From the 2008 February 18 edition of Electronic Business.

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An article by Brian Wood, VP Marketing, Continuous Computing

Engineers have taken a few shots in the past 20 years, especially those in the United States of America. It has become a popular sport for the collective group that brought us microwave ovens, satellite imagery, cell phones, and high definition to be stereotyped as introverted Dilbert-emulators who are long on brainpower but short on social skills... and soon on the street due to outsourcing.

Considered by some to be better left in an offshore lab, the very people who design and deliver the products that define ever-increasing quality of life in these United States have been thrown under the bus of society's appreciation in favor of flashier personas like professional athletes and amateur performers. Pity the poor US-based engineer tapping out code or calculating the coefficient of friction on tomorrow's next innovation: He or she has been handed the short end of the country's thank-you stick and left to worry about whether tomorrow's paycheck will pixelate and fade to black. It's time for us all to press pause for a moment and take stock of where we stand - and contemplate "what's next" for our American engineering elite.

First, it's a great time to be an engineer. The venture capital and financial markets are awash in investment capital earmarked for technology-focused businesses that have the prospect of earning higher-than-average return on investment. Engineers are the engines of these high-growth/high-tech companies, developing and delivering daily innovations in response to perpetual market demand for more, more, more. With product lifecycles (and attention spans) compressing at the pace of Moore's Law, the forecast for continued engineering output is clear and sunny. The trick is managing financial market expectations so that marketing and associated "get-rich" hype doesn't outpace product development and the laws of physics. Hopefully, we've all learned a few lessons from the dot-bomb debacle.

Another encouraging trend is that engineering as a discipline is starting to rise in social prestige as the benefits of applied technology become evermore apparent in our everyday lives. Better fuel efficiency, mileage, and emissions; life-saving medical imaging, intervention, and prevention; sophisticated business forecasting, modeling, and analysis; and immersive entertainment, communication, and recreation all showcase a culture dependent on the fruit born from engineering's sweet nectar. And, with an expanding base of distributed-yet-networked, wiki-savvy consumers, there's no turning back to the "old way" of doing work and living life. Social, genetic, financial, environmental, and more - engineering is here to stay... and evolve.

Second, it's a great time to be an engineer in the telecom industry. The confluence of deregulation, digital broadband, and the Internet Protocol forms the perfect storm for intelligent, experienced, motivated engineers who are inclined to think about things like packet processing, electromagnetic wave propagation, and bandwidth management. With subscriber adoption and participation rates for new devices and services rapidly shepherding us toward the threshold where the benefits of Metcalfe's Law will truly kick in, the compounding opportunity - and influence - of engineers in the telecom industry rises with every new text message, hot spot, and video clip.

This is not just about investment returns and mass cultural influence, although these are certainly byproducts of the intersection of strong demand with just-off-the-CD supply. This also refers to the softer side of engineering's output, the quality-of-life transformation that takes place when telecommunications services reach historically underserved populations - either in our own backyard or across the globe. Study after study shows the correlation between the introduction of telecom services with a subsequent elevation in social infrastructure, education levels, health rates, economic productivity, and so on. In other words, the work we do in telecom has the effect of a rising tide for all boats in the bay, which helps make an exhausting day at the office that much more satisfying. It's now fun - as well as important - to be an engineer again.

Third, it's a great time to be an engineer in the telecom industry in the United States. It's true! Contrary to what the gloom-and-doom crowd has to say, there are still tons of great engineering jobs in America - they haven't all been boxed up and shipped off to distant lands. While it's plain that companies are expanding their R&D groups and manufacturing operations overseas to take advantage of lower labor rates, companies also continue to hire engineers in the US. Clearly, in a global, flattened economy where customers are dispersed both physically and culturally, it makes sense to have employees similarly spread out for design, development, delivery, and support. But as long as Americans continue to consume - and like it or not, consumption is the least common denominator of modern life in the United States - there will be perpetual need for local, America-savvy engineers to do what they do best: Creatively apply science and technology to address practical challenges like squeezing more bandwidth down a pipe or serving up more information for people to consume, consider, and incorporate. Fear not, for the engine of American economic output demands a steady supply of innovative ideas, detailed design, and engineering sweat equity to keep the train chugging along. You can count on it - and get paid for it.

The American engineers are just as influential, valuable, challenged, and satisfied as their China- and India-based counterparts; it's not as if all the good jobs have gone elsewhere. Talent, experience, intelligence, and tenacity are universal requirements, and that requirement doesn't leave the room just because we've established new loading docks in Beijing and Bangalore. From Boston to Baja, Vancouver to The Keys, the US still needs engineers to do what they do best.

So to summarize: Engineers, thank you, our collective quality of life is due largely to your toil. We owe you. Telecom engineers, the economic and social benefits of your efforts are tremendous. Bravo, and keep up the good work. And American telecom engineers, there is still much to be done that only American engineering ingenuity can do best.

About the author

Brian Wood joined Continuous Computing, a provider of integrated systems and services targeted at telecom equipment manufacturers, as director of marketing in April 2004. He became VP of marketing in June 2006. Previously, Wood was director of marketing at Sorrento Networks, an optical networking systems vendor acquired by Zhone Technologies. He also held a variety of operational and business development roles at Rhythms, a nationwide DSL service provider, and NextWave Telecom, a nationwide wireless carrier.