For as far back as I can remember, I have always built one gizmo or another, usually from parts I collected from old television sets, radios or with parts that I bought with the money I used to earn on my newspaper route. Back then, in the late ‘50s, I had an amateur radio operator uncle who worked as a technician for AIL. Through his tutorship, I built my own ham band transceiver and earned my FCC license. I later attended RCA Institutes and got my first job at Technical Research Group (TRG). We built low noise parametric amplifiers for use in the ground stations that received signals from the very early orbiting satellites and a little later in the first geostationary satellites. I finally earned my BSEE degree with my tuition fully paid by TRG (with no groveling required). Yes, those were the days.
Back then, most technical co-workers had related hobbies outside of work. There were the ham operators that later included the Oscar satellite enthusiasts and the microwave moon bounce people. There were the audio buffs with their airtight speakers that incorporated various forms of infinite baffles, and there were even the radio astronomy guys who had the most elaborate antenna arrays and some pretty nifty reflector telescopes right in their backyards. Everybody had at least one room in their house dedicated to some technical hobby and maybe even a complete metal or woodworking shop in their garage. At least once a month, just about everyone would participate in a Friday night “bunny hunt” (for a hidden transmitter) and then meet at some pre-arranged diner. We would tell that evening’s war stories associated with that hunt and show off our newest direction finder (DF) construction project. Back in the ‘60s, technology was more than a hobby. It was a way of life – it was a miracle that marriages survived – and it was a joy to go to work.
As a comparison, let’s take today . . . PLEASE take today. We old guys certainly don’t want it. What happened to the enthusiasm, what happened to the excitement and what happened to the joy? Want proof? Look at all of the responses that Gary Lerude (Microwave Journal technical editor) received from his inquiry about the positive influence today’s engineer is contributing to our science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) initiative. In the first two days, he received just mine! Where is everybody? Personally, I’m depressed because I still remember the good old times. For the sake of the technical standing of our country, we have to get those good times back. We sure don’t want other countries to have all the future fun by becoming tomorrow’s technology leaders, do we?
It is time to get serious and make some changes. How, you ask? Two major areas that should be kept in mind when guiding our youth towards a STEM career are today’s political environment and industry’s shortcomings in keeping the technical workforce motivated and stable. I have known many excellent engineers who have left the laboratory environment for less technical, yet seemingly more attractive and lucrative positions.
I see the current increase in STEM activity motivated by the U.S. government’s fear that we are beginning to technologically lag behind other nations. A similar initiative also existed in the mid ‘50s through the early ‘70s. Unfortunately, unlike this earlier period where much of the research and development was government programs, there is very little government funding currently available. We are presently preoccupied with keeping up with our debt payments. Businesses in the private sector have been paying lip service to government R&D requests, while they have actually been placing most of their resources into increasing their profits to keep their stockholders happy. Very little scientific discovery is taking place. Instead, most of today’s engineers are working to achieve small incremental improvements in existing technology. Such work is neither very exciting nor mentally challenging. The business environment is also quite competitive, which limits profits and salaries; it certainly is not going to attract our sharpest minds. It is unfortunate that today’s environment is considerably less R&D-oriented than it was back in the ‘50s through ‘70s.
One additional thought: the IEEE will, of course, fully support the current STEM initiative because its future health is a function of the country’s engineering environment. They appear to continually claim that there is an ongoing shortage of engineers. If this were really true, then supply and demand would dictate that engineers would have the highest salaries in any organization. This is certainly not the case. I will have more on this later.
With all this said, I have concerns about those in our industry who are so strongly pushing the STEM and STEAM (STEM + Art) initiatives. We have to be very careful about “selling” a career path like engineering to our impressionable youth, most of whom do not yet realize how that career decision will inevitably affect not only their future lifestyle but also the future lifestyles of their dependents. Honesty dictates that we must share the negatives as well as the positives. Otherwise, what could occur is what happened to one of my personal “career targets” who received an undergraduate degree in engineering from MIT and a master’s in engineering from RPI. After a three year stint as a hands-on “lab rat” with a large, reputable company (with its internal politics and meager salary increases), he went back to Harvard, earned his MBA and is now a marketing VP in New York City. He recently shared with me that he still has to put up with company politics, yet at a salary quite a bit greater than twice that of a typical senior engineer. He told me another major motivator in this career change was the piecewise introduction of his four children and his ability now to send them to good schools like the ones he attended. Another of my historical “career targets” left engineering after a few years, attended Wharton and is now a business manager in another industry, for the same reasons given by my first target.
How about a third and fourth example: I am retired today but not because I was able to save all kinds of excess from my typical engineer’s salary. Rather, I linked with a very smart financial advisor who, by the way, graduated from Cornell with an engineering degree and quickly learned that he needed a more lucrative means to attain the lifestyle he wanted for himself and his growing family. Incidentally, he initially targeted engineering because his father was a hands-on engineer for Hewlett Packard. As you may have guessed by now, his father soon left the lab and became a manufacturer’s representative. My very own first mentor will be the final example that I will share. He was one of the sharpest technical people I have ever known. He soon left engineering – I hope not because of his exposure to me – and became head of the company’s human resources (HR) department. Today he is practicing law. While I have numerous other examples that I can share, I think I have more than made my point.
In my 47 years working in engineering, I have encountered relatively few people who stayed with the pure technology. Most left the bench within their first 10 years and either entered sales, became hands-off managers or left the industry altogether. In light of this, there is little wonder why so few seasoned, hands-on mentors are left to support and inspire our entry level technologists. It makes little sense expending tremendous effort to attract people into engineering if they will not stay with it for the long term. It makes the current STEM attraction effort nothing more than a big wheel-spinning exercise. It is like polishing the leaves of a plant when its roots are failing. Our immediate focus should be to bring today’s engineering careers in line with the competing alternatives, not attracting entry level people into technical jobs that most will prematurely leave. This will not be an easy task, however, when you consider negative issues like competitive outsourcing, where foreign engineers are willing to work for a fraction of the U.S. rate.
While on the negatives, we really should consider the return-on-investment (ROI) on the cost of a good college and historic trends in engineering salaries and related perks. When I initially decided to enter engineering, part of the perks offered to both technicians and engineers by almost all companies was a generous tuition reimbursement policy. Back then, full-time college costs were only a small fraction of what they are today. There was plenty of government-supported and commercial work, and competition among companies was high for good technical people. Annual cost-of-living salary adjustments plus merit reviews were given, and substantial yearly bonuses were the norm. Unfortunately, things are much different today. Recently a senior engineer from a major microwave company told me that his company has not given out yearly increases in almost five years, and health insurance cutbacks have necessitated that the employees now pay a much larger portion of those costs. Last week, during dinner with the HR VP of another prominent Long Island technical company, I was told that yearly cost-of-living plus merit raises were under two percent, and there were also cutbacks in health insurance coverage. In both of these organizations, like many others, layoffs are commonplace. It is little wonder why many parents of our high school students are asking whether or not it actually makes financial sense to enter the engineering profession.
I rest my case.
So, what are we, as today’s proponents of engineering, going to do about all this?
Editor’s Note: John Mruz, Sr. is a retired microwave engineer with six grandchildren who are beginning to ask him about career options. We encourage you to share your experience and thoughts about engineering as a career below in the comments section.