Engineering dept staffed with unqualified "engrs" 15

[plasgears]

A word for the big three, especially since I have a stake in the matter; I generally buy American brands:

In the spirit of ISO 9000, seek to learn the level of expertise in first and lower tier suppliers. In section 4 of ISO 9000 there is a requirement that engineers should be well qualified to perform the function. You should find it alarming that the engineering department is managed by a non-engr. Further, it should trouble you that team leaders and other "engineers" are not graduate engineers.

 

[mloew]

Tick,

I like your analogy, but it still does not mean that the sub commander is the most knowledgeable person on the ship in all disciplines. My point in agreeing with Greg is that you don't indeed need to be in a position that your manager knows more than you and could teach you about what you do, you just need that manager to help you provide the tools, resources, and environment to do your job well.

Best regards,

Matthew Ian Loew
"Luck is the residue of design."
Branch Rickey

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[TheTick]

It's not a matter of knowledge. It's a matter of "engineering literacy".

 

[finman]

Hey MLOWE, I'll tell you what happens to what happens to lousy engineers that get promoted into managerial positions............

very very quickly they become Directors and VP's! (or of course, run out of town by their own subordinates!).

 

[mloew]

Tick,

Agreed!

Finman,

I know. Too much of the former, not enough of the later.


Best regards,

Matthew Ian Loew
"Luck is the residue of design."
Branch Rickey

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

 

[strokersix]

I've had experience working with widely varied supervisors over the years. If I had to choose between technical competence and interpersonal/management skills I would pick good manager any day. Of course, both would be the best but that's rare for a supervisor (or anyone for that matter) to excel in both. I've had one and he was by far the best. I've had supervisors who were neither and that's awful.

A technically competent bad manager results in micro-management and lack of trust in the relationship.

 

[patprimmer]

It all depends on the structure and were the technical decision making is done.

All technical decisions should be made by compentent engineers. Commercial decisions should be made by commercially compentent people, styling by stylists, non structual dedesign by designers, marketing by experienced marketers, toolmakeing by toolmakers etc.

For a successfull product they need to work together, AS A TEAM, pooling all knowledge, and each individulal being aware of their own strengths and weaknesses.

A good managers main assett IMHO is to be able to assess every team member for their worth, and assign tasks according to their skills. That manager cannot be so multiskilled that he has good knowledge of all disciplines.

If you take the arguement that a manager should know as much as his staff on how to do their job to it's ultimate conclusion, how could you ever get MD's for very large coperations, who employ thousands of experts in a wide range disciplines.

I guess I agree with Greg and Matthew.

One more point, if you have 2 equally qualified engineers on a project, one might naturally be more radical and creative, while the other is more conservative and mathamatical. A good manager does not need to be an engineer to recognise the difference and put one guy on concept design, and the other one on detailed design, then get them involved to alter the concept untill ther numbers work out on the details

Regards
pat

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[GregLocock]

I was perhaps, as usual(?), overemphasising my point. In different industries, and in different roles within a given industry, either might be a better solution.

My personal career has been something like 90% intensely technical and analytical. My second manager out of uni was a great guy, and also experienced in the field in which we worked (automotive NVH). Within two years I was far beyond his help in technical stuff, and have never looked back. One reason I learned so quickly was that he was interested in what I was finding out, so we picked a lot of things up together.

Since then I have had 'technical' managers and 'political' managers, and frankly, the efficiency gains from having someone who knows how to make the company system work and trusts my result without necessarily understanding the underlying details greatly outweigh the additional robustness in the process from having someone second-guess me technically. Oh, I'll make one exception. My first supervisor during, and after, uni was a very very very talented analyst, working for him was like one long tutorial, and we worked on some fantastic projects.

So, I think in the particular case of analytical automotive engineering it is very useful to have technically gifted engineering supervisors and managers to set the young engineer on the right path, but after the first few years the manager will get a better result by letting the engineer make his own mistakes.

Just thinking about that para, in theory of course the inexperienced engineer could benefit from learning from a technical mentor, rather than his direct supervision, but at least in my case that does not seem to have happened much. I think that is a cultural thing in the UK automotive industry - grunt engineers don't tend to be technical mentors to the kids. If we are working with people on our own percieved level of experience then we learn off each other, but the more 'one way' technical flow in a mentoring role is seen as what? a waste of effort? boring? training up your future competition? I don't know what, to be honest.

This is a shame, I've found that educating/mentoring the right sort of engineering graduate is very enjoyable (at least for me!) but, having a somewhat prickly manner, they have to be the right fit.


Cheers

Greg Locock

 

[patprimmer]

Greg

In my experience the best mentors are those with enough confidence to not feel threatened.

I once had a boss, and his approach was that he could not be promoted until he trained someone up to take his place.

That was a great working situation.

On another occasion, we got a boss, and he soon figured out I could probably do his job better than he was, and quite a few people thought so. Unfortunately one or two said so to him as they retired. He was gunning for me from that day on.

He was by nature a political animal rather than an achiever, so it was not a nice, nor productive place to be.

Neither was as technically qualified as I, but one was an excellent manager and when promoted, moved on leaving the unit in fine shape, and one was a poor manager, and took a staff of 150 down to 12 in 5 years and turned a profit into a loss in the process. He also had a staff turnover of 200 in a year with a total staff of 150. Like I said, not a nice place.

Regards
pat

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[pkelley]

Please keep in mind that a college degree is only a piece of paper. What a person does with it is what makes the difference.

Over the last 36 years I have worked with and for a lot of non-degreed engineers. Some of the best engineers I've ever known were non-degreed. By the same token, some of the best engineers were degreed but in a totally different field (Ind. Engrg. Mgr with a degree in music; Director of Advanced Engrg. with a degree in Philosophy; Project Engr. with an Ag degree)and performed quite well..

Stereotyping a non-degreed engineer as unqualified is like saying that all people who "generally buy American brands" are not true Americans.

'Nuff said.

 

[CanEngJohn]

pkelley

"'Nuff said."

If that were true this thread would have been over about 25 posts ago.

A good manager is one who uses a style that complements his background and skillsets. But woe is the manager who can't do the Engineering when his best Engineers are gone for the day.

A good engineer is one who can do the Engineering theory behind the day to day practical.

There are good and bad examples of both. Who is truly the authority to judge?

 

[Ratty]

I have seen several key comments here that define the best manager I ever worked for.

He was a "manager" rather than an "engineer", but he had an ability to understand with ease the concerns of his engineers. This was imperative, and is probably what we all mean when we say that managers with a background in engneering are the best ones.

From this point, his skills as a manager's manager took over - he'd negotiate, facilitate and motivate. Senior management saw him pushing the team to move forward in the best direction for the company. In his team, I saw him keeping the politics away from us and freeing us up to push ourselves forward.

Ever manager I've worked for since, has been unable to fulfil BOTH of those needs - they either focus wholeheartedly on getting money for the business and appear to be puppets, or are scared of the responsibility they have and are obstructive to progress.

Degree qualified? I don't know - the personal attributes made this guy stand out, not his qualifications.

 

[AngelAlvarez]

Happy New Year to all!
While these topics can be debated for ever, I want to add some words to what you already wrote:
For some reason I feel better if I think that the guy that designed the bridge I'm crossing is a graduated, licensed civil or structural engineer with the skills to design a bridge.
The same aplies when I fly in a plane, I like to think that the people that did the finite elements analysis and calculation of the wings and other parts of that plane have enough skills to perform the calculations.
Let me state this frankly: In a lot of the engineering fields you can find people without degree with a lot of talent and skills, even better than some graduated and licensed engineers, but that is not the Rule. A good graduated engineer with some experince and love for his profession, as a Rule is a better engineer than the people without a degree.If that do not sound logical, lets close the Universities.
Even if in some fields people with no formal education can perform at top level, in some fields you need to have some formal education. From my own experience -shiprepair and shipbuilding- I have found some good engineers with no degree in the Engine Departments but I have never found a Structural Engineer without a degree.
The fact that there is a lot of people with degree that do not deserve them, doesn't change nothing I said.
Engineering Management:
I think that somebody with management skills with good technical background is always preferable to the guy that do not know at least the basics of the area he is leading. As Patprimmer said, "the technical decisions should be made by competent engineers", but if the Engineering Manager is not an engineer -with or without degree- how he will make decisions not knowing what the engineers are talking about? You do not need to know all about everything, but you need certain technical background.
Of course all depends on the type of engineering any concrete department is doing. In some cases, a good manager even not being a technician can make a good work but again, I do not think that is the Rule. The presence of a lot of "Professional Managers" in Engineering Departments and non graduated people doing engineering work is more common here in America. That doesn't mean that it is the correct direction to follow. The main cause of this is MONEY. As a rule a non graduated person gets paid less. This is one of the main reason Engineers are dissapearing from a lot of places.
I've seen a lot in my life: A Lawyer managing a Maintenance and Engineering Department in one pretty big and complex organization ... a Human Resources guy with no formal education or technical background functioning as Project Manager in shipconstruction, making a lot of Technical decisions without a clue about what he was doing ... Of course, with the time this people will get some knowledge, but in the process a lot of money is just wasted by poor management.
About the ISO Series 9000.
Even if you do not certify your organization, the knowledge you acquire about your own company during the ISO implementation is worth the effort.
If all the effort is lost in bureaucratic procedures and bunch of paper it only mean that you do not have an ISO system in place even if you think so.

 

[ltcray]

I understand both sides of the degree/no degree issue. I'm a mustang engineer, having come up thru the ranks (former master machinist). I do have a lot of respect for those who were fortunate enough to get the chance to go and get a degree. But I also have met those like "sprintcar" said couldn't find their rear end with both hands and a map.
I used to do reverse engineering for a big gas turbine manufacturing company thru a vendor company. As long as I was working for the vendor company, the big manufacturer loved my work. When the vendor company (who hired me to get the manufacturing company's business) laid me off, my first action was to call my contact at the manufacturing company. His response was, he couldn't hire me because of my lack of a degree. I didn't like it, but I understood his position. After all, a degree is mostly a statement of credibility. You can always say you're an engineer, but can you prove it? The company wasn't willing to accept the liability of an undegreed engineer's work, but it was okay as long as the liability was on the vendor company.
I have four years of college, umpteen certifications and 28 years experience in mechanical development, reverse engineering and tooling design. A degree would be nice to have, but at age 47 (mandatory retirement at 60), I can't see the payoff.
Now I work for a well known german auto manufacturer doing equipment maintenance and improvements. The job's more stable that any of the others I've held, and the money's equal or better to what I was making as the automation engineering manager for a company.

 

[sacem1]

I've read this thread and found so many points of view that reflect the personal experience of a lot of people in our bussiness so now I'll share my point of view with you:

The whole idea of receiving instruction as classes at a university to earn a degree in engineering is to give you the ability to understand the BASIC CONCEPTS of the sciences you are going to be dealing with in the future, they will be math, calc, physics, chem or whatever. The rest of the studies will broaden and interconect those knowledges so that when on your own you will have gotten the abbility of mixing different abstract concepts with practical applications and be able to design that better mouse trap that you will be asked to do.

In practical work when you are a production super or a plant engineer you would be better off with a technical school background as it is better to know how to set up a machine than to understand the forces inside the machines you work with.

When working in design you requiere the abstract science concepts to deal with structural analisys, kinetic forces and so on, but also the concept of how the piece is going to be manufactures, ever received a design that showed a hole bored in a place where a drill is not able to reach?
so here it is a fact that the best design departments are those that mix people with backgrounds in production and what we call desk engineers (no production but high on calc experience) the reason why many experienced draftsmen get promoted or highly valued in design departments is that because of experience they know the design errors that would make production difficult, costly or even not possible and have a memory for past failures that might have not been detected by the desk engineers.

If you get promoted to management then you'll find that you use less your engineering skills and more the management that come from a BA degree, thats why for middle to top management my perfect "recipe" would be an engineering degree with a BA post graduated studies.

Finally the fact that as AngelAlvarez stated I also would prefer to fly on a plane that has been designed by someone holding an engineering degree, at least he should not be guessing when in doubt and should be able either to calculate it or not be afraid to ask another engineer about it.

People who have accumulated a lot of years of experience are many times more valuable for a firm than a new out of the university grad and that should be aknowledged by the firm management but as in an open heart surgery you would only have a certified surgeon do it, if a 100 Ton overhead crane is going to work on top of you better have a certified engineer do the math instead of a long time welder decide the plates to use in the construction of it.

Experience is invaluable but as is only worth if it comes from someone that has the common sense and dedication to learn from it.

In english the term "Engineer" seems to derive from the word "Engine" which is why it is associated with machines and engine operation but in spanish the word use is "Ingeniero" and it is directly conected to "Ingenio" which means "wit" or the ability to design, invent or solve a problem and I think that it is a much more exact meaning of our profession, he who is capable of solving the problems using his brains.

SACEM1

 

[plasgears]

I wonder how the general population would respond to learn that their medical needs were handled by promoted practical nurses, not even RN. That was the whole point of this thread.
There are management types that are allowing non-degreed individuals, frequently promoted draftsmen, to occupy engineering positions at bargain rates. You frequently find unqualified individuals managing professional graduate engineers. This should be of concern to top managers with quality concerns, and customers, who are paying top money for cars and expecting the best.

 

[rodar]

Hi
If a company has a short term outlook for profit, like now
demanded by the stock market it will focus its effors on
the next three months. That makes it likely that people who
are optimist in nature (assume it can be done until proven
otherwise) will get the favor in management. Despite
history proving that real profits come from a long term
consideration in management nobody in management today cares about this because if the next quarter doesnt look good their gone. This is an example of the philosophy that
states the more you try to achieve something the less
succesfull you are. Try first to make a lot of money and you will fail. Try first to make the best darn widget possible then see if it will sell and you will succeed.
Hiring bargain employees is just a symtom of the overall
problem. I know of some places I have worked where the best
advice i could give them is to fire all of their salaried
staff and hire back half as many for twice the wage of the
previous employees and their effiency would double. I am
sure of it. Short term outlook will kill this economy
rodar

 

[adTherm]

Excellent points 'rodar', 'plasgears'& 'sacem1'...

IMHO, an 'Engineering Manager' needs to be a fine balance between a 'good Engineer' & a 'good Manager'... suitably qualified on both counts.

Regards,
Des Aubery...
(adTherm Technology -

http://www.adtherm.com

- des@adtherm.com)

 

[Tmoose]

Our ISO auditor is a smart lady. She said "managing engineers is like herding cats."

 

[Tmoose]

I'm no manager, but, like everyone else I'm pretty sure I've known a few good ones and some BAD ones

A few minutes ago while reading this thread I got wondering what a "degreed manager" might have taken in school. So I asked Google to spy on the enemy for me. Google turned up a batch of hits about risk, hotel, hospitality and hospital management.

This is from the one that sounded most like part of a generic "management" curriculum.

Business Skills – Management
• Moving into a Management Role (MGMT0000)
• Succeeding as a First-Time Manager (MGMT0100)
• Essential Skills for Tomorrow's Manager (MGMT0110)
• Moving from Technical Professional to Management (MGMT0120)
• How to Discipline Employees & Correct Performance Problems (MGMT0130)
• Management Excellence - Performance-Based Appraisals (MGMT0140)
• 360-Degree Performance (MGMT0150)
• Managing Problem Performance (MGMT0160)
• Mentoring Essentials (MGMT0250)
• Delegation Skills (MGMT0260)
• The Successful Facilitator (MGMT0270)
• Coach with Confidence (MGMT0280)
• Managing Technical Professionals (MGMT0290)
• How to Overcome Negativity in the Workplace (MGMT0310)
• Managing Others Through Change (MGMT0330)
• Managing Contractors and Temporary Employees (MGMT0700)

It sounded reasonably reasonable to me.

I did notice that we "technical professionals" have earned their own "how to manage" category, just like those of us with "problem performance".

 

[wilg]

Math is the queen servant of science, degree or no degree, without a solid understanding of algebra, calculus, curve fitting etc.,technical people can't communicate.
Physics and Chemistry must be understood and higher math
is the Rosetta stone of science.
I once asked an individual with a mathematics degree
how to take a decimal and convert it to a fraction,
I knew how to do it, he couldn't do it.
(example: 0.1738 = 8,769/50,000)and then
the 50,000 can be factored down to 2 to the fourth power
times 5 to the fifth power and then other
constants in a given equation could be cancelled).
I no longer accepted him as a mathematician.
If you can do the work and technically communicate,
I don't care if you graduated from kindergarten or
have a PHD from Harvard, the only thing that
means anything are results. I have seen both
types, the individual that doesn't have a degree
and thinks he is an engineer, he is very dangerous
and the person that has a masters degree in engineering
and can't do the work, he is just as dangerous.
And the idea that non-engineer's can manage
engineers has been around since the '40's when
the "efficiency experts" suddenly began calling
themselves "Industrial Engineers".
The enlightened companies that think non-technically trained individuals can manage technically trained or technically experienced people, exist mainly in industries
where "captive customers" abound, automatic profit
occurs, and plastic man can be promoted to fit
in any where. No matter how much money they waste
profit is guaranteed (Pharmacueticals, Utility Companies ect.).
But all in all Bris gave a great explanation
as he can view both sides of the problem.