🚀 go-pugleaf

: The days of a career track in engineering are just about over.
: Now, engineering offers jobs, nothing more.

I entered the engineering market with GE in 1967.  Career guidance and
tuition reimbursement programs urged the engineer to pursue education in
depth.  If we engineers must expect to have many jobs rather than a few,
then perhaps we should pursue education in breadth rather than in depth.
I met an engineer at Boeing in 1978 who had designed body frames for
airplanes for 22 years - and only in the center section of the airplane!
He had a career in body frame design, but he wouldn't have been prepared
to change jobs outside aircraft.  Perhaps an engineer's continuing 
education should be directed entirely in areas _not_ related to the
present position.

I've often said that aircraft companies hire engineers by the acre.
(For this new program we need 3 acres of structural designers, 2 acres
of stress analysts, 2.5 acres of aerodynamicsts, etc.)  It is very, very
different working for Hewlett-Packard.  There were far more stress
analysts on the 757 than all the specialist engineers in HP.  Apparently
HP understands that no product family lasts forever, and engineers must
be prepared to change jobs _within_the_company_ several times in a
career.  Specialties may disappear with a product family, so specialists
are rare.  Many job openings in growing HP divisions are restricted to
people declared excess by a shrinking division.  I've been with HP for
7 years and believe I can stay until I retire (19 years), but I don't
know what product families I'll work on or what engineering functions
I'll perform in those years.

---------------------
My opinions, not HP's.
Ed Moore
Hewlett-Packard
Vancouver, WA