Recently there has been a re-organization in my area of corporate America. I have a new manager (a really down to earth guy and seems like a real good guy to work for), and a new contract Software Developer is coming in Monday. However, I have to say that I do feel disappointed. There are many others that I work with that I do like personally, but they do lack very much in the technical areas that they are supposed to be proficient in.
Since I’ve been working with this group I have had the glorious honor of watching someone with a Master’s Degree in Engineering come in and ask me the most basic of questions about his job (I actually trained him for a while) and was completely clueless until after months of supervision, he finally began to ‘get it.’
Another Engineer that showed up a month or two after I joined the group doesn’t know even the most basic of things but he somehow has been working within the company for a number of years. This is very alarming to me. Unless this Engineer has been sitting behind a desk doing nothing more than administrative work the entire time he’s been with the company (that is still not an excuse), there is no reason for him to be here. A Software Engineer that doesn’t know anything about software. And no, I’m not joking.
However, I find this to be typical in Corporate America and most especially in the areas of Engineering that I work in. I would be more understanding if it was just that the Engineer was new to the internal process or something like that but it’s nothing like that at all. They just don’t seem to know anything about the subject in general. Granted, the MS Degreed Engineer had a bachelor’s in a similar area of study (Electrical Magnetism), his MS in Engineering should have done away with any question to his level of proficiency.
A co-worker that happened to join the group a few months after I joined is less educated and had a very big learning curve but at least he is showing progress. The MS Degreed Engineer is getting better but the other Software Engineer really needs to take classes over again. What is the most ridiculous of all of this is that the Software Engineer was supposed to be a President of some sort of club and some think that somehow validates his intellect. I have nothing against the guy personally but I think that it wasn’t his ability that got him the job.
I also happen to work with a Network Administrator/Hardware Engineer that means well but is no better than the other Engineers. Now, let’s be clear. I’m not an expert of software or hardware and don’t expect anyone else to be but you’d have to actually see what I’m talking about to believe it. This Hardware Engineer seems to somehow manage to lie about most things he doesn’t understand and he doesn’t appear to understand very much beyond what he sees in front of himself. In other words, (I’ve learned this the hard way) if he tells you something about a particular piece of hardware or software, chances are you’d better research the information yourself.
After several years working for Corporate America, I feel that these people are able to hide behind the ridiculous cover of the Corporation in order to hide their obvious lack of ability. To be honest, I have met many in the particular corporation I work for to be complete idiots. A few years back I worked with an Engineer that couldn’t spell the country of Canada. This guy worked in a position that dealt with international clients. Good thing this guy never had to actually write anything to anyone other than his boss.
Over the years working here I have met plenty of really great people as well and I have nothing but the utmost respect for most of them. However, this continuing trend that I see in the company I work for will continue to bother me. I really do hope that this is a trend that ends sooner rather than later.
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