Re: warm bodies

On Jun 24, 2005, at 2:25 PM, Paul Bowers wrote:
> The adoption of computers and software was the
> singlemost biggest (pardon my French) change for engineering in
> history.
> Feel free to argue with me about this.
Computers made a huge change for engineering--arguably for the better, but that's not a foregone conclusion. The engineering function really hasn't changed, but more engineers are doing what drafters and engineering assistants used to do. This isn't altogether bad--preparing your own reports and doing your own 'board work' can be a good thing, provided the quality of the design work doesn't suffer. Trouble is that it's putting newbies without the organizational and communications skills needed to be good designers, because schools don't teach organization or communications or even first principles of design all that well. The management assumption is that CAD or FEA does all that stuff now. But it doesn't. Engineers used to learn the practical parts of their jobs from more experienced staff, but experienced staff has been going away for quite some time, I think because management thinks that the tools make the engineer, not the other way round.

> What is so wrong with being "in the trenches" past the age of 40?
Nothing at all. It just doesn't happen very often.

> Is it status? The perceived peer pressure to "have people working for
> you"?

Neither. It's a fact of corporate life. You don't get 'ahead' as an engineer, just as a manager. My experience is that somewhere between 40 and 50, engineers tend to veer toward a management track. I didn't and I'm very happy that it's worked out that way, but I know a lot of people who went down the other path and in doing so lost most of their engineering skills because that didn't use them.

Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant at chrisw@skypoint.com | this distance" (last words of Gen.

.......................................| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania