Not to poke a fight, or cause any malcontent, but I am basing this solely from my life experience where I have seen few engineers become successful managers. I have seen non-engineers become very good at generating ideas, but because they lack the engineering disciplines need the engineers to work out into real time products. Now I'm not against engineering by any means, in fact I know we need as many as we can produce. Here's my argument. Engineers go to school to design, build and create concepts into things. Non-engineers attend "other" disciplines (management) schools to oversee the other important support aspects and dynamics of making the idea into reality. When an outfit can dial in two disciplines to work cohessively, it flows. I have come to firmly believe that in order to survive and flourish is to keep the disciplines seperate but functioning together. Paying the engineers the salary for doing exactly what they do of designing, building and creating while paying the managers their salaries of supporting the engineers to meet the objectives. Allow the engineers to be free of the logistic burdens and do what they went to school for and the managers to carry the logistics burdens all the while an open comms line between the two disciplines to ensure target objectives are met.
My case in point of experience is I was employed at a highly respected U.S. Naval research and development facility as a Program Manager and saw too many young engineers promoted to management positions over a talent pool of former military types with combined 200+ years experience in personnel/logistic management. The long term result was a group of very talented and promising engineers were pulled from viable projects and over time they lost touch of what they originally attended school to do as they became mired in the logistic support arena for these projects. This often resulted in the person leaving for "greener pastures" and the promotion cycle would repeat itself. At the same time, the non engineers mentioned were designated as engineer technicians supporting roles were helpless in advancing some projects because the managing engineers wouldn't listen to the input. Budgets often went over the limits and production targets were missed. It had become so convoluted of mismatched disciplines that I eventually too left. The big difference was this was a U.S. Government facility, not a private firm and monies were always available..... so the cycle is probably still going on.
Again, I use this posting based solely from my personal experience and not looking to insult or demean any career path one chooses. Yes, there are the exceptional talents that appear from time to time that can handle the rigor, but I honestly believe that if an organization recognizes the talents and utilize them accordingly with disciplines where non engineers manage and engineers engineer separated yet parallel to each other, phenomenal things can happen.
You wrote a lot to unpack, and I won't get into everything, as that would take more time than I have today.
A couple points - a lot of engineers have the degree, but not the mindset. Some techs do have the mindset, but didn't get a degree, and most large organizations require the degree (for good reasons and poor ones as well).
Attitude matters. Doesn't matter - degree or not - people with poor attitudes are a PITA to work with - doesn't matter how smart they are.
Engineers are generally underpaid by a lot and few companies recognize a technical career path. This is also true of the best techs. The easiest / fastest way to advance in a career is to manage others. I have a daughter who could have become an engineer - she has all the tools and talent, but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. I can't blame her for feeling that way.
Concur in all aspects. I saw your post and needed to vent. I was frustrated (still am somewhat) with the fact that we couldn't deliver to the warfighter what they needed in a timely manner. Cost over runs, missed target deadlines, etc.all because of inexperienced personnel in key positions. Not their fault, especially when pushed by their superiors to fill the vacated slots. Our young engineers were brought in at the higher payscales for their experience levels and within a short timeline were given managerial positions which was crushing their abilities. The maddening part was the talent pool of the SMEs (military) who knew exactly what was needed and couldn't advance because the position required an engineering degree. That was where I worked and the senior/executive management mindset. Have a great day fren!!
Sorry to hear your frustrations - in some ways I can relate, but nothing compares to putting our young men and women in harms way because of egos and incompetence. I think that is criminal, but except for a few cases, very hard to prove and punish appropriately. Although, the best punishment would be to put those people on an active front line unequipped and let them try to deal with it - without putting any regulars in harms way because of their inability to manage a bad situation.
Not to poke a fight, or cause any malcontent, but I am basing this solely from my life experience where I have seen few engineers become successful managers. I have seen non-engineers become very good at generating ideas, but because they lack the engineering disciplines need the engineers to work out into real time products. Now I'm not against engineering by any means, in fact I know we need as many as we can produce. Here's my argument. Engineers go to school to design, build and create concepts into things. Non-engineers attend "other" disciplines (management) schools to oversee the other important support aspects and dynamics of making the idea into reality. When an outfit can dial in two disciplines to work cohessively, it flows. I have come to firmly believe that in order to survive and flourish is to keep the disciplines seperate but functioning together. Paying the engineers the salary for doing exactly what they do of designing, building and creating while paying the managers their salaries of supporting the engineers to meet the objectives. Allow the engineers to be free of the logistic burdens and do what they went to school for and the managers to carry the logistics burdens all the while an open comms line between the two disciplines to ensure target objectives are met. My case in point of experience is I was employed at a highly respected U.S. Naval research and development facility as a Program Manager and saw too many young engineers promoted to management positions over a talent pool of former military types with combined 200+ years experience in personnel/logistic management. The long term result was a group of very talented and promising engineers were pulled from viable projects and over time they lost touch of what they originally attended school to do as they became mired in the logistic support arena for these projects. This often resulted in the person leaving for "greener pastures" and the promotion cycle would repeat itself. At the same time, the non engineers mentioned were designated as engineer technicians supporting roles were helpless in advancing some projects because the managing engineers wouldn't listen to the input. Budgets often went over the limits and production targets were missed. It had become so convoluted of mismatched disciplines that I eventually too left. The big difference was this was a U.S. Government facility, not a private firm and monies were always available..... so the cycle is probably still going on. Again, I use this posting based solely from my personal experience and not looking to insult or demean any career path one chooses. Yes, there are the exceptional talents that appear from time to time that can handle the rigor, but I honestly believe that if an organization recognizes the talents and utilize them accordingly with disciplines where non engineers manage and engineers engineer separated yet parallel to each other, phenomenal things can happen.
You wrote a lot to unpack, and I won't get into everything, as that would take more time than I have today.
A couple points - a lot of engineers have the degree, but not the mindset. Some techs do have the mindset, but didn't get a degree, and most large organizations require the degree (for good reasons and poor ones as well).
Attitude matters. Doesn't matter - degree or not - people with poor attitudes are a PITA to work with - doesn't matter how smart they are.
Engineers are generally underpaid by a lot and few companies recognize a technical career path. This is also true of the best techs. The easiest / fastest way to advance in a career is to manage others. I have a daughter who could have become an engineer - she has all the tools and talent, but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. I can't blame her for feeling that way.
Concur in all aspects. I saw your post and needed to vent. I was frustrated (still am somewhat) with the fact that we couldn't deliver to the warfighter what they needed in a timely manner. Cost over runs, missed target deadlines, etc.all because of inexperienced personnel in key positions. Not their fault, especially when pushed by their superiors to fill the vacated slots. Our young engineers were brought in at the higher payscales for their experience levels and within a short timeline were given managerial positions which was crushing their abilities. The maddening part was the talent pool of the SMEs (military) who knew exactly what was needed and couldn't advance because the position required an engineering degree. That was where I worked and the senior/executive management mindset. Have a great day fren!!
Sorry to hear your frustrations - in some ways I can relate, but nothing compares to putting our young men and women in harms way because of egos and incompetence. I think that is criminal, but except for a few cases, very hard to prove and punish appropriately. Although, the best punishment would be to put those people on an active front line unequipped and let them try to deal with it - without putting any regulars in harms way because of their inability to manage a bad situation.