Complaining about the "broken education system" is getting old

[Uncle Vernon]

Your comment is a fancy way of saying that people without a degree are lazy or stupid!.
And then you wonder why Techs everyone gets upset!

You've got it in one vk6zgo.  Those who haven't Had a gilt edged career path have still made it in so many ways. Some as Techs, some as tradesmen, more than a few as well respected engineers (albeit engineers without formal qualifications.)

All of those can wipe the floor with the vxp03600s of this planet. Some people have it, some people earn it, those that don't hide behind qualifications and association memberships. The guys a talentless w**ker, time to update the ignore list me thinks.

[EEVblog]

As an aside, it seems that 70% of Silverbrook Research's 300 employees have PhD's:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/genius-or-scoundrel--patently-someone-is-wrong-20120415-1x1px.html
No wonder they haven't gotten a product to market in well over a decade :->
Sounds like some weird stuff is going down there, that would be a lot of PhD's to flood the Sydney market if they implode!

Dave.

[free_electron]

i wonder how those 200 PhD's feel about their boss... after all he too is a university drop out ... 

[A Hellene]

Hehe! Once more:

"The only engineers who get promoted to management are the ones who can be spared. The real walking disasters are the ones who think they got promoted because they were good." 


-George

[vxp036000]

At least where I live, it is very common for employers to pay for school.  Kind of hard to turn down free money, isn't it?  Not to mention a healthy pay raise when your finished. 

Can't pay for undergraduate school?  Yep, me and most of my buddies actually worked our way through school.  When there is a will, there is a way.  I have a lot of respect for techs; I personally would never do that kind of work, though I'm certainly capable of it.  The EEs that I've worked with have no reason to go to a lab troubleshooting circuits.  Instead, their pre-occupied with managing the project and / or designing circuits.  And most do a damn good job at it.

There are numerous telecom companies in my area.  Most don't have a lab here; instead, we have design, management, and customer support personnel.  The test / manufacturing has been outsourced to China, Korea, and a host of other countries.  It won't be long before the lab skills are completely unnecessary in most work places.

Unfortunately,for those of us with insufficient means,there is a third reason why we may not undertake a Degree course,-------Simple economic survival!
You,somehow managed to keep body & soul together for 8 years at University.
I can only surmise,that either:-
(1) You have independent means of your own.
(2) You have wealthy parents.
(3) You have an enormous Student Loan.
(4) You worked your way with various menial jobs---If so, Bravo!!

(3) & (4) are the ONLY options left for most of us,so you will find most people opt for the less prestigious path of becoming a Technician.
Anyone with family responsibilities has to balance his/her "dedication" to self improvement against that required by the family.
Your comment is a fancy way of saying that people without a degree are lazy or stupid!.
And then you wonder why Techs get upset!

[vxp036000]

One more thing; you know who is the first to go when there are budget cuts?  That's right, the strictly technical folks.  Management gets a raise for saving the day by slashing expenses.  And people wonder why I chose the managerial route...

No one has yet to answer my question about how to fix the "broken" system.  Why complain if you can't suggest a better alternative?

[free_electron]

It won't be long before the lab skills are completely unnecessary in most work places.

i have to add to that .. it won't be long before the engineering bits can be outsourced too.. India and china are full of an immense potential. Just like japan started by manufacturing by copying 50 years ago and then moved into actual design , the chinese and indians are gaining fast. they actually have overtaken 'the west' in several area's...

it won't be long before all we have in 'the west' are 'man-agers' and unemployed people ...
And then there will be role reversal... the thrid-world is coming ...
better start making 'mandarin' a requirement class in engineering courses...

[vxp036000]

This is very true.  Even now the real "engineering" jobs are hard to come by.  Most are a combination of technical and business work.  My plan is to get out of the field before it gets much worse.  And save, more money the better with the economy the way it is.  Good luck.

It won't be long before the lab skills are completely unnecessary in most work places.

i have to add to that .. it won't be long before the engineering bits can be outsourced too.. India and china are full of an immense potential. Just like japan started by manufacturing by copying 50 years ago and then moved into actual design , the chinese and indians are gaining fast. they actually have overtaken 'the west' in several area's...

it won't be long before all we have in 'the west' are 'man-agers' and unemployed people ...
And then there will be role reversal... the thrid-world is coming ...
better start making 'mandarin' a requirement class in engineering courses...

[Uncle Vernon]

No one has yet to answer my question about how to fix the "broken" system.  Why complain if you can't suggest a better alternative?

Hell that's an easy one!  Base rewards on ability and productivity! Cadetship based user/s pays education. Let industry wear the cost and the benefit of education. Educational institutions working with industry rather than being an insular process line for unemployable w**kers. 

Add less government interference and you have a recipe where innovation and ability reaps national rewards. Asia has no problem with this while the western world bogs itself to standstill with flawed regulation.

[vxp036000]

You finally admit that having the piece of paper makes a difference.  And, as I already pointed out, it is not uncommon for employers to pay for the cost of school.  If the schools weren't teaching anything useful, employers wouldn't pay for it now, would they? 

Another metric is the fact that very few folks in the upper half of my graduating class could not find work.  Obviously the students had something to offer that employers were looking for.  To me, that indicates anything but unemployable people.  And if Asian countries have it figured out so well, why is it so common for Asian students to study abroad, for example, in USA?

Less government interference would help, no argument there.  The first thing we actually agree on...

No one has yet to answer my question about how to fix the "broken" system.  Why complain if you can't suggest a better alternative?

Hell that's an easy one!  Base rewards on ability and productivity! Cadetship based user/s pays education. Let industry wear the cost and the benefit of education. Educational institutions working with industry rather than being an insular process line for unemployable w**kers. 

Add less government interference and you have a recipe where innovation and ability reaps national rewards. Asia has no problem with this while the western world bogs itself to standstill with flawed regulation.

[Uncle Vernon]

You finally admit that having the piece of paper makes a difference.

I never claimed a qualification was a bad thing, it is not! What a qualification also isn't, is a licence to behave like an elitist prat. Nor is a degree licence to deride the demonstrated skill and education achieved by other through less formal means.

  If the schools weren't teaching anything useful, employers wouldn't pay for it now, would they?

Somewhat of a contradiction from your prior argument bollocks that it was all about marketing and certification.   

Another metric is the fact that very few folks in the upper half of my graduating class could not find work.
Obviously the students had something to offer that employers were looking for.

Who can tell there may be a huge demand for prats with attitude or office idiots in your country!  There are skilled graduates all over the planet flipping burgers, your arguments above confirm current economic trends will see a whole lot more.

To me, that indicates anything but unemployable people.

How is your mandarin?

And if Asian countries have it figured out so well, why is it so common for Asian students to study abroad, for example, in USA?

Western subsidisation, me thinks? Hell the US built and paid for most of Japan's industry, may as well pay to educate their youth as well.

[vk6zgo]

One more thing; you know who is the first to go when there are budget cuts?  That's right, the strictly technical folks.  Management gets a raise for saving the day by slashing expenses.  And people wonder why I chose the managerial route...
No one has yet to answer my question about how to fix the "broken" system.  Why complain if you can't suggest a better alternative?

Then why didn't you go for an MBA,instead?

[vxp036000]

I didn't get an MBA because I had no interest in it.  The EE program was fun and a great challenge.  I figured that I could easily get into engineering management without the MBA and I was right.  Haven't regretted it in the least, after seeing how EEs are treated at most places. 

Electronics is a great hobby and I spend hours tinkering with stuff at home, but I couldn't be paid enough to do it for a job.  Between projects that I had no interest in and almost zero job security, I decided that business is less interesting but a safer career path.

[free_electron]

wow... looks like someone can't bring up the dedication to stick with it 
maybe you are not that interested in engineering after all..

[vk6zgo]

At least where I live, it is very common for employers to pay for school.  Kind of hard to turn down free money, isn't it?  Not to mention a healthy pay raise when your finished.
In that case,you are extremely fortunate.The days of "Cadet Engineers" are long gone in my country!

Can't pay for undergraduate school?  Yep, me and most of my buddies actually worked our way through school.

From your "healthy pay raise" comment above,you were already working in the Industry.
I can't see MacDonalds giving you a pay rise when you graduate!

When there is a will, there is a way.

Again,priorities intervene.
If you had to work menial jobs,& raise a family,buy a house,plus pursue your University studies,you too,may have decided it was not worth it!
To those of us of an earlier generation, except for those fortunate enough to obtain a Cadetship,which were never plentiful, University was really not a viable option,as we needed to be making reasonable money from the time we left school.
Many Techs did "Go back to school"& do Engineering Degrees when they were more financially stable.Most of these people were very fine Engineers.

  I have a lot of respect for techs; I personally would never do that kind of work, though I'm certainly capable of it.  The EEs that I've worked with have no reason to go to a lab troubleshooting circuits.  Instead, their pre-occupied with managing the project and / or designing circuits.  And most do a damn good job at it.

There are numerous telecom companies in my area.  Most don't have a lab here; instead, we have design, management, and customer support personnel.  The test / manufacturing has been outsourced to China, Korea, and a host of other countries.  It won't be long before the lab skills are completely unnecessary in most work places.

Many types of equipment require testing over & above that performed at the factory.
Technicians do still need to do a lot of the stuff I enumerated earlier,both in installation & ongoing customer support.
Your scenario seems more gloomy for EEs than for Techs.

[Uncle Vernon]

Then why didn't you go for an MBA,instead?

Can see a bunch of knob-jockey MBAs whining about engineers using the term "engineering manager" without what they see as sufficient management qualifications.    Can also see vxp036000 whining about it like a spoilt child without ever seeing the irony.

[EEVblog]

I didn't get an MBA because I had no interest in it.  The EE program was fun and a great challenge.  I figured that I could easily get into engineering management without the MBA and I was right.  Haven't regretted it in the least, after seeing how EEs are treated at most places. 

So you actually worked your way into management without any formal qualifications in the field? Fancy that!
What if you have to find another job, and you come across a company that rejects you because you don't have that MBA?
(BTW, that's actually not uncommon here in Oz, MBA's have been all the rage in the last decade or so)
What is the difference between you working your way into management without qualifications in management, and someone working their way into engineering without (or with lesser) qualifications in engineering?
Both engineering management, and practical engineering have long histories of allowing technically "unqualified" people into the roles (at least in Australia, I won't speak for other countries). The difference is just semantics.

Dave.

[dcel]

I have re-read this entire thread again and I seem to think that the point here is truly being missed.
Yes, its possible that the education system is somewhat broken, but, I think what has been taught to children, a must have college degree, is what is really broke. I have read here and elsewhere that a lot of people are sick and tired of cubicle life, having that white collar job ain't as glamorous as it was made out to be. Some of those people are longing for the sense of accomplishment from creating something with their hands.

I would rather work with and/or for someone without a college degree than with. I have found out that most people with a "degree" don't know jack when it comes to real world stuff. I'm a tech and will always be one, even though I have engineered outdoor power equipment from the ground up; concept, prototype to production unit, two models. I have my worthless name on a couple patents to prove it, although no longer with that company by choice. I did this without a college degree, as did the owner.

I think that there are a number of kids, or college applicants, that don't really have a clue what they want to do for a career, or worse yet, choose something that they don't have a clue about or a passion for. So these students go through the course, get a degree, and are turned out into the world just as clueless as they started. Educational fail? Maybe, maybe not. There is allot more to an education than just the degree; mentoring, on the job training, or just plain having the drive to figure things out for ones self play a huge part as well.

As an aside... Arguing with someone in a on-line forum is like wrestling with a pig in mud, after a while you will realize the pig really likes it, and you both end up with mud on your face.

Chris

I had forgot where I had seen this but found it in my bookmarks...

www.mikeroweworks.com

Check out the video of Mike speaking in front of congress.

[vxp036000]

I see a tendency to use to term practical engineering for what I consider to be the lower level engineering jobs, as if higher level engineering (at the level of architecture, systems engineering, modeling, etc.) is less practical.  I think we can all agree that lower engineering functions can be accessible to someone without a degree.  Just like the lower to middle levels of management are attainable by someone without the MBA.  But as you progress up either one of these ladders, the more important the degree becomes.  I know plenty of degree-less folks that made it into lower level engineering jobs after 10 years or so experience, only to hit a glass ceiling because they had no formal qualifications.  The same is true with management.  And yes, when the MBA becomes a limiting factor, I have no reason not to go back to school at the company's expense.

[FJV]

I think I'll just add some fuel to the fire and mention that "I'm better than you" issues are not restricted to different levels of education. There is also the whole "I'm better than you" between different fields of engineering.

I think I will now sit back and enjoy the dysfunctional family circus. (secretly laughing at chimp behavior)

PS
My experience tells me, I am only considered as good as my last engineering task. If the last task went well everybody praises me and I can do no wrong, if last task went bad/wrong everybody vilifies me and I can do no right.

The second situation cannot be avoided, when you are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Customers always want things twice as fast, twice as cheap, exotic features, etc...

This means that often university educated engineers break good design rules, not because they "don't know crap", but because they are expected to deliver designs meeting specifications that cannot be achieved using the conventional engineering  way of doing things.

[vxp036000]

This is absolutely correct: most of the poor designs out there are a direct result of managerial decisions, whether they be budget limitiations, ridiculous schedules, impossible to meet specs defined by marketing, and the list goes on.  One of the many reasons I got away from engineering is because I was appalled at the shortcuts that were taken to meet some milestone.  And then management comes down on the engineer wondering why the product doesn't work.

I'll give an example.  I was working at a semiconductor company and found that one of the ICs exhibited a very poor PSRR.  I talked to the circuit designer and he used a resistive divider for a critical supply voltage.  Wtf?!  Apparently this guy had absolutely no clue what a band gap reference was (yes, the circuit was also supposed to be stable from 50 K to room temperature, no exaggeration).  To make a long story short, management, in it's infinite wisdom, decided to have a digital designer do the analog circuitry.  I could come up with dozens of other examples of horrid designs that were productized because of management decisions like this.  So think twice before blaming the designer. 

I think I'll just add some fuel to the fire and mention that "I'm better than you" issues are not restricted to different levels of education. There is also the whole "I'm better than you" between different fields of engineering.

I think I will now sit back and enjoy the dysfunctional family circus. (secretly laughing at chimp behavior)

PS
My experience tells me, I am only considered as good as my last engineering task. If the last task went well everybody praises me and I can do no wrong, if last task went bad/wrong everybody vilifies me and I can do no right.

The second situation cannot be avoided, when you are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Customers always want things twice as fast, twice as cheap, exotic features, etc...

This means that often university educated engineers break good design rules, not because they "don't know crap", but because they are expected to deliver designs meeting specifications that cannot be achieved using the conventional engineering  way of doing things.

[free_electron]

so here's a question ... why did you move into management then ?

It is the job of the engineer to educate management. if they tell me they need x in y amount of time with z performance and my gut says it can't be done i TELL them! i give them a couple of options but i am not going to deliver a mediocre product. i have, on numerous occasions, gone in against 'the managers' , even in front of our customers. They appreciate this tremendously. Whenever there is a design review meeting or kickoff meeting for a new design one customer DEMANDS that they fly me over ... even if i only need to be there for 10 minutes.

better to take an extra day to work it out than spend 3 months trying to fix it later ...
I simply refuse to deliver crap and i make this very clear. i am not afraid to speak my mind.

Simply nodding 'yes' is the best way to end in the downward spiral of delivering crap , having to fix it later and then being labeled a 'bad designer' since it didn't work right and 'how come your stuff ran over budget and over time'. once you are 'burned' you are 'burned' for the rest of your life. I refuse to fall for that.

And as far as the 'marketing and sales' promises to the customer are concerned : they can get stuffed for all i care.

[gregariz]

I didn't get an MBA because I had no interest in it.  The EE program was fun and a great challenge.  I figured that I could easily get into engineering management without the MBA and I was right.  Haven't regretted it in the least, after seeing how EEs are treated at most places. 

So you actually worked your way into management without any formal qualifications in the field? Fancy that!
What if you have to find another job, and you come across a company that rejects you because you don't have that MBA?
(BTW, that's actually not uncommon here in Oz, MBA's have been all the rage in the last decade or so)
What is the difference between you working your way into management without qualifications in management, and someone working their way into engineering without (or with lesser) qualifications in engineering?
Both engineering management, and practical engineering have long histories of allowing technically "unqualified" people into the roles (at least in Australia, I won't speak for other countries). The difference is just semantics.

Dave.

The big difference IME is that the MBA is a load of crap. In fact I want a refund because I'm still trying to figure out what I was supposed to have learnt. Its a course that tried to teach you that you needn't know anything about your industry and at the same time it teaches you efficiency is everything (ie cut as many corners as legally possible). Several years ago there was a case at Harvey Mudd College where a MBA grad sued the school because he suspected he was more stupid after having completed the degree.

It is so easy in fact I never did any study except for the night before any exam. It was easier than my 2 year engineering tafe course by a country mile.

Moreover I've never been around a bigger pack of assholes in a University environment. Some of the students were just plain psychotic, many of them clearly incompetant and were there simply there to try to get out of whatever job they had which no doubt they were at best average at.

I did the course because I was at the time at a large company like vxp is no doubt at, and they all seemed very anal about it in management. I did the course just part time in my spare time because I wondered what the fuss is about. The one thing I did learn is that most managers cannot possibly know what they are doing because nobody has a crystal ball to see the future. After I did it I stopped going to quarterly results reviews and town halls because I didn't want to kill any more braincells by subjecting myself to bullshit.

Vxp: there are other avenues to get some respect in the workplace rather than trying to climb the corporate ladder in a multinational. I found that pursuing that something akin to giving oneself a labotomy. Smaller companies are less bureaucratic and less kiss ass and as a result you are likely to be a much more core member of the team as an engineer. This is simply because small companies can't afford to pay people to bullshit. Ironically I found they also pay better. At the extreme, in the startup environment, the engineers are most often the most important employees of the company. In fact in the startup realm there is a very high rate of entrepreneurship amongst postgraduate engineers. I also found by experience if you do want to stay in a large company, foreign companies are often better than US managed companies. Japanese companies have traditionally had a low rate of MBA's in management and haven't swallowed the Harvard crap machine. You could argue that the influx of MBA's has actually been a precursor to some of them coming unhinged.

[FJV]

It is the job of the engineer to educate management. if they tell me they need x in y amount of time with z performance and my gut says it can't be done i TELL them! i give them a couple of options but i am not going to deliver a mediocre product. i have, on numerous occasions, gone in against 'the managers' , even in front of our customers. They appreciate this tremendously. Whenever there is a design review meeting or kickoff meeting for a new design one customer DEMANDS that they fly me over ... even if i only need to be there for 10 minutes.

Individual experiences vary. My experience is that I tell them, they repeat the same thing, I tell them again they repeat the same thing again, etc. Any further discussion is useless, might as well get going instead of wasting time.

The reasons why are not that far fetched, for instance:

Sales promised a customer a ridiculous delivery date and has agreed to a contract with a fine for every day the delivery is late. On top of that the contract is not carefully worded, so any last minute changes in demands by the customer will not shift the delivery date back, neither will late delivery of information the customer needs to provide. Just a desperate need for an order to keep a company from going bankrupt is enough to cause this.

I can tell management that the delivery date is shit as often as I like for as long as I like and I would be right. But it is the kind of being right you choke on. They need a design and they need it fast.

And right now, in economic bad times, there are a lot of companies agreeing to some really shitty orders to stay afloat.

better to take an extra day to work it out than spend 3 months trying to fix it later ...

Agree, but it is hard to sell, because while everybody knows this is true, you cannot point specifically to where this saves money and how much money is saved. It is the same for a systems administrator, who cannot point to the network shutdowns that didn't happen, because they hired him.

I simply refuse to deliver crap and i make this very clear. i am not afraid to speak my mind.

Simply nodding 'yes' is the best way to end in the downward spiral of delivering crap , having to fix it later and then being labeled a 'bad designer' since it didn't work right and 'how come your stuff ran over budget and over time'. once you are 'burned' you are 'burned' for the rest of your life. I refuse to fall for that.

And as far as the 'marketing and sales' promises to the customer are concerned : they can get stuffed for all i care.

I have designed a lot of things that needed to be fixed later and I have been labelled a "bad designer" more than once. I also have been labelled "an excellent designer" more than once. In my opinion mistakes are inevitable when you are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. How someone deals with those mistakes can tell a lot about his/her quality as an engineer/tech/designer.

You can give a good designer a lot of really difficult jobs and make him/her appear worse than a bad designer you lots of easy jobs.

Also a designer that works 5 times faster than another designer while delivering the same quality will appear to be worse, because in the same time period he/she makes 5 times more mistakes.

As for marketing and sales, without sales you have no orders, without orders you have no job.

[Uncle Vernon]

I see a tendency to use to term practical engineering for what I consider to be the lower level engineering jobs, as if higher level engineering (at the level of architecture, systems engineering, modeling, etc.) is less practical.

Then in simple terms your interpretation is entirely incorrect.

I think we can all agree that lower engineering functions can be accessible to someone without a degree.

I think we've all agreed your an opinionated and struggling second rate engineer masquerading as a third rate manager.

Just like the lower to middle levels of management are attainable by someone without the MBA.

Hell yeah even near useless engineers who've proven absent of sales skills qualify for those gigs. All you need are cufflinks and poor to non existent interpersonal skills.

But as you progress up either one of these ladders, the more important the degree becomes.

Which is exactly why pretenders without an MBA will eventually plateau at the lower levels of middle management.

I know plenty of degree-less folks that made it into lower level engineering jobs after 10 years or so experience, only to hit a glass ceiling because they had no formal qualifications.

I know of legions of brain dead engineering graduates with no real lust for their chosen profession, who've ended up as paper shuffling middle managers or golden teeth sales engineers <-- Yeah brochure monkeys use the term too!

The same is true with management.  And yes, when the MBA becomes a limiting factor, I have no reason not to go back to school at the company's expense.

Forgotten something? With unemployed MBA graduates now in plague proportions, what company is going to spend money on further education for their, as you put it,  low hanging fruit?