Are you indespensable? Or, as Seth Godin would put it, a linchpin?
I came across this article recently, “Engineers as Commodities” – it’s 5 years old now but it covers a lot of what I’ve been thinking about recently. It talks about how, as a lot of engineering work has been made increasingly routine, it has effectively become commoditised and ripe for outsourcing.
Pink has three questions for you about earning a living:
Can someone overseas do your job cheaper?
Can a computer do your job faster?
Is what you offer in demand, in an age of abundance?
If you answered ‘yes’ to 1 or 2, or ‘no’ to 3, you could be in deep trouble.
I wonder though if this will lead to a fall in the number of engineers in the developed world, as so many engineering roles are outsourced. I don’t think it will. Engineering will expand – is expanding – into roles that either didn’t exist until recently or weren’t considered engineering.
I work in an engineering consultancy on a floor full of engineers. The floor above is full of environmental scientists, working on the same projects as the engineers. Is an ecologist an engineer? Yes, if they are applying their skills to how engineering designs are developed. Ground engineers ensure that a building won’t subside, an ecologist ensures that local habitat and wildlife aren’t unduly affected. To me, they are both doing engineering.
I’ve started working on tools for carbon footprinting – measuring the carbon impact of a development. This hasn’t even existed very long as a concept, let alone a job. Is it engineering? Yes, because it influences how the design is developed.
As time goes on, and tools and standards are developed, parts of some engineering disciplines will continue to be commoditised, just as mass manufacturing replaced cottage industries. Does this mean there are fewer jobs? No, it just means the jobs are in different areas. Once you no longer need an entire floor of engineers doing manual calculations and hand-drawn designs then considering other things, like ecology or carbon, becomes possible.
Posted by Pete Collins 
