Elegy on the death of the engineer !

Technology has invaded the lives of billions with an unseen ferocity. Social strictures have changed and so have the ethos and the codes of daily conduct. In this deluge, the most confused are the technocrats of yesterday and the budding engineers of tomorrow…

Change has turned into the unwanted salesman who pops in at the oddest of hours with an infuriating roster of products. What is more frustrating is that the products are attractive, lucrative but beyond the reach ! Technology mocks at the portals of every institution and the resource centers and libraries resemble Jurassic parks and historical museums. With genetic codes of the most wanted classified columns ushering in avant-garde, engineering colleges of today look blankly at their mediocre armory and the ‘now-not-exploding’ ammunition. Four years in these walls students bandy words of an extinct civilization and learn a trade which finds no buyer. At the end, a confused ensemble walk out into an unforgiving world equipped with nothing other than an extra cell of ‘common sense’. Four years of rigor and hardships and now he has to pick up another set of skills that are alien to his education.

The best at the craft think of when they can do their MBA and pursue the ‘big bucks’. The pragmatic ones have their eyes glued onto the next software company and have ‘when do I get to go abroad ?’ brooding like a Damocles Sword on their minds. For the once who also tried and failed the only option is to get an engineering job in some organization which will treat them with the disdain of a stepmother reminding them each day that they are there due to the dearth of better options !

True, the brick and mortar needs a set of hands to make concrete jungles and labyrinthe circuitry, but the engineer behind is the blue collared layman of today. While he values years of ‘experience’ and working , enter the geek of today half as old as he is and twice as current. Speaking a language foreign to the engineers he even plans to retire by forty with a fortune unheard of to the mind which turns to the tune of worn out gears and unlubricated grey matter…

Calamity dawns even though a little late then the beginning of a quest of unlearning and erasing a knowledge block which was bread and butter of a generation long past. Crowding into blocks of new avenues, a sojourn into the unknown embarks. With the curiosity of Alice and the impetuousness of the Cheshire cat , the fight goes on with the worst nightmare of all – Unemployability !