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.

 

[Rob45]

And now I find that, starting today, I am reporting to a manager who not only is not an engineer, but he doesn't have a degree at all!
And has in the past exhibited a fine disregard for and a tendency to disparage those who do have degrees.

Oh well, as I've said (and demonstrated) before, I don't have to put up with anything I don't like, as long as I can find the front door!
Regards,
- R

 

[plasgears]

Rob,
Warm up your resume, keep your eyes and ears open, and when you finally leave, let the top bosses know why you left. It is unconscionable to manage engineers with non-professionals.

 

[wilg]

plasgears
There's a whole lot of "unconscionable"
going around. Managing engineers with non-professionals
is more the norm than the unusual.
Rob45
Don't jump from the frying pan into the fire,
and don't take less money in your next job.
Be careful with promises of future bonuses,
get your money up front.

 

[carnage1]

TheTick (Mechanical) Sep 29, 2003
To be true to the original intent of the thread, we must not confuse degreed vs. non-degreed with qualified vs. non-qualified.

the real problem I see is that the people who determine who has what position in a company don't understand what that person really needs to accomplish, im an electrical engeenering technician and have been asked in an interview if I could type 30 words per minute but they didn't care about my ipc soldering certifications. (the job involved component level debug and repair)

I have also been laied off from a job where the document that sealed my fate and 185 others also included a %20 pay raise for all of management because they found a way to meat there spending goals.

what happened to work ethics? not just from the employee but also form the employer?

 

[ubrales]

I have a BSME and an MBA from a top US business school, The University of Chicago. My experience with engineering managers is that a good eng. mgr. need not necessarily have an eng. degree.

A degree is the quickest and most disciplined way of attaining knowledge. However, knowledge can be obtained by home study, work experience and a host of other ways. Management is a skill and top quality managers (and CEOs for that matter) have a well developed right hemisphere of the brain, dealing with holistic functions (look elsewhere for explanations).

Top engineers usually have well developed left hemispheres of the brain, dealing with analytical functions.

In humans, it is usually one or the other.

My boss and subsequent colleague is one of the sharpest and smartest engineers in the Midwest and just has 2 years of college from U of I, when U of I had a campus on Chicago's Navy Pier. The reverse is also true.

A good eng. mgr. must be good at management and very astute in engineering, not necessarily a degreed engineer.

In conclusion, degrees are nice to have, but they should never be the sole yardstick in evaluating competence.

 

[desertfox]

Hi All
When I started in Engineering as an apprentice I used to think the people with a Degree knew everything and as the years rolled by I realised "How Wrong I Was".
A Degree means you're qualified to do the job but it doesn't mean you can do the job. Whilst I feel it is important to hold some technical Qualification to show a level of understanding in this day and age, I really believe that experience counts just as much.I have worked with other good and bad engineers some Degree qualified some
PHD's and believe me some of these so called qualified engineers I wouldn't pay in washers.
One doesn't have to go back far in history to remember some of the greatest engineers of our time IE:-George Stephenson for instance the father of the railway's in England.This
magnificent engineer couldn't read or write and as time went on he was snubbed by the Institute Of Civil Engineers because of his lack of education, in spite of all the bridges and railways he built.However some engineers talking shelter in an old railway carriage, whilst working on a rail project where discussing this fact, they decided to form their own Institution and invite George to be their President and thus the "Institute Of Mechanical Engineers" was formed. I feel this is quite ironic Considering you cannot join this institute these days without an vey good honours degree.
A good engineer in my definition needs to have a flair,interest in his job and be able to listen to others around him who may not be as well qualified and of course a
good understanding of engineering principles.

regards

desertfox

 

[BRIS]

What we should remember is that engineering is far more complex than anyone on the outside of engineering can even begin to contemplate. They see an engine as lumps of metal bolted together. They cannot begin to conceive the expertise behind each component. Engineers of all skills and levels of academic aptitude will have made a contribution – some Phd academic probably worked in some back room developing the material properties over many years of research. A practical engineer without a degree may have worked out the best form for the component so that it can be dismantled in the future for maintenance. They all contribute equally to the end product. Try to get the Phd material research engineer to develop a functional model and you could well conclude he is not worth paying in washers. And as in any profession there will always be some more able, more interested and dedicated than others regardless of qualification.

The point I am making is that there is no argument of whether engineers need to be degree qualified – the field is so wide both practical and academic expertise are needed.

When it comes to management of engineers the practical engineer is likely to be the better manager of a production facility where the academic engineer may be the better manager of a research project. Not all engineers can manage and we all know many engineers that would be unable to manage their way out of a paper bag but are expert at their field providing they are pointed in the right direction. . This is one reason why a manager needs to be an engineer – because he needs to know what the hell is going on inside the paper bag – consequently a good engineering manager who is an engineer whether degree qualified or not will invariably make a better manager than a none engineer.

 

[plasgears]

I agree that some of the best engineers in history came up the hard way, but they are the exception. Lindenthal (Hell's Gate Bridge, et al, NYC, Portland OR, and Pittsburgh) was a great bridge engineer who learned engineering on the way up. I worked with an exceptional engineer, Dudley N., who was sent to MIT by GE to round out his engineering qualifications. The English and American experience during the industrial revolution produced numerous great engineers. Pasteur was an example of an unqualified individual in medicine who introduced landmark improvements in disease control.

To allow unqualified individuals today to act as engineers is playing with fire. I'll enumerate some of the glaring results:
- loss of contract because of degraded material introduced by an unscrupulous supplier supported by a bonehead;
- loss of contract because of uncorrected design causing cyclic noise;
- loss of contract because bonehead hired a consultant who produced an inferior design in a new application.

Hiring unqualified individuals is false economy.

 

[desertfox]

Hi plasgears

From your list of incompetence I assume the bonehead wasn't qualified, however these errors could easily be made be an incompetent qualified engineer, all I am saying is that someone qualified may well turn out to be as incompetent as
an unqualified person.
I agree with BRIS that a manager should be an engineer who has the knowledge and answers that his subordinates might
require from time to time.
Whether that manager is qualified or not is irrelevant its the quality of his knowledge that counts.

regards desertfox

 

[finman]

Hi Plasgears,
I really hate to disagree (but only in part I hasten to add).

Qualification is no insurance against screw ups.

I've worked for a Graduate engineering manager who was the perfect political animal and was lacking in any form of common sense, He could wax lyrical about high flying design solutions he had come up with until he lost us a few contracts with badly specified components and poorly executed solutions where experienced but unqualified guys had advised otherwise.

This is just the otherside of the coin to your example, I just don't think you can tar everybody with the same brush it's down the individual on how they use the information they gain during university or life.

 

[BRIS]

Finman - I am just wondering on what point you disagree with Plasgears - you appear to be selling the same line:

"Whether that manager is qualified or not is irrelevant its the quality of his knowledge that counts".

"it's down the individual on how they use the information they gain during university or life".

I think we all agree engineering is learned by practice.

Brian

 

[finman]

Hi Bris,

The phrase "Hiring unqualified individuals is false economy" I figured was a bit grim, however I must admit on a second reading I thought to myself "it all depends on your idea of qualified".

 

[plasgears]

Finman,
Qualified means prepared to carry out the duties of a sector of engineering with appropriate graduate engineering degree and applicable experience. PE license adds proof to qualifications, and that is the reason for establishing engineering licenses.

States aim to protect the public by licensing doctors, surveyors, engineers, dentists, and other professionals. The other side of the coin is the possibility of withdrawal of license for good cause.

I think the general public appreciates this, but Detroit has reconfigured the meaning of qualifications to support low cost operations by using marginally qualified draftsmen and others in the practice of auto engineering and management. Compare automotive QS-9000 with ISO-9000. ISO speaks of qualifications to do engineering work, but QS skirts the issue because it is written by auto QC types, not engineering minded individuals.

 

[finman]

I would still defend the point that engineers do not have to be "Degree" qualified although there may be a difference in US v UK concepts on degree qualified.
In the UK there are 2 streams to get into engineering, 1 the academic side where one attends university and another seperate stream where one attends Technical college for the theory and gets a good amount of practical training aswell. Only the first stream will get you a degree.
In my experience the degree guys are fantastically educated but lack the practicalities required for what at the end of the day is a practical trade. The scenario of "I can design a space shuttle but can't drill a hole" is as dangerous and expensive as the other extreme.