Out of the mouths of babes? 5

[BitTwiddler]

This article (reprinted from the WSJ) states that even technology executives in America can't convince their kids to become engineers.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/11306251.htm

I'll start the thread by asking five questions:

1) Would you recommend the profession of engineering (or a similar technical career path such as physics) to a young person ready to attend college?

2) Have you ever given advice to a young person about the potential of an engineering career?

If the answer to 2) is yes, then please answer the following questions:

3) Did you recommend the profession to him or her?

4) What was the primary reason for your recommendation (either for or against the idea)?

5) Did the young person follow your advice?

Please identify which country you are posting from.

I am posting from the USA.

BitTwiddler

 

[BitTwiddler]

The link above is redirected to force you to subscribe to the newspaper, so I'll try another link:

http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg&section=Business&storyid=112615

BitTwiddler

 

[TheTick]

Interesting to hear Indian immigrants worry about their jobs being outsourced to their homeland.

 

[Slugger926]

That article hit several points. I know people in sales that have made 3 to 10 times as much as the engineers because they tend to be funner to interact with the top executives. Also, in looking at jobs around, jobs that require the same skills as engineers, but not engineering jobs pay a lot more. I tend to think that engineering schools tend to kill social skills in our young people.

I was lucky I went through school sideways by playing college sports first, then finishing engineering. I was also lucky that I wound up under a non engineering manager that sent his whole staff to Dale Carnigie classes to learn to interact with people better.

If you don't enjoy life a little bit, you never reap the rewards. If you don't stand up for yourself, you also don't reap the same benifits as other people in less important departments.

I would not recommend engineering unless the person included other activities (athletics, fraternities, Dale Carnegie classes, and ect.) with their schooling so they don't lose out on learning how to socialize.

 

[GregLocock]

"But then she ditched engineering for an English major. "In engineering, you truly have a chance to invent something or push society forward technologically," she said, but "I didn’t love it enough to make a huge difference in that field." She wants to write science fiction, instead, or maybe go into law. "

ie she doesn't know what she wants to do. Personally I'd say that article is rather silly, and concentrates far too much on computer engineering (whatever that is).






Cheers

Greg Locock

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

 

[QCE]

I agrree with Greg the article is kinda silly.

My father was an accountant that made a very good living.

He could not of convinced me to be an accountant. Many people don't choose the same career path of their parents. So what is the point?

The only good point is that the number of engineers in the USA is falling behind other countries.

I will answer your questions however:

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. Yes, I usually recommend taking a trade first. I also recommend it to people that are interested in this type of work. I don't recommend it to people for a money making scheme.

4. I recommend engineering because I enjoy my work and make a good living at it.

5. Many are very interested, we will see what they choose in the future.

I'm from Canada.

The main flaw of the article is that they persume that people make a career choice based on how much money is to be made on not on what the person wants to do for a living.

If a baby is born and the parent says that they want their child to be a doctor, engineer, etc because they will be rich then they are being very silly. Besides if we could perdict which career choices will be good in 25 years then we would never have a shortage of hot jobs.

 

[weh3]

Writing from Virginia, USA.

I have worked as mentor to a robotics team of high school and younger. These are techno-whiz kids who have no trouble with the technology and no lack of motivation to study the math, science, and computer programming. My advice to them is usually that if you want to be an engineer, the things you need in school are

1. English. Learn to write prose and to write well.
2. Speaking. Learn to speak in front of groups and one-on-one.
3. Business. The business side of engineering is totally neglected, at least in my experience. This is especially true if you intend to practice engineering, that is, hold yourself out to the public as an engineering professional.
4. As many foreign languages as you can get.

The things that stonewall engineers in the corporate world are not engineering problems, they are usually communication problems. Upper management does not care that engineers just want to be left alone to work out the technical side; engineers do not understand when project priorities are shifted for nontechnical reasons.

Engineering projects are driven more by strategic corporate goals than by technical merits. For this reason, in-house engineering is seen by upper management as overhead, regardless how fast or efficient you can make a process, or what the cost savings are for doing a retrofit.

More time is spent defining the "box" that a project must fit in than designing the project itself. When I say box, I mean the scope, schedule, and budget, which are most often economic, environmental, regulatory, or business decisions.

As an electrical engineer, I have been particularly subjected to boredom on infrastructure type projects with civil and environmental issues. I have sat in more all-day meetings than I would care to count, where the only things anyone wanted to talk about were dirt, water, and paint.

Life imitates Dilbert.

Regards,
William

 

[epoisses]

You just can't always do what you'd love to do if you're part of an organisation whose objective is not to play around with engineering toys of whatever kind but to make money. Having said that, the next best thing for an carthesian-minded kid to do is still -of course- to become an engineer.

My 2-year old daughter loves to classify the fridge magnets according to color and shape, to count them and to arrange them in rows and columns... The above is what I will tell her as soon as she'll understand it.

 

[JRW261]

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. Yes

4. Its an excellent field of study with endless possibilities. I know engineers who are now sales people, managers, and even doctors. My point being, as an engineer you are qualified to do any job that you want to for two reasons.
A: Engineering degrees are fundamentally courses based soley on problem solving or logical thinking. So, if that engineer is interested in their type of work, regardless of the work, they are going to be able to tackle and manage any problem (i.e. Work) they are given. This is often why engineering fields often fuse together or intermingle and the clear distinction between majors that we know of in college easily disapears in the professional world.
B: Engineering degrees are generally a bit more aggressive than the managment or business degrees. Thats not to say that management or business degrees are easy. But I feel that if you survive the engineering carriculum, it tends to show a driven personality or at least someone willing to do the work necessary to get the job done more so than other majors.

There are exceptions to this, Im sure of it. But, in my opinion.. there is a clear trend. If you dont cut-it in engineering you fall back on business or management. I am not, however, describing those who just arn't interested in engineering at all and go into something else due to interest.


5. I do not know, the few that I gave my advice to are distant relatives.

What I do see, is there are generally two types of Engineering students. There are the kids who can study until they get something and have taken engineering as merely a "smart career choice". Then there are students that were engineers since they were toddlers and generally do better in the professional environment rather than the educational. Both can make good engineers, but generally different types of engineers.