If there was anything on the floppy, it was probably so old that it couldn’t possibly be important to us anymore, but if it was, the chances of finding a computer on the premises that could read it would be slim to nil.

Now as a mechanical engineer, I don’t typically encounter legacy operating systems (COBOL, anyone?), but I have had to dig up some very old technical drawings.

I was working on a radar system upgrade and had to pull up technical drawings from the radar’s original construction in the 1960’s. The drawings were stored on microfiche, and were readable, miraculously enough, by shining a light through them. All facetiousness aside, it was remarkable in a way, that I could still access information that was forty to fifty years old.

I brought this up with a senior engineer and he asked me if I thought today’s CAD models would be readable ten years from now. We were in the midst of changing CAD vendors, and already had problems changing from one file format to the other, and I had to admit that the data would probably become useless, if not in ten years then probably in twenty. Despite it’s bulk and it’s susceptibility to fire and water damage, I have to note that paper and vellum prints have excellent forwards compatibility. And really how well do hard drives hold up to fire and water?

The current solution to the CAD system issue was to maintain a computer with a handful of  licenses for the old CAD vendor’s software for the foreseeable future. Perhaps not an elegant solution, but seemingly the best option for the moment. Is data compatibility an issue your company has had to deal with? What about in your personal life?

It’s funny how information tends to come in waves.  Recently, I came across two articles that had similar themes about different victims.  The first was the notion that engineers that are over 35 are essentially unemployable.  The opinion piece from CNN discusses how “older” workers are perceived as too expensive to hire.  It also discusses how the point of mass layoffs is to eliminate the older, more expensive workers and foist more work on less people.  Fluxor has discussed the reality of this situation in many of his posts.

Shortly before this article came out, another one showed up on Bloomberg.  This one had the age of unemployability as 40, but around the same ballpark.

All of this has been discussed often on EngineerBlogs.  However, what brought this to mind was an article I came across a few weeks ago.  This one talked about the other end of the employment spectrum.  It’s also something I’ve seen discussed in my classes when I’ve had a speaker from the career center.  This article posited that entry level jobs are no longer entry level.  This is exactly what I’ve been hearing from the career counselors: if you want a job after college, you need to have 2 or 3 internships while you’re in college.  No one will hire you until you’ve already had engineering experience.

My take away from all this is that employers are becoming increasingly picky about what they want in an employee, and they certainly aren’t willing to train.  One is supposed to invest four years (or more) into their education, work several internships (hopefully none of which will be unpaid, but that is becoming the norm in many other fields), and can only count on having that job for about a decade to maybe two before they may have to switch fields entirely.  Granted, that 10-15 years may provide valuable experience, but is it worth it given the cost of college and the fact that one may have to retrain to enter another field that may be more stable?

…and it’s kicking my ass, as you can probably tell from my lack of posting. Last October, I posted on how I was diving right into the deep end (see: What’s the difference between 18 and 27?) because my feeling was that academia is sink or swim and those that can cope will, and those that can’t cope won’t. I was most decidedly in the camp that thought they could cope and things would be easier once I got a grant or two under my belt. This led to a, shall we say, promiscuous year applying for any and all proposal solicitations that were remotely in my area (~10 NSF-length proposals, and ~10 smaller opportunities). I wanted to make sure I got some funding in the first year to get off to a good start.

It turns out that when you get more than 1 or 2 grants under your belt, it becomes very difficult to cope.

I have done less planning for my class than I would have liked and herding graduate students is definitely like herding cats. On the flip side, I’m not going to burn through my startup in the next few months (which was a big concern only 6 weeks ago!) and I received some grants (yay!). And I’m in a weird position where I’m looking for students and I need to hire them but their first year is all classes so they have no time for research. Additionally, getting grants opened up an entirely different sinkholeworld within academia which is the accounting/bookkeeping/reporting side which I’ll save for a later post.

I think the most interesting aspect that I’ve noticed is the new-shiny feeling has definitely worn off everywhere. I remember I was really nervous (and excited) in the days leading up to my first class. What if my notes are too short? Too long? What if my voice cracks or my fly is down? What if I misspell something stupid or have a Freudian slip? All of those things that I was very nervous about last year are absolutely no concern for me this year. Aside from the last minute panic of “oh crap, have to prepare a syllabus”, it feels very business as usual.

I’m still plugging away on grants, although not at the pace I was last year. I’m definitely taking a more measured approach which I think will improve the quality of my proposals and hopefully my success rate. Additionally, I’m part of a fairly sizable multi-uni effort that will hopefully pan out in the next few months (it’s one of the reasons why I haven’t had time to post).

I hope everyone else in academia has had a good start to the semester and has a fruitful year!

[Image Source: Marktoon, url]

With so many car companies on the brink of extinction just a few short years ago, I’m surprised how many ex-pats were assigned their very expensive postings right around that time frame. I’m obviously doing something wrong. It appears the trick to getting a great ex-pat pay package is to work for a money losing multinational.

Trust

The first concern I have with a supplier is trust. Can I trust them to make quality goods and deliver on time? In the US, I feel like basic interview questions and social cues will lead me to conclude whether you’re a worthy supplier or not. I can call you on the phone (because at most you are a few time zones away!), communicate with you in fluent English, and also check your references, who probably also speak English. If I want to meet you face to face, your factory is at worst a day’s travel and several hundred dollars for the plane ticket. Finally, if it comes down to it (and it probably won’t, but just in case), I could imagine suing an American supplier in the U.S. If I was overseas, I wouldn’t have a clue.

Logistics

When you’re in early development phases, shipping samples back and forth can be crucial. No amount of math, analysis, or simulation will substitute for a fit check, or to review final part color and surface finish. You can get small parts across the US in less than 3 days for under $10. Ground shipments of major deliveries will make it across the country in less than two weeks. A slow boat from China, on the other hand, could take a month, or you’d have to pay the money for air freight.

Ethics

Although the US has had it’s fair share of scandals about factory conditions, I feel generally better about manufacturing in the US, than in a country where  infant milk formula was poisoned, or factory workers toil under dangerous conditions. Will plastic parts have BPA, phtalates, lead, or some other toxic substance in them against my directions? Can I pay for a lab to test samples?  Then there’s the additional ethical choice to move American jobs abroad.

Cost

Of course, the big elephant in the room is labor costs. Labor can cost ten time less overseas than in the US. The risks of working in another county can be mitigated by sending someone in person to vet the supplier, but of course, that costs money, too, and you’re essentially paying a lot a lot of money to manage the risks.

Practical Issues of Availability

I’ve tried working with mfg.com for the first time to source a supplier. I’ve received 25+ bids on my project, only two companies were based in the US, and even then, they just had US offices, the work was really done in China or Korea. Finding a US supplier will take more work on my part.

Conclusion

Given the volumes I’m working with and the difficulties of working abroad, I’d certainly prefer to stay in the US, but the experience has certainly been eye opening as to what’s out there.

But I’m a bit hypocritical. I’m a graduate of an engineering program that taught me quite a bit, in buildings that were just a touch larger than they needed to be. Further, I encouraged my wife when she expressed a desire to go back to school this semester to try out a completely different field.

So why was I ok with that? Access.

In my case, access to facilities. Access to faculty capable of teaching me difficult concepts. And most importantly, access to co-ops and potential employers. Similar reasons abound in my wife’s case, though she’ll be taking many of her classes online, so maybe not the facilities.

And what about everyone else? These days, there are countless ways to learn, much in the same way as my wife will be learning. What’s more, you can do it completely free. Udacity, MITx, Coursera, OCW, Khan Academy, Code Academy…the list keeps going! On a non-educational front, you could even consider the University of Reddit or even just looking up instructional videos on YouTube! If you want to learn something, you have little to complain about these days in terms of access. If you cannot find a way to learn about something these days, you likely need to take a course on search terms.

The value these days lies in access and opportunity. And that is rapidly shrinking.

Mostly, we see this in terms of a piece of paper. You have completely the requisite courses at your school and have fulfilled all of the requirements. “Here’s your diploma, hope it gets you a job,” they say. Though many in Generation Y are finding that it’s not the case, thanks to a large number of degreeless-yet-experienced people being unable to leave the workforce.

I maintain that the employees of the future will be:

• Found and retained due to their ability to maintain a professional network
• Willing to relocate and/or commute for their work because of the niche fields that will employ people
• Judged and hired based on their experience, not their degree
• An employee willing to take on new challenges and question authority
• better than average a communicating within and without the organization
• Willing to continue self education on their own because they are passionate about the profession (i.e. engineering will no longer be “just a job”)

Yes, those are all links to articles I have written, but I wrote them for a reason. There is a dramatic shift coming, in my opinion, and I think wise engineers will harden themselves against some of these disruptive changes.

Another change I see coming in the near future is apprenticeship, at least in the USA. This has existed overseas for many years (and in smaller forms in the US). My brain can’t get past the fact of the accessibility of educational material these days and how schools no longer have the monopoly in this area. What is stopping someone from going and learning the relevant job skills from an apprenticeship program and educating themselves on the theoretical information on their own? I think this is a large shift in how education will work in the future.

If you’re a student, I would not tell you to drop out. Instead, I would tell you to seek out…opportunity. Go find the internships, ask your professors out to coffee (platonically!) and ask them about their research and how they got where they are (see also: networking), get involved with technical and professional organizations and do whatever you can to squeeze that last bit of value out of your ever-increasingly expensive degree. You owe it to the person that will be paying off your loans for the next twenty years….you.

Thanks to Wally Gobetz for the school picture.

Universally, it is recognized that the last 10% of the project is 90% of the work. I’d say that the first third of the project is 2% of the work. Can someone do the curve and put it in the comments?

Why is it so tough to finish projects and so easy to start them? Starting is easy, involving large portions of researching, discussion and shopping. These tasks don’t actually involve producing any results but they feel as though something has been accomplished. Making something out of nothing, to design something or to build something where it wasn’t in existence before is HARD. If you’re not used to feeling the sense of accomplishment, you don’t know how much you’re missing to want to feel it badly enough.

I think that finishing projects is a learned skill which provides the experience (or foresight) to know how long something will take once you dream it up. The skill of Finishing Stuff is complemented by the skill of knowing when not to get started on something because it’s a time-suck, impossible or too expensive.
Obtaining the skill of Finishing Stuff takes practice.

Here are some ways to practice that elusive skill:

1. Make a decision to stop being an anal perfectionist.
You can lose a ridiculous amount of time going from red to blue and back again. Tweaking this and tweaking that keeps you in the 50% done phase. It also tricks you out of having to think too hard about solving the next problem.

2. Don’t add tentacles (bells and whistles) to your Revision 1 project. Unnecessarily adding tentacles to your projects will make them unwieldy and unmanageable, causing the project to sit in the garage gathering cobwebs.

3. Kill your wireless and put caution tape across your kitchen door. AKA No Distractions. Leaving your email, Facebook, Twitter etc. on while you’re trying to move forward is just plainly, a bad decision. How can you get anything done if your internet life is beeping or blinking at you. It takes the average person some time to get their brain back on track after an interruption, and YOU ARE NO EXCEPTION. And don’t interrupt yourself because you’re hungry or need to do dishes. Finding oneself in the kitchen staring into the white light is also not productive. Caution tape.

4. Practice working your way through problems. You can’t hit the problem wall and just…delay. When you get to a stopping place because you don’t know what to do, do something. If you don’t know what to do, ask someone, ask a forum, ask Google, ask your tea leaves, experiment.

5. Set a deadline that’s two weeks from now.
When you have a deadline that’s too far away, it’s easy to wait until the last minute. Then you have no time and the project doesn’t get done. Break the project up into 2 week doable sized pieces.

6. KISSS keep it simple simple simple.
Don’t pick 10 projects that aren’t doable and buy parts for all of them. Pick something challenging you know you can do and tackle it. Don’t wake up one Saturday and decide to build a small shed on your property…alone….and find that you don’t have the time, money or skill set to finish it. Know yourself better than that.

The way to get good at something, good enough where it becomes second nature, is to do it over and over again until you have mastered that skill. To be the person who Finishes Stuff you have to practice being that person. If you finish a few projects, chances are that you’ll never want to leave something undone again.

Comments please! Do you finish stuff or do you typically have projects undone? Or are you somewhere in the middle?

Last week, I complained on my own blog about how I wasn’t looking forward to school starting.  In the meantime, it has started, and I’ve made it through the first week of classes.  Now that I’m starting to get back in the groove, I’m looking at things a different way.

First, as much as I love summer, I like the fact that my life is now moving back into a predictable, albeit busy, routine.  I have certain days I’ll be teaching, certain days where I take my dogs to class, certain days I’ll be running my kids to events, and certain meetings that I simply cannot avoid.  Taken as a whole, I really like having a schedule and knowing where and when I need to be a certain place.  Summer, with it’s lack of structure, sometimes leaves me feeling a bit lost.

Second, I’m happy to be teaching again.  I love doing research, but it’s really a nice change of pace to interact with a new set of students.  I also like the feeling of optimism that accompanies the beginning of the semester.  By Christmas, I’m sure I’ll be ready to go back to doing just my research again.

Third, it’ll be a lot easier to get a hold of colleagues who tend to take a lot of trips during the summer.  I have to admit that when your collaborators are AWOL, research can be a bit more difficult.

Fourth, the campus shuttle is running again.  That makes it a lot easier to get around campus, especially when I have to go to the library or print shop.

What about you?  Are you dealing with an academic calendar?  What things do you appreciate about the beginning of the school year?

The new school year is rapidly approaching, or has perhaps already arrived for some. As one of the resident graduate students here at EngineerBlogs, I thought I’d offer some advice to anyone embarking on the quest that is the US doctoral degree. On my own blog, I’ve offered advice about questions to ask on visits.

So now that you’ve matriculated, what’s next?

Accept that everyone is going to have advice, and much of it may be completely irrelevant to your department and situation. Learning to parse large amounts of information to find something relevant is a critical skill in graduate school, so consider this practice.

Make sure you have all of the requirements for candidacy/graduation written down in one place. What courses do you need to take? How are your qualifying exams structured? When are you expected to achieve candidacy? In the beginning, you’re still going to have courses, but you’ll want to start on research as soon as possible if you’re doing a research masters of Ph.D. Coursework is required for most post-bachelors degrees, but with the exception of coursework Masters, the research is what ultimately earns you the degree.

Advisor selection (assuming you chose, rather than being chosen) is a huge issue. You may only have so much flexibility here. The professors you really want to work for may not have money, or may already have new students. However, you don’t just want to settle for the first professor who gets back to you with a positive response. Ask the students in the group how long a typical time to graduation is. You can ask the professor too: it might be interesting to see how these numbers differ. Talk to advisors working on things you don’t know much about, but seem like people you could work with.

Keep a hobby. In many places, there will be the expectation that you work 60-80 hour weeks and never sleep, but if you want to remain sane, it’s good to establish outside hobbies at the very beginning. If you learn to include a hobby in your schedule at the beginning, it will be easier when you start getting busier.

Even if you school has funding, apply for fellowships: I’ve written about it here and here. To summarize, though, there are many fellowships targeted specifically at STEM students, and you should try to take advantage of that. Fellowships often have better stipends than standard research and teaching appointments, and give you a little more freedom as a student to pursue side projects.

Former and current grad students, what would you add to (or remove from) my advice? Soon-to-be or future grad students, what questions do you still have?

The food and drink, though not cheap, was delicious. All of the guests complimented me on my ability to bend smoke and heat to my will and tame the fibers of a beef brisket. Really I did this because my wife decided she wanted to have a party for friends and family, but it got me thinking about the concept of social capital.

Do I trade food for friends? No.

Do I think giving someone a slice of brisket will necessarily endear me to them? Nope.

Even if there’s lots of free beer to go along with it? Nah.

Do I think good things happen when you bring people together and help cross polinate your social groups and try to find commonalities among them?

You bet your brisket I do.

Remember, you don’t have to have a reason to hang out with friends. But putting a little extra effort into being a valuable connector (yes, even as an engineer) can have lots of great consequences in your personal and professional life. We’re still just humans, after all.

Plus, who doesn’t like brisket?