The engineering knowledge gap

Many companies are faced with a knowledge gap between experienced engineers (roughly above age 45) and recent graduates (roughly under age 30). Experienced engineers have the practical knowledge to bring recent graduates up to speed, but may lack the time to do so. Once one engineer mentored one new graduate, but now experienced engineers are asked to mentor several younger engineers while having more engineering responsibilities themselves. Thus, engineers are finding it more difficult to pass on knowledge, even when they want to and are expected to.

Have you found a similar knowledge gap at your job? Why does the problem exist and what needs to be done to fix it.

Please reply here and send me an e-mail (m.rowe@tmworld.com) because I’d like to speak with you personally.