THE GENERATION GAP ROSTER:
Andy Byers
Hardware engineer, Tektronix Inc. (www.tektronix.com)
Martin Cooper
Chairman and CEO, ArrayComm Inc. (www.arraycomm.com)
Samuel J. Horowitz
Marketing manager, Electronic Materials, DuPont (www.dupont.com)
Vic Kulkarni
President and CEO, Sequence Design Inc. (www.sequencedesign.com)
Paul Lanier
Product development engineer, Analog Devices Inc. (www.analog.com)
Allen Rosenzweig
Vice president for business development, Broadband Wireless Group, Remec Inc. (www.remec.com)
Larry Stratford
Product manager, Signal Analysis Product Generation Unit, Agilent Technologies (www.agilent.com)
In the early 1950s, young engineers reveled at movies like Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean. They listened to Elvis and began to take an interest in a new, almost static-free radio called FM. Peter Goldmark, the head of CBS Labs, hated getting up to turn over 78-rpm records in the middle of his favorite piece of classical music, so he invented the LP. Plus, portable radios could now fit in your pocket because they were made with brand new components called transistors.
Fifty years later, engineers are taking in heavy-on-the-digital-special-effects action flicks like Spider-Man and xXx and listening to the Dave Matthews Band. Engineers expect to soon be able to catch the movie and music on their multimedia PCs, DVDs, HDTVs, and PDAs. The technology is headed that way now, but it has taken a long time to get here.
Things were pretty good for most engineers in the '50s. The work was challenging and the results were satisfying. But it was also a time when the IEEE and other industry groups were fighting industry companies on charges of age discrimination among EEs. Some EEs had stopped listing their advanced degrees on their resumes for fear of being overqualified for available jobs, as well as concern of losing those jobs once the economy picked up. Some defense/aerospace companies with fixed-price military contracts were hoping to improve their profitability with younger, less-costly engineering talent.
Age discrimination in engineering is still an issue, but it's different today. Now it's much subtler. "How do you fairly compensate engineers who have been around for a while, know a lot, and have been contributing, but are on about the same salary level as some new engineers?" asks Larry Stratford, who joined Hewlett-Packard (now Agilent Technologies) right out of school 36 years ago. Stratford now works as a product manager in the signal analysis product generation unit and has been involved in recruiting new engineering talent for the company.
Sometimes, you can't. Most engineers working in electrotechnologies today have been at it for 20 to 25 years. The worldwide average age of an IEEE member is 46.3 years, even older (49 years) on average for the IEEE's 235,000 U.S. members. Most of these guys (and most of them are still guys) had to learn how to use a PC on the job. They think a little differently and still do things differently than the new and emerging flock of EEs. "We're not as patient as some of the older guys," says Paul Lanier, less than two years out of North Carolina State and a product development engineer at Analog Devices.
But the biggest difference between the generations may be in the way that younger EEs more quickly take advantage of new tools. "Some of the younger engineers think they can do things faster and more efficiently if we look at what tools are available to us today versus doing things the same as always, especially with software tools," notes Lanier. "We're also more apt to write our own scripts."
Andy Byers, a hardware engineer at Tektronix, graduated with an MS EE from the University of Colorado about 18 months ago. Byers says that he feels nothing but respect for the older EEs he works with, and he eventually wants to move up the company ladder. "Gradually, I would like to take on more of a leadership role in this company. I see technical management in the long term," he says.
Allen Rosenzweig, vice president for business development of the Broadband Wireless Group at Remec, manufacturer of high-frequency wireless subsystems, isn't surprised. "The younger folks seem to want a hell of a lot more in a shorter time. They're less interested in what we used to call paying our dues. If they don't advance, or if the work isn't stimulating, they're out looking," he says. Yes, tools certainly make a difference. "The major difference is in the tools at the disposal of the engineers today. I see [young] engineers on the Web several times a day, whereas I may use it only a few times a day," Rosenzweig adds.
Mentoring isn't exactly a thing of the past, but it's not as formal as it used to be. Most companies' idea of mentoring today is to put young engineers alongside a more seasoned EE and then move them around so they're exposed to more things in the company. That seems to work at most companies.
"Some of the people I work with have more experience than years of my life," says Byers of Tektronix.
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