Should a Technician do engineering?

Note that GenRad is gone.

There's no law that says you have to have HR!

I've seen a lot of class warfare between "technicians" and "engineers", especially in bigger companies where the distinction is official and the functions are constrained. It sometimes degenerates almost to sabotage.

Who?

Yeah, that's going to work at, say, IBM.

You, too, can be unemployed.

After the first dozen, or two, law suits, executives tend to listen to lawyers.

When was the last time you checked? Maybe Obama is slipping...

Perhaps people learned something on the job and were promoted accordingly?

Unless you're within sniffing range, a pension is a pretty poor reason for keeping a job, these days. They can pull that rug out from under you at will. I know several who have had it happen (I made it under the wire by 23 days). I'd *always* favor the work, first by a long mile, then *who* I'm working for. other benefits (as I get older, vacation is more important than money) come way down the list. If they're not treating the employees properly and doing other stupid things, it's time to cut losses. I waited way too long on my last job.

Some really poor engineers think they can walk on water. They also quit and start there own companies, which fail in short order.

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I would ask your boss if the company has formal requirements to be a "Member of Technical Staff". Things as having a technical degree , etc. and make sure that he has all the ammunition he needs to get you reclassified. My experience is that bosses are want to get people rewarded. You might also help him by writing up the things you accomplish so he has an easy time of putting your accomplishments in your personnel folder. It sounds as if you are working in a mechanical group and your boss may be a mechanical engineer and not be familiar with what you do.

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That's a bit different, a Bachelor's degree is well defined and you can't just say you have one if you don't. Anyone can call them selfs engineer

Only place I see title being and issue is at places where title, pay and job is tied via union agreements

So someone from a company with inflated titles get at the top of the pile?

probably not, but there's not rules that says he can't

-Lasse

Good point. I've interviewed some real clowns from the so-called Ivy League. My favorite was the MIT PHd candidate who was an IC "expert". I had a plot on the wall. He couldn't even identify the bonding pads. I managed to maintain my composure, just saying "OK, we're through."

Wondering if this idiot actually had a MIT degree, I found some paper that proved this. But it was on gas discharge tubes or something similar.

By far, the best hit ratio for good engineers is Berkeley or believe it or not, the University of Toronto. I've met MEs from McGill. I never ran into any EEs from there, but it supposed to be a good engineering school.

You're pretty parochial if you're surprised that UofT is a good school. I went to UBC, which is more or less the west coast equivalent of UofT, and when I got to Stanford for grad school, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I'd seen more physics than the alums of the fancy places like Harvard and Princeton.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Wow! They sure know how to take the wind out of the sails of their people! I too found it was cheaper to give titles than to pay people. What's wrong with them?

After a few years doing something, you are that something. Even ads for people say "MSEE with 2 years experience, or BSEE with 5 years of experience," some continue with "No degree? show us what you can do", because these hiring people know that On the Job training often has more value than having an education poured into you at some brick and mortar institution - performance is worth diplomas.

Be very, very careful. They shoot the messenger in CA. The guy you report to should be livid. If he's not, or too weak to fight, you MUST seriously consider your self, family, career, and livelihood. Companies have NO loyalty to any employee, yet companies demand loyalty from employees, go figure.

lso

Yes, business is a different game than engineering. If you have a good product idea, you can always hire engineers and sales people to do all the work. But it helps if you know something about what's going on so you don't get ripped off.

I know a guy from India who has a PhD in biology and did medical research for 5 years, but didn't make much progress. Now he owns a liquor store and makes a good living.

-Bill

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Those companies seem darn rare these days.

Mr. CRC, I'd second the suggestion that you dust off the resume, and send it round. Nothing too bad can happen and at last the resume gets updated.

George H.

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Yes, my boss is very supportive of trying to get me properly rewarded, to the extent that he understands what I do. He even participated in the last promotion committee for the extremely rarified ranks of technologists one notch above mine, to better understand the process so he could help me get promoted, hopefully, eventually. My performance grades are always "outstanding." You need that rating >=3 yrs in a row to get promoted to the highest Tech. rank. I've gotten that grade now for 6 years. Waiting...

But he has some misunderstanding of what I do in relation to the definition of a Technician. One of the scientists in my dept. who actually once did a EE minor, agrees with me. On the bright side, my boss was very appreciative of my efforts to explain to him the definition of "Engineering Technician". This affects many people besides myself. There will be big meetings. He will take what I say to higher levels.

I submit a written report on my work every year for performance evaluation. I usually assume that my boss has no idea what I'm talking about so I make it very explanatory. Then I am forced to edit out much of the explanation, so it will fit standard corporate forms. I hate that part!

He has the option of consulting with the scientists who receive my work to check the validity of my claims, but they can mainly comment on quality, rather than understanding what I do. That is because, yes, they are all Mech. Engs.

Unfortunately, there are horrific inconsistencies in our promotions and I'm not sure if there formal requirements for the Member of Technical Staff (MTS) vs. Technologist/Technician ladders.

I have a B.S., and there are plenty of B.S. MTS. They mostly do design engineering. But not in my facility.

My facility is unique in doing mostly research. Thus, we have a culture that tries to restrict access to the technical staff ladders to PH.Ds. But this is pure ivory tower-ism. There is no precedent for it outside of this one unique sub-institution within the larger company.

Here's an interesting example of the difficulties managers out of the field of EE face in evaluating the work of different Electronic Technologists/Technicians:

Three techs. can report on their performance review: "I developed applications with FPGAs."

One used LabView FPGA.

Another had his project designed by a very brilliant Ph.D who is great at electronics. The tech. was closely guided and mainly did what traditional techs. do.

The third tech. decides completely independently when and which FPGA to use to solve a problem, writes the logic in HDL, simulates, verifies, then does the board layouts and builds the chassis all by himself. This may also include microprocessors and all firmware written by himself. For the most part, he even has to guide the customers (the scientists) through the process of specifying exactly what they want.

How does a manager who isn't an EE understand which one is doing more or less technically challenging, engineer-like work? It's not easy.

Well, I am considering that. I would prefer not to, due to my age and traveling distance I am currently at. It's more of a convenience for me than a desire at the moment.

It used to be a good place to work however, things have been going through changes due to the economy and down sizing in some areas.

R&D technology shops with in the company are dwindling in favor for more use of the current technology at the production sites and just simply patching them and running them into the ground instead of advancing and designing new ideas to make marketable products better at a reasonable cost.

We have been part and still are of designing in new ways of automating the process for higher quality products at a higher production rate and be able to make products in production that was before considered to costly due to their complexity and required process.

Over the last few years I have been there, a lot of new products have been created that never would have been attempted with out the aid of the R & D shops to create & modify machines to do so.

It used to be a benefit for the company to have many of these sites with in their establishment however, from what I understand, changes in the last 3..4 years of tax regulations and bad economics is forcing a down size in areas where they can no longer use for write offs and afford to operate.

I work for a company that used to be well known through out for their accomplishments "Brand Rex". We had the first cross linking polyrad compounds which were engineer here at the site I work at. That also means we had and still have the very first irradiation unit for this process ever made. Actually, this is the second irradiation unit for cross linking ever made at all! The air force had the very first unit ever made in a hanger for a special project.

The manufacturer of this first unit has told us that when we retire the unit they would like to buy it back as a display piece.

Jamie

The vacation is a bigger factor actually. I'd probably get that cut in half if I started a new job. Maybe if I was of Phil Hobbs caliber I could easily negotiate whatever terms I wanted, but I'm not that confident.

I do love my vacation!

It's mostly the equipment, facilities, freedom/flexibility, support for educational pursuits (they just spent a bunch of money to send me to Xilinx for 7 days of training), etc.

I actually bank on receiving 0% of my pension and SS when making retirement projections!