Engineering Careers Short-Circuiting

8BitWimp writes "Today's edition of the Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article discussing the current plight of the U.S. engineering profession. One 29-year-old engineer recently caught in Nortel Network's layoffs said "I spent seven years in school, and it resulted in a six-year career." The article goes on to say a California computer science professor has statistics to show that a programmer's career is not much longer than a pro-football player. What do other Slash-Dot readers think of this situation as related to their programming and engineering careers? Would you pursue the same career path again?"

Engineering is working out fine for me

[billmaly]

Someone needs to pull this trainload of Japanese imports, might as well be me.

Move to India!

[Real World Stuff]

That is where all the development jobs, hot chicks, and great food dishes are!

We win

[SteweyGriffin]

The article goes on to say a California computer science professor has statistics to show that a programmer's career is not much longer than a pro-football player.

Yeah, but who gets more tit 'n ass? ;-D

There *is* a safe career choice!

[kevcol]

I've recently started a new career that, thanks to the baby boom of the 40s and 50s, will guarantee me an increase in customers for the next 20 years until I can live on my earnings: Undertaker.

Re:We win

[Anonymous Coward]

Your man tits and a huge ass from drinking cola all day don't count as tit 'n ass. Sorry bud.

Re:Just In Time

[NineNine]

will be vastly easier classwork, and easier work in the workplace.

Kid, you're gonna get your ass handed to you on a platter if you believe this. Coming from someone who's already been there, IComp Sci is pretty easy: you learn the formulas, equations, languages, etc, and you bundle it up in packages. Most projects are pretty much identical. A real businessperson has to handle many, many different things. There's no sitting on your ass in a comfy cubicle while you surf Slashdot. You may get an assignment in a job that's "Improve sales by 25% in the next month. Go." And that's *all* you get. At least, with the comprable IT problem: "Improve performance by 25% in the next week", you know where to look, what to do, you can read web sites, etc.

If you think an MBA will be "easy", you're in for a rude awakening.

GIve me a shell, a good language and...

[scorp1us]

I am one of the most powerful forces on the planet. I can conjure sets of ordered instructions that can be used to bring down governments, save economies, destroy enimies, save lives and maybe even make me a few dollars.

I'll never give that kind of power up.

Re:There *is* a safe career choice!

[Jonny Ringo]

Yeah I hear that you even get free room and board. The only deal is that you have to be around a bunch of cold stiffs.. Oh wait, I guess thats not much different than the corporate environment.

Re:I heard one hiring manager tell me

[cuyler]

Engineers with 20 years experience in refinery design and revamp are few and far between. And worth their weight in gold.

hehe....knowing a couple engineers myself I must say - that's a lot of gold...

Re:Vanishing Middle Class

[benzapp]

This is why I spend a lot of my spare cash on purchasing high powered weaponry while its still legal. There are a lot of discontented people out there. They are everywhere. We might like to think a plutocracy is the natural progression of society, but that is not the case.

You are very right my friend. I think the revolution will come sooner than most people think. Join your local national guard now, so you at least have access to automatic weapons when you need them.

Re:"Programmers" are a commodity

[jelle]

"While another 2345 users are trying to update the same records."

"Think of credit card verification system."

Ok, I will bite...

If that is happening in your credit card verification system, it should block all the 2345 record updates and flag the card as stolen by a mob of 2344 people.

Re:Programming "Career"

[jsse]

...not resulting from poor economy (I live in Canada, and our economy is quite strong right now...), but as a result of poor management and planning.

Since when the high unemployment and poor economy is as a result of our fault? Let me rebuke your FUD and give you a real picture of what IT business is.

The major problem the IT business is facing is the programmers in general failed to follow what has been planned by management. We've stressed on focusing on our core values for many years and none of our programmers could list any one of them in any of their review, least following them. I don't know what their core values are, neither, but when we've made them, they should follow them precisely. Also, we've emphasis on the importance of COM(Customer Oriented Management) for years and even introduced 4P(Professionalism, Partnership, Proactiveness and Priority), but none of our programmers seemed to have followed them. Therefore, this year, we restated the nessacity of TCQM(Totally, Completely Quality Management) and our compliance with ISO 60002. Guess what, none of them understand a hell of them!

At the beginning of this year, I gave them one last chance and called for "paradigm shift" and "thinking out of the box", to my provokation all they could do is eating out of the box! We even so nice as to rewrite the VMV(Vision, Mission and Values) and annoucned "3Rs &1M" (Re-prioritisation, Re-engineering, Reorganisation and Market enabling). I hope they could at least re-organize, re-engineer or re-prioritize their code toward the heaven of total quality, but all they could raise up is to urge me to adopt some craps like design pattern! We are not running garment business God damn it.

You see how many chances I've given to them? If anyone of them could comply with what we've planned we could have achieved the state of Total Quality, Zero-Error and Complete Customers Satisifaction years ago! Now you say we are to blame?!



(For humor-impaired: this is a joke, but all the terms listed above are real, some of them are extracted from our Director's year resolution, sadly)