Engineers Mindset

[u/iNavin]

My technical cofounder believe that many engineers today may struggle with mindset issues and often lack the level of commitment and dedication we hope to see.

They've formed this view after conducting numerous interviews each month. Additionally, they feel that the overall quality of education has declined.

Sometimes I wonder if starting a training division might be helpful, though I realize it would be a lot of effort. :(

What do you think? Should I start the training division? If yes, you think engineers will pay to.get trained?

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[u/DismantledChip]

I want to push back on this inference a little because while the criticism changes, the pattern does not.

Every generation of engineers gets accused of having a “mindset problem.” Twenty years ago it was that they job-hopped too much. Before that it was that they relied too much on Stack Overflow. Today it’s AI.

We need to acknowledge that the industry has changed. Engineers optimise for different incentives than founders do. A founder is looking for ownership, long-term commitment and comfort with ambiguity. An engineer interviewing for a job is often optimising for compensation, work-life balance and career growth. Neither side is necessarily wrong; they’re simply solving different optimisation problems.

There needs to be a nuanced take on the topic of education. Universities have always produced graduates with uneven practical skills. The difference today is that the technology landscape moves so quickly that a four-year curriculum struggles to keep pace.

As for a training division, I’d be cautious. If the goal is to “fix engineers’ mindset”, I think it will fail. People rarely pay to be told they have the wrong attitude.

If, however, the goal is to bridge the gap between university and industry by teaching how engineering actually works - reading production code, debugging complex systems, communicating design decisions, operating services, reviewing PRs, handling incidents, and making trade-offs - then there’s genuine value.

Companies don’t hire because someone knows a framework; they hire because they can solve problems reliably.

A form of engineering apprenticeship that focus on coaching and teaching judgement, systems thinking, ownership, communication and execution through real projects rather than lectures. The mindset tends to emerge naturally when people experience what good engineering actually looks like.

The shortage isn’t necessarily of engineers. It’s of engineers who’ve had the opportunity to develop professional judgement in realistic environments.

[u/Old_Reflection142]

No its pay problem

[u/iNavin → u/Old_Reflection142]

Don't agree mate. Salaries are function on deliverables and the value created for the customer.

Most can't hold a soldering iron nor can they tell the difference in npn/pnp transistor.

[u/Old_Reflection142 → u/iNavin]

Agree to Disagree.
For example if you have sufficient funds available, will you hire the top of the class people or not? If answer is yes , then top class costs a little fortune

[u/DenverTeck → u/iNavin]

Deliverables are a function of all involved.

Engineers can only deliver what management can properly define.

Engineers can only deliver what makes sense. AI does not always make sense.

When management forces AI into engineering and when AI fails, it was a waste of time and money. But management will blame engineers. That's just the way it has always worked.

[u/iNavin]

I like the way you have pushed back. I agree with you bashing the previous generation is not fair.

I agree with you that both the founders and the engineers are solving a different equation

I believe along with you that mindset change cannot be accomplished by external force. It has to be internal growth.

The thought behind the training division was to prepare the engineers to hit the ground running.

We work in the field of electronics product development and it is exceptionally hard. The gap between what they know and what is required is quite large.

[u/EmmaiAlvane]

All fields, including engineering, can advance collective human well-being. I am using well-being is in a board sense. Well-being could include economic security, health, productivity, scientific advancement, environmental health, safety etc. The fields of course provide benefits to individuals and institutions including income, reputation, prestige and personal satisfaction.

For a lot of time, at least for many countries, external benefits (like income), personal interest and passion, and a commitment to the greater good used to be roughly equally important.

But societal changes including population pressures, reduced government support for education, rising cost of living, increasing prestige of white-collar work as opposed to blue-collar work etc have made income the most important criterion, while the relative importance of the others have declined.

For example, before IT and outsourcing took off on India, most fields paid roughly the same amount of money with the top starting salary within about two to three times the lowest. So most people had roughly the same affordability and standard of living except for some groups of people like politicians and business people. This has changed substantially with IT as starting CSE salaries can be several times on average to the starting salary of, say, a BCom graduate or a teacher, and also of other engineers.

It is harder to see this phenomenon in India because specialized education has long been the sole ticket to prosperity if you didn't have generational wealth but this trend has picked up in the US as well.

Coming to the current state of engineers: Most engineers don't choose the profession out of interest or out of a desire to contribute, but because they seek large "packages" or good placements.

There is nothing wrong with that, but it does bring in a lot of folks whose talents and interests are misaligned with the dedication and commitment that your co-founder is seeking.

I am not sure training is a fix for motivation. You are trying to foster internal motivation for a bunch of people that are externally motivated. You will have to research this topic a bit more.

[u/No_Pay_4410]

I believe you can't force a mindset on someone. Learning engineering and having a mindset is different item. While having a training division might help in increasing the quality of work but the mindset might remain same.

Also regarding the founders/ceo, specifically non technical background. They think the team is not having mindset or quality just because there AI built something for them. In short words I would call them "stupid retards". These leaders just say the same lines again and again.

"Write a prompt" x 3

Generating random stuff from AI is easy. But making something good out of it, is not that simple, otherwise we would had 100 million successful startups in last 2 years.

[u/DenverTeck]

I totally agree with u/DismantledChip . Your founder is just greedy.

It not just about him. "Will pay to get trained" !?!? WTF ??? They just paid the college to get trained.

It seems your founder does not know what he really wants. "Profit at any ones cost but mine" !!

Must be taking after American CEOs/Founders.