A funny thing happens when you try and hire someone you know: they usually tell you more about their life than a potential employee would ever tell an employer. In the midst of talking to an acquaintance and trying to convince him to come work with me, we got talking about location. He did not currently live in the same city as me. He also divulged that he was considering a different job further away, just about as far away from where he lived as he could get (without leaving the country). We began discussing the merits of moving for a job and he stated it quite simply: For the right job, he would move just about anywhere. I, of course, immediately began probing him on worst case scenarios. What about completely barren areas or moving to a place that had very few resources (grocery, gasoline, etc)? What about if the weather [...]
I’m not someone who is prone to nostalgia often. First off, I haven’t been an engineer that long, at least in comparison to many of my peers. Being the “new guy” (or gal) can really prevent being nolstalgic about the old days. However, I find I’m becoming more so when I try to hire people. Hunh? You see, I know a decent chunk of engineers who I’d love to hire. I know I’d like to hire them because I’ve seen their work, I’ve talked to them about electronics and I know that they know their stuff. I feel confident that whatever they don’t currently know, they would quickly go out and learn to the best of their ability and apply it to the situation I’ve placed them in. However, in reviewing their work and credentials, I see that there isn’t an undergraduate degree on their resume. FULL STOP. Is this [...]
Though I’m an engineer, I don’t necessarily consider myself a natural tinkerer. Sure, I started out that way, as most kids do. My childhood inspirations included Legos, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets and lots of toys that are precursors to engineering. But as I got older, I didn’t step into many of the other stereotypical “future engineer” activities. I never learned how to change a car’s oil or do regular maintenance. I never framed a house or similar structures. I never built a computer from components at the store (though this is obviously more relevant around the time I grew up vs 20 years prior). I never got a ham license or had a 200 in 1 electronics kit, two things that almost guarantee a future as an electrical engineer. So what gives? My parents were both very supporting and continue to be to this day. And I regularly worked on [...]
As we continue on our theme week, I thought I had a slightly different perspective on the business spectrum. While I won’t be writing about my current situation, I have in the past worked for companies that have been on the downward trend. But more to the point, I have worked for companies as a sustaining engineer (keeping old product alive) and through a recession. I think both of these put me in the red area of the spectrum, though the business I worked for did not ultimately shut down. Regardless, I think this situation causes some interesting changes in how I and my colleagues acted as engineers. I’ll cover the the sustaining engineering and the recession separately, though there will be similarities between the two. Sustaining Engineering Sustaining engineering is not always fun. For those who have never heard of it, it’s the engineering based around keeping a product [...]
UPDATE: The podcast showcased here (sorry to discourage the surprise) is now available at The Engineering Commons Podcast site. Normally, we discourage cross-posting here at Engineer Blogs. We find that it’s best if our writers can write here and at their own sites on different topics (or at least have different articles in both places); hopefully our readers here notice the difference and visit the sites of writers they like. But since I helped start the site, I thought I’d adhere to the Golden Rule: He (or she) who has the gold makes the rules. And since there’s no gold anywhere to be found at Engineer Blogs, there obviously must not be any rules! So anyway, as alluded to above, I have mentioned this news on my own site in the past few days. Normally this means I wouldn’t write about it on EB, but I thought that our engineering [...]
I’m going to prompt everyone up front. This article was inspired by the Mega Millions Lottery that was drawn on Friday. No, I will not do the stereotypical thing and pretend I won (yay, April 1st posting date). And no, I will not be talking about the horrendous odds of the lottery (Gizmodo had a fine article about how you’re much more likely to date a supermodel). Though I usually rail against playing the lottery, I did capitulate this time. And for my $5 (inevitable) loss, I did get a good thought exercise out of it all: I began thinking of situations when you have 3 components: willing engineering/scientific minds, free time and gobs of money. We’ve actually seen this thanks to the dot-com bubble and the people that managed to cash out. And even beyond the dot-com bubble, we’ve seen millionaires and billionaires spring up overnight. And when they leave [...]
This morning I awoke to an interesting Get Rich Slowly article. I’ve mentioned it on this site before, but GRS is one my favorite sites on the internet. It’s a personal finance blog that was started by JD Roth but has expanded to many other authors (and guest authors!). Today, the daily post was from a former teacher who wrote: [This and other blogs] seem to be written by people who work in their pajamas or by people with no opportunity cost to blog (they’re either financially independent already or stay-at-home parents). These are both great things, but I don’t hear much from a Joe Sixpack schlub with a 9-to-5 like me. Instead, there’s a lot of Tim Ferris-type noise about how us poor saps who go out and punch a clock are the suckers. Plus, there are so many blogs advocating early retirement in the form of extremely low cost lifestyles, [...]
This week we’ve been inadvertantly talking about education on Engineer Blogs. It’s a large gap to cross from student to engineer, one that many people say you can never truly cross over, due to the demands of an engineering job. But in the midst of this debate, we’ve hit upon a little bit of controversy, which I’d like to analyze (hey, I’m an engineer!). If you’d like some context, feel free to read Miss MSE’s initial article about story telling, GEARS insistence that the humanities majors are asked to take STEM classes and Sam’s followup about things he’s learned since school. I’ve now written about 1000 words on this subject, taking both sides of the debate, none of which you’ll be seeing. I’m really torn and I tried taking comments to heart from people on Twitter and the comments sections of those other articles. The question is whether an education should be [...]
A few weeks ago I wrote about Trickle Down Technonomics, or more simply: how large investments in prior research can and do still affect us in the modern day. Since then, an article from the author of a forthcoming book on Bell Labs wrote an intriguing piece in the New York Times. I highly recommend checking it out. And while I haven’t changed my mind about the necessity of high-level research and investment, there was a glaring problem with the last post and my focus on high level: it’s not realistic these days. I’m not sure about the socio-political feed-ins that allowed raw research investment back then, aside from the specific example of AT&T’s glaring monopoly in the case of Bell Labs. What I do know is that research for the sake of research in a for-profit company seems to makes people (managers) more squeamish these days. Perhaps it was [...]
Subscribe By Email
Subscribe By Reader
Recent Comments