply don't find today.

So where are we headed? Engineering is still the best educational foundation for a broad range of career options. When you talk with nontechnical people, it is almost comical to see how bewildered they are by today's technology. They seem to think the tooth fairy is somehow responsible for a lot of it. Engineering, in contrast, provides a grasp of the physical world unmatched by few other academic disciplines. As a basis for incisive and logical thinking, it is still hard to beat.

Engineering: A dead end career? Machine design - Associate Editor Engineers speak out about engineering as a career: The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Today, America's workforce is running scared. Huge layoffs and big-business outsourcing to cheaper, foreign labor markets does nothing to boost morale. But does this hold true for engineering, traditionally considered a solid, secure career?

If so, you wouldn't know it from engineering school enrollments. A recent survey by the American Society for Engineering Education reports a 3.4% increase in engineering degrees from 2001 to 2002. While this looks good for U.S. science and technology numbers, an informal survey done by Machine Design reveals many dissatisfied engineers. Overwhelmingly, engineers report fewer jobs that are harder to find, require specific training and experience, and last only five to six years.

Status and recognition are sore points as well. For example, many people have no concept that engineers are behind most tangible things encountered daily, from the car they drive to work to the computer they toil in front of. Sadly, engineering is the "invisible" profession.

Adding further insult to injury is the loose application of the term "engineer" to nonengineers. The person who once was a garbage collector is now a sanitation engineer. Many engineers believe this leaves degreed engineers with no status. Also, corporations see engineering as a necessary evil rather than as an asset or a source of long-term value. Readers report some companies will not give their engineering staffs necessary resources or provide only minimal funding. Many engineers feel such practices arise because the work they do does not contribute directly to the bottom line. Many of them gripe that corporations focusing on quarterly earnings don't see the big picture.

No surprise, long-time engineers tout computers as the biggest change they've seen in engineering. For example, most calculations once done on pocket calculators have long since been relegated to PCs and bigger computers. But though better computers let engineers use higher-level languages to design more complex systems, the basic method of computer analysis has not changed much since the 1990s.

Is engineering a smart career choice? Some engineers feel the profession has lost the luster it once had while others say it's still a valid and satisfying career. But, many readers say companies view them as a commodity. As such, foreign engineers are being imported to take jobs, while more jobs are being exported through outsourcing.

Finally, readers see more corporate value being put on selling and marketing functions rather than on the design and manufacture of products. Considering the level of education necessary for proficiency in engineering, many engineers replied it is not a lucrative career choice. There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. While acknowledging that engineering is not a career for the rich and famous, one engineer stated, "I enjoy and take pride in the work I do. I can always come home at night with a clear conscience knowing that, somehow, I made the world a better place today."

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Received on Mon Apr 26 20:55:00 2004