The technical divide
With early retirements and layoffs, the senior engineers who remain often have less time to train the next generation.
Martin Rowe, Senior Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 10/1/2009 2:00:00 AM
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There seems to be a gap between senior engineers (over age 45) and junior engineers (28 and under) that is wider than just the difference in age. With the current economy, the ratio of junior to senior engineers is growing because of early retirements and layoffs. The senior engineers who remain often have less time to train the next generation.
“Management doesn’t always get it,” said Wayne Moorhead, a former ATE applications manager. “They let go senior engineers simply because they make more money than recent graduates. Unfortunately, senior engineers are often more productive than their younger peers.”
“Mentorship is a must today and time has to be made for it,” he added. “Bringing new engineers up to speed quickly provides a good return on investment. But at the same time, new engineers must understand that they own their careers and they should aggressively find learning opportunities and mentors.”
Richard McDonell, product manager for automated test at National Instruments added, “On-the-job training for automated test is becoming increasingly difficult for many companies.” “Experienced test engineers are finding themselves mentoring a larger number of new engineers, and [they] face a growing challenge of keeping up with their own job responsibilities.”
Chris Grachanen, metrologist at Hewlett-Packard, has experienced this firsthand. He’s found that he can no longer take the time to train the basics of measurements, particularly RF. The lack of time to train puts Grachanen in a quandary. Because he needs to accomplish something right away, he may not have time to teach others so they can relieve him of some of his workload. “Today, everyone needs to understand RF, so I assign technical reading to get junior engineers started, then I make time to answer questions,” he said. He also asks recent graduates to read about math and physics to get them started.
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The lack of time for mentoring can add to a cycle that is difficult to break. ATE consultant Louis Unger noted that “test engineers are put into roles that resemble assembly work more than engineering because production can’t be slowed while someone learns how to address problems.”
Ken Wyatt, former EMC engineer at Agilent Technologies and now a consultant, saw the problem coming prior to his retirement and decided to do something about it. He developed training courses in EMC for Agilent engineers in North America, Europe, and Asia. His seminars typically drew 20 to 25 engineers, with his last seminar in Malaysia drawing 45. He then trained two other senior engineers to continue training others in EMC.
McDonell has found that companies are looking to their suppliers to assist them by providing self-paced training for their new test engineers to come up to speed more quickly. In response to that, his company has developed a free technical guide on test-engineering (Ref. 1). Other companies such as Agilent Technologies also provide application notes on test basics (Ref. 2).
What have you found? If you know of other materials on test-engineering fundamentals, tell your peers. Leave a comment below.
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Great article,
I also believe that training is the way out and it's usually much more efficient to have instructor based training due to the dialogue you have.
I started training people in the team I lead, the company I worked for and now it's a big part of my own business. Companies do not have the time to mentor and train their own people anymore, but they usually do have the time and the money to hire expert trainers from somewhere outside the company.
Regards,
Robert
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Robert Berger
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Robert Berger - 2009-28-10 14:06:12 EDT -
Good article, Martin!
I greatly appreciated the mentoring by engineers at my early jobs. I was just thinking the other day about writing to express my gratitude to several of them, as it becomes easier to locate them with search engines and social networking.
I continue to learn from and value the knowledge of coworkers - senior and junior. Our field is too broad (and too rapidly changing) to be foolish enough to think we can know everything. What we learn from coworkers is usually already information that has passed the test of importance. Sometimes it is seasoned advice from a senior who has already been there and dealt with similar technical challenges.
In other cases, it may be advice from a young engineer on which texts on a new technology they found useful and which were a waste of time. The wise engineer also learns from the technicians and production folk additional lessons about what works (and doesn't) in reality.
I hope we find ways to educate employers more about the value of this cross-fertilization of information.
Beyond the value of the information itself, it also helps build the corporate team and sustainable work environment.
Brad Levy - 2009-28-10 13:31:22 EDT -
HIgher level managers think that those younger engineers are less expensive until they naively make an expensive mistake that a more-senior engineer would have avoided through experience.
Arthur K. - 2009-27-10 10:28:49 EDT -
I was laid off from my lst position. I took a position at a different location within my company, informing my to-be supervisor that my experience was in RF/microwave, and not so much in the digital realm. He said "no problem", but when I got there, there was no mentoring or even a little assistance for my transition, and he turned on me. The comment in the article was that you have to be responsible for your own career, and that is where I failed to raise the issue to higher management. You MUST be a strong advocate for yourself.
Larry Cormier - 2009-16-10 13:01:45 EDT -
Martin,
This is an outstanding article and reflects many issues I have also seen. The areas I look at are the current employment situation, measurement-related education and training, and knowledge preservation within companies. My comments relate to electronics and RF/microwave as that is my background.
Looking at the current employment situation, I find that when looking for positions - as an employee, contractor or consultant - I have to compete with people 1/2 to 1/3 my age, and the position requirements often include years of experience with software that did not exist even 10 years ago, let alone when I started my metrology career. Many of the requirements I see in job listings also have little to do with metrology or quality. I want to and need to work for several more years, yet I feel I (or my age group) am being deliberately shut out - even though being capable of doing the actual work.
As for measurement related education, I have lost count of the number of times I have had to educate young engineers on the fundamentals of metrology - stuff that is taught in the first week or two of PMEL school. I see cases where a differential measurement is required and the engineer specifies a digital oscilloscope using the (A minus B) function without even understanding why that is completely wrong. I have lost count of the number of engineers who have designed a circuit and yet are completely unable to help troubleshoot it when it fails in production . So I lay a lot of blame on the engineering and technical schools for failing to teach basic metrology (what calibration technicians know) and basic electronic troubleshooting (what electronics technicians know.) As Chris Grachanen and others have said many times, every day there are fewer of us with that education to pass on - even if we are still in positions do do so.
Many companies also do a poor job of knowledge preservation. For the last several years I have been doing work that requires looking up performance specifications of test & measurement equipment made decades ago, in order to make a metrologically acceptable substitution for it. I am surprised at the number of companies (assuming I can track down who they are now!) that have no records of items that are past the end of support life. I know of a case where someone was told by a major company that they never made such an instrument - yet I have used and calibrated hundreds of them! (It is a once-popular instrument that was killed off by the low-cost bench digital multimeter.) All organizations must do a better job of preserving their knowledge - as records for those who need the data later, and as references for young engineers who never learned methods used 30 years ago because they are "obsolete" and no longer taught.
Pop Quiz: how many electronic and RF engineers who graduate THIS YEAR know what a slotted line, "cookie jar" frequency meter, or SWR meter are or how to use them? How many of them know what the input impedance characteristics of a VTVM or a DC differential voltmeter are, or why it is important to know that information? (How many know what a vacuum tube is?) How many know the essential input characteristics of a differential amplifier (and why an oscilloscope [A minus B] function is not the same?) And I could go on.
The faults lie in several places - corporate management focused on this quarter's bottom line instead of strategic vision for the next 10, 30 or 50 years, engineering and technical schools that do not teach the fundamentals and history of measurement, organizations that do not preserve their technical knowledge base in easily retrievable form, and probably several more.
Graeme C. Payne - 2009-8-10 10:42:25 EDT
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