I am a Georgia Tech Alumni of the ME class of 82. I spent several years
in the aerospace industry where I designed flight hardware for the Space
Shuttle and the Atlas II missile, was on the Tomahawk and Advance Stealth
cruise missiles. My brothe graduated from the University of Tennessee
and later became a flight instructor on the Space Shuttle.
We both left the aerospace industry in dismay.
I recently wrote a paper for a graduate management class I took last
quarter.
This paper has caused considerable stir among those whohave read it.
The paper contains insight that I wish I had been exposed to when I was at
TECH. Consider it a voice from someone who is 20 years further down the
road.
I am bothered to see young people being aligned to go into engineering
simply because they are good at Math and Science. This is propoganda.
You can make a better living doing other things.
The message the paper presents will really sink home when basic needs
such as paying a mortgage or raising a family overcome any technical
zeal you may currently have. I hope it helps.
Engineering Leadership, a Dilemma
FORWARD
Dr. Richardson,
You made several statements in class on the 20th of November that really
struck a nerve.
You mentioned that tacking on a fifth year to engineering curriculum is a
solution to the dilemma of why engineers don't stay in engineering. I'm
an engineer who has made the move into marketing, and I have no plans to
move back.
I would like to use a case study format for this paper using my background
as the reference to describe my perception of what I consider the
engineering leadership dilemma we experience today.
Personally, if I had to go through a five-year degree, I would have gone
broke at the end of the fourth year and would not have finished. I
actually
paid for my last quarter's tuition with the insurance proceeds from a
car wreck I had gotten into.
As a co-op student, it already took me five and a half years to get my
degree anyway, and I was $15,000 in debt when I graduated in 1982. Adding
another year would just add to the misery and another year of lost income
that would take probably a decade of 5% pay raises and promotions to make
up.
BACKGROUND
My Father graduated with a degree in Industrial Design from the Cleveland
Institute of Art. He was a highly skilled artist but realized that in
order to feed his family, he had to find a Real job. He said that
most artists only make money on their works after they are dead. Few
rarely become Andy Wharhols or Pablo Picassos.
I emulated my Dad. I thought of him as a creative genius and an inventor.
He is very talented and is always coming up with unique design solutions
to complex problems.
He took a job in the industrial design department at a leading manufacturer
who supplied large retailers with bicycles and lawnmowers. The company
had been founded by a mechanical engineer who married into a wealthy family
in Ohio. He used his wife's endowment to fund the startup. My father
and a small handful of other designers developed inventions that generated
considerable income for his employer. After twenty years with the
company, he got "his place in the sun," as he calls it, by being promoted
to the corporate Director of Design. My family benefited financially from
this position but strangely enough, we were in no way affluent. What
struck me odd was that for his position, he was not considered an
executive nor did he receive stock options until much later in his
employment.
Yet, he and his staff had sole responsibility for designing the entire
product
line upon which this corporation was able to survive and prosper.
The "rich guys" in the company were in sales, marketing and the executive
VP ranks. They got the perks, the bonuses, and lived affluently. The
design group found itself much lower in the food chain. The engineering
group- the group responsible for placing every nut and bolt in as
financially efficient a way possible for large scale manufacturing- was at
a level lower than the design group.
Since he was my dad, though I though the world of what he did and was
greatly influenced by his creative abilities. I grew up in a home that
had a full woodshop at my disposal in which I spent a great deal of time.
At the age of thirteen, I demonstrated my early engineering design skills
by building the runner up entry in the All-American SoapBox Derby in the
State of Tennessee.
At that age, though, I just did not make the connection that creativity
in American industry does not always equate to personal wealth. I was
just a kid having fun on a summer project.
My dad lasted three years in his new Director position. He was defeated
by nepotism within the company. The benevolent CEO passed on, and a son
who lacked the leadership skills and foresight to run the company assumed
the top post. The son refused to listen to the design suggestions of the
retailers and began to dictate design from the top office. My father was
fired when he was the first to challenge the unprofitable direction in
which
this steered the company. He also found himself in the position of
scapegoat
for all the failures the new CEO brought about.
The company showed poor earnings for the subsequent decade after my father
left. It was later sold to a holding company in Sweden. Though, he was
not entirely responsible for the company's profitability while he was
there,
his design skills did have a profound influence.
Losing his job meant economic disaster for my family and was the reason I
ended up paying most of my way through college. It was several years
before my dad would get a comparable position at another company.
I graduated in the top third of my class from a private college prep school
in Tennessee. My SAT scores were in the top 90 percentile. Since I
excelled in math and sciences, the guidance counselor and others- even the
printed SAT Result Form- suggested I look to pursue an engineering career.
The only career advice I ever received from Dad was to NOT to go into
engineering. He recommended that I study economics and business. I
should have listened to him.
I attended the Georgia Institute of Technology where I settled into the
Mechanical Engineering program. I was quickly disillusioned by teacher to
student ratios of 200:1 and instructors who did not have a command of the
English language. Despite numerous setbacks and detours over
five-and-a-half years, I persisted through the program and graduated with a
whopping C average.
On several occasions at Tech we were fed the line of propaganda: "More
corporate CEO's came from Tech engineering than any other school". I
realize now that this was just another selling point to justify their
existence and generate pride within the Tech organization. What they
did not say was that these CEO's were no longer engineers and had gone
to other schools for their advance degrees in either finance or marketing.
No one ever made mention that they did not make the CEO level up through
the
engineering ranks. It took years of observation for me to realize that
they had left this important point out.
After graduation, I entered the aerospace industry where I designed flight
hardware for the space shuttle, was part of the Tomahawk cruise missile
design team, and was heavily involved in stealth technology. I used to
take pride in telling people what I did. Now, I could not buy a cup of
coffee with a dime plus my background. I really thought I was making a
contribution and that someday I would get a big payoff for my efforts.
I also quickly learned that I was to use little of what I had studied.
From this did I feel like I had wasted my time in school? Yes. I learned
more practical real-life engineering at the auto racetrack where I worked
as a part-time racing mechanic while going to school. That was a real
world laboratory. While my class mates were working on nebulous senior
design projects like: "The Design of a Box that will Prevent an Egg from
Breaking when Thrown from the Roof of a Tall Building", I was working on
high performance racing engines.
I am astounded at what I was paid as an aerospace engineer in the mid
eighties compared to what I see what new grads are getting in the
semiconductor equipment industry today. Other professions start out low
too, but there are significant opportunities to make more depending on how
aggressive a person is. Yet still in engineering, salaries are inherently
flat no matter how talented one is.
At General Dynamics, engineering management promoted mediocrity. There
were no such things as "hot young engineers" who rapidly promoted up the
ranks in the company. Unfortunately, I see the same mentality in the
semiconductor equipment industry.
LEADERSHIP POSITIONS AREN'T IN ENGINEERING ANY MORE - OR MONEY TALKS, BS
WALKS
Six years ago, I was working to get a job through a headhunter that only
placed junior military officers recently freed from military service. I
and a handful of other former junior officers were exposed to two days of
intensive resume writing and interviewing seminars before they would let us
interview with their corporate clients. In one of the discussions, we
were presented with some very enlightening career direction information
that had a profound impact on me. They told us that all corporations are
structured the same way. In most cases, corporations are broken up into
three groups as follows:
Sales/Marketing
Engineering/Manufacturing
Staff (Human Resources, Finance, Public Relations, Legal, etc.
As former military officers, most of us had engineering degrees.
Strangely enough, the headhunter's goal was to convince us to go into
sales/marketing and not engineering/manufacturing. In fact, we were being
looked at for our ability to promote into senior management through sales
and marketing. Those whom they thought did not have promotion potential
via this route were asked to interview elsewhere.
We were told that 90% of senior executives come from sales/marketing, that
this is THE fast track. We should not fear sales since it is just the
entry level to this fast track and that we should expect to promote into
sales management WITHIN TWO YEARS. It was also suggested that during
our careers we get MBA's from name universities to improve our chances
for the highest level of promotion.
We were strongly encouraged to avoid engineering positions, since fewer
than 10% promote out of engineering/manufacturing into the executive level.
An entry level engineer should expect it to take at least ten years before
his next promotion. ( My aerospace experience held this to be all too
true ).
Lastly, we were told that a small minority of senior executives come from
staff positions and that this area should also be avoided also.
I was dumbfounded at hearing this. They had hit the nail on the head.
After fumbling through 8 years in the aerospace industry, which resulted in
dejection and non-opportunities, a light had finally come on. I just
wish
someone had told me this when I graduated from college. I should have
immediately tried for sales after graduation, but since I was the typical
introverted and impressionable engineer, I was convinced I would go off
and be the next Werner Von Braun at NASA. It took a long while for me
to realize that you don't pay the mortgage designing parts of spacecraft.
I can understand the headhunter's tact from a financial standpoint also.
Who would you rather have in your back pocket as a conduit for corporate
placement fees: engineering managers who place low-paid engineers, or
executive vice presidents who hire highly-paid general managers?
Ask yourself why the rest of the 75 people taking your class are going
for the Masters in Engineering Management instead of off getting advanced
engineering degrees. I think their main motivation is for the opportunity
for a better income and the opportunity to move up out of the dregs of
lower level engineering without having to get an advanced engineering
degree. Those who hold tight to their engineering ideals are doomed to a
life of low-paying jobs.
I think that they, like me, have figured out the "system". One can't
advance into management without an advanced degree, to make more money, to
improve the family's financial situation, to afford a mortgage, etc. Why
would a person go through the struggle of working on a Masters in
Mechanical Engineering when one can get their "check in the block" with a
much simpler master's program in finance or management that will eventually
produce more free time to enjoy the family and home? This is basic needs
kind of stuff.
I know the president of a small supplier of filtration components for the
semiconductor industry with annual revenues in excess of several hundred
million dollars. He used to be a bodyguard for the CEO of a large
aerospace
company. When the aerospace company sold out, the CEO made him
an executive in this spin-off. He eventually was promoted to President
Funny thing. From body guard to president. He doesn't have an engineering
degree which, would technically qualify him for the position, but the boss
liked him. He does have two master's degrees. One is in Industrial
Psychology and the other is in an educational discipline.
Does he use the information he learned from these advanced degrees? No,
but when the company puts out the prospectus, they certainly mention these
two degrees to give him and the company more credibility. Without these
masters' degrees, I think the board would have to explain too many times
why they have some fellow with only a Bachelor of Arts Degree sitting at
the head of the company.
He has his "check in the block". He is also a multi - millionaire from
stock options. He is not an engineer.
Engineering is inherently a dysfunctional profession. There are many,
many more "Ted Kazinskis" out there that people think. Yet with all their
technical training, which is in most cases socially stunting, engineers are
asked to lead projects and manage people as they advance up the corporate
ranks.
Something has to be amiss when more often than not, I see new grads with
4.0 grad point averages come in new to the job and fall flat on their face.
From what I have seen, a 4.0 grade point average indicates mastery at
taking tests and doing homework. It gives no indication of the person's
creativity or ability to put that knowledge to good use.
All too often I do see non-technical or even non-degreed individuals excel
when they hit sales. This is an area where they use all their faculties
to make significant accomplishments for the corporation. The world of
sales
is a much larger arena that they bring the engineers into only when its is
technically necessary, only to put the engineers back into their
respective
boxes before they can place themselves in awkward situations.
I saw a movie several years ago that made the bleak situation in the
aerospace industry really sink home.
Two fighter jocks crashed their F-14 out in the desert. After parachuting
to safety, they set out looking for help. They ran across this old man
living in a beat up trailer in the middle of the desert. In his trailer
were
pictures of old jet fighters from the 60's and 70's. The old man noticed
the F -14 patches on their flight suits and immediately started boasting
about how he was part of the F-14 design team and all the nebulous
components he had designed for it. He also said that he was now living off
his "retirement" from the company. I found this scene quite ironic and so
very true. It was also ironic that Hollywood had written this character
true-to-life. Are all engineers so easily stereotyped???
I got to experience this same type of situation in real life while working
at General Dynamics as an aerospace engineer. One of the senior design
engineers I worked with, on his retirement from 30 years with General
Dynamics Convair in San Diego, had gone to a jeweler to have his 5, 10,
15, 25, and 30 year gold anniversary year pins melted down to make into a
ring. The latter three had quarter-carat diamonds that he was going to
have set into the ring. He was astounded when the jeweler called him a
couple of days later to let him know that there was not enough real gold in
all of the pins to make a complete ring, and that two of the three diamonds
were fake. The company had cheated him and he didn't know it until after
he had retired. This was a guy who had played a role in the design of the
Atlas missile and the Tomahawk cruise missile. He was important to the
survival of the company. He now lives off his meager life savings and a
very meager pension in a trailer on the beach in Baja.
My last assignment before I quit the aerospace industry was to design an
advanced stealth cruise missile with the top missile design engineer at
General Dynamics. I though I had reached the top of the engineering
pyramid. Here I was, working side by side with another engineer who had
contributed much to the company and the industry. I was quite surprised
and dejected when he told me that after 20 years with the company, he only
made $50,000 per year. In 1988, this definitely put him in the lower
economic class of the west coast. I saw the financial handwriting on the
wall. Twenty years of 5% pay raises ( the standard raise that all
engineers
get ) rubber-stamped by engineering management really doesn't amount
to much, especially when one lives in Southern California.
To me, this represented a lack of engineering leadership at General
Dynamics.
Engineering management did not have any leverage to improve the
livelihoods of the engineering professionals in their organization. This
had a rebound affect that hit these engineering managers as well- Since
the pay scales of the engineering ranks were set low, there was no reason
for the company to set the pay scales of engineering management very high -
a double whammy. There would be too much of an imbalance if engineering
management was compensated out of proportion to their subordinates.
Engineers are not good at negotiating themselves into higher pay brackets
and this is a sad fact.
In engineering, upward mobility is too flat, but accepted as the status
quo. The correct course of action would be to quit at the point you found
out it would take ten years to promote to a significantly more lucrative
position. Well, it does take ten years to promote to the next position as
an engineer, but like lemmings we follow the next guy up the ladder over
the cliff into the abyss.
Human resources departments do a wonderful job to hold down the
compensation paid to upper level engineering managers. They are paid far
less than their financially-trained counterparts elsewhere in the company.
I was enlightened to this pay disparity by one of the human resource
managers at work recently. Admittedly, my company holds salaries low to
inhibit people from leaving to form their own companies. It purposely
denies future competition the seed money to start. This is an admission by
my company that it considers its own in-house engineers to be a valid
threat, and the holders of the basic knowledge necessary to successfully
compete.
The guys at General Dynamics who got the perks and the rewards were the
marketing and sales guys who were all former fighter jocks. Deja-vu to
what my father had experienced. I now make more in middle level marketing
in the semiconductor industry than a Center Director at NASA.
ENGINEERING LEADERS
I consider Kelly Johnson of Lockheed, the originator of the Skunk Works
and the head of the SR-71 project, the last of the great notable aerospace
engineers. I don't think that anyone in this day and time either in an
industry or out is able from an engineering standpoint to attain the
notoriety that he has. Maybe Andy Grove of Intel can be considered
at the same level, but I don't think his reputation extends far enough
out of Silicon Valley.
The way Mr. Johnson portrayed himself in his biography, you would think he
designed the U-2 and the SR-71 himself. But behind the scenes he had a
very talented had picked team of engineers that designed and invented the
widgets that came together to form the assemblies that made it all happen.
The SR71 was completed in a phenomenal 11 months, from the placing of the
original set of requirements, to the rollout of the first aircraft. He
had
total control of the product and would not involve the customer until he
was
ready to show it to them. The Air Force and Navy programs I worked on took
years to develop.
In his spare time, Kelly would practice solving differential equations
related
to thermodynamics, heat transfer, and aerodynamics. He was an engineer's
engineer. At that time, the larger aerospace companies paid very
handsome
salaries and bonus packages to keep and motivate their key people. This
was
a very large carrot for up-and-coming engineers to chase after.
This carrot was taken away from the aerospace industry when the "bean
counters" from the government Defense Contracts Agency came in and set
engineering pay scales to equal civil servant pay scales. I guess the
civil
servants working within the aerospace industry saw the disparity in the pay
scales and complained. So, as usual, instead of giving the civil
servants a
pay raise, they went into all the government contractors and drove down
civilian pay scales.
Engineering management had no leverage to counter this. It was not like
all the aerospace engineers were members of a labor organization that would
negotiate for them otherwise, they would have gone on strike. This action
by the government cast in concrete that aerospace engineers were slave
wager
earners equal to civil servants and had absolutely no leverage as
professionals.
This condemned them and their families to substandard living conditions for
the duration.
Most Aerospace companies are located in large metropolitan areas with high
living costs. A whole army of contract aerospace engineers exists (aka:
"job shoppers") that feeds talented designers and engineers to the
industry.
On most of the projects I have worked on, these were the most talented and
senior engineers, yet they were not full time employees of the companies.
In most cases they got tired of waiting for a management position and opted
for a nomadic lifestyle that allowed them to double their income. They are
paid by the hour and have learned to negotiate very well as opposed to
their
"direct" counterparts. They are despised by engineering mangement who
has to hire them out of necessity. In the long run, they earn incomes
substantially higher than their non-contract counterparts but are
responsible
for their own insurance, Social Security payments and taxes. They usually
enjoy the same longevity, and only get laid off only a couple of weeks
before the direct employees do. They are a product of the engineering
environment that exists.
I recently had the opportunity to read Lee Iaccoca's autobiography. In it,
he described how Ford Motor Co. paid for most of his schooling. He got a
Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering. His first assignment was to
design a widget for one of the new models. When he realized he would be
doing this type of work, he immediately left to go into marketing much to
the chagrin of the engineering management who had footed his way.
Mr. Iaccoca represents today's engineering leader where Kelly Johnson is a
remnant of the past. In marketing, not engineering, Mr. Iaccoca was able
to become the "father" of the Mustang. In this he used customer demand to
drive "his" design. In today's world he was able to be a more successful
engineer in the Marketing Department of Ford Motor Company than in the
Engineering Department.
My life took an unusual turn as I left the aerospace industry. What I saw
in 1987 was that we were badly beating the Soviets at a financial war.
They were literally going broke trying to counter all the new weaponry the
U.S. was putting up against them. I figured that with the fall of the
Soviet
Union, I would be out of a job. I was correct. A year after the Berlin
wall
fell, General Dynamics in San Diego was sold to Hughes Aircraft. Hughes
laid off 30,000 of my former co-workers.
By that time, I had safely escaped to Navy Flight School.
By the way, the president of General Dynamics got a 2 million-dollar
severance package in that same deal.
LEADERSHIP AND LEVERAGE
Life is a continuous negotiation. Whether you are changing jobs or
looking
to buy a new car. How well you do is directly related to the negotiating
position you put yourself into. Leverage is the key. Even a guy with
multiple graduate degrees from Harvard can be out-gunned by an
uneducated real estate banker if he doesn't have the leverage to talk down
the price of a mortgage. I can't even leverage myself into any reputable
MBA program with my whopping "C" average from Georgia Tech.
Ask yourself this question: If there an oversupply of lawyers and a
shortage of engineers, why can lawyers on a whole make a lot more money
than
engineers? It's because engineers have their salaries set by
non-engineer
led corporate compensation committees.
Additionally, partners in law firms set their own compensation and pay
themselves very handsomely. Kind of like the "fox running the henhouse".
They are their own compensation committees. They don't have people from
outside their profession setting their compensation as we do in
engineering.
The overinflation of their salaries has a trickle-down effect that enhances
the compensation possibilities of their subordinates. Additionally,
lawyers can leverage high fees since their clients are looking at jail time
if they are not successful.
Doctors have a similar leverage. "Pay a lot of money to me, or walk away
to die". They usually get what they demand. They are recently losing
their
"fox running the henhouse" advantage as their rates are now being set by
non-medically trained HMO beancounters. This is happening because HMO's
got smart. They shipped in thousands of foreign-trained MD's who line up
for the opportunity to work in the U.S no matter what the salary. This has
forced physician compensation down and is breaking the back of the "medical
giant" in this country.
Engineers will never enjoy this "fox running the henhouse" leverage as long
as their salaries are set by people outside their profession and as long as
they are managed by engineers who are weak negotiators. Engineering
Directors don't define the pay scales and find it politically incorrect to
challenge or alter them. 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.
Even at Georgia Tech, this disparity in compensation occurred. Mechanical
Engineering was one of the top degrees one could get. Yet MY professors
only were paid only $30,000 per year. They had to supplement their income
with consulting fees. This should have been a big red flag to me, but I
ignored it.
The degree that all the football players went for was Industrial
Management.
At that time, a finance professor in Industrial Management was hired in at
$80,000 per year. They justified this salary because it was hard to get
people to come in from the private sector and that this was a salary
competitive with the private sector. That is when I should have changed
over to Industrial Management.
Another far-reaching example of how engineers give away their talents is in
the assignment of patent rights to the company they work for. Who would
sign away the rights to potentially millions of dollars worth of
intellectual
property to their employer? I did. I had no negotiating leverage.
I needed a job.
It would be nice if the engineering leadership of this country would lobby
for at least a 50-50 split of this revenue. It would affect the engineer-
negotiators as much as it would affect the line engineers.
Lawyers who win liability suits command at least 40% of their client's
judgment. Engineers should get at least a portion of the profit realized
from any idea they originate even if they used company assets. The
company’？
portion should only be justified because they supplied the resources. They
should not get the whole thing.
This would be nice, but it will never happen. It is more than an issue of
supply and demand. It is an issue of long-established,
strongly-entrenched,
introverted professional culture that doesn't take care of its own.
The medical profession that we see today is the result of at least a
200-year
evolution that has greatly defined the compensation. They have evolved
from a largely academic organization centralized in the larger universities
in large cities. The legal profession has had a similar evolution
resulting
in a national bar association for standardization. Engineering does have
it's professional accredidations for civil engineering etc. but for the
vast
majority who's creativity have given us the 747, the Corvette, and the
Space shuttle, the PE license is meaningless.
SOLUTIONS FOR BETTER ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP
The solution may lie is in having a regulating body for design engineers
similar to the AMA and the BAR association who could leverage its assets to
lobby for legislation. This would enhance engineering compensation levels
and grant employed engineers a significant stake of any patent that an
engineer generates. At the same time, this organization would partner
with universities to provide strict guidelines for the certification of
design related engineering disciplines and provide avenues for continuing
education. This is necessary because there are too many "cowboys".
Engineers lack a common identity and are used to acting as mavericks.
Case in point: The head of the structural analysis group at General
Dynamics hired a contract engineer to help with a temporary overload of
work on one of the current project. He was assigned to help with the
structural analysis on one of the parts to the Atlas missile redesign that
I was working on. In this case, the part was a main spar that supported a
strap on solid rocket booster. After about a month working with this guy,
I realized he was in way over his head. The questions he was asking
about analysis were just too basic. I approached his manager who
immediately went into denial and touted this guy's academic credentials.
As it turned out, his telephone bill gave him away. He was calling a
mentor in Los Angeles who was giving him free advice over the phone on how
to analyze the parts he was assigned. His master's degree was bogus also,
yet the company was paying him $40 per hour with overtime (approximately
$30,000) in the 3 months it took to discover him. He was so bold to think
he would not get caught that he purchased a new car.
This is a classic case for the need for a certification body for
engineering
disciplines that not only provide standardization for training but also
track
key individuals in the profession and certify them as "genuine" to perform
as advertised. This standardization can only lead to an uplifting of
financial compensation for engineers and a greater retention within the
ranks.
Ideally, this body would have licensing authority over engineers and the
political and organizational clout of the Teamsters Union.
Additionally, American engineering courses need a complete facelift. A
hands-on journeyman program similar to those in European industry should be
adopted for those entering engineering fields. U.S. co-op programs have
been a good start, but are not enough when at the same time engineering
curriculums are displaced into irrelevance by academia. Industry should
take a greater role. Exposure to customer interaction should be mandatory
to at least give engineers a taste of social awareness as a part of the
path to success.
Entry into professional trade associations should be encouraged as the next
step beyond the journeyman level, with sights set at certification and
higher
earning potential driven by advanced engineering studies.
This would be a cradle to grave approach, with the main goal of keeping
good engineers in the profession instead of driving them from it.