
The End of the Engineer - aarghh
http://blogs.forbes.com/tomgillis/2011/07/14/the-end-of-the-engineer/?partner=yahootix
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jeffdavis
The author seems to have concluded that engineering will cease to be a
competitive advantage. I think that can only be true if engineering can no
longer produce things that are truly new or qualitatively different than what
could be produced before. And that sounds a little like saying "everything has
already been invented".

Sure, the consumer doesn't care about the difference between 2.8 and 3.2 GHz.
But the difference between 1 MHz and 1GHz is so huge that it's a qualitative
difference -- you can apply it in ways that just wouldn't be practical
otherwise.

I find it strange that he cites Apple, because they are a prime example of the
success of engineering and design excellence. They take existing technology,
imagine what can be done if they push it to the limits, and design products
that deliver a lot of value (I don't happen to like Apple products much, but a
lot of people do -- and not just because they look nice).

But pushing the technology to the limits is a crucial aspect. Why do you think
they care so much about their sources of technology? Sure, it's outsourced,
but Apple always makes sure they get better products than their competitors
can. If the iPhone were just a little bigger when it was launched, it would
have failed -- because that's the difference between all your customers always
carrying it around, and being happy about it; and them leaving it in their car
or at their desk when they go to lunch.

~~~
makeramen
I would argue Apple doesn't exactly "push engineering to the limits." That is
the role of companies like Intel, nVidia, AMD, ARM, to name a few. Apple is
precisely in the business the author describes, of tailoring the technology of
those other companies to best fit the mass market of consumers.

This is not to say Apple doesn't design and engineer either. Just not in the
traditional sense. Apple engineered and designed OSX to take advantage of the
cutting edge hardware they source from other more traditional "engineering"
companies. Apple designs and engineers the retail experience, online and in-
store, to better sell those products. Apple designs new and innovative ways to
combine existing technology into innovative new products like the iPod,
iPhone, iPad.

But the real differentiator is the vision behind their actions. While Intel,
nVidia, ARM battle to make the faster, stronger, cheaper, more power-efficient
processors; Apple is asking "how do we make listening to music more
enjoyable?" (iPod), "how do we make our 'smart'phones less annoying?"
(iPhone), and "how do we make computers that actually get out of our way, so
we can get our work done faster, and go home to our friends and families?"
(Macs).

The difference is in the driving questions behind their actions. The answers
might still be provided by people we call engineers and designers, but they
are definitely not the same kind of engineers as the ones at Intel creating
the next generation processor architecture.

~~~
jeffdavis
But what you are saying is essentially that they build on top of other
engineering work. And that's all engineering is, anyway.

Maybe in X years Intel will just be a manufacturing company and not an
engineering company. But that's just the way of things -- when an industry is
immature, engineers are needed to make stuff work; and when it's mature, they
don't need so many engineers.

But there are new industries, new applications, and new expectations that
_will_ need engineers.

Or, maybe everything really has been invented this time, and we're just done.

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jones1618
Paradigm shift? No, more like visibility shift.

While it is true that shaving megahertz and kilobytes doesn't give you command
of a market anymore, engineering still defines market leaders. Look at Amazon,
Google, and Facebook. Their "customer understanding" is key to their success
(and is most visible) but they couldn't serve their customer experience
without mountains of engineered infrastructure.

What about Apple? They're just a pure design firm now? No, they may fly the
design banner but below decks the Good Ship Lollipop is manned by notoriously
cut-throat band of engineering scalawags bent on shaving components and
squeezing price/performance blood out of their suppliers.

Yes, component engineering and manufacturing have moved overseas but system
and product engineering still dictate what the user experience designers (who
also need a fair amount of engineering know-how) can deliver.

At minimum, every "Liberal Arts" kid should learn math, science, programming
and basic web technology. Think about it: We live in a world where artists use
tech skills and librarians are computer scientists to some extent.

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bartonfink
"That’s why I’m encouraging my kids to pursue a liberal arts education. I
can’t think of another course of study that would prepare them better for the
future."

This has nothing whatsoever to do with what he wrote about the diminishing
returns of pure engineering skill over the past ten years, and I'm not sure
why he chose to conclude with this.

I fail to see the connection between a liberal arts education and "a
competency of customer understanding... [that] includes a vision of solving
problems the customer has yet to anticipate." Engineering is still going to be
a fine career choice for a long time, and unless that liberal arts education
comes with a specific mandate to study the current whims of the marketplace
and how to create products to serve them, his kids are going to be in a rough
spot when they graduate.

~~~
friendstock
Agreed!

Yes, engineering is a commodity and companies must do customer development...
but people will need strong technical backgrounds in order to make the right
decisions.

------
imack
"As China and India continue to evolve, their supply of engineering talent is
likely to outpace demand"...Spoken like someone who has never tried to
outsource a development project.

I've been hearing this since I started my CS program in 2001, back then I was
worried that by the time I graduated the whole north american industry would
be hollowed out and I'd have to go to law school. If the engineering sky was
falling, it would have collapsed by now.

He is, however, correct about the importance of customer understanding, but
that is not at the expense of engineering in any way.

------
cwp
I guess if you tell a room full of engineers that engineering is no longer
where it's at, you won't get a lot of applause.

The author never said that there won't be a need for engineering talent. Of
course there will. It's just that engineering isn't the edge anymore. The
difference between Apple ten years ago and Apple today isn't better
engineering. The difference between Apple and Nokia or Twitter and Buzz isn't
engineering.

Actually, I think this is what Google+ is about. Google has always had great
engineering, but they haven't paid much attention to user experience. Google+
comes out of the recognition that the internet is actually a means for people
to connect with other people. So if you're going to focus on _that_ instead of
"organizing the world's information," user experience comes to the fore. Sure,
the engineering is there, but it's not enough. And sure enough, Google has put
a lot of effort into UX in Google+ - everything from interface design to
feature selection to rollout strategy. Contrast that with Wave, which was a
marvel of engineering, but didn't have a clear purpose.

------
turbojerry
While it is true that understanding your customers and making things easier to
use is important it does not mean that engineering is dead. He makes many
mistakes in the article, for example Apple is less about the customer than it
is about creating pretty objects that have a cult like status, how else do you
explain people buying mobile phones that only work if you hold them a certain
way? He obviously has no knowledge of the strides made in engineering that I
see every single day. Also I took a look at IronPort that he seems to be so
proud of, they are security products that don't seem that secure-

<http://securitytracker.com/id/1023399>

<http://sebug.net/exploit/19117/>

All that said, it's in Forbes, so hopefully the article will distract many
CEOs of large companies from investing in engineering allowing other companies
to eat their lunch, I look forward to shorting those CEOs companies and going
long those that crush them.

------
ChuckMcM
Somehow, I'm not too worried.

While I don't doubt for a minute that engineering talent in other parts of the
world will continue to improve, the need for engineers will remain until that
time when a machine algorithm can take a set of requirements and a 'look' and
put together a plan for creating the required product. That too will come
about at some point but efforts to date have yet to seriously threaten day to
day engineering.

Perhaps the author is just burned out, or perhaps he has lost his sense of
wonder which is so vital to engineering things. But I am not convinced by his
reasoning that we've hit 'peak engineer' :-)

~~~
turbojerry
Well the Holy Grail of automating software development has been supposedly
coming for a long time and still isn't here, check out The Last One from 1981-

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_%28software%29>

------
WalterSear
This article presents so many strawmen, it should be called the rise of the
engineer.

~~~
wladimir
He's conflating two things; yes, there are a lot of good and cheap engineers
in India. And yes, doing what the customer needs is important. Conclusion: the
end of the engineer!

It's more like "the engineer is dead, long live the new engineer". The end of
the engineer would mean the end of our decades-long high-tech fun ride.

People take so much for granted. Engineering is implicit in everything these
days. We've replaced the guts of our (human) world with software, hardware,
and it's not showing signs of stopping. Who is going to support that?

People with liberal arts degrees, of course! Yes, I bet in a decade, it's
going to be so much easier to get a job with a liberal arts degree than with
an engineering one...

~~~
WalterSear
The biggest problem I have had with recent liberal arts degree acquirers is
that they are so damn sure of themselves, and completely clueless. They don't
know what they don't know.

It's like they haven't been introduce to the actual world, or anything even
remotely complicated. Isn't that what a generalist education is supposed to
prepare you for?

------
hjkl
I'm a guy who went to school for a BA in Film/Digital Media and a BS in
Mechanical Engineering. I now work as a software engineer. It is my opinion
that my BA in film to did not develop any more "soft skills" than my
engineering degree.

The implication in this article is that you either think like an engineer or
you think like... I don't know, someone who studied liberal arts? I think this
is a false dichotomy. Engineers can understand customers just as well as
someone who studied film/anthropology/politics/whatever.

~~~
WalterSear
Better, if understanding that customer's requirements involves engineering
something. This "maybe you can engineer, but I got 'wide ranging experiences'"
shit has got to stop. You can't get a liberal education in a classroom - you
have to go out into the world and teach yourself.

(Social science undergrad/MS, FWIW, with plenty enough shakespeare and
philosophy classes)

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zwieback
Someone who writes this kind of ridiculous drivel cannot be a good engineer so
I don't take his analysis very seriously.

~~~
JamesVI
Correct, Tom Gillis is not an engineer.

He is a salesman who happens to lead a business unit at a technology company.

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alexgaribay
Why was this article written? How is it the end of the engineer? How is the
'era of the engineer over'? I don't see one thing in the article to support
his idea. The only thing I conclude from the article is that the focus of
business has shifter to satisfying the customer with easy-to-use elegant
technological products.

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gte910h
You think requirements analysis and industrial design are parts of a liberal
arts education?

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kartikrustagi
And I always thought iPhone was a technical marvel :-/

