taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (09/10/86)
This article is from sun!words!dirk (Dirk van Nouhuys) and was received on Tue Sep 9 09:15:13 1986 A friend of mine who is both a journalist and a technical writer is doing an article on people who have left high tech to devote their time to other things. Some examples are an Apple marketer who is opening a dress shop, an SRI programmer who has become a psychotherapist, another SRI programmer who has become a tour guide in Nepal, a Ford Aerospace project manager who is trying to get a job as a high-school math teacher, an Intel QA supervisor who has opened a barbeque stand. Probably no one who fits is reading this message directly, but maybe you know some one. If so, and youirehink he or she is willing to be interviewed, please send me a message with a bit of information aboutirehem and a way to contact them
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (09/20/86)
This article is from tektronix!uw-beaver!tikal!sigma!bill (William Swan) and was received on Wed Sep 17 00:06:38 1986 This has been a recognized situation in electrical engineering for the 10 years I've been in the field. About five years ago there was a study published (and referred in one or more trade journals) claiming that, statistically, the half-life of the EE is only five years. Many EEs go into marketing, sales, or management.. a few (as mentioned above) leave the field entirely. I had a discussion recently with a friend, a very bright engineer who has also survived two half-lives, who is wondering whether he really wants to spend the rest of his life doing this work (or.. what he wants to be when he grows up :-). Having had similar questions on occasion, I wonder: What's wrong with a profession that is typically abandoned after about the same amount of time as is spent preparing to work in it? I might add that the people in that study were largely not those lured in by the prospect of high-paying employment, that many of them began their studies during a time of recession in the industry, the early 70's, and hence must have been motivated by other factors such as the technical challenges. Any thoughts? (I would like to read that article.)
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (09/25/86)
This article is from well!mandel@hplabs.HP.COM (Thomas F. Mandel)
and was received on Mon Sep 22 06:25:52 1986
One of the likely reasons for such a short half-life (~5 years)
among EE's may well be the extremely rapid rate of change in the
knowledge base for this profession. I've heard some people suggest
that it takes an enormous amount of effort to remain current, and
perhaps a good number of EE's get exhausted doing so.
Another reason may be the sheer stress of a profession at the
leading edge of technological change. You can't play the "soul
of a new machine" game very long and expect to stay healthy (on the
average).
In other words, exhaustion -- intellectual or psychological -- may be
a factor for many early dropouts or career-changers.
Tom Mandel
ARPA: mandel@sri-kl.arpa
UUCP: {ptsfa,hplabs,lll-crg,hoptoad,apple}!well!mandeltaylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (09/25/86)
This article is from pyramid!utzoo!henry and was received on Tue Sep 23 06:35:06 1986 > ... What's wrong with a > profession that is typically abandoned after about the same amount of time > as is spent preparing to work in it? Easy to answer: lack of any possibility for growth. In most companies, it is not possible to remain an engineer (as opposed to a manager) while gaining responsibility, status, and salary beyond a certain point. Although it is fashionable to provide "dual ladder" schemes which theoretically offer a growth path, in practice such schemes are usually a sham: the technical ladder seldom offers rewards comparable to those of the managerial ladder. And since it's the people from the managerial ladder who run the company, nobody up top realizes that there is anything wrong with this. "Why, some of my best friends aren't managers." Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry