SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Jon Evans writes at TechCrunch that some extremely successful companies, notably Facebook and Google, are famously engineer-centric, and many, many engineers go on to become successful CEOs. But at many companies engineers are treated as less-than-equal because they are often viewed as idiot savants. "We may speak the magic language of machines, the thinking goes, but we aren’t business people, so we aren’t qualified to make the most important decisions. That’s for the analysts, the product people, the MBAs. They might throw money our way, but they don’t take our opinions seriously, at least not the ones they understand."
Michael O. Church, describes the different experiences of the same candidate applying for a position of “Senior Software Engineer” vs. “VP of Data Science,” a managerial position. "As an engineering candidate, he faced five gruelling technical interviews and was arbitrarily vetoed by the last interviewer. As a managerial candidate, he essentially chatted his way through behavioral questions–and was offered a lucrative position with a generous relocation package. Church argues that this difference is because engineers have low social status, whereas even managerial candidates, one they’ve proven they can talk the talk, are viewed as equals."
Evans says it’s an inevitable side effect of companies who boast completely non-technical managers. "People who have never written code or soldered diodes, who don’t really understand what and how engineers do what we do, have no alternative but to have blind faith in us. Which, paradoxically, leads to less respect, because it’s the root cause of idiot-savant syndrome," writes Evans. "f you’re an engineer who’s treated as automatically lesser than an business graduate or MBA, or worst of all, treated as a cloistered savant, that’s a warning sign. Consider your future carefully if so."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Tuesday August 19 2014, @08:04PM
What's the big deal? An MBA is essentially a reduced humanities master's degree with less math requirements then a single course in first year CS.
Just be thankful that automation and academic inflation has yet to address the corruption that made sure an MBA is all that's required of management. I pity that future generation that will encounter a requirement for an actually managerially-useful second bachelor-degree like law or accounting alongside engineering totaling in a minimal 8yrs.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 19 2014, @10:41PM
As far as I can see, it is already here. The economic downturn has made nearly a decade of youth stagnant and it seems, aside from a lucky few, a single degree is just not enough to get full time employment. I am working on my second degree right now because of it. Many late twenties women have chosen the graduate route. It is a good decision with all the scholarship money available to them and equal opportunity making it easier to be accepted. Hopefully after more coursework I can find a way to do the same thing.