I agree you have performed a valuable service publishing Manofsky's essay.
Hopefully, it will make some engineering majors question their assumptions
about life in "the real world." Perhaps too many believe that just because
they bust their butt for four or five years in school that somehow that
entitles them to being rewarded with a corporate vice presidency before the
age of 30 at a giant manufacturing firm.
An engineering degree from Tech is certainly no automatic ticket to
affluence and I don't know any of my fellow alums who pretend otherwise.
What I got most from my education was a solid foundation in engineering
fundamentals, and the ability to think analytically and solve tough
problems. The real education began after graduation and I thank Ma Tech for
giving me the tools to make the most of it.
I guess its what they call "tough love." Sort of like what our fathers
hopefully did with us when we were growing up. We didn't like it too much
at the time, but now that the soreness has worn off our britches we are
thankful for the lessons we were taught.
I recommend all students should either co-op or through some other venue
seek out established professionals in their chosen career. Take them out to
lunch and pick their brains about what they like and don't like about their
careers.
All the alumni I know would be flattered to be asked. Most of us have
children of our own and would love to help. As you say, too many are making
decisions with insufficient information.
You have my permission to print my letters. I will ask George if I can
forward some of his replies along with my further responses.
Your publication has certainly helped to spark a worthwhile dialog between
father and son. I hope it may do likewise for others.
Regards,
Andy Zimmerman
Below is a copy of a letter I wrote to my stepson, a junior mechanical
engineering major at Tech, in response to an article he gave me from your
publication. I am a 1980 aerospace engineering graduate.
George:
I went ahead and read that article in the recent edition of the NAR, written
by the Tech ME alumnus (Bill Manofsky), right after you left the house. I
thought I would comment on it while still fresh in my head.
As I have said before, we live in a highly complex technological society.
The technically-trained professional will be light years ahead of those
lacking that training.
The MBA graduate with an engineering degree will be far ahead of those with
a non-technical background. Manofsky made the same point while failing to
recognize its truth. He suggested if he'd known the "truth" he would have
switched his major to IM, while at the same time illustrating his article
with examples of major industrial corporations headed by men with
engineering undergraduate degrees and advanced management academic training.
Manofsky says that "An engineer who is an employee of a corporation should
never be considered a professional along the same lines as a lawyer or a
doctor." It didn't take me 10 years in industry and government to figure
that one out. In California engineers at large aerospace corporations
already belonged to a "professional" union, in much the same way as do
public school teachers, by the time I left the industry and got into
consulting in 1989.
Manofsky recognized that, until recently, doctors and lawyers have not
generally worked for large corporations with their pay and position set by
others outside their profession. As he points out, that is a typical
situation for the engineer in industry. These other professions have
generally worked in professional consulting firms with pay and position set
by the partners or owners who are senior practitioners inside the same
profession.
I recognized quickly that the solution was not to abandon engineering, an
ancient and honorable profession, but to leave the large, bureaucratic
industrial corporation and get into something more entrepreneurial.
Manofsky hinted at this truth when he talked about Kelly Johnson, the
founder of the Lockheed Skunk Works.
Men like Johnson and Howard Hughes made their mark when aerospace was a
booming infant industry from the 1930s through the 1960s. He talked about
the SR-71 going from concept to first flight in eleven months. By the
1970s, the industry had matured and also become hidebound due to its close
association with the government as part of the "military-industrial complex."
I fell in love with the industry during the glamour days of the 1960s with
Project Apollo, the X-15 flight test program, etc. However, I failed to
recognize the fundamental changes that had occurred by the time I graduated
high school in 1975. It wasn't until I graduated Tech and got to USAF
flight training that I recognized I was chasing a dream that no longer existed.
However, I was already locked into a military service contract and it took
me the next six years to figure a way out, followed by two years of
retraining before making the jump. Apparently it took Manofsky a little
longer in the system to catch on to these truths. Unfortunately, his
experience has led him to the wrong conclusion.
Instead of thinking outside the box, he has simply jumped out of the frying
pan and into the fire. He is still part of "the system," he just figures he
has gotten smart by changing his track. He is basing his career decisions
on what he is being told by headhunters and personnel/human resources
flunkies who are cogs in that same "system."
I know a lot of burned-out, bitter and disillusioned marketers and sales
executives. Manofsky will never improve his situation until he gets over
his self-centered perspective. Like many technical types, he fails to
realize that technology does not exist in a vacuum; it exists to serve the
needs of society, not the engineers who create it or the sales weasels who
push it.
Manofsky disparages the current P.E. license, then advocates a tougher
licensing board and further unionization of the engineering field with the
"political and organizational clout of the Teamsters Union." That will not
make us professionals but will only serve to lower our stature in the eyes
of the public as has happened with the public school teacher unions. This
proposed "solution" is just evidence of an inability to break out of an
intellectual prison.
The key to success and happiness is to recognize the truth as taught by the
Master, "he who is last will be first; to become master we must first be a
servant." To achieve success, we must first see ourselves as servants of
the public health and welfare. We must make that our first priority.
Bill Gates did not set out to be a multi-billionaire. He got where he is by
seeing a need to make a new technology affordable for the average Joe in the
same great American tradition as Henry Ford.
Ford saw potential for the automobile to revolutionize transportation and
improve the life of the common man by providing for affordable personal
transport. Gates saw how the personal computer would revolutionize the way
we lived and worked. Both men were inspired by the desire to serve the
needs of their fellows (and not coincidentally make a profit for themselves)
and helped to create whole new industries in the process.
They started companies from scratch in the great American tradition of free
enterprise. That is the beauty of a market economy; everybody wins when
individuals are free to pursue their dreams. And by the way, both Gates and
Ford were trained as engineers (although Gates never finished his degree).
In a free society, the greatest rewards go to the man who does the best job
of bringing cost-effective, reliable products and services to satisfy the
needs of his neighbors. The trick is to get out of our introverted ruts and
think more of the big picture: what new products and services could be
brought to the market in an effort to serve the needs of our customers and
clients?
That can be a tough questions when our customers and clients may have only a
vague idea of what their "needs" are. The day to day details of life can
distract us easily from the bigger picture. It takes imagination and
creativity to see a better way of managing wetlands when we are up to our
necks in aggressive reptiles.
Gates, Jobs, Ford, Westinghouse, Curtis, Armstrong, Edison, Bell, et al had
that kind of vision and prospered from it. How many besides them at the
time realized the potential of the personal computer, automobile, air
brakes, airplanes, radio, television, electric lights, phonographs, movies,
telephones, etc.? Or, how about new services like overnight package
delivery which rely on many of these technologies?
Engineers will never be professionals as long as they make their careers as
simple cogs in a big machine, never questioning the value or purpose of the
systems they are asked to design. That is the role of the technologist. We
will only maintain professional status when we are intimately connected with
satisfying the larger needs of the society in which we live.
Those needs can include things like clean water to drink; convenient,
reliable and safe transportation; comfortable homes and offices in which to
live and work; safe, clean sources of energy; national borders secure from
foreign invasion, affordable clothing in a variety of styles and fabrics,
wholesome and nutritious food, new forms of artistic media to enrich and
inform our lives, improved commucation and data management systems to run
factories and businesses, etc. and etc. Achieving these goals involves
professional engineers in both design and marketing.
Neither is sufficient by itself to successfully improve our lives. Like the
giants mentioned above, we must be able to both envision new products and
services and be able to successfully show others why they will work as
ntended.
My advice to you, George, is to stay in engineering school. Acquire the
mental discipline and analytical skills required to graduate. Take
challenging classes in history, political science and the humanities. Then
see how your skills can be put to use serving the needs of your community in
a way that makes the best use of your God-given talents.
In that manner you can achieve both financial success and a sense of
personal satisfaction. Don't let yourself become distracted by chasing the
almighty dollar or personal ambition to the exclusion of all else. Serve
God first, then your fellow man and you will be handsomely rewarded.
Love,
Andy
George:
I have been somewhat disturbed by the Manofsky essay published in the Winter
'98 North Avenue Review and given to me by you. I have re-read it several
times to try to discern what really bothers me the most.
I believe the first mistake of any student is to choose his profession
because he thinks it will help him to "get rich." This is an unrealistic
expectation. There are no guarantees in life.
Manofsky showed his unrealistic expectations when he declared that his
childhood family was "in no way affluent." Yet his father did well enough
to send him to private college prep school in Tennessee. Tuition at those
schools ain't cheap.
The definition of a "professional" is one who has a "higher calling" than
mere pecuniary gain or "square-filling" a bureaucratic promotion folder. In
engineering, our first loyalty is to the public health and welfare, second
to our client or employer, and only last to our own financial advancement,
social status and prestige.
Now I'm not saying we should go into engineering as a charitable, non-profit
pursuit. Money is important to feed our families, but it cannot be its own
reward. Anyone who pursues a "profession" with the idea of "getting rich"
as his primary motivation, be it either engineering or finance, is bound to
be disappointed.
However, if a particular industrial company is too hidebound to reward its
top engineering talent appropriately, then it makes sense for that talent to
find a more appreciative client. The successful engineers I knew in the
aerospace industry changed employers every three to five years. But, that
kind of move requires sensitivity to the needs of the alternative employer
and the ability to convince them that you are the solution to fulfilling
those needs.
Perhaps Manofsky's disillusionment is also partly a result of the industry
he chose out of college rather than any inherent problem with the
engineering profession. I suspect he went into aerospace, like many others,
because it was a "glamour" field. Again, this is not the best reason for
choosing a profession.
Of course, I'll admit I made the same mistake. That mistake cost me several
years of anxious soul searching and career failures until I learned to get
my priorities in order. The peculiar problems of the aerospace-defense
industry in the post-Viet Nam/post-Apollo/post-Cold War era only worked to
make the disillusionment more acute.
By the 1970's, the industry had become a government-subsidized entrenched
bureaucracy more concerned with perpetuating itself than serving the needs
of the free market. That is the danger of any institution financed
primarily with tax money extorted from the people rather than voluntary
exchanges in the marketplace.
In this new era of the global marketplace, deregulation and privatization,
the winners will be those technically-trained people and their institutions
who are most adept at change, re-orientation and continual learning. They
must be sensitive to the needs of that global market and good at
communicating their unique talents as the means of achieving elegant and
cost-effective solutions. Those who are able to master these skills will
enjoy the rewards of a market-based economy.
I am sure with your talents in both sales and the engineering arts and
sciences you will be well positioned to be one of those winners. Just don't
let yourself get sidetracked by negativism and the cynicism of middle-aged
men who have yet to straighten out their priorities.