Technology Commercialization
Technical Professionals Career Path, EdAddison.tumblr.com
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I used to work for Westinghouse back in the day when it was a Fortune 500 company. I left to become a serial entrepreneur when I became convinced that there was no true technical career path and that most managers there, particularly my early ones, were Dilbertized. I wanted to make a difference through innovation, not politics.
In Obama’s SOTU speech tonight, he emphasized a need for America to become more innovative. Other countries are turing out more engineers and scientists than we are. Somewhere, the American culture lost its respect for engineers and scientists.
Companies, like my former employer, advertize a “dual career path” so that engineers and scientists may advance in their fields like their management counterparts. However, the dual career path is, for the most part, fiction. A senior engineer could follow the technical path and eventually become a fellow engineer or an advisory engineer, and the latter was allowed a bonus. But a person choosing the management route could parallel this, becoming a department manager with a bonus. However, the department manager could go on to become a general manager, vice president, senior vice president, president or CEO. There was no such path for the “techies” and these senior managers made “N” times more money through high salaries, bonuses, and stock options. So I chose management, at least until I discovered the Dilbert culture that prevailed by first hand exposure.
Companies like the former Westinghouse paid lip service to technical professionals, but do not truly give them the chance for senior positions with the serious equity that management professionals are given. That was a conspiracy of silence. Further, our society refers to engineers and scientists as “dorks”. Lastly, the American business culture pays doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, and top tier MBAs 5 to 10 times more than it pays its scientists and engineers. I speak without bias because I have both in my background.
Do you still wonder why Americans do not pursue PhDs in engineering and science and most such degrees granted by American institutions are going to Asians and other foreigners?
Obama is right about innovation. And while business professionals are squarely involved in innovation, we need more science and engineering education of our citizens to be competitive. We can start by changing our cultural attitudes and values. Until then, we are the laughing stock of China.
