From: rizzo@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (anthony.r.rizzo)
Subject: Re: I don't want to keep looking for new jobs.
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 15:25:07 GMT

>>If we engineers must expect to have many jobs rather than a few,
>>then perhaps we should pursue education in breadth rather than in depth.
>
>Yah!  A little of this, a little of that.  It makes sense.
>
>When I co-oped at GE (and then worked before coming to grad school) I was a
>Finite Element structural and processing analyst.  (Wheee.)  When the company
>I worked for folded, I obviously searched for another job.  Do you know that
>the only position I was considered for, anywhere, was an analyst?  Are you
>surprised?

I'm not surprised.  Managers tend to stereotype engineers.  For some reason,
they think that all you're capable of doing is the LAST thing that you
did.  But that's a problem with management, not with the employee.


>I know several very talented engineers who are locked into FEA.  I know a
>few, at GM especially, who've been doing the same COMPONENT for 5+ years!!
>This is a phenomenal waste of a resources...that's why I went back to grad
>school - in order to broaden my horizons.

5+ years?   That's his own damn fault!  I'd never let that happen to me.
I'd quit first.  In fact, I've come quite close to quitting, when
the job and my own career interests didn't agree.


>Interdisciplinary studies (I share my office w/ 2 other Mech E's a Civ E,
>a Chem E (I think, I never see him), and an Architecture student are highly
>effective in sparking ideas.  The "cross-pollenization" that occurs is really
>great!

I couldn't agree more.  Talking to others with a different point of view
is a great way of sparking new ideas.  I have some of my most creative
moments in the lunchroom. ;-)


>We need more company managers (like Ed Moore's HP bosses) who recognize that
>a well-trained and CROSS-TRAINED staff is far more useful than a whole room
>full of specialists.


Oops!  Can't quite buy this one.  There is a need for specialists.
Sure, I have an axe to grind here, because I'm considered a specialist.
I do robust design studies with parametric FEA models.  But I
think that I can be objective.

The recent trend to decentralize organizations has led to an
unwillingness to support technical specialists.  The problem is
that when managers are forced to look no further than their own
relatively small bottom lines, they become reluctant to keep
specialists on staff.  An engineer with a broad (but shallow) background
becomes more attractive to managers than an engineer who has been
doing one or two difficult activities very well for years.  The specialist
becomes an albatros, because his organization typically does not
have enough need for his/her expertise.  But it and other organizations
do have that need from time to time.  

During the last six years that I've been doing parametric models, I've
noticed that I (and the others in my group) have gotten only the
difficult jobs.  People tend to try the simpler tasks on their own.
But they do come to us when their gonads are in the vice.  This tells
me that there is a place for specialists.  What's lacking is the
right organizational structure.

We may not be around much longer, for the reasons that I've mentioned.
But the willingness of companies to eliminate technical specialists
from their payrolls can only cost them more, in the long term.
It is also creating unsusual opportunities for those with the
intestinal fortitude to become independent consultants.

Tony Rizzo (att.com!hogpb!rizzo)
Newsgroups: sci.engr