Self Taught or Mentored?
- Thread starter tito
- Start date
Actually I disagree. "keeping up" with technologies as an engineer puts you on the gerbill wheel: you will spend your life running as fast as you can, making money for other people utlizing technologies they invented.
IMHO the only way to be a success at engineering - and to demonstrate that you actually have some type of talent - is to come up with truly new ideas, base a product on these and protect and defend your intellectual property.
Unfortunately engineers are de-valued today unless they truly can bring something unique to the table: the problem with this for corporations is that the truly talented people wont work for them if they sense that they will be cost-cutting fodder the next time some CEO cant make their quarterly numbers. Instead these folks will simply bypass these orgainzations and make money for themselves.
If you want to be successful as an engineer, you have to be a royal ass kisser or a crook or both.
I tried it the other way: 50 technical report, 8 journal articles, 5 patents, 16 missile and aircraft design participitations, principle designer airlaunched weapons, solve two world class engineering problems. It didn't work. The concensus in government and industry is that an honest person is a detriment to the organization and a loose cannon. Engineering is a miserable profession for most people.
I tried it the other way: 50 technical report, 8 journal articles, 5 patents, 16 missile and aircraft design participitations, principle designer airlaunched weapons, solve two world class engineering problems. It didn't work. The concensus in government and industry is that an honest person is a detriment to the organization and a loose cannon. Engineering is a miserable profession for most people.
ditto. as much as trading is psychologically devastating at times, engineering was like running a track meet in quicksand. the faster you tried to run, the harder it was. i found out that when working for other people, its best to be 'just good enough'. sad.
oh, yeah i'm self-taught. wish i had a mentor
i definitely have had some amazing people guide me along and i'm very very greatful for that!!! 
This fact is most true in defense contracting firms. It sounds like you are able: why not try to eat your former employers lunch in some small market niche ? - This is what I did long before they would have gotten rid of me. Once I saw how incompetent and disreputable they were I fired them. Now they come to my table with checks: its a much better world than what I would have had working for these firms and it says a lot about the value of working for any venture in which you dont have a non-trivial ownership interest.
The only way I could ever get even with them is if they made me secretary of defense.
The first thing I would do is cut their budget by 50 percent for starters.
The next thing I would do is separate the military from any oversight over technology.
The third thing that I would do is stop the revolving door of both military and civil service personnel into the industrial complex. These individuals would no longer be allowed to solicit work from the pentagon.
Instead of sending the losers who didn't work out to the pentagon and commands, I would appoint the most senior employees with the best technical credentials to these supergrade positions.
The next thing that I would do is to encourage more competition in the defense industry. A billion dollars for one aircraft is absurd.
Getting rid of the dead wood and stopping work on ideas with no technical or strategic merit that the present system initiates could probably balance the entire federal budget in a few years.
The first thing I would do is cut their budget by 50 percent for starters.
The next thing I would do is separate the military from any oversight over technology.
The third thing that I would do is stop the revolving door of both military and civil service personnel into the industrial complex. These individuals would no longer be allowed to solicit work from the pentagon.
Instead of sending the losers who didn't work out to the pentagon and commands, I would appoint the most senior employees with the best technical credentials to these supergrade positions.
The next thing that I would do is to encourage more competition in the defense industry. A billion dollars for one aircraft is absurd.
Getting rid of the dead wood and stopping work on ideas with no technical or strategic merit that the present system initiates could probably balance the entire federal budget in a few years.