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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: People Who've left High Tech
Message-ID: <679@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Sep-86 14:09:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.679
Posted: Thu Sep 25 14:09:00 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Sep-86 03:11:58 EDT
Reply-To: hplabs!pyramid!utzoo!henry@hplabs.HP.COM
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 19
Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <639@hplabsc.UUCP>


This article is from pyramid!utzoo!henry
 and was received on Tue Sep 23 06:35:06 1986
 
> ... What's wrong with a 
> profession that is typically abandoned after about the same amount of time
> as is spent preparing to work in it?

Easy to answer:  lack of any possibility for growth.  In most companies, it
is not possible to remain an engineer (as opposed to a manager) while gaining
responsibility, status, and salary beyond a certain point.  Although it
is fashionable to provide "dual ladder" schemes which theoretically offer
a growth path, in practice such schemes are usually a sham:  the technical
ladder seldom offers rewards comparable to those of the managerial ladder.
And since it's the people from the managerial ladder who run the company,
nobody up top realizes that there is anything wrong with this.  "Why, some
of my best friends aren't managers."

				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry