For Shah

[regulator 0]

http://www.driveforinnovation.com/the-problem-with-women-in-engineering
The problem with women (in engineering)
PHILADELPHIA–For decades the percentage of women in engineering has stagnated at between roughly 5% of overall engineering jobs. This despite the fact that women are growing as a percentage of workforces in mathematics and the biosciences over the same period of time.

Theories abound for this situation in the engineering ranks. Some believe that while girls excel at science and math in the early years, they run into a wall of social pressures in high school, expectations from guidance counselors or pressures from parents.

Another school of thought argues that women tend to gravitate towards scientific disciplines where they can demonstrate clear social outcomes day in and day out. Electronics and mechnical engineering often have great social outcomes that are realized well down stream of the actual design work.

The MIT experience

Others have argued the chicken and egg situation: There simply aren’t enough role models in faculty at college level to inspire young women to stick with engineering. In the 1990s, MIT observed this phenomenon in their science and engineering schools and took steps to increase the percentage of female faculty during the next 10 years.

MIT published a study this spring go gauge the impact of the previous decade’s policies. Clearly, women increased as a percentage of faculty and feel more inclusive and less forced to make difficult work-life choices. The jury still is out, however, on whether a doubling of female faculty in the engineering sciences department will draw more women into the program or keep them to the full four years.

Katherine Kuchenbecker, who can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be an engineer, represents the 5 percenters. She’s a mechanical engineering professor at University of Pennsylvania here.

She acknowledges she doesn’t have all the answers, but one of them, she’s sure, is mentoring. And it’s not just women mentoring women. Hear what she had to say when we visited her at Penn in September:

[JohnMitchell 16]

My oldest daughter is an engineer. She does quite well.

[regulator 0]

I'm not dissing female engineers...I just know Shah loves them!

[shah269 0]

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I'm not dissing female engineers...I just know Shah loves them!

Hey the more we have the better!
Maybe these guys will have a reason to start dressing to impress! And some will discover the power of soap+water!

But this is great news. Maybe a few of those very nice very friendly very good looking finance girls will rethinking finance and become engineers.........and make less money....well now i'm just being nutty.

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[rehmwa 2]

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There simply aren’t enough role models in faculty at college level to inspire young women to stick with engineering.

The contention here is that women will only select other women as role models rather than finding the best engineer they know to be a role model regardless of gender.

so are you saying that women are sexist and this is slowing down their penetration into engineering?


the article talks about mentoring to be important - that's fine, encouragement and guidance can help.



I find the double standard related to gender or race, etc to be sad. A couple of my best role models in skydiving are female - because of their attitude and SKILL - just like a couple other skydiving role models who happen to be male. I find the need to have role models that "look" like us to be a sad statement on people's ability to decide what's really important.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[shah269 0]

Please please please!

there are many good reasons why any girl should go into engineering!
1)Ladies, when there are 52 dicks and only 2 chicks....the other 5 chicks may be men we are not sure. You can simply pick two of the 52 men you think are your type and have them fight to the death to see who will be worthy of taking you out on any given Friday! As such you will never have a boring Friday night.

2)Ladies, affirmative actions. Need I say more? No? Well it is affirmative that there is no need for any action with respect to you shaving your legs EVER! See when you have 2 chicks and 52 dicks. Yeah the other girl may have shaved her legs...but so what! Not like the guys are going to talk those other....ahh...well we think they are girls but no one has asked. And none of these guys are well dressed enough to be gay. So you will still have a date this friday!

3) Home work, just farm it out to the 12 (one for each subject matter) or so guys who walk at least 2 feet behind you everywhere you go!

4) HR, as in Human Resources. Yeah sure there may be a million and one qualified male engineers but well every office in every division of every company needs one girl in a middle management position to qualify for government help/financing/high fives. And well since there are only 1 of you....the other 3 girls/things who were in your class got married out west in some sort of Indian three way sun rise ceremony and the one girl who shaved her legs skipped out and now works in finance......you have a 99.99999% chance of landing a killer gig within about 4 hours of graduation.


(The above is satire, if you took it seriously, you obviously must be one of those engineering IT types who has no sense of humor and writes large posts about how much you hated Space Balls.)

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!

[DrewEckhardt 0]

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I'm not dissing female engineers...I just know Shah loves them!

Hey the more we have the better!
Maybe these guys will have a reason to start dressing to impress! And some will discover the power of soap+water!

But this is great news. Maybe a few of those very nice very friendly very good looking finance girls will rethinking finance and become engineers.........and make less money....well now i'm just being nutty.

Or not.

Average starting compensation for fresh college graduates at the big Silicon valley companies for software engineers who just earned their undergraduate degree is over $100K.

http://www.netpaths.net/blog/starting-salaries-of-top-technology-companies-apple-google-microsoft-facebook/

After a few more years of school the average MBA was netting just $91K in 2011

http://poetsandquants.com/2011/05/10/class-of-2011-more-job-offers-higher-starting-pay/

although that may be artificially high for young people since many MBAs get there after spending a few years out of school gaining experience doing other things (the same article suggests a 74% salary increase post MBA which would imply a $53K average before).

Good engineers who don't retire early from a startup win or detour into management after 15-20 years can net $200K cash annually working for privately held companies or potentially do a lot better in public companies with six figure (4 year vesting, with some back-loaded to 20% every six months over the last two years) RSU packages that can push the four year package total past the seven figure mark. Startups don't pay as well but have less BS to deal with and that has a lot of non-monetary value.

While not hedge fund money that's not too bad.

[shah269 0]

I graduated in 2002 which was a horrible year for engineers.
I was going into Sales with Johnson Controls, which if you ask me is a great company. But well Enron fell and they decided to hire all of those very talented sales engineers from Enron rather than hiring new folks. Which I can understand. But if I ever see a job for JCI again in the international sales division I'll be there like a packer at the bon fire when a AFF student brings free beer.

Yeah an engineer at the right place at the right time can make very good money. That's true. But I live and die by the averages.
Work 25 years and make $200k? Ok that's nice! But have you seen what the finance guys make in bonuses over the past 10 years or so? Let alone their average income? Even in this down economy a person who is smart enough to be an engineer working for a finance house can and will do very well as a financial engineer.

Now that is not to saying it's a bad career field. Heck it's kept me employed over the past decade or so and the pay is ok if you can find a roomy or get married to someone who makes equal pay as you. But it's not 3 series money. It's more or less Carola money.

And kids today are not happy with Carola money. They have spent half of their lives living in a recession and are well aware of the value of money with respect to happiness. And if they are smart enough to be engineers or a scientist and are driven, have a personality, can hold a converstaion and have the connections odds are they will walk right past the STEM fields and right into financial engineering. And honestly can you blame them?

The field though noble is suffering from a great deal of bad perception and an anemic compensation not to mention...engineering school is hard as hell! None of your professors speak any English and a good majority of your student body is in need of a good bath! Especially in the state schools.

If we as a nation are to have a viable engineering and science community the system needs to be changed from the top down. Though having more women join the field is a welcomed improvement. But business leaders really need to realize that they need to bump of their compensation packages in order to lure more outgoing people into the field. And I'm sorry national average $45k starting is just not worth the time energy expenditure needed to be an engineer or scientists.

The Time Value of Money is just not there.

So what does the future hold for STEM? Take it from a guy who is working his ass off trying to sell it to the next generation...it does not look very good at the moment.

I have parents of kids tell me point blank that their child though well spoken and very intelligent will not be going to an engineering school because they want their child to be one of those who work in a nice high rise office and who's yearly bonus is equal to what their parents made last year. And honestly can you blame them?

Life through good thoughts, good words, and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay.

The only thing that falls from the sky is birdshit and fools!