Bah, we don't need these people. I'm not being bitter, I'm honestly not. I will be graduating soon (a few months), and I have seen many of these engineers-turned-bankers first-hand. We don't need them; the engineering profession wouldn't benefit from having them.
There are two types of people who go to college for engineering: those who truly love coding, circuit design, mechanical design, etc, and those who do it for lack of a better thing to do.
The first type are the ones who stay up late hacking, read up on the news, and keep themselves on the bleeding edge. They're the ones who know what they're doing.
The second type invariably just does the coursework needed to pass and get his degree. He's usually incompetent when it comes to his field of study, because his brain is filled with thoughts of paychecks and bonuses, not technical problems.
We don't need them. And I'm sure when the tech industry takes a tumble next time they'll all be gone again, to whatever field promises to be lucrative.
The second type is the type that attempts to turn every class into an orgy of pure memorization, trying to shoehorn every type of problem into a rote formula, while avoiding anything resembling understanding of the material.
I find the second type to usually be solid when it comes to theory, but utterly hopeless when it comes to implementation. They can draw you UML diagrams (so long as you don't stray too far from the coursework), but when it comes down to putting down code, they're lost.
The thing that bugs me about these people is not so much that they're incompetent, but they are so because they have no passions. I have a passion for code, other people have a passion for cooking, or writing, or whatever. All of the people I've met in engineering who aren't into it, also aren't into anything else, and I have a lot of trouble imagining how a person can exist in that state. I see so many people who are absolutely driven by the things they love, and somehow these people are just sitting around, not interested in anything except taking home a fat paycheck (to spend on what?)
It depends on what you define as theory, though. Things like analysis and extending algorithms, and understanding the concept of recursion, fall well into the realm of theory. People I've dealt with of the second type go completely off-course with this, too.
I've found they do ok when it comes to questions like "Define and give me an example of a ______", but become utterly lost when given a question such as "Design and implement in pseudocode a set of data structures/classes/etc. to accomplish vaguely-defined task x." As soon as you call upon them to apply their knowledge of theory to something they haven't memorized, they become completely lost. Maybe I'm just worrying over the semantics of the word theory too much.
I agree about how the lack of passion can be unbelievably annoying. Though, it's encouraging you've seen so many driven people, see them as a positive. I wish more people had that same attitude.
I agree, and I suppose by "theory" I mean anything that isn't code (even pseudocode). I've met many "type 2s" who can give you a great database and object model for whatever you feed them, but would be utterly lost if ever asked to translate into code.
And God help them if you describe a bug to them and ask them where they'd begin looking.
In the end it boils down to not doing. To be good at anything you need practice and experience, not just rote knowledge. Type 2s do not have this, since nobody holds a gun up to their head and makes them code till the early morn.
You've probably got your answer already: Everybody needs something to work for, and if you don't have anything in particular to work for, money is the default.
What I especially dislike is that these are the people who are responsible for our colleges and university continuing to focus more and more on the pragmatic and teach to the test approach, than focussing on true understanding. It's not just that they are bad for themselves, but they bring things down for us.
I was most definitely the second type precisely because I had no clue what I really wanted in life, and couldn't pinpoint my passions other than reading science-fiction. All I was able to figure out was that I needed to find a job and that I was semi-ok at math, physics, and computers.
I wish I had made more of an effort at that time on self-reflection. At least now I know what I want. Live and learn.
In all fairness, I was the second type when I was in college. I'm a card-carrying first type now but it took a few years of experience, meeting the right people on- and offline, and reading the right books to get me there. I think having more people in engineering will lead to more better people in the field.
Is there a defining moment/revelation/etc you can think of that might have tipped you into the first type? I ask because it seems that experience and the right people aren't sufficient conditions, and that picking up the books requires motivation from the first two sources. I ask partly for curiosity, and partly so, if it is the attitude someone around you conveyed, I can cultivate the same in myself and encourage those around me to become the first type.
I had left CS after I graduated in '04 because I thought the job market was bad and I didn't like the hard classes I took my last 2 semesters. I was working on a Masters in Urban Planning and read pg's essay "How to Be Silicon Valley" (http://paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html) which showed up in some urban planning discussion forums. It was provocative and well written so I read his other stuff, which reignited the interest in computing that I had when I was younger but lost when I became focused on school and jobs.
I'm planning on taking a course in electrical engineering, merely because I've been fascinated with technology all my life and I've already been playing around with circuits and what not since I was young. I built a transformer when I was like 13 years old, it worked for sure... until I melted the core, and now I know to always use laminated cores, not spoons. I also made a capacitor around that time, although it weighed like 2 lbs and held like 1mA charge.
I'd have to agree. I don't think someone solely interested in passing a course is going to help the industry. There's lots of people who go through university solely because they're afraid to enter the real world. I got a job as an electrician because I didn't want to be one of those losers who finally finishes university at 23 years old and realize I have no clue what to do and I wasted a good 5 years of my life.
It's interesting that he made the argument about smart people developing exotic financial instruments not having much societal benefit. The same argument could probably be made of most (but not all) tech startups. The next facebook widget, or cool web-app is hardly going solve our environmental & health problems.
I've heard this criticism frequently of late. Very few Facebook widgets are going to improve the human condition (Scrabulous aside, of course). I wonder if the problem is related to such businesses requiring more emphasis on physical products, interfaces to external groups and labor and other things which turn off start-ups or raise the cost barrier. I don't know, but it's worth thinking about what the extra barrier might be and how to knock it down. I would bet the answer is not a lack of compassion, but something to do with the general requirements. The barrier couldn't be lower, these days, for a Facebook app but of course a good challenge is one that leaves a huge distance behind you to the next competitor.
Early in his college career, Tyler Bosmeny assumed that after graduating, he would do what hundreds of other self-respecting Harvard University engineering, math, and science students do: take a job on Wall Street.
It's funny how it seems to be common knowledge in the elite schools that a technical career is to be avoided by people majoring in technical subjects. Perhaps that one piece of knowledge makes the exhorbitant cost of admission worth it. The joke is on the unwashed technical proletariat, after all.
I wonder where the media get these random stats from. "We asked 3 engineering students and 2 of them said they would consider an engineering job over a banking job" I'd be surprised if anyone could plot a graduating trend in such a short period of time since the media started causing a buzz about the "financial crisis".
There are two types of people who go to college for engineering: those who truly love coding, circuit design, mechanical design, etc, and those who do it for lack of a better thing to do.
The first type are the ones who stay up late hacking, read up on the news, and keep themselves on the bleeding edge. They're the ones who know what they're doing.
The second type invariably just does the coursework needed to pass and get his degree. He's usually incompetent when it comes to his field of study, because his brain is filled with thoughts of paychecks and bonuses, not technical problems.
We don't need them. And I'm sure when the tech industry takes a tumble next time they'll all be gone again, to whatever field promises to be lucrative.