14 May 2015

Getting sidelined: Computing Science vs Engineering degrees

There are those down in Silicon Valley who are telling teens and youngsters to go into “Real” Engineering™ instead of Computing Science in university, claiming that or else they will get sidelined or “passed over” when they start developing their careers.  They are surely well meaning in advising that, but...

Engineers: please stop telling people what to do with their own lives.

This is speaking to the Computer, Electrical, or so-called Software Engineers out there, but really, this applies to those in any engineering field, e.g. including Petroleum Engineers.

Was there a course in Engineering School that taught you to propagate the Cult of the Engineer?  Did you Silicon Valley types ever stop to think that maybe telling people what to do by appealing to your having a job in “Silicon Valley” is just an appeal to authority (by association to a geographic region)?  It’s no more convincing than appealing to having a job on Wall Street, or being an American (in a more international context).

Who do these engineers think they work for anyway?  Well, why don’t we have a look at who many of these Engineers™ work for and what their educational background is (according to Wikipedia anyway, for what that’s worth...):