Error Of Magnitude
The kids just don't get it: German engineering is so necessary
A world without German engineers -- frightening. Using a public toilet in the Charlottenburg Rathaus the other day was an experience of pure aesthetic satisfaction. The chain was a pleasurable arm's length and angle from my throne, the stairs and dogleg of the stall was bizarre and exquisite -- everything else was proximate, intimating, comfortable. I'm belaboring it -- good design is unexplainable. Why not dance about architecture?
But now engineering has fallen out of favor with the lads and lasses in the perpetual motion machine of German education. The whole environmental angle, I don't know -- sure, it's the sort of ethical reservation that students have, and invariably regret later on in life -- but what's the real reason for all this?
Brothers and sisters, when are we going to get together, when are we going to do what's right? Engineers and IT people are needed everywhere -- they're the "highly skilled" workers you hear so much about in your economic gazetteers -- and students finding the field non-cache: well, what can I say? Be a freaking priest, or maybe you prefer the travel and drinking options of a German teacher. The waning German interest in engineering is more or less a lack of interest in a lucrative future, and I'll leave it at that. Engineering is a drag -- long hours in the building, never-ending homework about fluids and traffic flow. Let's just DJ a few nights a week and join the local artists' collective instead. Have you seen my new piece, Consumeranfang? It's a birth canal with fangs. Get it?
Comments
I get it, baby.
Victor; August 17, 2006 11:23 PM
Interesting. I'm one of those copmputer geeks myself and worked a contract gig in Stuttgart at Alcatel in 1999.
I'm not sure I would care to work in Germany if Alcatel was typical. Software engineering - basically any hands-on job - was low status. The class structure was that the German alpha males were all managers, female alphas were architects and such, and coders and other hands-on types were almost exclusively from Eastern Europe, Russia, or Ireland. No Turks at all, which I found very curious. Non-alpha Germans were in staff jobs of one kind or another - you definately wanted to be staff in that place. The hands-on people were the scum of the earth - and treated that way.
I'd say the problem with getting good enjineers stems from that - no status. Who wishes to be treated like scum? Assuming this was anything like typical, I would think any good coders would be headed for anywhere else - UK, Czech Republic, US, wherever they have status. And new ones will be hard to come by because it's a hard thankless job to learn and requires a lot of maintenance to stay in it. You have to read books and learn new stuff all the time. It's a lot of work just to be treated badly.
Don S; August 19, 2006 3:08 AM