Posted on 07/25/2013 8:52:12 AM PDT by cicero2k
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg got political on his Q2 2013 earnings call yesterday, criticizing America for not producing enough talented engineers for him to recruit.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
We have a small company. We can not find qualified people for it. Like someone said, our schools are filled with students from other countries who take their knowledge back to their country. Students from the US do not want to take higher math and science. Even kids who are smart enough want to take easier courses. The education system here want people to be dumbed down. I did see where a kid had a perfect score on the SAT. Maybe there is hope for our future.
I am reading some of these posts, and my Palm object has the property FACE repeatedly assigned.
We produce too many lawyers instead of engineers. When my son took the bar exam in Minnesota a couple of years ago there were over 600 applicants taking the exam that day. I imagine the numbers taking the bar exam have not shrunk by any extent in the intervening years and I cannot imagine that there are that many lawyer jobs in the state to handle the number of graduates. My son was very fortunate and landed a great job with a Minneapolis law firm. Many of his law school classmates were not so lucky and did not get jobs.
Ergo, we will remain insanely valuable.
I’d say one to five years beyond a Master’s degree would be a fair measure. Successful grads who have gone to Wall Street into finance, whether with an MBA or a couple of degrees in math or physics, should be on the ramp toward $1M-per by then.
We’re not talking the bulk of young grads, but the high-end potential. Of course, become a Silicon Valley whiz and there’s great potential there too.
Undergraduates who major in business admin on average aren’t nearly the brightest, which is the reason, rather than their choice of major, that they don’t tend to become corporate CEOs down the line.
It's also hard to produce enough engineers when the cost of a four year degree from a private engineering school exceeds $200,000 and there are limited spaces available at public engineering schools due, in part, to the large number of foreign engineering students who are recruited in the name of diversity and most importantly, because they often pay full tuition (unless they are illegals from south of the border).
Yes and no. The MBA crowd has a problem in that they do not recognize the talents that they need and companies couldn’t care less and they implode.
I would say (and have experienced) that a Master's degree is not needed to be quite successful with an engineering degree.
If that’s going to be your criterion, then you probably can’t fairly be compared with those on the most usual financial fast-track.
But you’re rare among engineers, including here on FR, for not whining about engineers topping out at an unfairly low pay ceiling and being put out to pasture all too young if they don’t move up into management in good time.
I have a degree in Engineering Physics. About the only use I got out of that diploma is some bedbugs sh*t on it.
I use to think like that, but engineers ARE people and PEOPLE need reasons for doing things. Getting people to do the right thing is therefore of the HIGHEST value and Facebook (or FreeRepublic for that matter) , can work towards that goal. (FreeRepublic much more so than Facebook obviously ). The moral of this story is that by telling yourself such things don't matter you let our enemies dominate the conversation!
I have seen engineering degrees being the path to a lot of different successful roles. It doesn’t tie you to the technical side only. I know many that have taken it to management, or even places like law.
It certainly isn’t for most. But for a college kid who was capable and interested in getting it; I would recommend it. It doesn’t mean they will spend their life on a calculator, spreadsheets and CAD, unless they want to do that.
You mean communication is the way to attempt to persuade people of a position. You are preaching to the choir on FR and FB is not a place of substantial discussion. Spilling ones guts in public is not constructive communication.
FB is not a reason for doing things. Neither is FR. Accomplishment is.
If I remember correctly, at the two decent size companies (5,000~50,000) where I ran an engineering department, I don’t think any of the other engineering Chiefs had a master’s degree either. I think one of the engineering managers did, but the 4 others in the same time frame did not.
I think that could be used to show where the engineering degree has significant value to the college kid starting out. It is often enough to open many different doors, combined with a willingness to work and not be a prima-donna. The most consistent short-coming I find in engineers is the ability to effectively communicate. My spelling skills document this quite well.
Laz, really?
Ha ha. You’re communicating quite well—and making a lot of sense.
Pssst: the SAT has been dumbed down too.
Dat engineering be old school. /s
Most engineers didn’t have my High School Senior English Teacher.
Most of us, including me, pretty much hated her. 30 years later, I realize I may have learned more useful skills from her than any of my college professors.
Precise and Concise. Apply that to any written work used for something besides entertainment.
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