now, after all the heated namecalling
a bit of real-life ...
Here is a scenario i have firsthand...
A group of people , let's call them a 'soldering guy' , a highly skilled troubleshooting person , someone who knows how to layout perfect boards (pass emc testing first time right , perfect signal integrity throughout the board. ) and another person who is a 'serious hobbyist' but has no 'official credentials'. So this group of 4 people , each with about 15 years+ of experience, and having cobbled up and delivered numerous perfectly working prototypes, get a new manager.
This manager is fresh out of school with an 8 year degree ( he had a MSEE and a PHD in electronics) ... is going to lead this team. And oh boy, does he take charge...
First meeting we have , with a big customer out of scandinavia , makes mobile phones you know... , anyway. first meeting we have there is a couple of questions on the reference PCB layout and why we place the decoupling capacitors in specific regions. The customer had some concerns since his board real estate is at a premium and wants some advice to see if we can optimize it a bit. In the same meeting are the 2 people that designed the silicon (both of them ALSO holding PHD's but with each about 20 years of hands on design experience under the belt. The Silicon people give us the numbers of total capacitance they need and designed for. The layout person explains his strategy and the people that built and tuned the prototype assembly explain how they tuned the capacitors to get the correct result.
Before any of us can react , mr freshly minted 'manager' blurts out. But ? you have a mulitlayer board . Why don't you just put parts on inner layers . that should solve your area concerns ..
Now you have to image these two big scandinavian blokes with a heavy accent belching out this guttural laugh .... and keep going at it for about a full minute.
There were a couple of other 'accidents' like that in the next few months.
Like the time we were tasked with cost-optimizing a design. there was some glue logic required and mr super-phd came up with a schematic requiring no less than 9 different ic's. Most of them half used... So the 'techies' 'below' went over it and came up with a cleaner solution and some clevernesslike building an Or gate out of a couple of leftover nand gates ( you know , like using a nand to build an inverter and inverting the inputs of another nand that way. you do the boolean math , i have posted this as an example question when i have to interview potential candidates for employment )
Anyway. mr super phd cannot be convinced that this will work. he has to model it in VHDL and run it through the simulator to double check. At which point i formulated a nice banner to put above the door of the lab: 'more TTL, less VHDL'
You know where all these people are today ? they all Quit , work for a different company. That group shut down and mr nitwit .. eh .. manager , now works in his parents restaurant as a server ...
So here is my question : you have a company. Who are you going to hire ? Mr blundering 'phd magna cum laude' that has no clue how a board is made and makes a total jackass of himself in front of the customer , or the person with 15 years expierence , multiple technical patents (we're not talking design patents foolery here... these are things that sit in mass production...) to his name, having given presentations at ISCC , IMEKO , TCEE and other leading international conventions, has been published in multiple leading circulars such as IEEE magazine , elseviers Journal of computer standards and interfaces , and others. But , no officalized ' blue ribbon' ?
Tough decision ?
I know which i want ... a 1 year 'real-life' degree is worth a ten year university degree..
If that country you live in , or company you work for cannot come to the same conclusion ... well ... it's in a very very sad state of affairs... and it deserves to go under... real fast.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. being able to recant the recipy after 8 years of study does not make you a good cook.... and if you make a fool of yourself by letting the milk boil over, burn your fingers on the hot whisk and setting the entire kitchen on fire on your first day , while making excuses like 'boiling milk' is for 'sous-chefs' and putting out fires is for firemen will get you very quickly where you need to be : on your behind , in the gutter while it's pouring rain.
The title 'engineer' should be something that is post-humeously, or post-retirement if you want to avoid only having dead engineers
, awarded to people with a proven track record. Not after school. There you should get a nice certificate that you struggled through the paperwork. But then , for each one with 'known' and 'published' stuff there are so many that never get their 5 minutes of fame. Because they prefer to slave away in their little corner in the lab.
stuff to think about ....
it does you no good having a company with 25 phd's dreaming up the most fantasic stuff , but nobody to actually build it because they can't stand the superiority complex...
So , again : do not 'talk down' to the techs. You need them. Treat them with respect and they will respect you, each in his own field , with a lot of overlap. Pull them in on design meetings and listen to what they have to say. They can anticipate problems down the line that you could not even begine to imagine because you never go down that far ... In the end you will have a harmonious working environment that is very productive and delivers first class products.
and, most importantyl , do not seed topics like 'people without 'official credentials' sould not call themselves 'engineers'.
If it walks like a duck , quacks like a duck and looks like a duck , it is , for all intents and purposes a duck ! ( until you can prove otherwise. and no , killing it and throwing it on the barbeque to see if it tastes like duck is NOT an acceptable test ! )