Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

It's good to know that, as a future engineer, my economic future and contributions to society (if any) are of little value or concern to "people who know such things".

I guess I should just give up on my bid to have my schooling paid for by others because I'm getting an engineering degree, and instead pay the 100-150 grand out of my own pocket to join the "old boy's club" in law or medicine...

What was I thinking? Who even needs roads anymore?

Posted by John Breen III at August 1, 2006 10:10 AM

If scientists and engineers are so valuable, why do they make less money than doctors, lawyers and business consultants?

Just like pro football pays better than the Army.

Posted by Mike Johnson at August 1, 2006 10:18 AM

I should just give up on my bid to have my schooling paid for by others because I'm getting an engineering degree, and instead pay the 100-150 grand out of my own pocket to join the "old boy's club" in law or medicine...

There was a town in the Midwest a few years ago that was so short of lawyers that they only had one. Even so, he barely made any money. But then a SECOND lawyer moved in; now they both do good business.

Posted by Mike Johnson at August 1, 2006 10:27 AM

Mike says: Just like pro football pays better than the Army.

Here's a shocker. We agree. I still love football though.

Posted by Mac at August 1, 2006 10:28 AM

I think much of this is how we've organized our society, however. In America, one in every 270 people is a lawyer. In Japan that ratio is one in every 5800. Clearly America has needless amounts of lawyers. I think similarly we have inefficiencies of management and beauracracy that give us a glut of managers, business consultants, and clerks.

Posted by Ian at August 1, 2006 10:28 AM

I believe it is a myth as well. If engineers are in short supply with a growing demand, salaries are certainly not showing that. In my position, I am being asked to do more and work longer (which suggests a greater demand), but the compensation is less and the competition is higher (suggesting plenty of supply).

Posted by Leland at August 1, 2006 10:41 AM

In America, one in every 270 people is a lawyer. In Japan that ratio is one in every 5800.

While it is silly to say that we should have the same lawyer ratio as Japan (or anyone else) - having lived in Japan and having seen their culture, and building startups and seeing what disagreements people have - I think a lot of this is due to the homogeneity of Japanese culture. When a Japanese guy says that he will fix a pipe for $50, that means the same thing to everyone involved. When an american guy says that, it means one of: 1) $50 and the pipe is repaired no matter what my out of pocket, 2) $50 and the pipe is repaired unless parts cost more, 3) $50 and the pipe is repaired if I can cover parts and it doesn't take unexpectedly long, 4) $50 and if you pay up front, sucker!

All but the last one are somewhat reasonable - and all are in use in various places in the US. But if you and I disagree, it will have to be decided by a judge - because we did not have a good agreement on what was contracted. So since in the US we are a "melting pot" of various nationalities and backgrounds, we all have different expectations - which leads to legal disputes...

Posted by David Summers at August 1, 2006 10:43 AM

John: Our engineers are such stars that they can do the job of dozens of 1950s engineers with CADs, libraries of existing designs, collaboration software, etc. Doctors and lawyers having innovated much less in comparison are still in short supply. Economists are not in short supply.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at August 1, 2006 10:59 AM

I noted the same passage. It might also usefully be taken to heart within the space movement: by those who still value the cool new technology idea over the boring operations or marketing idea, and by those who are half-fearing, half-hoping that China 2010 (or whenever) will fill the same role as USSR 1957.

Posted by Monte Davis at August 1, 2006 11:12 AM

What's wrong with “techno-fetishism and techno-nationalism”? Technical endevours improve your brain by enforcing true logic (as compared to promoting wriggling through legal loopholes).

I much more would enjoy having an engineer as a neighbor than a lawyer as a neighbor. We would have less internal conflicts about useless things if we were a nation of engineers.

The Charles and Ray Eames DVD Volume 3 contains their movie about Jefferson and Franklin, and it shows that America was founded by natural scientists. Franklin's hero as a young man was Newton. Jefferson was a surveyor and loved gadgets.

We can't turn our backs on this “techno-fetishism and techno-nationalism”.

Posted by Some guy at August 1, 2006 11:46 AM

Just like pro football pays better than the Army.

The problem with this comparison is that most people who want to be pro football players aren't hired. If you include them, the average salary is small.

Football is an example of a 'star' activity, where the output of a single, identifiable person is consumed by a large audience. Such activities tend to have a small number of very well compensated individuals. The military is not like this.

BTW, I completely agree with the observation that engineers' salaries debunk the notion that there's a shortage, and also look askance at the idea that kids should be lured into science/engineering. Let the market do what the market does best, folks.

Posted by Paul Dietz at August 1, 2006 11:57 AM

China is run by engineers. Let's see how it turns out.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at August 1, 2006 12:07 PM

*********

There is an incredible book that I recommend, called "The Lunar Men". It is about the circle of people in the UK that provided the intellectual impetus for the industrial revolution. Names like James Watt, Matthew Boulton (Steel), Wedgworth (China and Canals), and Erasamus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles. There was another guy, whose name I can't remember that was a pivotal member of this group. One of his star pupils was Jefferson. Ben Frankin was also an associate of many in this group. This is why patent law in enshrined as strongly as it is in our constitution.

These were the visionaries of their time.

Dennis

PS, they were called Lunar Men because they used the light of the Moon to walk home from the local pub.

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at August 1, 2006 12:19 PM

China is not run by engineers. It is still run by legacy military and party men who are in charge not because they were selected based on merit but because the control slipped to them when the older generation died.

The corruption there is total. Crossing an official on a business deal can land you in jail for ever.

Posted by Some guy at August 1, 2006 12:20 PM

BTW, I completely agree with the observation that engineers' salaries debunk the notion that there's a shortage, and also look askance at the idea that kids should be lured into science/engineering.

It is true that football is not a perfect analogy because it is a "star" activity. But it does serve to show that just because someone is well paid, that doesn't necessarily make him valuable. In some cases, "valuable" for negative reasons. Extortionists can be well-paid.

The real point about scientists and engineers is that they create wealth so that everyone can be paid better. Real estate agents in Silicon Valley get paid really well, maybe better than the engineers who work there; but it is clear where the money really comes from.

Posted by Mike Johnson at August 1, 2006 12:40 PM

Anyone who thinks we, Western Civilization in general and American aerospace industry in specific, do not need more engineers can come sit at my desk and try to hire some.

And anyone who thinks that our civilization doesn't depend on a steady, healthy, goodly supply of engineers can go sit on a deserted island without a boat, radio, plow, knife, water well, cooking pot, or clothing and enjoy the the absence of engineers in his life.

Posted by Aleta Jackson at August 1, 2006 01:03 PM

The real point about scientists and engineers is that they create wealth so that everyone can be paid better.

But football players also produce wealth. They're not being paid by charities, they're being paid by rational economic actors expecting to get something in return. What they ultimately produce is pleasure on the part of sports fans, who either pay directly (buying tickets, brand merchandise, pay TV, etc.) or indirectly (with their time, watching advertising.) This is as much wealth creation as a silicon valley employee working on a new computer game.

Posted by Paul Dietz at August 1, 2006 01:05 PM

Anyone who thinks we, Western Civilization in general and American aerospace industry in specific, do not need more engineers can come sit at my desk and try to hire some.

So, the unemployment rate among aerospace engineers is zero? Or, is it that you find you can't get any at the salary you're willing to offer?

Posted by Paul Dietz at August 1, 2006 01:09 PM

Depends on how you define shortage. We still benefit from engineering students and engineers from foriegn countries coming here and staying. I think the shortage is in homegrown engineering majors. There are not enough and if the engineers from China, India, etc elect to go home the shortage will be more obvious.

The other problem is that while we do have a lot of homegrown students studying engineering (just not enough to cover our needs) the home grown ones tend to stop at the Bachelors level because of the pay in industry.

Three personal examples.

When I was an engineering student the engineering dept had 3 foreign professors out of approximately 25, give or take. When my son started two years ago, approximately 25 years after my start, there were about 5 homegrown professors out of about 30 total.

Last summer I did some research at a local university, not the one I graduated from, the entire research team, with the exception of me, was foreign born. This included the professor in charge of the research group, the grad students and 2 undergrad students.

I now am andjuct at this same university. I have met a good deal of the engineering professors and the majority are foreign born, including the chair and the associate chair.

Is there anything wrong with the above? No these are good people, hard working and quite brilliant. But with the rise of Inda, China, etc as engineering powers can we depend on people like this staying here in the future. When the professors I met came here 20 - 25 years ago their only option was to stay here, or maybe Europe or Japan, but mostly here.

So I think the shortage is hidden in those foreign engineers that are here. Once they come and leave the real problem will become more apparent. The fact that not enough US young people are going into engineering.

Just my 2 cents

Posted by JAH at August 1, 2006 01:20 PM

Well, I'm just waiting for more of those Boomer engineers to retire or die, thus shrinking supply and increasing my salary.

Waiting...

Posted by Astrosmith at August 1, 2006 01:22 PM

Anyone who thinks we, Western Civilization in general and American aerospace industry in specific, do not need more engineers can come sit at my desk and try to hire some.

Maybe if y'all weren't out in the middle of the desert ...

Easy, Aleta, put down that wrench. I kid because I care.

Posted by Brian at August 1, 2006 01:50 PM

I think that Paul has a point when he says that you can't get any at the salary that you're willing to offer.

I had to go through hell and high water to get a decent rate for labor for myself and my senior engineers on a NASA contract. If you look at salary surveys for engineers nationwide the numbers are incredibly low in comparison to other professional salaries.

If you want the best people to become engineers pay them better. It is my opinion that a top engineer should make the same $400 an hour rate of a top lawyer. Do this and your engineering shortage evaporates. In the real world outside of government contracting I know several top guys that are making in this range for both programming and hardware design.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at August 1, 2006 01:58 PM

Paul,
I argued that same point here once long ago. I was trounced for suggesting such heresy as low money, being the cause of no available engineers.

The data and experence I had, mine, my wifes, and our friends and ex-coworkers from here in NC was that EVERYBODY in the local economy wanted to hire Bill Gates for programming, Jonas Salk for medicine and Alan Greenspan for finance all at $12.00 an hour. We were hearing the same from others out west, up north and even from Phoenix.

Aleeta, and someone else Aletta may remember who, said the engineers just don't exist. I think they were both writing about situations in / around Phoenix.

Posted by Steve at August 1, 2006 02:00 PM

Brainfart time.

I am NOT an engineer. My wife and everyone else involved was.

Posted by Steve at August 1, 2006 02:01 PM

Steve

This will be a key differentator between successful and non successful companies. Good companies pay their engineers what they are worth. I can think of so many times that an experienced engineer has saved a company far more money than the cost of his or her salary. Companies who forget this and try to low ball their guys get what they pay for.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at August 1, 2006 02:33 PM

In the defense contracting business, it's very common to find companies that want to hire new graduates to keep the wages low so they can win contracts. Others try to hire experienced people but pay them as if they were new grads. Reading between the lines of their ads, they basically want an "entry level engineer" with 10 years of experience. When they get no takers, they then complain about the shortage of engineers.

Fortunately for me, my company tends to hire experienced people and pay them accordingly. I'd estimate the average age of the people in my department is 45. Almost all of us served in the military and most are retirees. As a result of our experience, our customers love us. It does sometimes make it harder to compete with the low-balling companies, but we win our share of contracts.

Hire good people and pay them what they're worth. What a radical concept!

Posted by Larry J at August 1, 2006 03:03 PM

Part of the problem may be what I'd call the "Why do people smoke so much?" puzzle. Why do people smoke so much, when smoking for 10 years is, roughly and statistically speaking, about as dangerous as playing a round of Russian rou1ette?

The answer of course is that smoking doesn't kill you fast enough. The delay between act and consequences is long enough for ordinary attention spans to wander, and for people to fail generally to connect the two.

Similarly, the quality of the engineering that goes into a product or service is often not apparent for some time. It can easily be years to decades before shoddy engineering causes its damage, or equivalently high-quality engineering demonstrates its superiority.

This is one reason people undervalue good engineering. Nor is it totally irrational: discounting the value of future benefits is a rational response to the uncertainty of life. Maybe it doesn't matter that the car will self-destruct in 15 years, because I'll be dead of a bus accident in 5 anyway, or the world will be out of oil in 10, et cetera.

Now, it might be that we discount the future benefits of good engineering more than we should, but that could be because our instincts for how uncertain the future is are out of synchrony with present reality. Our instincts were formed when we were primitive ape-like beings swinging from tree to tree. The future was arguably far less predictable in those days. Perhaps our instinctive feelings about how much to discount future value do not work well in a modern society.

In support of that supposition, I note that insurance companies -- which evaluate risks rationally -- make gobs of money betting against our instinctive evaluations of risk.

Posted by Carl Pham at August 1, 2006 03:16 PM

But football players also produce wealth.

No, for the most part celebrities, such as professional football players, control wealth rather than creating it. If a conspiracy of jihadists assassinated the NFL and was then itself vanquished, the NFL would immediately be replaced by another NFL which would be only slightly less talented and only slightly less entertaining. To be sure, all aspiring football players in America together create wealth, but if that's your denominator, they (deservedly) get paid very little each.

On the other hand, if they assassinated every American silicon chip designer, then for some years America would make bad silicon chips. Many areas of the economy would suffer.

Part of the point being that scientists and engineers create a great deal of wealth that they do not control, much more so than professional football players.

Posted by Mike Johnson at August 1, 2006 03:50 PM

So, the unemployment rate among aerospace engineers is zero? Or, is it that you find you can't get any at the salary you're willing to offer?

No to both questions; and I didn't say I was looking for aerospace engineers. Salary is not the go/no go decision point; we pay well. Experience, talent, experience, training, experience and enthsiasm get top dollar. Or as top as we can manage until we become really profitable; employees get rides and other intangible benefits. :-)
I have over a hundred resumes from degreed engineers, mechanical, aerospace and otherwise. Most are just out of school, and I'm very unhappy that it apprears that a) most schools don't teach practical stuff and b) these grads haven't done much before they went to school (very few say "I built a submarine when I was 16" or "I helped my Dad build a plane" or "top awards in science fairs"). I look for people who WANT to be an engineer, and if you don't want to be one, then it's pretty difficult to explain the desire. Kinda like explaining "red" to a blind person. The older engineers are almost too old ("Gee, sounds wonderful; where were you 15 years ago?"). Very very few are 30-45, and the good ones get squabbled over like any other scarce resource.

Posted by Aleta Jackson at August 1, 2006 05:09 PM

You know, I'd just like to live in a nation of scientifically and technologically literate people, irrespective of whether they act as engineers in society. People who understand their technology can function in its absence. Those who do not understand it become helpless, and thus a hindrance and burden in times of crisis.

Astrosmith, good luck on the waiting. The Boomers are going to be squatting in their positions for a while, especially since so many have crapped out in their retirement funds since the turn of the millenium. Once they are pushed out the companies will find that there's really been no one groomed to take their place, so they'll outsource the work back to the same folks but at a lower rate, or GenX temps. It'll be about 10 years before it really starts becoming noticeable.

Oh, and teachers are paid pretty crappily too, though the value of their contribution is inestimable. Another area of our society/economy where we squander investment opportunity. Another decade or two in the same direction and we won't be able to produce engineers or scientists and all our best and brightest will have to go to Asia or Europe to study to be able to compete in the global market. Okay, maybe 30 years...

Posted by Ken Murphy at August 1, 2006 05:31 PM

Aleta

Good point and unfortunately I think you are going to see more of students who cannot do the practical things. Why? The computer. They play with computer games. When I was growing up my friends and I played with erector sets. We knew how to build things, trouble shoot them and make them work. We would work on our car engines when we got older. tear them apart, put them together, really learn how they work.

Even if they use design programs on computers they do not get the true 3-D sense of what is going on. Also students are being trained to trust the answers out of a computer. Several years ago when I was in conceptual aircraft design I was given the task of leading a design of a new transport aircraft. One of the young, just out of school, engineers I was assigned was doing the takeoff and landing analysis. This transport had to have short takeoff and landing capability. One day he came to my desk and showed me his work. As I was going through it I noticed he had a takeoff ground roll time of 300 seconds. I asked him about it and he said "Well that's what the computer says." Not really realizing he had written the program and it was only as good as his ability. I had him go to his desk count off 300 seconds and then come back. When he came back he said "Yep need to rewrite that."

He really thought the computer could do no wrong.

I am a teacher now, at an all girls college prep school. In addition to Honors Physics and AP Physics. I teach an engineering course. This is the same as OSU's 181, 183 classes for all incoming engineering freshmen, with the exception of the Honors Program students who take 191, 192, 193.

They get experience hand sketching items, so they can get a feel for the 3-dimensional aspects, before they move to CAD programs. They also have to learn to use tools and actually build something. I get my physics and engineering students in involved in robotics competitions and they love it. They are learning what it takes to design something, buiild it and make it work. Last year we went to the regionals in Auburn for the BEST robotics. We were the only girls team there.

Posted by JAH at August 1, 2006 06:41 PM

There is a way to solve the problem of the lack of practical training in engineering schools. Support students!!

At UAH when I was there (University of Alabama in Huntsville) we had numerous projects to teach students about practical things. I started some of these after overhearing an interview from a local company where a graduating EE did not even know what an IC was, much less describe a specific component when asked.

In civil engineering UAH has led the nation for years in concrete canoe design, geotechnical, paper presentation, and the balswood bridge, all projects that help them to be better CE's.

In Mechanical Engineering we built solar cars, human powered vehicles (which we did a Guiness book of world record for crossing the country in an HPV), and other ME competitions.

In the IEEE we did a really nice series of robotic cars that had to do autonomous navigation on a course and other similar competitions.

In my project, which was a student built satellite, we had five masters degrees awarded for work on the bird, along with almost 200 hours of undegraduate engineering credit for working on the system. We did presentations at professional conferences and were the genesis of the Utah State University Small Satellite Conference student paper competition.

We also did two Getaway Specical student payloads on the Shuttle, including the very first concrete ever made in space. I did several flight projects while at UAH myself working for the Consortium for Materials Development in Space.

So if you are complaining about students not knowing enough and you are not doing something about it, you are part of the problem. I know that we all are busy but let me tell you the rewards are great. Several of the students that worked with us on SEDSAT are working at NASA, contractors, or the military on engineering projects.

So support students in Co-op programs, put some money into student special projects for Cubsats and the like, or many other opportunities in this area. We started with a fifth grader flying a biological experiment and he graduated from high school by the time it flew!!

Mentoring is an incredibly important part of any senior engineer's life, that is if you want to have your knowledge passed on and not die with you. I have been very lucky to have many of these people and recently got to brief the father of Ion propulsion, Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, on our efforts in this area. He is 93 years old and still has valuable insights to help us out.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at August 1, 2006 07:12 PM

I always thought that the reason why physicians and lawyers had high salaries is that they were licensed professionals. Since it is usually illegal to practice without a license, the supply of the professionals is artificially limited and their price goes up.

While there are Professional Engineers who are required for certain functions, I believe the vast majority of engineers are not PE's. Indeed it is legally possible, if not adviseable, to practice "engineering" without even having a college degree. The supply of people who can do a particular engineering task is usually fairly large, and thus their average cost is lower. Of course there will always be specialized functions requiring scarce skillsets which demand higher salaries. But business realities must always be taken into account. It makes no sense to pay an engineer a million dollars when the expected ROI is less than that.

Posted by Frank Johnson at August 1, 2006 07:54 PM

Dennis, we *are* supporting students through co-op programs- we usually have two at any given time, and earlier this year hired back two of our previous interns as newly-minted junior engineers. The only problem is that the pipeline took a while to fill, and will take longer to turn up the flow...

Posted by Doug Jones at August 1, 2006 08:19 PM

It's a buyers' market/sellers' market thing. If you are a star engineer and can differentiate yourself as such, you can get paid well or even if you can't you may be able to start your own firm and develop your own designs. If you are not distinguished, like a new grad from an average college with an average background, you will get an average salary.

If everyone pushes kids to be scientists and engineers and it works and the kids go for it, then engineering and science will pay worse than an occupation like law that is held in low esteem and does not attract a surplus of qualified candidates. So entry level engineering salaries for average engineers represent the least the engineers are willing to take before exiting the field. Entry level law salaries for average lawyers are the most the average law firm is willing to pay vs. going without.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at August 1, 2006 08:26 PM

Society at large does not value engineers that highly for good reason, technology innovation is just not sufficiently productive.

Far too many failures, far too many fraudsters getting the funding and poisoning the well, poor risk management, people not looking at the economics, wrong types of funding, lack of accountability. Basically, R&D is operated as a monopoly, and we deserve everything we get. This is not just the fault of engineers, society at large has little clue what it is doing when it comes to R&D. Some kind of “third way” R&D revolution is required.

We have to somehow force competitiveness and accountability into R&D. No more of this just one group taking a random punt on one idea. Some kind of antitrust law needs to be applied to R&D for starters. The R&D problem is really holding engineers back.

Space settlements will put an interesting twist on things, there engineers will have far higher value, be more numerous and have more of a say in things. I wonder if it will do them any good.

Posted by Pete Lynn at August 1, 2006 08:50 PM

Frank Sez

*************

Frank

DO WHAT? Silicon Vally was built as much with non degreed engineering talent as degreed. One of my best friends is probably in the top three memory designers in the world and made several million dollars doing it, and he does not have a degree. He also was one of the eight founders of Micron Computer and one of their lead engineers. He built his memory company from $4M in sales to over $180M and has I think 11 patents now. Get real.

Richard Diegas, the designer of the first Winchester Hard Disk/Floppy Disk controller was not a degreed engineer. Les Staples, the lead engineer at Data Point in the mid 70's designed the ARCNet controller, the granddady of all token passing network designs.

Another ex roomate of mine is a top designer at 3Com. It is only in this artificial government contracting world where you HAVE to have a degree to practice the art. I designed the hardware for the world's first point of sale data acquisition devices in 1983 long before I got my degree. I led the test engineering effort for the world's first large scale engineering document management system in 1985 because I knew the hardware better than anyone.

This is a huge problem in the contracting world that non degreed engineers don't even get to play anymore. When I started in engineering in 1978 after three years of electronics in high school companies were hiring anyone that knew which end of a soldering iron was hot. It was only with the big drawdown in defense after the Gulf War that the requirement shifted in the commercial world to require degrees because of the plentiful supplies of engineers.

Our generation had a lot of kids who were really good with electronics having grown up with Radio Shack kits, Heathkit, and many many other electronic hobbyist outlets that don't exist anymore. (Actually they do, but they are called computer stores and the kids now outdo each other to build the most radical gaming computer)

While what Pete Lynn says may apply to the entreprenurial space arena, it certainly does not apply to the much wider computer and electronics industry. Some of the stuff that has been funded in the past ten years in the new space world boggles the mind that they were able to get a dime.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at August 1, 2006 09:09 PM

Dennis, I'm getting this vague impression you had a problem with something I wrote...

As you say yourself, in contracts it is usually required that the engineering personnel have the right degrees from the right ABET accredited programs. In today's world it is very difficult to get hired otherwise. So I would advise anyone who wants to pursue engineering to get at least a bachelor's degree.

There are certainly exceptional people who can succeed in engineering without a complete college education. The richest man in the country, if not the world, dropped out of college to found Microsoft. But if instead he had dropped out to practice a new surgical technique he would have been sent to jail for practicing medicine without a license.

Posted by Frank Johnson at August 2, 2006 03:58 AM

Ten years ago I went to an institute of professional engineers meeting. Some old POM got up and started desperately advocating professional capture as per the medical and legal professions. I took a good look at the people around me, and never went back. I did not go to engineering school for the piece of paper.

The computer and electronics industry did manage to get an intensive grass roots highly competitive R&D industry happening. The financial scale and lack of entry barriers helped greatly, still this is what is required in so many other industries. Alternative energy, personal transport, medical research and so many other fields are currently in very desperate need of this.

New space is actually leading the way, showing that R&D entry barriers can be substantially reduced even for what many assumed to be an inherently big fish pond. One of the tricks it would seem is to get away from the “think big” mentality and directly design for low entry barriers and constructive openly competitive grass roots R&D. This is one of the lessons to be learnt from the computer industry, if you can not design, build and test something low cost, fast and with a small group of people, then go back to the drawing board until you can, dividing it up into smaller tasks if need be.

Posted by Pete Lynn at August 2, 2006 05:48 AM

David,

I would agree with your explanation of why Japan has and needs less lawyers than we do. However, my point, which I still stand by, is that the way we've organized our society there's a lot of unneccessary and inefficient litigation, which slows down more than just the amount of people becoming scientists and engineers (in favor of being lawyers, for instance). I would say that the beauracracy also slows down innovation, the economy, and the beauracracy, and gives us more managers and lawyers as well as civil servants. This obviously isn't true with every company or state, compare NH to MA, for instance. Just on the whole.

Posted by Ian at August 2, 2006 06:32 AM

Frank

Then you need to tell Tim Pickens of Orion Propulsion that he has to close his company. They are one of the most innovative propulsion houses around and Tim does not have that degree.

There is a lesson in the Gates thing. There is a picture floating round of the Microsoft folks in 1978. I think that only one person there had a degree at the time.

Elon Musk Dropped out as well from college I belive because he found a way to be effective as a programmer and found a company as well.

The analogy to medicine is inappropriate and ther are more than a few exceptional non degreed engineers out there in the computer world, far more than you are willing to admit.

We built the world's most innovative industry in the computer and electronics world because we looked for competence, not paper. While I understand the value of a degree, I left the computer industry and spent a lot of time poor getting my engineering physics degree I can tell you from living in both worlds that without the practidemic experience that comes from actually doing things, an engineering degree is useless. In the early 80's when I worked at Vector Graphic Incorporated the engineering manager would put the newbies from UCLA under us non degreed senior engineering techs for a year before they let them do any real design work.

Engineering and software is far more about love of the art and focus than it is a paper degree.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at August 2, 2006 07:00 AM

Dennis,
this degree push started before the Gulf War. I got out of the Navy in 1982 and QUALIFIED people were being hire for engineering tasks. Before the 80's were over, it wasn't happening anymore.

you said:

There is a lesson in the Gates thing. There is a picture floating round of the Microsoft folks in 1978. I think that only one person there had a degree at the time.

...15 minutes later Gates hired his first Human Resources Manager, and the rules changed because HR people are trained to think the resume' and sheep skin make the man.

I used to work for a I&C manufacturer, the top, sharpest, most knowledgeable guy with the product was a non-degreed guy. He started working for that company when they were still working out of the founders garage on Long Island. The man in question started by sweeping floors when he was in Junior High School. He learned I&C from the floor up literally. He was a great person to ask any electronics or computer questions. Very, very sharp.

The company grew, moved to NC, got bought out by a bigger company and prospered. The big daddy company moved in a HR group, who in less than a year managed to fire or push out or push to the side everyone who helped grow that company from a garage and 2 customers to a 10,000+ sq ft building and a worldwide customer base.

One of the first guys pushed aside was that most knowledgeable lead engineer, because he had no paper. A lead, mind you, with 15 years of experience on that product. A man who built and programmed all the test computers, and designed and built the test beds we used. He was replaced by a guy who had never seen our product before he had his 1st interview. A 25 year old, mid-level engineer, looking for his second job, post college.

The HR boss was the guy who made and carried out all the hiring, firing and pushing. He actually told us in a tech meeting that any engineer or tech or field apps person could be replaced ANY day.

This clown taught at night, in two local universities. Do you think he taught anything but his own twisted view of engineers, techs, field apps people or even janitors? His attitude is epidemic in the world. HR people only value other HR types. Everyone else is expendable.

The amazing thing, to me, is that NO ONE seems to realize, or care, that hardly any HR people are technically trained.

Aleta, I don't think his approach applies to you or your company. As I recall your are an engineer, or technically trained at least, but you are the minority in the tech world. Or any world I've encountered.

Posted by Steve at August 2, 2006 08:53 AM

Simple. The market is imperfect and prone to distortion by personal opinions. Live with it or get out of engineering.

I got out of engineering. I worked out a couple of years after graduation that I could earn more in engineering "management" and sales than I could ever as an actual engineer. I was right. At this point, in my company, I'm earning a basic salary that's higher than practically all the engineering staff, and my commission package is worth 4 to 5 times the salary of the average engineer here.

Interestingly, the situation is different in other European countries. German qualified engineers tend to have salary parity with lawyers and doctors, although they also have very similar professional requirements upon them and a similar training period.

Posted by Daveon at August 2, 2006 09:30 AM

So what would the effect of fewer or less experienced scientists and engineers be?

If you're not touring the engineering and science workforce, what would you notice that is different?

Posted by Kevin Parkin at August 2, 2006 04:17 PM

Truck Drivers deserve to be paid crap, because if anyone is useless to society, it's truck drivers.

Posted by X at August 2, 2006 05:01 PM

Dennis,

Our discussion seems to be bifurcating:

The original point was Sam's assertion that engineers are less valuable then physicians and lawyers because they make less. More likely, this is due to artifically limiting the labor supply by a professional licensing system. If you don't like medicine or law as examples, consider that IT professionals with security clearance tend to make more then those without clearance. There has been tremendous growth in demand for cleared IT staff. As such, salaries have gone up even though there may be plenty of non-cleared individuals with an adequate skillset.

As for the other point, I can point out many succesful non-degreed engineers in my field (metallurgy) as well. I would say fewer now than in the past. Metallurgy is a fairly mature field that is not growing as quickly as telecom or IT.

There are no guarantees in life, but I think that having a degree increases an individual's chance of career success and earning potential. The strength of our economy is that people without degrees can engineer things, and can fill needs that the educational system hasn't anticipated. Some become quite successful doing so. But, on the average, there will be a salary differential until experience levels are comparable.

Posted by Frank Johnson at August 2, 2006 05:12 PM

Frank

I think that you may be confusing the issue. The referenced article was about the shortage of engineers. My original point was that you solve the engineering shortage by paying engineers what they are actually worth in terms of their productive output. I feel that engineering salaries are at least 50% of what they should be and probably closer to 25%. This is for the top experienced engineers and the noobs can climb the ladder as their talent and experience dictate, not the CLIN's of some government contract.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at August 2, 2006 06:40 PM

Hmmm. I thought the post was about how there is a surplus of engineers and scientists because it's so fun, cool and socially responsible. Of course engineers are extremely valuable to society, but when it's a buyers' market, an employer only has to pay what the average engineer will take vs. leaving the profession. If there really were a sellers' market, then engineers could make nearly what they are worth to the firms that hire them. That is, low engineer salaries are definitive evidence that there is no shortage of engineers.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at August 2, 2006 07:33 PM

Sam

Then you have not been listening to all of the aerospace companies complaining about not being able to find the people that they need to do the work. The situation is a little better in the EE world because companies can just outsource their engineering to India and China, after all one engineer is just as good as another.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at August 3, 2006 07:01 AM

If scientists and engineers are so valuable, why do they make less money than doctors, lawyers and business consultants?

The remark earlier in the thread about productivity comparisons between the fields is correct - engineering has been made much more productive over the years by CAD systems, etc.

In the case of physicians, many of them don't make much more than engineers. (Many of the primary care docs make about $100k. on average.)But there is one major difference between an engineer and a doctor. If an engineer's product fails, his liability exposure is much, much more limited. Risk and reward tend to be correlated. Also for most specialities in medicine, the hours are longer and more irregular than for engineers.

In the case of attorneys, much of what they do that is of use to the average person could be done by a clerk with a simple expert system. (i.e. wills, sales agreements, etc.)

Posted by ech at August 3, 2006 07:51 AM

Dennis, if the salary rose they could find lots of engineers. American people would even "do the jobs that Americans won't do" if the price was right. The companies are being disingenuous.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at August 3, 2006 10:17 AM

There will always be "engineers" to fill engineering positions.

Salary determines whether these "engineers" are smart relative to their former classmates who went into other fields such as law and medicine, and whether their education fully prepared them for engineering, or just an adjacent engineering-minded field.

At the moment I think we're in the middle of a die-off, so to speak, in which there is a downturn in the demand for engineers and scientists that is outpacing even the high retirement rate. So, as the science and engineering base is shrinking, few new scientists and engineers are being hired and salaries are depressed.

This downturn appears only to be local, as the scientific progress worldwide in the next 25 years is predicted to equal the progress made in the past 100 years, i.e. 2006-2031 1906-2006. The next century-equivelent of scientific and engineering progress will probably occur mostly in Asia, so let's hope we are better than anyone else at downstream development of new inventions.

Posted by Kevin Parkin at August 3, 2006 04:44 PM

Going down the professional capture monopoly route for engineers and scientists would I think end badly. It would reduce the rate of new technology development – as per Europe, and increase out sourcing off shore. It would lead to a serious loss of international competitiveness.

This suggests an alternate route, we can instead reduce the professional capture of the medical and legal professions – by promoting their out sourcing off shore. This would increase the relative worth of engineers and scientists.

Sam may want to correct me on this but my reading is that economic growth is a direct function of technology development, (resources are not resources without the technology to exploit them, etcetera). Everyone knows how critical economic growth is and so it surprises me that governments do not expend far greater effort in understanding and creating the climate for such innovation. If engineers and scientists wish to get paid more, and bring more people into the industry, then they need to promote this. This does not mean just educating more scientists and engineers – their traditional approach leading to the current low pay rates, it means creating a market pull. This leads back to focussing on the need for more and more productive R&D, which is very much in the governments best interests.

Posted by Pete Lynn at August 3, 2006 08:30 PM

Dennis, if the salary rose they could find lots of engineers. American people would even "do the jobs that Americans won't do" if the price was right. The companies are being disingenuous.

***********

Sam

My approach is to offer the good salaries to attract the best and the brightest. On my NASA contract last year the average age of my company's people was + 65. That is because they are some of the best in the world at what they do. If I had hired a 1000 fresh outs at $40 per hour I would have just wasted a LOT of money.

The optimum idea is to have the greybeards mentor the fresh outs and pass on their wisdom. The greybeards mentor and correct the errors and the freshouts do the long hours.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at August 3, 2006 09:58 PM

And how many freshouts have you noticed recently? At least if you're working with NASA, I would guess that the answer is close to zero point zero percent if you don't count interns.

As for the private sector, could it be that a natural US comparative advantage has never existed for science and technology, and merely been forced by DOD's need to keep an edge?

If so, market forces should move us to licensing most new technologies from abroad, and freeing up Americans for whatever tasks our workforce can do best.

Posted by Kevin Parkin at August 4, 2006 01:47 AM

Mostly what it takes to realize a new prototype product is to write a specification. Imagine and we can engineer it. So if we lead in imagination, we can have the factories and engineers off shore. Maybe we will lose imagination and just become a nation of investors and venture capitalists being critics at the top of the value chain. Maybe there is another revolution that will follow the information/service revolution as robots automate service delivery where people will evolve into foremen for gangs of robots or dabble in art, sports and philanthropy--and private space program.

Whatever it is that pays best, that seems to be what we are doing as the most nimble economy with the highest per-capita average and median income.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at August 4, 2006 06:49 AM

One of the old lessons of software engineering that rarely seems to penetrate big organizations is the huge disparity in productivity between average and 'star' employees. The difference is staggering, an order of magnitude or more. The tendency in large companies is to treat programmers (or software engineers) as interchangeable, uniform, replaceabke, outsource-able parts, and to try to compensate for the consequences of this fantasy with a blizzard of mostly useless paperwork and process, which mainly causes the stars to move elsewhere.

Look for the companies that treat stars as stars. I get the impression Google does this.

Posted by Paul Dietz at August 4, 2006 09:03 AM

Paul

This is true in just about any field of human endeavour. It is only in government contracting and recently in some sectors of the wider computer industry that this is happening. Whenever a company, government entity, or nation treats their professionals as commodities that is what you get, a commodity.

Kevin

The edge has been here and in many ways still is. In the U.S. the financial aspect of innovation is just as important as the engineering side. Risk capital in the U.S. has been hugely important in pushing innovation forward.

One thing to note is that there was a huge surplus of engineering talent in the 70's that moved from the government sector to the commercial sector and formed a lot of the core for the tech explosion that began in the mid/late 70's. I worked with many of these guys back then who had really suffered after Apollo died.

I see freshouts all the time as well as those who are still in school because I make a point to watch for talent and help those along where I can. I am looking at assembling a team in the fall for some work that we have been offered from a government customer. It will be a LOT of fun. Also, in my commercial solar business I will be training a lot of new people, from engineers to installers. I want young motivated people there as well as the greybeards for the tech development.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at August 4, 2006 03:05 PM

Good " target="_ ">Article from EE Times on the Engineering Shortage

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at August 5, 2006 01:54 PM

Oh great, enrolments down from 5.8% to 3.8% because there is no money in it, and their answer is a scholarship to lure more fools into what is appparently an engineering trap.

Posted by Pete Lynn at August 5, 2006 09:09 PM

Here is a link to an article about a top engineer, a software engineer.

http://www.pacifict.com/Story/

This is what it means to turn work into art.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Wingo at August 6, 2006 02:37 PM

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