I hate Engineering but so much less BS
I started my career as a hardware engineer, then software engineer, then complex system design. It was a good career at first, but then I started hating it. I got to really hate geeks. Firstly, a male monoculture, almost no women. (I was a straight man at the time). Secondly, they didn’t get the big picture — I got tired of building the wrong thing half the time. Thirdly, I got tired of talking about Tech all the time. I’m a musician, I like creativity. I couldn’t take it, I went into tech marketing.
First I was thrilled! More women. Most people at least understand what a big picture was. They were at least somewhat creative. But they still talked about tech all the time. ew. Well 2 1/2 out of three ain’t bad. But then I slammed head first into something I had NEVER experienced before. Corporate politics. BS ruled. Wow! I had no immune system to this stuff. At first, I couldn’t detect it very well, and I didn’t know what I could do about it. I eventually got very good at detecting it, but even after many years, I could never quite figure out what to do about very effectively. And it got worse as I progressed upward in my career.
I started focusing on cybersecurity where it is really bad, even today! Why? Because there are three important considerations in cybersecurity:
- How secure is it?
- How much does it cost? How long does it take to build?
- How easy is it to use? How easy is it to measure success?
Typically you can only prioritize two of the three above. Which do you think will lose every time? #1 because it’s really difficult to measure (99.9% of people don’t understand this stuff). Until things fail, but that happens much later after decisions are made, when it’s easy to spread blame. This environment is a recipe for BS. Same situation in any kind of risk management or complex systems like Global Warming, Education, Health Care, etc. (Just replace “secure” with something else)
But I eventually figured out what to do. I quit. I went back into Engineering very reluctantly (I still HATE it for the same reasons but it’s worse now). Mostly because there are a lot more Engineering jobs than Marketing jobs as companies have flattened out — going from probably 10 to 1 to 500 to 1. I became a senior architect. The engineers work for me — I tell them how to design things. It’s it also my job to clear out the BS Marketing is shoveling, and set them straight.
My job is SO much easier!!! I know what I’m talking about and yes in the tech world, if you’re on the Engineering side, it’s very difficult to BS because it’s much more obvious when something isn’t correct, and engineers do not like BS artists . Fortunately I have a very supportive boss and other senior managers — they’re nerds, but hard to BS a nerd. Yes they actually respect people who know what they’re talking about and they will support them— hard to believe after all these years.
And I also learned in the tech world, most companies don’t respect Marketing people…well, because they’re not geeks (The power is in the Engineering side). And I’m also able to call out BS artists (often Marketing People) in meetings with Senior Managers. And if they respond by gaslighting me (typical political tactic for somebody who is way out of their league and doesn’t understand the complexity of what they’re dealing with), I eviscerate them right there, often in front of senior managers, VP’s, and even the CEO. (A necessary strategy I learned recently). And it works! For example, just the other day, they fired the company’s CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) for being a bully. Thanks to me and a few other folks calling out his continuous behavior.
I still rather not hang around with geeks, but at least I respect them more now. But maybe we can train them to stop worshipping tech and spend a little more time playing music, painting, hanging out with people who are different from them, etc, so they can help us steer this tech driven world into a better direction.
I wrote book about going from Straight to Trans. And a bit of the tech stuff and the need for a female attitude is folded in there.
