A little background. I am a thirty year Electrical Engineer. I have spent those thirty years woking on some of the most amazing pieces of technology ever built. I have worked with cutting edge technologies before most people knew they even existed. I have had a phenomenal career. And I’ve spent that entire career with one company. That company has treated me very well, and I am grateful. But times are changing.

You see, Engineering is not about building things. Engineering is not a process. There is no magical list of steps to follow that allow you to develop products. Engineering is not about meeting requirements. It’s not about meeting cost and schedule targets. It’s not about on-time delivery or post delivery support. Don’t misunderstand, all those thing are very important. They are, in fact, critical to making a business work, month after month and year after year.  But they are not what Engineering is about. What’s more, Engineering is not even about math, or physics, or chemistry, or materials, or any other branch of science.

People that are not Engineers get this wrong all the time. Every day guidance counselors tell young students to pursue Engineering because they’re smart, or because they’re good at math or some branch of science. Because they don’t get it. Business bureaucrats sit around writing “standards” and “processes” thinking that it will make Engineering more efficient or cheaper. Because they don’t get it. Company executives and upper managers read the latest pop culture business books about Richard Branson, or Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos, or even Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, thinking that those individuals must have a some secret formula for innovating or developing new products. Because the don’t get it.

In fact, despite being the source of virtually every advancement to the modern world for the last 300 years, Engineering remains probably the most misunderstood endeavor on Earth.

But why? What is it that non-Engineers don’t understand about what we do and who we are?

It is this: at its very core, Engineering is about creativity! Engineering is about conceiving of something and bringing it into existence. Engineering is about passion and emotion. It is about the act of creation. And it is a uniquely human endeavor. Just as the sculpture frees a form from the marble as it’s conceived in the mind, or a painter sees an image on the canvas and then works to bring it to life, so too does the Engineer first form his vision and then, through strength of knowledge, skill, vision, passion, and will, bring it into existence. One does not train to become an Engineer; Engineers are born. The training is about the tools, not the passion. And this brings us to what is so wrong with so many of the modern technology companies today.

There was a time when most technology companies were owned and run by Engineers. These were people with a creative vision and the drive to make it happen. This is why so many of those same companies started in garages and basements by people working long nights and weekends. People who created, fought, celebrated, morned, and created some more. Not only with each other but also with the very technologies they were bringing to life. These were people with passion! It wasn’t about the bottom line, or the contracts, or marketing. It was all abut the passion!

But today that is no longer the case. Most tech companies today are run by people that are not the creators. They are run by lawyers, accounts, and bureaucrats. They are run by people looking for money, power, or fame. They are run by functionaries and the scriveners. They are run by the the spiteful, the narcissistic, and the psychopathic. In short, they are run by the people that simply don’t get it and never will. And herein lies the heart of the problem.

Because these same people that run the companies have no understanding of the true nature of Engineering, they attempt to reduce it to the terms they do understand. They try to reduce it to processes, standards, instructions, and schedules. They fret about labor rates, and overhead, and headcount. They scowl and complain about “difficult” employees who won’t “do what they’re told”. And when innovations don’t happen on their timetables or problems don’t magically get solved according to cost or schedules, they blame the Engineers. We get called lazy or difficult. Because they don’t get it!

And yet these same people get in front of cameras and reporters and claim there are not enough of us. The claim they “can’t hire enough Engineers”. They lobby for STEM education and technology money because they think you can just train someone to be an Engineer. Because they don’t get it.

And when they interview an Engineer they never ask about passion. They never ask about creativity. They ask about academics. They ask about “software skills”. They ask about “experience”. They ask about “behaviors”, and “working together”, and “inclusion”. They ask about all the things that have virtually NOTHING to do with Engineering. Because they don’t get it.

I can tell them all this: After thirty years of Engineering, I will take one Engineer with passion, one Engineer that works on projects in his spare time, one Engineer that truly fights for what he believes to be right… over ten that interview well and have “good interpersonal skills”. On my team, I want the “difficult”, I want the “pedantic”, I want the “obsessed”. Because they are the ones with a fire in their belly, the ones with passion, and the ones with true creativity. They are the ones that will stand by my side, and fight, and create. They are the ones that will be there to scream with me into the midnight storm “It’s ALIVE!”

Engineering is about passion. Never let anyone take that away!