What career path for engineers who don't want to go to management?

http://frrl.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/quandary-career-advancement-of-technical-engineers-part-ii/

by Revisor • 16 years ago

3 3 16 years ago

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Revisor• 16 years ago

This article is just a conversation starter. What career path does your company offer to engineers? If you're an engineer/developer/programmer, what career path should a dream company offer?

Are the technical skills wasted if the engineers go to management?

tgflynn• 16 years ago

In reading this article I was struck by the value judgements implied by the choices of terms within the context of contemporary American culture : Engineers == self-centered == bad Managers == other-centered == good

Another perspective might be that engineers are more interested in the value of the work they do whereas corporations are only concerned with the economic benefit they can obtain from that value. I'm not an economist but I'm convinced that value and price/cost/profit are two very different things. The first measures the actual benefit to a person or society of a given good while the later is determined by market dynamics/economic context. For example a laptop may only cost a few hundred dollars due to abundant supply but if I use that laptop to solve a problem worth millions then isn't the value of that laptop really much higher ?

jhrobert• 16 years ago

Managers care about money only, hence they get the money.

Engineers care about money and glory, hence they get none.

For glory is about money in corporations and almost everywhere in this world.

As an engineer, I focus on glory only, that's hard enough, and I am pretty sure some big money would come out of it if, I ever manage to achieve anything.

This is not something you can do when you're young, you need some money to survive, but as soon as you get that, you can.

Work for glory, not money.

What career path for engineers who don't want to go to management?

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