The Lost Soul of the Engineer
James
R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
©
January 20, 2016
The
paradox is that insiders capture our attention while outsiders stir the
drink. Outsiders, now commonly called
“outliers,” write most of the books with insiders names on the dust jackets. Outsiders write the speeches, strategy
briefs, and the tactical maneuvers for politicians, CEOs, generals, educators,
clerics, and television commentators.
Outsiders remain essentially mesmerized by their nearness to power,
while unaware of their own.
This
is played out with finality in the engineering community. The modern world is a product of the
engineering mind. Yet, while engineers
created that world, it does not belong to them.
It has been stolen from them.
A
Look Back to See Ahead, 2007, p. 113.
NOTE:
This
was first published in the Short-Circuit
Engineering Newsletter, Spring 1993.
* * *
There once was a man who lived on his lawn in a
mobile trailer while he built his dream house. For some reason, he continued to live in his trailer after his
magnificent home had been completed, leaving it empty.
After a time, opportunists noted this oddity. They took possession of the dwelling and laid
claim to it as their own, possession being nine-tenths of the law.
At first the builder was bewildered then
exasperated, disbelieving what had happened.
He was full of angst and found all attempts to redress this wrong
driving him deeper into litigation and financial ruin. He was the odd man out.
By the accident of his circumstances, he stepped
into a world not of his making, a world of words that was not his forte. He considered himself a maker, not a taker; a
doer, not a transgressor. His world
previously had been of predictable outcomes, not disreputable deeds; a world of
moral certitude, not cunning malice.
Time past and he took comfort in the fact that at
least he had his trailer even though it had been fenced off from the rest of
the property. Yet, he did nothing.
Then one day while enjoying his morning coffee, he
was hit with an eviction notice, giving him 48 hours to pack up and leave, or
be thrown off the land. His world, and
all that he held dear, was suddenly destroyed, not unlike Franz Kafka’s Joseph
K (The Trial, 1925), who was arrested
one fine morning and had done nothing wrong.
In Tracy
Kidder’s The Soul of the Machine (1981),
we are introduced to the genius of a superb team of engineers who take on the
nearly impossible task of creating a supercomputer in a finite period of time,
only to be reduced to the equivalent of a vestigial organ once the magnificent
machine – The Eagle – was
completed.
These
engineers put their hearts and souls into this project, sacrificing everything,
only to be personae non grata in the
end, and they had done nothing wrong.
They, too,
built their dream house and left it in the hands of the wordsmiths and the spin
doctors to legitimize ownership. Then
marketers added insult to injury, rechristening The Eagle as “Eclipse MV/8000.”
This was followed by securing elaborate mention in The Wall Street Journal and The
New York Times of this singular achievement.
The final
humiliation came in the form of an elegant luncheon at the Roosevelt Hotel in
New York City. These engineers,
essentially untutored in the finer social amenities connected with the elite,
felt uncomfortable in their ill-fitting suits, while confused with the showy
formality. They hung helplessly together
as if a pastiche, not knowing whether to take the first course salad on their
right or left. They were fish out of
water and made to feel that way.
These
self-conscious celebrants felt like embarrassed teenagers at their first dance,
intruders being punished for what they had done. After all, once the project was successfully
completed, not interested in making waves, they had packed up their belongings
and left the building.
A year
later, one Eagle engineer, reminisced, “I
felt like a hired gun in an old Western movie, sent to rid the town of the bad
guys, only to be run out of town once respectable citizens could sleep easily
again.”
The engineer
has a fatal attraction for being punished rather rewarded for excellence. Why? Could
this be a product of the engineer’s masochistic complex?
THE MYSTIQUE OF THE ENGINEER
From birth
there are subtle forces conditioning us to be what we become. The engineer is prototypically a product of
the technological culture. His acumen is
that of the problem solver of things, while exhibiting ambivalence towards
solving people problems.
Regrettably,
we know precious little more about ourselves as human beings than Plato observed
in The Republic some 23 centuries
ago. Education cannot put knowledge into
the soul any more readily than sight into blind eyes. The soul of every man has the power to learn
and the organ to see, but learning can be manipulated to justify bias.
We possess
the capacity to learn the truth but not always the soul to realize its
wisdom. Just as one might turn the eye
to see light instead of darkness, so the soul has the capacity to see reality
in its unchanging permanence. To effect the
conversion of the soul to the sight of the soul’s eye requires we look in the
right direction from where the soul’s light emanates.
Today, we
refer to the soul as the psyche when
discussing the self or the mind.
Plato’s point is that we see what we want to see. Currently, the fantastic explosion of
technology mesmerized us. It implodes
our senses with the wonder, “Will man survive?”
Plato would
say we are looking in the wrong direction.
It is not the gadgetry that is critical to a changing world, but man’s
relationship to man. The engineer is in
the middle of this turmoil. His world of
algorithms is not enough for man to survive, much less prevail.
Thoughts are
composed of ideas which are time-bound states of mind and not foolproof
algorithms. Ideas distort our passions
with perpetual biases. Algorithms
straighten them out and spruce them up, opening ideas to the purity of
mathematics clearing the way for the advancement of science.
Yet, we are
befuddled by this complex of ideas, which are derived from simple ones, as
words are made up of letters, letters sentences, sentences thoughts, and
thoughts a compendium or complexity. Simple
ideas arise spontaneously from the sensation of inner reflection, and then insert
themselves into the conversation without the benefit of invitation.
The engineer
distrusts words as such, but not the language of mathematics, which is itself a
language of symbols that connote ideas without the apparent messiness or ambivalence
of words.
We, who
write essays and books compound words and divide them at will, constructing all
sorts of complex ideas to suit our personal vagaries, inviting the danger of
making a mess of things.
But the engineering
mind is equally capable of generating chaos as well as order, regression as
well as progression. After all, he is
the creator of weapons of mass destruction as well as the marvel of the World
Wide Web.
That said engineers
are the preeminent builders of the modern world. They have automated the workplace, ending the
factory system. Genetic engineering has
revolutionized agriculture with biotech laboratories producing synthetic
vanilla, coconut oil and staple farm products.
A select corps of engineers has created 24/7 financial trading across
the globe. Thanks to engineers,
globalization of industry and service is now standard operating practice.
Unfortunately, the problem solving in the creative phase is not always the problem solving in the operating phase. Engineers move out of the picture once the problem solving moves into the sphere of social dynamics, where the world of words and similar constructions deal with as well as produce ambiguities.
Unfortunately, the problem solving in the creative phase is not always the problem solving in the operating phase. Engineers move out of the picture once the problem solving moves into the sphere of social dynamics, where the world of words and similar constructions deal with as well as produce ambiguities.
Once the
systems are operational, the message engineers hear is, “Engineers need not
apply!” How could this be? How could engineers be left out of the
equation? How could the engineer be
relegated to a homeless soul?
TECHNOCRACY and CONSCIOUSNESS
The
engineering mind has shaped technological society and its consciousness as
well. In technology, many things are
going on at once in social systems (relational
processes) and technical systems (technological
production).
The engineer
has kept in touch with the technical, but not necessarily the relational as he has
an aversion for people processes. Yet,
his relationship to the social is as critical to his success as is the
technical. The whims of human nature
differ little with those of Plato’s time, while our knowledge of the universe
far exceeds that known to Aristotle.
We have
experienced more technological change in the past thirty years than the
previous three hundred. It is not an
exaggeration to suggest that modernity has driven our consciousness to the brink
of disaster. This is a failure to
recognize the soul’s significance in the relational aspects of technical and social systems. Denial is expressed
in the statement, “Not my problem!” Then
emphasized with, “Let them (whomever Them
may be) worry about that. Leave me to my
work!”
Engineers, gifted with special knowledge and skill, follow the laws of mathematics and physics, and presume to be free of the ambivalence of people, or as a breed apart. They motor forward with “1+1=2.”
They are uncomfortable
working with non-engineering groups and fail to see that socialization skills
(consensus building) apply to them. Such
skills are for those who have nothing better to do. Likewise, they fail to see the value of
reading non-engineering books, or in developing writing and speaking
skills.
Alas, the
lines are blurring between disciplines while social compression is accelerating
at near warp speed. The workplace has
taken on the characteristics of a social center with camp informality and a
personalized rhetoric echoing the refrain, “have fun at work,” masking the
corporate rush to the bottom-line. It
takes more than engineering acumen to cope in this new environment.
The mounting
of non-engineering demands on the job has led to the engineer’s dis-identity,
and sense of discontinuity and disenfranchisement from work itself.
Meanwhile,
the technocrat, the benefactor of the engineer’s expertise, thrives in this ambiguous
environment with political cool. This is
brutally apparent with one data point. The
engineer is the last to be hired and the first to go. He is treated like an indentured worker, used
up and discarded, a vagabond with a modem and microprocessor, while the
technocrat goes to the bank on the engineer’s impact.
The
engineer’s loss of soul might be traced to his failure to take the
non-engineering world seriously and to see engineering as part the larger
world, a world requiring a quantum leap in consciousness.
Remember, technocracy grew out of technology. Oddly enough, many successful technocrats were once die-hard engineers. They took that quantum leap coming to realize that finance is not an intrinsic but an acquired goal for the engineer-as-technocrat. Take The Eagle team. The team of engineers set a goal to produce a supercomputer, and that was the team’s end game, not the technocrat’s.
Imagine if these
engineers had seen the completion of the supercomputer as the beginning of the
marketing phase. They would then see
themselves involved in the licensing agreement, the marketing contract, and the
network of distribution. This is the
world of technocracy where the spoils are divided.
While the
fundamentals of logic dictate the technological phase, irrational gamesmanship
dominates the technocracy phase. In this
climate, technocracy has little choice but to acquire a sense of humor about
itself. Here waste, duplication,
falsity, dissent, duplicity and chicanery are encountered. It is the price of doing business with the
social group. The engineer’s failure to
make connection with this world has been at his peril.
To the
engineer, the focus is on problem solving.
To the technocrat, it is on the solution with “nothing left out.” The engineer focuses on the process, the
technocrat on results. The outcome
(result) is incidental to the process as long as all the t’s are crossed and
i’s dotted. Technocrats invented
documentation.
Technocracy creates
its own inertia as it is governed by a discrete body of policies and procedures
with a mania for enforcing them no matter how counterproductive. Consequently, to produce meaningful results,
this finds technocracy growing exponentially chasing more than a few
exceptional engineers out of the megacorporation. Unfortunately, the next company, should there
be a next company, may even be worse.
Denying the
existence of this technocratic world, ignoring its penchant for wasteful policies
and other non-systemic propensities, its fixation on ends at the expense of means,
and fascination with numbers, does not change the fact that technocrats are living
in the house that engineers have built. How
did this happen? More importantly, what
can be done about it?
PROFILE OF THE ENGINEER VERSUS THE
TECHNOCRAT
The engineer
desires to bring the future into the present.
The technocrat is interested in protecting the status quo.
The existing
social system represents the culture of shared beliefs, values and
expectations. It is a psychological wall
that resists change. Due to innovative
engineering, breakthroughs however do occur, with the technocrat quickly changing
course and developing a vocabulary to exploit this to advantage. These innovative engineers seldom share in
the spoils. Gutenberg invented the
moveable type printing press, but went bankrupt.
Arrogant
disregard for things not engineering has proven a damning disease compounded by
engineers seeking the comfort of likeminded individuals to lessen their angst when
having to deal with technocrats.
The engineer
admires those who can do what he does only better, and not those who are
engaged in something totally different.
This finds the engineer difficult to manage and impossible to lead. Take his preference for managing data rather
than dealing with people, or his aversion for managing himself. The measured world of the engineer with its discrete
indices and lack of spuriousness does not exist beyond him if it exists at all.
Consider the
following five dimensions: intelligence, support, conformity, achievement and
decisiveness. As you examine these, note
how minor adjustments could restore some balance between the engineer and
technocrat.
INTELLIGENCE
The engineer
has an uncanny ability to analyze, digest, assimilate and utilize data. Information he can see he grasps with quick
facility. Information not quantifiable
is unimportant and of little interest. If
the information is not empirically derived, it does not exist. The engineer is interested in facts, not
feelings, in hard data, not abstractions.
Yet, love, hate, security, freedom, peace and fulfillment are subjective
values that can easily trip him up.
The
technocrat is like the shark in water always in motion more concerned with
making an impression than a difference.
He lives in the world of soft data (impressions, feelings), information of
little interest to the engineer.
Survival warrants the technocrat be especially vigilant to new
information, who possess it, and how to leverage it to his purposes. He takes the product of the engineer (e.g., The Eagle Supercomputer) and runs with
it. The technocrat’s adaptive skills are
not often apparent to the engineer.
SUPPORT
The
engineer, by nature a technologist, expects support to emanate naturally from
the nontechnical community. When it is
not forthcoming, he becomes restive and petulant demonstrating his lack of
maturity. Not so the technocrat. He is used to being taken for granted and
slighted. Pride is a luxury he can ill afford. Therefore, he remains unmoved by insults and
assaults on his character. His modus operandi is in the world of uncertainty,
while the engineer operates in the certain world of first principles.
The technocrat
is perpetually in the selling mode in the capricious world of power and politics. Once the technocrat identifies his needs, he
rallies support to his cause, recruiting a cadre of folks of differing views, disciplines
and needs. He sees no need to be the
smartest person in the room, but the facilitator of those that are to his
purposes. Often this requires an ability
to identify key talent, then persuading them to join his scheme usually without
the requisite authority. Taking the
initiative is second nature to him. He
is a fan of fads and cosmetic interventions, of anything that keeps him
relevant and involved.
CONFORMITY
The engineer
is the consummate conformist. The
technocrat is not. The difference is a
matter of projection. The technocrat
assumes the posture of the conformist when it suits him, while the engineer
likes to think of himself as a nonconformist.
Conformity is quite acceptable to management as it represents no threat
to its control. While the engineer struts
his stuff, he seldom steps out of line. To
cover his frustration, he may retreat into passive aggressive behaviors, but is
unlikely to ever be confrontational. Not
so the technocrat.
The
technocrat is in the face of management feigning conformity while busy pursuing
his hidden agenda. Management should be
leery of the technocrat but is blinded by his sycophantic zeal to its causes as
he echoes management’s sentiments to the letter.
The engineer
comes to be used up by the system while the technocrat uses the system to fulfill
his desires always alert to unexpected changes in the mindset of management. He then redirects his efforts to take full
advantage of the course change, while steady Eddie, the engineer, is surprised by
these disruption all the way to redundancy.
The technocrat is untouched by management’s cageyness. He deals with the possible, the engineer with
the ideal.
Paradoxically,
it is the brilliance of the engineer who creates the necessity for change, but
it is also the engineer (not the technocrat) who is usually crushed by the reality
it introduces.
Conformity
is an engineer’s safe haven, for the technocrat it is a half-way house. Seldom does radical change emerge from the ranks
of engineers. Radicalism is the
antithesis of his discipline.
Engineering
is synonymous with laws (First Principles),
replicable frames of reference, inviolable structure, unfailing paradigms and verifiable
mathematical algorithms. The dogma of
science is the theology of the engineer.
The engineer
is apt to be more loyal to data than to his own mind and interests. Occasionally, he escapes this confinement and
dances to the world of liberal arts. This
is the world of the engineer as CEO.
The
technocrat operates in unchartered waters while the engineer hugs the shore
with his CAD/CAM blueprint. The
technocrat gets the job done by bending the rules seeing the possible where the
engineer is not likely to venture. The
technocrat takes the engineer’s science and makes it commercial while the
engineer broods over the unfairness of it all.
The unhappy
engineer, who would like to escape conformity, justifies his stance with the
rationale, “I’m paid a dollar more an hour than I can afford to quit.” Trapped in this psychological conformity, he deludes
himself that it is matter of economics when it is much more.
ACHIEVEMENT
An engineer
has a strong personal drive towards excellence that is not necessarily related
to achievement. One of the consistent
complaints of the engineer is that he is underutilized, as if that is the
system’s fault and not his own. The
engineer is the system! He created it with
his diligence and innovative effort. Failure
to recognize this goes back to his sense of powerlessness.
The
engineers on the The Eagle Project were
consumed with a drive to complete the task.
Every action was orchestrated towards that end. It was not a drive towards
self-aggrandizement, but completion. But
completion for what and for whom? Why
not self-interest?
Solid
achievement, while spectacular, can mask a deeper dilemma, a failure to feel in
control. A project becomes an engineer’s
life with his self-obedience to its demands.
He relishes that role and not being in charge. Why? Because
he doesn’t want that stress. His first
priority and his last is the project.
Panic fills the void until he is involved in the next project.
The
technocrat is spectator to the engineer’s achievement, sitting in the bleachers,
so to speak, calculating how to exploit the project once completed. He sees the engineer as something of a
trained seal. It is no accident that the
risk level of the technocrat appears considerably upscale to that of the engineer.
The persona
of the technocrat in his three-piece button-down world disguises his edginess
and avarice. What happened to Data General is repeated daily about the
globe. Companies rise like a fire
cracker, light up the sky, and disappear leaving scores if not hundreds of
engineers behind without jobs, while technocrats escape the carnage to latch on
to the next rising company.
Sad but only
too true, the engineer is invited into the house that he built, treated like a
trespasser, then eventually given his eviction notice.
DECISIVENESS
An engineer
is not decisive. By nature, he is
tentative, circumspect, looking for more data to verify his findings. Perfection is his bottom line.
The
technocrat is of a different mindset.
The only numbers that matter to him are those that he can manipulate
like a magician. He operates in the high
risk business of doing what makes those numbers work for him. Functioning at the gut level, the technocrat is
seen by the engineer as a “loose cannon shooting from the hip.” He is and he does, for the technocrat makes
decisions with a flare often on the fly with little tangible data in support. He is not afraid to make decisions, the
engineer is.
The thought
processes of the technocrat, while seemingly orderly in retrospect, are in chaotic
mode from the start. Not the
engineer. Order is what he knows. The
technocrat thrives in chaos, the engineer demands order.
The
technocrat gambles on his and other people’s ability to fulfill his agenda. He keeps two different mental books, one for
management and one for everyone else.
This finds him hedging his bet, having a convenient fall guy should
matters go awry, who is often the engineer.
His decisions are designed to promote his career with little concern they
might derail those of others.
Management
sees the technocrat as decisive and intently loyal, while the engineer, who is keenly
loyal, is often seen as tentative and his loyalty suspect.
THE DELICATE BALANCE
If the
engineer sees himself in this sobering assessment as the pigeon in enterprise, it
is because he has demonstrated a reluctance to take charge. I was once consultant to a high tech company that
had been awarded a $65 million systems engineering contract.
The system
analysts of this program had no interest in performing the function of
management. So, a technocrat was brought
in to perform that function, a man who knew nothing about systems analysis, or
the kinds of people who are attracted to this discipline.
Operations
were barely into the first quarter of the contract when a ruckus erupted. The supervisor had downgraded one of the
system analysts cutting his pay and grade level, citing “the man is incompetent
and is performing poorly.” The basis of his
evaluation was that this particular engineer was always found to be doodling or
tapping his pencil on his desk whistling to himself, clearly an indication of noninvolvement
in the work at hand, right?
This
engineer happened to be the informal leader of the group, and respected by his
colleagues. He had initiated key breakthroughs
in simulation studies critical to the program.
When his
coworkers heard of his demotion, they all threatened to quit. Abruptly, the supervisor was removed. One of the analysts reluctantly volunteered
to act as supervisor “for the duration of the project, but not beyond.” Even with this development, these engineers
didn’t see the significance of what had happened.
As Plato
observed, the engineer has the power to see into his own soul, but must be looking in the right direction. The answer is not in the engineer’s
technology, but in himself. He has
created the modern world, but spurns the responsibility for managing it. He has done this, not only to himself, but to
his profession as well. He has allowed
the technocrat to steal his thunder.
Fault not the technocrat. He has
come to this advantage by default.
The engineer
has been finessed by his own stubbornness, by his inability to entertain and
then establish a delicate balance between social and technical demands, between
engineering principles and demands of a diverse workforce. Contempt for things not engineering has
placed him in a cage of his own making.
Only he can step out of that cage and enter the house that his genius
has built. The first step may be to
invite a technocrat to lunch.
Short Circuit Engineering Newsletter, Spring 1993.
