Bosch and Siemens to recruit at kinder-garten

In germany there is a lack of engineers. So they go to 5 year olds to give them the engineering bug. I had it. One of my twins has it: he is busy drawing the biggest TGV train on paper with just "one" engine instead of the current "two". He calls the 'Tres Grand TGV" also showing an inclination for the insipid yet funnily marketable acronym the French engineers can come up with. He is 5 and I can see he will be an engineer. The other twin says "he wants to be a banker, so I can finance my brother" and I had to explain all about the notion of "interest" to him.

See the funny thing is that in Germany and France (just like in Spain and India) being an "engineer" is a socially acceptable thing, like being a doctor or lawyer in the US. In the US an engineer is almost second class. A friend once pointed out to me that in the French word "ingenieur" there is the word "genie" or genius, and that in "engineer" there is the word "engine". If the problems in EU are acute imagine what they will be in the US? or maybe we just keep importing them?

Because the love of the job, the passion is one thing, the money is another. A lot of my friends from Polytechnique are bankers, quants. At the end of the day if a mediocre hedge fund managers brings home more bacon than an excellent engineer why are we puzzled that people choose the first? After all it is HARD being an engineer, it is long studies and a trade that gets developed over time.

Could the real issue be that engineers are notoriously bad at money? and cannot negociate proper salaries for themselves? At JBoss I made sure the best engineers were properly compensated in stock and cash. But JBoss was clearly a company where engineers had value, we needed them bad.

Market solutions will appear. The job market of tomorrow will demand a level of technical savoir faire, or at least familiarite that you can only acquire through engineering training.

I rest my case.

Comments

Roy Russo said…
"At JBoss I made sure the best engineers were properly compensated in stock and cash."

Marc, did you ever look at Bill Burke's code? He should've been paying you to work there!

Hugs, Bill. ;-)
June 17, 2008 at 7:25:00 AM PDT
adt43wt342 said…
Somehow I KNEW you were going to be the first one to comment....

no comments :)
June 17, 2008 at 8:36:00 AM PDT
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thug vs Thug: Porsche 1, Hedge Funds: 0

The latest drama is fun. VW became the largest company in the world, in terms of market cap, ahead of EXXON on a little financial market coup d'etat orchestrated by Porsche. Apparently VW stocks was on the way down, I don't know the details but many Hedge Funds (HF) were short the position. Fine. The price goes down. Porsche starts buying the anonymous float (and probably some private too?), but the point is they build a 73% market share without many people noticing. In the US you would need disclosure after 10% or so. Point is, that many HF wake up and realize that their short position is about to lose a lot of money. So what do they do? those idiots? they short cover all together, which means they buy the stock to cover the short. The stock zooms up, by a full multiplier and overtakes EXXON. Porsche makes A KILLING in the process and has robbed the city robbers to the tune of "potentially $30B". Not bad for a days worth of work. PS: hey, psst Porsche! With t
Read more

Love ya 2 PTB!

Jules: I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy but they're definitely dirty. But, a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way. -- Pulp Fiction Jonathan Schwartz has this wonderful quote about me in a recent interview 15 minutes with the great man : Q:Turning to MySQL, how long do you think it will take before MySQL is fully integrated into Sun? We saw with Red Hat and its JBoss acquisition that this can be a slow, laborious process.... A: First, the personalities involved. Let's just say that integrating Marten Mickos into a company might be easier than assimilating a few of the JBoss personalities. Marten is a joy to work with and will make this integration work. I got to hand it to you Jonathan. You hit the nail on the head. JBoss was full of prima donnas, a lot of them actually; it drove me nuts. My developers were bitching all day long, my executives were even bigger fat cats, my sales guys were testosterone freaks. Even the receptionist had an att
Read more

Madrid Blog--We get sued

Image
...for having children If you are a foreigner and move to Madrid, do not, necessarily expect a warm welcome. Yesterday, we, or rather Don Mark Fleury and Dona Natali Manson ***note to Building Association of Serrrano XX, before you lawyer up, do your research. My husband spells his name "Marc" with a "c." and my first name is spelled "Nathalie;" not to mention that my honest English stone mason forbears would cringe at the misspelling of their last name to confound with that of the notorious 20th century serial killer. received an official communication from the Juzgado de Primera Instancia de Madrid, from one Don Ramiro Blah Blah, President of the Building Association of Serrano XX, a building of exactly 12 units, half of which were owned at one time by his father in law, in which it is alleged 1) "Mark Fleury and Natali Manson" have four children 2) these children own bicycles 3)and roller skates 4) and scooters ( Nathalie comment: nope sorry
Read more