Shocking: More MIT engineering students now actually want to work as engineers

[purduefrank]

<p>

A recent real-life example would be the Cisco layoffs of 2002 that were accompanied by termination packages so princely as to spur many Cisco engineers to try to be laid off. For example, one Cisco engineer I know who had already been admitted to a top MBA program but hadn’t told the company realized that he couldn’t just quit as he would then forgo any chances of the package.

</p>

<p>A further exploration of this issue really lies beyond very many measurable means – and while I would prefer to leave any bias out of the discussion, I don’t know if that is possible. Your acquaintance at Cisco was surely a good person, but the way you phrased such a statement leaves me with the following thought <em>that this person could have just quit and not taken the package</em>. Personally, I would have done the same thing but that is still irrelevant to my point. This person very well could have taken the package and went off to their MBA program where they surely had many lucrative opportunities awaiting them, but they didn’t. They wanted even more. There is ample evidence to support at least the nagging suspicion that the primary motive was money – not the good of the organization, the exploration of further knowledge, or anything else. </p>

<p>To relate this to the topic at hand I would ask you to seriously consider the case of Bill Gates, as he certainly had both the means and capacity to take a similar road as your acquaintance. Likewise, it is an arguable case to say that many top students who get into the top schools also have the potential to devote themselves to endeavors which could likely lead them much further then the ever coveted Harvard MBA. Yet, many of them don’t. They take the road more traveled, the one that is certain to end them up with at the very least a decent job. Bill Gates could have opted to go the financier route – but he didn’t – and I would argue that this had a great deal to do with what motivates him. Now of course you can argue what exactly Bill Gates has actually accomplished besides making untold billions, but the same example will likely hold up in a countless number of other entrepreneurial cases or cases like that of engineers such as Kao or Kilby.</p>

<p>Before you form your counterargument, I would also ask you to consider your very own words. </p>

<p>

In fact, he may not even finish the program at all. But to have that background meant that he had to have been motivated to want to learn science or math ever since he was a young kid, and it is those motivations that were determined by pop culture influences he was exposed to.

</p>

<p>In my opinion, the real issue is dynamic, not static or isolated – and likely cannot be modeled exactly by any one reference. As kids, we explore the world around us with an intriguing sense of imagination and curiosity, but yet as time goes on many of those traits wane and this spirit dies. I say that along with providing better compensation to engineers, we should also concentrate on the many issues outside of money that influence the lack of engineering interest. Even if bankers continue to dole out record breaking bonus packages [JP</a> Morgan staff in line for bumper bonuses after investment bank posts ‘blowaway’ profits | Mail Online](<a href=“JP Morgan staff in line for bumper bonuses after investment bank posts 'blowaway' profits | Daily Mail Online”>JP Morgan staff in line for bumper bonuses after investment bank posts 'blowaway' profits | Daily Mail Online) we should also focus more on developing the character of our youth so that when the time comes to chose between sure money and a long odds bet, the motivating factor is no longer money. In other words, I say that even if we change the financial rewards for engineers to be more like that of financiers, we still have the issue of whether or not this will lead to any real benefit aside from enticing more people to go into engineering.</p>

[purduefrank]

<p>

Once again, we are talking about ~500 engineers a year. This is in light of the fact we need to be producing 80K more engineers each year to have a per capita rate comparable to other first world economies. Sakky, you can take those 500. I’ll take the other ~79,500. This is a very quantitatively weak argument.

</p>

<p>Yes, I agree with you entirely which is why I think it is important to also look behind the numbers. There has to be some reason that we are behind, wouldn’t you agree? What do you think might be some of the reasons that we don’t graduate as many engineers as other first world economies?</p>

[jack63]

<p>Purduefrank…Why we don’t graduate enough engineers would be a great thread and very meaningful discussion.</p>

<p>From my experience working as an engineer, I think the answer to that question starts with the fact that good engineering jobs are hard to come by. Just like at Berekeley a minimum of 16% of the engineering class in 2007 were still looking for jobs in 2007, engineers have trouble getting good jobs everywhere. Personally, I don’t mind getting laid off from an engineering job as long as another good job is easy to find…heck you might even make some money with a nice severance. I question my career significantly when I get laid off/let go and the economy is somewhere between medicore and a mess and another good job is hard to find.</p>

<p>Why are engineering jobs hard to find…I could write pages…</p>

[nshah9617]

<p>The main reason I’m bring up other top engineering programs such as Caltech or Georgia Tech is to show the stark difference between “prestige” in the consulting/finance and engineering. As I said before these firms recruit based of antiquated perceived name-brand recognition, the Ivy Leagues and MIT/Stanford, which aren’t always inline with what the true top engineering programs are. Yes, MIT/Stanford are top programs but I know that consulting/banks would recruit a Yale engineer much more heavily than say a UIUC or GATech engineer, even though the latter programs are much stronger. Simply put, besides MIT/Stanford there is a disconnect between consulting/banking recruiting and other top engineering programs. I would argue that Caltech or Hopkins BME would produce just as high quality engineers but you won’t see the same recruiting or percentage of engineers flocking to the investment bank/consulting industry as with MIT/Stanford. That’s why I’m emphasizing that I can understand MIT/Stanford graduates entering the industry due to recruiting but if I saw a significant portion of other top engineering programs lose their talent, then I would be concerned. </p>

<p>Furthermore, I don’t really think it’s fair to play “what-ifs” just because the huge variability of what could of happen. Sure, if Kilby didn’t go into chosen field we might have been absent from his advances but on the same token he could of made millions in the financial industry and then set up a foundation to help fund other research–we’ll never know. </p>

<p>Finally, I know the engineers in us want to “optimize social utility” but really we can’t do that at the expense of the individual. We pointed out top engineers who entered business but to be honest, there are plenty of students who midway through their degree realize that they don’t want to work as an engineer anymore. Maybe it’s a sudden lack of interest or just becoming jaded by the difficult coursework but there is always a handful of students who will seek other endeavors after graduating. Another factor could be that at some of these competitive programs the students might just be excellent students but not be completely passionate about their field–I know a few students who can get top marks on anything but not really care about the subject.</p>

<p>I think the common trend between “top talent” is the drive for success and what measures success really depends on the industry. In Academia, it could be publications and awards, in the medical field it could be the patients saved and like it or not, in the financial industry it’s amount of money made. In ways a Hedge Fund manager has just as much entrepreneurial spirit and risk taking as a start-up firm, though we could question that both Quantum Fund or Facebook have minimal social utility. </p>

<p>Anyway as Mr Payne stated right now it really isn’t a valid point. 500 engineers isn’t really a large number and we can’t make judgments about “what could of been”. Besides, with the collapse of most of the banks and financials and the large percentage of veteran bankers unemployed, it’ll be harder for those engineers to enter the industry anyway.</p>

[purduefrank]

<p>

This is in light of the fact we need to be producing 80K more engineers each year to have a per capita rate comparable to other first world economies. Sakky, you can take those 500.

</p>

<p>

Why we don’t graduate enough engineers

</p>

<p>

From my experience working as an engineer, I think the answer to that question starts with the fact that good engineering jobs are hard to come by. Just like at Berekeley a minimum of 16% of the engineering class in 2007 were still looking for jobs in 2007, engineers have trouble getting good jobs everywhere.

</p>

<p>Well sure, that is definitely the case. My question to that is why, then, do we say we have a shortage of engineers? On top of this question, another relative observation is that if we think engineering students have a hard time finding jobs – what about the other majors out there? Surely business students and liberal arts students have even a harder time finding jobs. Yet, everybody keeps pushing their kids to go to college so they can get a job – and many of these same students will study liberal arts and have a harder time finding jobs than those who study engineering. Even more of these students will go into debt with the ex-engineer bankers who are getting rich working jobs that they got studying engineering, yet they do this in order to pay for a college degree that won’t find them a job. And if everybody is having a hard time finding jobs, then why don’t we figure out how to create more jobs? Well, if we need to create more jobs then we need more entrepreneurs – and isn’t engineering a great background for future entrepreneurs? Sure, I think it is – well then why not graduate more engineers? – I think it’s because they can’t find jobs. Huh. Odd twist of events here. I think somewhere in this mess there must be something missing…</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>

Yes, I agree with you entirely which is why I think it is important to also look behind the numbers. There has to be some reason that we are behind, wouldn’t you agree? What do you think might be some of the reasons that we don’t graduate as many engineers as other first world economies?

1. Currency markets & their effects on international trade.
2. The relative prevalence of other high earning jobs.
3. Exceedingly lower value on education.
4. Public universities that redistribute tax payer money to economically worthless degrees.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Once again, we are talking about ~500 engineers a year. This is in light of the fact we need to be producing 80K more engineers each year to have a per capita rate comparable to other first world economies. Sakky, you can take those 500. I’ll take the other ~79,500. This is a very quantitatively weak argument.

</p>

<p>No, again, a quantitatively strong argument. What you continue to ignore is that -as we have all seen - some engineers are far far more productive than others. Most companies tend to follow some version of the 80/20 rule of employee productivity in which 80% of the work is actually performed by 20% of the people. I suspect, and some academic empirical evidence now shows, that the distribution is even more skewed at the high end such that a better rule would be a 99/1 rule or even a 99.9/0.1 rule. {Such a notion has been clearly demonstrated in the software industry: a single genius software designer can easily outproduce 1000 mediocre developers.} In either case, the implication is that most of the employees contribute relatively little, whether due to lack of motivation or talent.</p>

<p>So, again, the real question regarding the future of any industry is where are the very best people going? If the best minds are being diverted to consulting or banking rather than engineering, that bodes ill for the future of engineering and innovation.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Absolutely, you are certainly correct. However, this is beside the point. If we are talking about the brilliant engineering students from Berkeley who choose to work in finance instead of engineering, the Einsteins, and the Bill Gates of this world – then we cannot compare them to the average engineer cashing his/her paycheck. We have to compare them with their peers, and my point was, is, that arguably one of the major differences between the Einsteins and the Berkeley engineers turned financiers – is their primary motivators.

</p>

<p>Interesting that you would bring up the example of Bill Gates. See below. </p>

<p>

Now, I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t find these traits in many of the people who are motivated to only to drive the fanciest of cars through downtown Manhattan or feast on the exquisite entrees of Paris’s finest restaurants.

</p>

<p>

To relate this to the topic at hand I would ask you to seriously consider the case of Bill Gates, as he certainly had both the means and capacity to take a similar road as your acquaintance. Likewise, it is an arguable case to say that many top students who get into the top schools also have the potential to devote themselves to endeavors which could likely lead them much further then the ever coveted Harvard MBA. Yet, many of them don’t. They take the road more traveled, the one that is certain to end them up with at the very least a decent job. Bill Gates could have opted to go the financier route – but he didn’t – and I would argue that this had a great deal to do with what motivates him. Now of course you can argue what exactly Bill Gates has actually accomplished besides making untold billions, but the same example will likely hold up in a countless number of other entrepreneurial cases or cases like that of engineers such as Kao or Kilby.

</p>

<p>Gates did indeed embark upon another path: becoming the modern day epitome of the robber baron in every sense of the term, both positive and negative. That is, as a young man, he represents a viciously competitive streak and a stunningly brazen disregard for business morals while, later in his life blossoming into the world’s most prolific philanthropist. </p>

<p>But it is the first half of Gates’s adult life that concerns us here. While I agree with you that Gates took the road less traveled because he passionately believed in innovation, it is also abundantly clear that he was equally passionate, if not more so, that he and Microsoft should benefit financially from that innovation. For example, back in 1976 when Microsoft was just a minor software company having been founded the year previous, Gates famously wrote an open letter to the developer/hobbyist community decrying its culture of open sharing and demanding that software companies such as his own be paid for their products. </p>

<p>[Open</a> Letter to Hobbyists - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists]Open”>An Open Letter to Hobbyists - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>That was obviously just the beginning. From pilfering the concept of the GUI from Apple (although, in fairness, Apple had itself stolen the idea from Xerox), to supposedly ‘partnering’ with IBM on OS/2 while, on the side, secretly developing a parallel operating system that would become Windows, to exploiting Microsoft’s monopoly power to crush Digital Research’s DR-DOS through misleading error messages inserted into Windows at the direct insistence of Gates, to forcing OEM’s such as Dell and HP to pay for a Windows license for each PC shipped regardless of whether the OEM had installed Windows or another OS on that PC, to leveraging its monopoly power to develop monopolies in adjacent industries such as office software suites, media players, and browsers. </p>

<p>The upshot is that while Gates may have passionately pursued innovation, he was at least as equally passionate that his company prosper and benefit from that innovation, such that he would actually serve to deter innovation from which Microsoft would not benefit. For example, Microsoft once famously bullied Intel to stop development of the Native Signal Processing technology suite that would have enhanced the capabilities of microprocessors for that would have threatened the capabilities of Windows. Similarly, Microsoft pioneered the ‘embrace, extend, and extinguish’ strategy to pollute and subvert outside technology standards by surreptitiously introducing Microsoft-specific features to wrest control of those standards. </p>

<p>Bill Gates’s reputation is such that his real contribution to the industry is probably not actual technical innovation but rather business strategy innovation and serves as an inspirational tale to other entrepreneurs of the riches that await them if they can dominate a key technology, and as a cautionary tale for competing firms of what may happen to them if they don’t pay proper attention to strategy. </p>

<p>But Gates is not our only example. Larry Ellison has freely admitted that he founded Oracle with the express purpose of becoming rich and powerful. Ellison’s spendthrift habits are also infamous: even while starting the company and with little money, he still insisted on driving luxury German cars, even if that left him with barely anything in his bank account. </p>

<p>Or take Steve Jobs, widely hailed as a genius computer innovator, but also infamous for being described among the tech cognoscenti as a certain term that rhymes with ‘brass-hole’. For example, Jobs utterly refused to provide Apple stock to many of Apple’s early employees who had helped launch the company, compelling Steve Wozniak to give them some of his own stock under the so-dubbed ‘Woz-plan’. He screwed over many of the original founders of Pixar by transferring firm control amongst shell companies to revoke the stock options of those founders, hence utterly shutting them out from the profit from Pixar’s later stratospheric success. And then of course there was the time when Jobs, already a multimillionaire from the Apple IPO, infamously denied fathering his daughter, Lisa, with his former girlfriend Chrisann, even going so far as to claim sterility in signed court documentation, thereby relegating Chrisann and Lisa onto welfare. {Years later, Jobs admitted that Lisa is indeed his daughter and that he was not sterile and he later fathered three more children. Lisa eventually ended up going to Harvard.} </p>

<p>The point simply is that I think there are many extraordinarily successful technologists who while interested in innovation, are also highly motivated in furthering their own personal empires, either for the money (i.e. Larry Ellison) or for reasons of competitiveness (probably Gates and Jobs, certainly Ellison).</p>

[sakky]

<p>

In other words, I say that even if we change the financial rewards for engineers to be more like that of financiers, we still have the issue of whether or not this will lead to any real benefit aside from enticing more people to go into engineering.

</p>

<p>As I said before, not all rewards are financial. Engineers can be rewarded through social capital and social prestige. The more respected a particular profession is throughout society, the more people will want to join. For example, many of the best law students aspire to eventually become judges, despite the fact that judges’ pay is penurious relative to top lawyers. Being a judge connotes strong social prestige. </p>

<p>Engineering could also be seen as a path to other goals. For example, the reason why lots of guys admit to learning how to play electric guitar and starting rock bands is, if they’re honest, because they wanted to meet girls. But, if you think about it, that’s a purely arbitrary choice. Why is electric guitar so cool? Why can’t you meet girls by playing the accordian well? More to the point, why isn’t engineering ‘cool’? Lots of girls are deeply impressed with a man who can quote poetry to her and discuss the arts and literature, but not too many girls are wooed by calculations of Bridgman’s Equations or Maxwell Relations. But why not? One is just as arbitrary as the other. Victorian poetry is not any more worthy a topic of study than are the mathematics of thermodynamics. Yet not too many girls are interested in talking about the latter over a bottle of wine. In other words, from a social standpoint, you can’t really use engineering knowledge. {When I, as a high school student, once asked my mother why I had to learn ‘useless’ humanities, she responded quite adroitly that I could use it to meet girls, but that’s clearly not the case with engineering knowledge. } You learn engineering well, and nobody cares. Heck, engineering is often times seen as having negative value because of its reputation for nerds who lack social skills and don’t shower. {All one needs to do is traverse the EE/CS building of any top-ranked engineering school around midnight and you’ll find guys who clearly haven’t showered in weeks.} </p>

<p>I bring up the importance of pop culture because it serves to shape the core attitudes of children which open the doors to later opportunities. Let’s face it - kids don’t understand the realities of adult life. They don’t know how to prepare themselves for later life. They respond to the social cues they see around them. If they had never been motivated to learn basic mathematics and science, then by the time they learn that engineering may be a promising career path, they lack the tools necessary to choose that path. As long as those who want to learn math and science are derided as ‘uncool nerds’ in high school, fewer kids will actually want to study those topics and hence even have the chance to become engineers.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

The main reason I’m bring up other top engineering programs such as Caltech or Georgia Tech is to show the stark difference between “prestige” in the consulting/finance and engineering. As I said before these firms recruit based of antiquated perceived name-brand recognition, the Ivy Leagues and MIT/Stanford, which aren’t always inline with what the true top engineering programs are. Yes, MIT/Stanford are top programs but I know that consulting/banks would recruit a Yale engineer much more heavily than say a UIUC or GATech engineer, even though the latter programs are much stronger. Simply put, besides MIT/Stanford there is a disconnect between consulting/banking recruiting and other top engineering programs. I would argue that Caltech or Hopkins BME would produce just as high quality engineers but you won’t see the same recruiting or percentage of engineers flocking to the investment bank/consulting industry as with MIT/Stanford. That’s why I’m emphasizing that I can understand MIT/Stanford graduates entering the industry due to recruiting but if I saw a significant portion of other top engineering programs lose their talent, then I would be concerned.

</p>

<p>Then perhaps you should be concerned.</p>

<p>Two popular options at Cal Tech are investment banking and management consulting firms</p>

<p>[Career</a> Guides for the Perplexed :The Scientist [8/1/2001]](<a href=“Theoretical Physics | The Scientist Magazine®”>Theoretical Physics | The Scientist Magazine®)</p>

<p>The Caltech Consulting Club is one of the most popular student clubs on campus. </p>

<p>[Caltech</a> Consulting Club](<a href=“http://consulting.caltech.edu/Caltech_Consulting_Club/Home.html]Caltech”>http://consulting.caltech.edu/Caltech_Consulting_Club/Home.html)</p>

<p>The Caltech Career website even has an entire section devoted to helping students obtain consulting jobs.</p>

<p>[Caltech</a> … CAREER DEVELOPMENT CENTER … Career Planning …](<a href=“http://www.caltechcareercenter.org/articles/new_career_paths/consulting.html]Caltech”>http://www.caltechcareercenter.org/articles/new_career_paths/consulting.html)</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Furthermore, I don’t really think it’s fair to play “what-ifs” just because the huge variability of what could of happen. Sure, if Kilby didn’t go into chosen field we might have been absent from his advances but on the same token he could of made millions in the financial industry and then set up a foundation to help fund other research–we’ll never know.

</p>

<p>Yet, ironically, in that alternate world, that research would have been largely conducted by those engineers who weren’t good enough to get jobs in consulting or banking. </p>

<p>

Finally, I know the engineers in us want to “optimize social utility” but really we can’t do that at the expense of the individual. We pointed out top engineers who entered business but to be honest, there are plenty of students who midway through their degree realize that they don’t want to work as an engineer anymore. Maybe it’s a sudden lack of interest or just becoming jaded by the difficult coursework but there is always a handful of students who will seek other endeavors after graduating. Another factor could be that at some of these competitive programs the students might just be excellent students but not be completely passionate about their field–I know a few students who can get top marks on anything but not really care about the subject.

</p>

<p>Yet as I said, many (probably most) engineers don’t really care about engineering. Surely we’ve all seen engineers on the job who are not highly motivated to do their job. They show up at 9AM - no earlier - and the moment the clock strikes 5PM, they’re gone, and they spend much of the day just chit-chatting or otherwise being unproductive. Again, Dilbert’s Wally is based on a real person. A lot of engineers are just not motivated. </p>

<p>But like I said, these people may indeed be optimizing their utility, given their choice set. If you go to North Dakota State University or some other average school, you’re not going to get an offer from Goldman or McKinsey. Hence, working as an engineer - even if unmotivated - may be the best you can do. </p>

<p>

I think the common trend between “top talent” is the drive for success and what measures success really depends on the industry. In Academia, it could be publications and awards, in the medical field it could be the patients saved and like it or not, in the financial industry it’s amount of money made. In ways a Hedge Fund manager has just as much entrepreneurial spirit and risk taking as a start-up firm, though we could question that both Quantum Fund or Facebook have minimal social utility.

</p>

<p>And what are the rewards for success for the industry engineer? That is, not the engineer in academia or in startups, but the engineer in industry. A top academic can earn tenure, a top startup entrepreneur or hedge fund partner can make billions, but what can a top industry engineer do? Sure, maybe he gets some modest raises, but that’s it. </p>

<p>Industry opportunities were far more extensive in the old days: Kilby and Kao won Nobels for research work conducted in industry labs. The problem is that most of those old labs are gone. Bell Labs - arguably the most prolific industry lab in world history, having produced 7 Nobels - is a shadow of its former self, as are IBM Labs and Xerox PARC. Standard Telephones and Cables, where Kao conducted his work, has been dismembered as part of the Nortel bankruptcy. Much of the technology innovation is now being shouldered by startup firms (which is why I hold them out as being the one true great hope for engineering). </p>

<p>

Anyway as Mr Payne stated right now it really isn’t a valid point. 500 engineers isn’t really a large number

</p>

<p>Again, the issue isn’t so much about just 500 engineers. If we were simply talking about 500 random engineers, I would agree that there would be no problem. But we’re talking about 500 of the *very best * engineers. </p>

<p>Consider this example. Why can’t the United States be a more powerful player in world soccer? Why can’t the US be a credible threat to win the World Cup? After all, the US has over 300 million people to draw upon. The US is the richest nation in the world, and so can easily afford player development. Soccer is the #1 participatory sport in the country. Yet the fact remains that the US is outranked in the FIFA standings by such tiny nations as Portugal which has only 10million people and the Netherlands with only 16million. Landon Donovan is a fine US player but he clearly does not compare to former FIFA World Player of the Year Cristiano Ronaldo or Wesley Sneijder. </p>

<p>The answer is simple: the very best American athletes don’t really want to play soccer, but instead would rather play basketball, football, or baseball. Somebody like Kobe Bryant probably would have been a very good soccer player - indeed, he played soccer intensely as a child growing up in Italy and has freely admitted that if he had stayed in Italy, he would have tried to become a pro soccer player. But he came to the US, where soccer is clearly a far less lucrative profession than is basketball. Similarly, Patrick Ewing was an excellent youth soccer player in Jamaica, and never touched a basketball until he started high school in the US. Hakeem Olajuwon was a star soccer goalie who only started playing basketball when he was 15. The US incents its best athletes away from soccer and towards other sports. </p>

<p>And it is precisely those star athletes that form the core of any championship-contending team. The best national teams in the world who are the most serious Cup contenders - i.e. Brazil, Spain, England, Argentina, Italy, Germany - are veritable all-star teams. The US has a few top soccer players but nothing that approaches the top-to-bottom talent depth of those other teams. That’s why the US has never been a serious threat for the World Cup. </p>

<p>Similarly, if the best US minds shy away from engineering and towards other professions, then the US will inevitably lose its technological edge over other nations. {One great advantage that the US still enjoys over other countries is its strong culture of tech entrepreneurship and small business creation, and it represents the country’s last and best hope to maintain its technical lead. }</p>

[jack63]

<p>Sakky…Are you an engineer or have you ever worked as an engineer? </p>

<p>

Most companies tend to follow some version of the 80/20 rule of employee productivity in which 80% of the work is actually performed by 20% of the people.

</p>

<p>I understand this is a common theory of how corporations worked. From my experience working as an engineer, it is not true. This is why I ask if you have ever been an engineer in a corporation. My experience is that engineering corporations who base their reward structure off of this theory go into ruin quickly. This theory may work better in a corporation of consultants. This theory ends up being an excuse to give top managers and engineers lots and lots of money.</p>

<p>To have these investment banks give nice offers to pull away SOME of the best engineering students is annoying, however my personal experience is that some of these engineers are different types of students with different educational backgrounds from the run of the mill engineering major. Also, sometimes Wall Street engineers go right back into engineering. For example, I met one guy in grad school who was going back into Engineering grad school after being an Analyst in Wall Street(Something I think you said would never happen…honestly, who would want to leave wall street to go into VLSI design…this guy did). He was a double EE/business major at Wharton undergrad…a different background from the run of the mill engineer.</p>

[jack63]

<p>Another thing…this bugs me about your posts in this entire thread… I agree that investment banks go to a few select schools to recruit. You assume then that they are picking off the absolute top talent. The Undergrad US educational system that I know is not a meritocracy. Often the acceptances into these top private schools is based on contributions from your family, the prep school you attended, legacy, and the ability to pay. Top Talent can be anywhere…not just Ivy or HYPSM.</p>

<p>Investment banks do recruit at some of the top publics. These are better at giving the average American a chance.</p>

[purduefrank]

<p>

The point simply is that I think there are many extraordinarily successful technologists who while interested in innovation, are also highly motivated in furthering their own personal empires, either for the money (i.e. Larry Ellison) or for reasons of competitiveness (probably Gates and Jobs, certainly Ellison).

</p>

<p>Sure, I agree – after all I think everybody would like to further their empires, I certainly would – although buying a nice toaster oven might do this :- ( </p>

<p>In any case, I am all for aligning the financial incentives in such a way as to promote engineering, no question. I also share the viewpoint that along with financial incentives, we should offer social incentives and get engineers in the same social circle as football players. On top of this, I think that changing engineering curriculum to better facilitate entrepreneurship is a great idea…</p>

<p>I think if we took the necessary actions to accomplish such goals we would be well on our way to living a productive life. In order to do this, I think I’m going to focus on making millions (ibanking, or perhaps BigOil - I’m not at a target), then, use my long money to reach the politicians, deans of engineering, and Rupert Murdock’s of the world. All the while, I will be uprooting the very foundations of those who help me accomplish my goals – but offer them a place in the new world after they have experienced what they have created when they fall from their pillars. Sinister? Or genius…</p>

[purduefrank]

<p>

Most companies tend to follow some version of the 80/20 rule of employee productivity in which 80% of the work is actually performed by 20% of the people. </p>

<p>I understand this is a common theory of how corporations worked. From my experience working as an engineer, it is not true. This is why I ask if you have ever been an engineer in a corporation. My experience is that engineering corporations who base their reward structure off of this theory go into ruin quickly. This theory may work better in a corporation of consultants. This theory ends up being an excuse to give top managers and engineers lots and lots of money.

</p>

<p>Interesting. This could very well be a great argument, even in consulting and banking. I too have often questioned just how much more productive these people are than their lesser paid counterparts. I tend to agree, however, that some incentives have to be put in place. I guess in my mind it’s more of a question of where to draw the line? </p>

<p>On the other hand, there is also no question that only a handful of people in history have more or less shaped the very world we live in. This, even in spite of the fact that billions have walked the face of the earth. I think it might also be worthwhile to mention that many, dare I say most of the people who have shaped the world for the better have had very little monetary reward for their services. In fact, I somewhat doubt that Einstein would have even attempted the feats he did if there were financial incentives for him doing so. This leads me to the question of whether or not we are really only financially rewarding people who shape the world for the worse? Gauss, Newton, Franklin, DaVinci, etc… didn’t make millions, and in my mind these are the types of people who should get paid the megamoney. Which begs the question – why did they set out to do such great things?</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>

No, again, a quantitatively strong argument. What you continue to ignore is that -as we have all seen - some engineers are far far more productive than others. Most companies tend to follow some version of the 80/20 rule of employee productivity in which 80% of the work is actually performed by 20% of the people. I suspect, and some academic empirical evidence now shows, that the distribution is even more skewed at the high end such that a better rule would be a 99/1 rule or even a 99.9/0.1 rule. {Such a notion has been clearly demonstrated in the software industry: a single genius software designer can easily outproduce 1000 mediocre developers.} In either case, the implication is that most of the employees contribute relatively little, whether due to lack of motivation or talent.</p>

<p>So, again, the real question regarding the future of any industry is where are the very best people going? If the best minds are being diverted to consulting or banking rather than engineering, that bodes ill for the future of engineering and innovation.

I’m sorry man, I’ve just seen too many poor engineers from top schools to think this is a large drain on the economy. Simply put, if our per capita rate of engineers was doubled, we’d be producing a lot more great, good, average, and poor engineers for our economy. Certainly more than the trivial amount that get sucked into finance.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Sakky…Are you an engineer or have you ever worked as an engineer?

</p>

<p>Oh yes, and believe me, much of what I speak is from personal experience. In addition, I have also verified these notions with many other working engineers to ensure that I am not simply speaking by way of personal anecdote and the stories all seem consistent. </p>

<p>

I understand this is a common theory of how corporations worked. From my experience working as an engineer, it is not true. This is why I ask if you have ever been an engineer in a corporation. My experience is that engineering corporations who base their reward structure off of this theory go into ruin quickly. This theory may work better in a corporation of consultants. This theory ends up being an excuse to give top managers and engineers lots and lots of money.

</p>

<p>Yet this is already happening - particularly within the high-tech space. It’s simply happening by stealth. </p>

<p>Allow me to explain. Take Google, arguably the most prestigious public engineering company in the world. {Facebook and Twitter are arguably even more prestigious, but they aren’t public yet.} Yet who are the highest paid engineers at Google? Clearly not those who were actually directly hired by Google - those engineers are by far the worst paid engineers at Google, the poorly paid proletariat. The best paid engineers at Google are those engineers who came from Google’s acquisitions. For example, the entire engineering staff of YouTube all became multi-millionaires when they were converted to Google employees as part of the YouTube acquisition of 2006. Another coterie of filthy rich Google engineers is comprised of the former engineering staff at Doubleclick that Google acquired in 2007. Heck, my old college roommate is now a millionaire engineer at Google resulting from Google’s acquisition of his startup. </p>

<p>Nor is Google alone. Cisco is one of the most acquisitive companies in history, and many Cisco engineers are fabulously wealthy from the acquisition of their former startups; similarly for numerous Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, and Yahoo engineers. That some engineers within the same company are far wealthier than others has proven to be an interesting organizational and sociological issue that has become a target of considerable academic interest. For example, one engineering manager at Google described the difficulties of trying to motivate those Google engineers who were not only rich enough to retire, but sometimes had personal net worths of easily 100x or even 1000x that of the manager in question. Every day, Google (and Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) has to convince these engineers to not simply retire or, more likely, quit to join/found another startup. </p>

<p>Imagine that: a company where the engineers are not only far wealthier than their managers, but are rich enough to retire as millionaires by the time they’re 30. </p>

<p>But the catch is that only some engineers - namely those engineers who came from a startup acquisition or are still hanging around from the company’s pre-IPO days (which was only 5 years ago in the case of Google), enjoy that sort of financial security. Most engineers at Google, Microsoft, Yahoo don’t get that. They’re just making regular engineering salaries. </p>

<p>What that means is that those firms are paying top engineers far more than are regular engineers, sometimes 100 or 1000x more. They’re just doing so through the mechanism of startup acquisition. Presumably, the notion is that those startup engineers are top engineers because they clearly produced something of tremendous value (otherwise, why did the company acquire it?). </p>

<p>But the question then is if a company can reward certain engineers through the external means of acquisitions, why can’t it do the same internally? For example, if I had been an internal Google engineer who developed a successful YouTube, why couldn’t I be paid millions directly? Why could I do so only through an external startup? Put another way, Google presumably has numerous top internal engineering direct hires, yet Google showers millions on only the top external engineers who work at startups that Google acquires. Why?</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Also, sometimes Wall Street engineers go right back into engineering. For example, I met one guy in grad school who was going back into Engineering grad school after being an Analyst in Wall Street(Something I think you said would never happen…honestly, who would want to leave wall street to go into VLSI design…this guy did). He was a double EE/business major at Wharton undergrad…a different background from the run of the mill engineer.

</p>

<p>Then I would ask whether he is truly going back to engineering or just engineering grad school. </p>

<p>As a case in point, I know plenty of MIT engineering grad students who ended up going to the very consulting and banking industries that we have decried. When I asked a few of them why they didn’t just get their MBA’s at the MIT Sloan School (or some other B-school) instead, their candid answer is that they didn’t get into those programs. Engineering was the easiest way for them to obtain a grad degree from a school of the caliber of MIT and hence avail themselves of the career opportunities.</p>

<p>Now, one counterexample is what I have discussed above: that some - indeed probably many - consulting and banking analysts want to join or found tech startups, and many of them may want to strengthen their engineering backgrounds to do that. However, startup work is really a blend of engineering and entrepreneurship and is clearly far different from working as a regular engineer.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Another thing…this bugs me about your posts in this entire thread… I agree that investment banks go to a few select schools to recruit. You assume then that they are picking off the absolute top talent. The Undergrad US educational system that I know is not a meritocracy. Often the acceptances into these top private schools is based on contributions from your family, the prep school you attended, legacy, and the ability to pay. Top Talent can be anywhere…not just Ivy or HYPSM.

</p>

<p>Nobody is arguing that either the top schools or that the culture of Ibanking is completely meritocratic - indeed, I have always said that the culture of Ibanking in particular is well known to be comprised of social networks and political influence that are highly unmeritocratic (at least by the traditional definition).</p>

<p>However, the issue at hand is not whether or why the top schools or the Ibanks are entirely meritocratic, but whether regular engineering companies aren’t more meritocratic. Surely we’ve all seen it ourselves - lots of engineers at regular companies are real-life Wally’s from Dilbert who are being paid well for doing nothing. Furthermore, as I said, the very best engineers don’t really get paid much more than do the mediocre engineers. In fact, often times it is precisely the least competent engineers who are the ones who are promoted to management because the firm can’t afford to lose the technical skills of the competent engineers (but of course they won’t actually pay those competent engineers more). Hence, the Dilbert Principle, which has been noted again and again within many real-world companies. </p>

<p>[The</a> Dilbert Principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_Principle]The”>Dilbert principle - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>[The</a> Dilbert Principle](<a href=“http://users.rcn.com/alderete/humor/norm/dilbert-princ.html]The”>The Dilbert Principle)</p>

<p>[Dilbert.com</a> - The Official Dilbert Website with Scott Adams’ color strips, Dilbert animation, mashups and more!](<a href=“http://dilbert.com/fast/1995-02-05/]Dilbert.com”>http://dilbert.com/fast/1995-02-05/) </p>

<p>Hence, an engineering student is faced with two choices: to work at a regular engineering company or to work in consulting/banking. {For now, let’s ignore the special case of working for a startup.} The consulting/banking firms are not meritocratic. But the engineering firms are not meritocratic either. Given the choice between two unmeritocratic options, he determines rationally that at least in consulting/banking, if nothing else, at least he’ll be paid better.</p>

<p>

Investment banks do recruit at some of the top publics. These are better at giving the average American a chance

</p>

<p>The vast majority of Americans won’t get into any of the top publics either. Let’s face it: most students at the top public schools come from relatively wealthy and privileged backgrounds, compared to the average American. </p>

<p>Let’s say you’re an average American who goes to an average school such as North Dakota State, and you become a superstar engineering student who graduates with straight A+'s. You will not get a $150k starting offer from Goldman that you may deserve (because Goldman doesn’t recruit there). But you also won’t get a $150k starting offer from an engineering company, because none of them will pay that kind of starting salary to any engineer, even though he may deserve it. So, either way, from a meritocratic standpoint, you’re screwed.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

On the other hand, there is also no question that only a handful of people in history have more or less shaped the very world we live in. This, even in spite of the fact that billions have walked the face of the earth. I think it might also be worthwhile to mention that many, dare I say most of the people who have shaped the world for the better have had very little monetary reward for their services. In fact, I somewhat doubt that Einstein would have even attempted the feats he did if there were financial incentives for him doing so. This leads me to the question of whether or not we are really only financially rewarding people who shape the world for the worse? Gauss, Newton, Franklin, DaVinci, etc… didn’t make millions, and in my mind these are the types of people who should get paid the megamoney. Which begs the question – why did they set out to do such great things?

</p>

<p>Well, actually, Ben Franklin did indeed become extraordinarily wealthy from his publishing and printing businesses - Poor Richard’s Almanack was a best selling publication and the Pennsylvania Gazette was a highly successful newspaper in its day. </p>

<p>*By the time he retired [from publishing] at age 42, [Franklin] was one of the wealthiest men in America *</p>

<p><a href=“http://booktakes.com/2007/02/18/review-the-americanization-of-ben-franklin/[/url]”>http://booktakes.com/2007/02/18/review-the-americanization-of-ben-franklin/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>However, to your point, nobody is denying that there are many people who aspire to accomplish great things for little pecuniary reward. In fact, most of academia is comprised of people who have deliberately forsaken higher-paying careers in return for a lifetime of discovery and research. Newton, Gauss, and Einstein all held positions within academia. {Da Vinci was a commissioned artist and held official membership in the Guild of Saint Luke, which was an artists’ guild). </p>

<p>But let’s face it: most engineering companies simply don’t provide many opportunities for creativity. You don’t really get to build anything of great consequence. Instead, you’re assigned to supervise one production line or one step in the manufacturing process or maintain one old (often times obsolete) product. For example, take those software engineers I know who have been assigned to maintain and patch prior versions of software that the company isn’t even selling any more, but is still contractually obligated to support as per the service/maintenance contracts that customers have purchased. But honestly, who really wants to maintain obsolete software?</p>

<p>As a case in point, Microsoft is scheduled to terminate all support of Windows XP in 2014. Yet Microsoft had already stopped licensing XP to most vendors (netbook vendors excepted) more than a year ago, and presumably most customers will shortly be upgrading to Windows 7, which has garnered rave reviews. Hence, by the year 2014, XP will be a venerably obsolete technology. Yet some Microsoft engineers will nevertheless be stuck supporting it.</p>