The ‘No-Glory’ Profession - 11/20/2006 - Design News
June 12th, 2007 by Albert T. Wong `01
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...The ‘No-Glory’ Profession - 11/20/2006 - Design News
Amid a firestorm of controversy over the future of American science education, working engineers have been weighing in with opinions that have been largely ignored.
Before we tell you about the response of engineers, however, let’s first recap the controversy: It started two years ago, when American universities and professional organizations began comparing the U.S. to China and India. Those two Asian countries, they claimed, were collectively churning out a million engineers per year, while the U.S. was graduating a paltry 70,000 (see “America’s High-Tech Quandary,” DN 12.05.05). Then Duke University researchers weighed in with a dramatically different set of numbers (see a recap of Duke’s results).
In essence, the debate revolved around two basic issues: First, whether computer science majors should be counted as engineers and, second, whether India and China were counting three-year techs as engineers.
Depending on how engineering grads were counted, the U.S. could be woefully behind or slightly ahead of India and China.
Even today, experts still aren’t sure what to believe. “How many engineers are there in India and China?” asks Frank Huband, executive director of the American Society for Engineering Education. “That’s a very good question and I’d love to know the answer.”
While the confusion has continued, the U.S. Congress has begun work on a bill that would appropriate millions — perhaps even billions — of dollars to an effort to create more science and engineering graduates in this country. The bill was created in response to the U.S. Department of Defense’s fear that it won’t have the engineering talent needed for high-end research and development as an aging engineering workforce moves to retirement.
Loading ...
I’m sure many engineers have dealt with or are currently working with this international problem/situation. My personal experience is dealing with developers from Taiwan and China. Taiwan seems to have a better system in place for developing software developers. They have some idea of a software engineering lifecycle and know what my sequence diagrams actually mean. However, China is a much more formidable opponent.
Before I explain some of the problems I’ve faced, I would like to list a few assumptions.
1. A Coder and a Software Engineer are not the same thing.
2. All projects must have multiple team members some in the US and some in China.
3. All engineers of the project can code a basic program.
My comments:
Through my experience, UCI students are unique. We receive a diverse education that pounds Waterfall lifecycles and use case modeling into our brain. In fact, those who graduated after 1998 (I could be wrong on the dates or to discount those before ‘98) went through quite a rigorous number classes. Further, I believe ICS really tried to push for more software engineering practices around the end of the ’90s to include all of these valuable tools.
Many other engineers I work with, from a different school or graduated back in the 80s or early 90s, really have no idea what a requirements document is. In fact, I see developers code a program and retroactively have me or another analyst write up a “requirements” document during the UAT phase. And, I think this is where China is at right now.
After talking with a CFO in China, he told me something interesting. I had assumed what he said but he basically reinforced the idea of the typical Chinese Engineer.
If you had 10 small projects with 10 Chinese Developers, they could finish it faster and better than if you had a situation with 10 American Developers (of course, this is an average). However, if you had one large project with 10 Chinese Developers, they would never get anything done. And that is his greatest challenge every day.
Even looking at the job market in China, engineers are so money driven (everyone is really) that they’d jump ship after three months if another company paid them $1000 more. Come to think of it, US workers might do that too. However, at a Taiwanese styled company (like the one I work in), it’s very easy to see workers with tags of 5-years, 10-years, or more. In fact, I’ve been here for four years and I’m still the youngest (in age) in my group.
So to not stray too far from the article, my question is the same as the article’s: What is an engineer?
Is a person who can only work with himself and nobody else really an engineer?
Is a super strong coder an engineer?
What do others think?