3 Reasons Young Engineers Are Not In The Automation Industry

The other day I was browsing some of my friend’s blogs and came across a post by Doug Brock (an Automation engineer), titled “Why don’t more young engineers pursue Automation and Control Engineering careers?” There is also a LinkedIn discussion on the same topic as well. I’m 27, an automation & Control engineer myself, work for a large automation company, and have discussed this very issue with many of my friends. So it was only natural to write this article.

The Goods of Working as a Field Service Engineer

Before I start bashing the automation industry, let me say that there are actually a lot of good aspects to my job as a field service engineer (which are the reasons I haven’t left the industry yet). There are of course many other positions in automation industry than just FSEs.

• Traveling and meeting people. The best part of my job is by far meeting the different people (operators, engineers, technicians, hotel employees, random restaurant patrons, and complete strangers). I’m writing part of this article sitting by the hotel pool at the Chateau LeMoyne hotel in French Quarter in New Orleans which is surprisingly under my $150 a day hotel charge limit.
• I live the How It’s Made life every work day. More times than not I get to contribute to part of the production line as well. It’s actually very interesting to geeks like me.
• I do real engineering work, not some consulting on how to outsource jobs offshore.
• I very much enjoy interacting with and learning from plant operators, plant engineers, and technicians instead of many arrogant, socially challenged, know it all, high level management and engineers.

The 3 Reasons

Now back to topic; we, the young engineers don’t enter the automation industry or if we do, we don’t stay long  because of

1. Lack of training (not) provided by employers.
2. Low salaries considering the type of work, amount of travel, and constant need for supplemental education required compared to other alternatives careers available to us.
3. Outdated policies and old cultures resistant to change.
4. (Due to all above reasons) Huge lack of passion.

Notes

• My comments below are only related to the automation industry in the United States. I’m not familiar with the automation field, demographics, and salary of engineers outside of the U.S. So my apologies!
• I use Rockwell Automation as the example in many of the comments because I work here and I can see things from up close. However my comments do not reflect or represent any statements, information, or guidance on behalf of Rockwell Automation in any way. In fact I probably will get in trouble for writing this article.
• Many of the following comments can also be said about other engineering fields.
• Do leave comments. I’m very interested to hear what your thoughts are on the topic and on this article.

I’m 27 and work at Rockwell Automation. My job title is “Field Service Engineer (FSE)” and I get paid a little under $65,000/year (plus a company car and benefits). I graduated from Purdue University with an Electrical Engineering degree and joined Rockwell right after college. Keep in mind no one in United States talks about their salary so unless you go to Glass Door or a similar website its hard to know how much salary you should expect or ask for.

1. Lack of Training

Most engineering schools’ curriculum don’t include any course related to automation. At least none that are required or recommended. We learn almost everything we know on the job. Granted, most engineering jobs are like that; I feel automation industry just has a larger learning curve associated with it than most other engineering jobs. There are a ton of different PLCs brands each with their own programming language used in drives, motion, and process applications not to mention all the historian and tracking software associate with each one. All these technologies are advancing at an extremely fast rate and we have to stay on top of it at all times.

A great comment from Will‌‌ Wagner on the LinkedIn discussion:

Control engineers are not produced by academic programs, they are developed.

Companies typically don’t hire young engineers that don’t know much PLC programming or HMI development, yet very rarely any of them offer any form of serious training. Even if they do hire young engineers they’ll low ball the salaries. Many of my friends who got hired at large automation companies or at a small integrator ended up being sent to job sites by themselves only few days after being hired with the notion of “We believe in you, go figure it out”. Most of my friends either left those companies within few months of being hired and some of them got let go because they couldn’t complete a job at a customer site.

Rockwell is the only company that I know of that offers a good training program to its new hires called Engineering in Training program. To become an Field Service Engineer (FSE) at Rockwell I had to go through the program which is an intense 6 month of – paid - training. That is unheard of in our industry. It is also the main reason the attendees (including myself) join Rockwell right after college. More companies need to do the same if they want young engineers join them.

2. Low Salaries

Salary levels in Automation industry are at or below of other engineering jobs available to young engineers. When a prospective young college graduate is looking at a job offer in automation industry this is how he/she views it:

• Little to no training (for most companies)
• A lot of hard work in rural areas
• Almost no one in his/her age group in the industry
• Comparably lower salary than many other opportunities

You see where this is going?

When I graduated I had an offer from Rockwell for $64,400, an offer of $69,000 from Accenture, and an offer of $74,000 from a defense company. I did choose Rockwell because Rockwell is the industry leader in North America and they gave me 6 months of paid training. That’s like going to college every day but getting paid instead of paying tuition.

Other companies should also offer better training programs OR be prepared to pay higher than average salaries to attract young engineers.

Even though Rockwell does a good job of attracting young college graduates to their program, I believe they do a poor job of keeping them by not doing anything afterwards.

Automation industry is extremely technical and it takes a long time to be a well rounded automation engineer. This fact makes the actual engineers hard to replace and there is large resistance to those who want to move up in the company.

It takes at least 3 to 5 years for a field service engineer to be trained well and able to handle most projects. If the engineer chooses to stay as an experienced field service engineer he/she is looking at 1% to 6% raise every year. On the other hand the engineer can simply switch to another industry and expect a much higher salary.

Doug Brock has done a great job of putting together a number of interesting salary charts for engineering professions.

For example: I find it troubling  that the customers whom I service pay over $210/hr for me to be there and I get paid less than $34/hr ($50 including benefits) of that.

Another Example: It’s also sad how companies complain about not being able to retain their young employees and the best solution they come up with is a 3rd year reunion party (pun intended).

Another Example:‌ Almost every one of my friends have had much higher offers (+$20k to +35k to what they make now) from other industries.‌ The question companies should ask themselves is why should these engineer stay at their job and not take the other offer? Specially in today’s world that companies let their oldest and most experienced employees go simply because the company didn’t meet a particular quarter’s stock expectations.

That being said, money is not everything. Actually I believe low salaries is not the main reason most young engineers leave the industry. However as long as companies refuse to fix their problems in other areas, higher than average salaries remain as their only tool to keep those employees.

3. Outdated Policies & Cultures Resistant to Change

Automation industry is one of the oldest technical industries around; with that comes a lot of outdated policies (from decades ago), cultures that are extremely resistant to change, and upper management that is two generations behind technology.

We, the employees, are expected to simply get certain tasks done, behave in certain approved ways, leave our character and cultures at home, “just shut up” (a phrase my former manager used to remind me often) –  instead of speaking up, and adapt to old cultures and outdated policies. That used to work for both employees and employers a decade ago – not anymore. Listen to the book Linchpin by Seth Godin for more on this topic.

Talking to corporations:

One of  the most important reasons that we, the young engineers, leave your corporation is the your lack of desire to change with today’s technological and cultural advancements. Instead of monitoring and blocking employees from going to social media, you should encourage them to spend half an hour of every day’s work hours to talk about their experience at work on social media. Stop being afraid of openness. You’ll be amazed at the amount of positive feedback you’ll receive.

You used to be able to hire engineers to just sit in a cube, program all day, stay long hours and weekends, and then go home just to do the same routine the next day (much like the robots we program). That era is over. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll jump ahead of the industry.

It is unacceptable that,

• Many companies that I service (even Rockwell until a month ago) still require many of their services to run on Internet Explorer 6.0.
• We have to spend countless hours on SAP (a software focused on horrible usability)
• Our laptop specs are from technologies that came out 3 years ago
• Emerson has no women as  a senior VP; ABB has only one woman senior VP (out of 11); Rockwell has only one (out of 14);  Parker Hannifin has 2 (out of 24). List goes on…
• The same can be said about the number of minorities in VP level positions.

If you are serious about wanting wanting to change and to address your employees concerns ASK them to submit those suggestions 100% anonymously. Ask them to write a blog post, Facebook or Twitter message and be serious about it. Those employees who speak out are those who care the most about the company. Give them room to talk. Here is a another good post by Seth Godin.

Is that too much? Then Simply go to GlassDoor and read employees comments. I have no doubt you already monitor the web and social media for coverage about your brand. Use it for a reason other than finding and forcing outspoken employees to sign legal papers.

Final Word

You, the leaders of the automation industry, can take one of two actions:

1. Ignore this article and those similar to it. You can go on with the same (failed) strategies to hire and keep young engineers. I suspect this will be your most likely line of action.
2. Far tougher option: You can encourage other young engineers to write about their experience at work. Focus on rewarding passion and you’ll be amazed at the results.

It used to be that engineers were associated with being un-social, obedient, and the kind of employees that accepted status quo regardless of what it was. We’ve changed and believe or not we have plenty of options to choose from.

Be The Google of The Automation Industry.