Ambition is the personal engine that drives us to want to get ahead on the job and in society. Most of us have ambition to spare, plus the inherent desire to please our superiors and earn the respect of our peers. We tend to lack the knowledge and possibly the instincts to achieve these fundamental goals. If only we could learn how EEs who made it to the corner office reached that lofty pinnacle. What are the skills that propelled these executives to the top of their trade? And what about employment specialists, like headhunters and human resources administrators? What qualities do they look for in the candidate who lands the job?
To address these questions and issues, we talked to a number of top industry executives, human-resources specialists, and recruiters to get their views on what it really looks like out there and what working engineers and management can expect over the near-term.
The view from the top is almost as mixed as how most engineers got there. Not surprisingly, starting your own company works best. An MBA helps, but most EEs got to the corner office via on-the-job training and by demonstrating the traits that not only made them good engineers but also strong leaders and skilled communicators. Further, they display a willingness to synthesize their technical knowledge with the needs of the business.
Career experts tell us this may not the best time to move, unless no other option exists. In fact, if you're thinking about looking for another job, think again. From just a plain old job perspective, it hasn't been a good year for EEs at any level. Employment is down, not only for working engineers and engineering management, but also for new EE graduates. Even for those who are still on the job, getting ahead seems to have taken a back seat to just hanging in there.
THE VIEW FROM THE TOP
The qualities and skills needed to make the jump from EE to CEO in a high-tech company have changed little over the years. Once you've reached the pinnacle, though, the challenges encountered are of a new breed.
"Engineers need to have good technical intuition," says Howard Sachs, president and CEO of Telairity Semiconductor. "But they also have to be able to make reasonably good decisions with little or no data," which Sachs says is typically a big problem for most EEs. "They refuse to make decisions or estimates on sketchy data. This can be a killer for engineers in terms of their ability to make it up the management ladder."
Like most EEs who run industry companies, Sachs (who holds BSE and MSEE degrees and has worked at Fujitsu Microelectronics, Integraph, Cray Research, and National Semiconductor) managed to get where he is via on-the-job training. "You take a lot away from making your first P&L report to your board of directors. That can get pretty bloody. You must be willing to learn from that," he says.
Scott Sandler, president and CEO of Novas Software, which specializes in debug systems for complex chip designs, thinks personality is important. "You need to be a person with empathy who can relate to people," he says. "And you need communications skills. You have to be able to understand and synthesize the needs of people with the needs of the business."
"There are many qualities that make good engineers that also are traits you want in top management," says Michael Kaskowitz, general manager of Mentor Graphics' Intellectual Property Division and president of the VSI Alliance. But some end up shooting themselves in the foot. "Some engineers want to win a technical argument so much that they're actually hurting their relationships."
Kaskowitz says people who are good at engineering usually have strong analytical and problem-solving skills, and they're always looking for something new. "These are excellent traits for progressing into management. They will get you to the director of engineering level. The ones who get through that [level] usually have more, including an ability to lead and inspire others," he says.
PROMOTE FROM WITHIN
David Lyon, the chairman and CEO of Silicon Wave, took another route to the top. "The easiest way is to start your own company and promote yourself," he says. "Everyone has their own formula, but I found that system really works."
Lyon, who holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), worked for several years in the Boston area, mostly in telecommunications. Even though he took a fairly heavy academic and research track in college, Lyon says he always worked, taking jobs in different parts of the industry. Also, while at MIT, he took part in a cooperative program with Bell Labs, which led to his master's thesis. "That was a technical track, but you can't really separate what goes on in product development from the business side," he says. "It gave me some ability to think about how R&D blends into the business end of the industry."
That was before joining what he calls the "MIT Mafia" in San Diego—specifically, M/A-Com Linkabit, then run by another MIT PhD, Irwin Jacobs, who later founded Qualcomm. Lyon started in R&D at Linkabit, but he soon became the business group leader of the company's two-way very-small-aperture-terminal (VSAT) earth station product line. Lyon eventually left Linkabit and started Pacific Communication Sciences in 1987. He gained additional business experience as a board member of Libit Signal Processing Ltd., until Texas Instruments acquired it. He also co-founded Ensemble Communications.
Lyon says that he probably could have moved along in business a little faster if he had formal business training in finance and accounting, for instance. Should EEs who hope to advance in management go for an advanced technical degree or an MBA? "It depends on what you like to do. If R&D looks attractive, go with that because there are a lot more people who can handle a balance sheet than can handle technology," he says.
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