Challenges faced by Engineer

Just like there are plenty of advantages of being an Engineer, they come with their own set of challenges.

One of the biggest challenges faced is indiscriminate move from one department to another. Since they can fit anywhere and can do outstanding job anywhere, they sort of become Fire fighters of the organisation and are sent to extinguish fire everywhere!!!!!!! And problem with Fire fighter's job is that it is not a very high paying job!!!!!!!!!!!. You can not be fire fighter for your entire career. If you do, you lose substantially in monetary terms over the span of the career. Secondly, since you are moving too much, you become a generalist and not a specialist of anything. Generalist earn general amount not special amount!!!! Ha ha ha !!!!

Another problem with engineer is that he is always unsatisfied in a positive sense. He always feels that he can do better in next position!!!!!!! He is always looking for climbing yet another mountain. And if the mountain is not found in the same organization, then he keeps on jumping / hopping the jobs. They succumb to new fads very easily. A lot of engineers got into the bandwagon of ERP (Typically paying Rs. 3-4 lacs for 6 months course) and joined ERP implementation area. When the market dried up, these engineers were left high and dry!!!!!! Same happened with dot.com boom. Many engineers set-up dot.coms with the dream of getting venture capital in millions of dollars, making millions in profits by selling their dot.com companies eventually!!!!. Sadly, they lost their shirts when the dot.com bubble got busted!!!!!!!!!

Similarly, when Y2K issue was hot, engineers put a lot of stake learning outdated technologies (Y2K problem was present in applications / software written in old era). They made money. But as soon as Y2k issue was over, they realised that they have wasted too many years working on totally outdated applications / languages. These guys had a tough time getting back to contemporary technologies. Ironically, some literally messed up their careers and just could not come out it!!!!!

Another challenge faced by the engineer is because of their confidence (should I say sometimes overconfidence). They take up all sorts of challenges some times not realising what it entails. And organizations also encourage such behaviour. So organizations sometimes lose good engineer and get lousy manager because they promote engineer to manager!!!!!!!!!!!!

As an Engineer, one needs to balance the opportunities and challenges. Yet another thing which has tremendously impacted engineering profession and how an engineer functions is TECHNOLOGY. We will see how technology has impacted engineer separately under

Impact of Technology on Engineer.

Milind Kulkarni

18th April 2010

milindinpanhala@gmail.com