The (Very Real) Gender Disparity in Engineering

In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned how I enjoy swimming against the tide and that was probably one of the reasons why I stayed in Engineering for so long.

I enjoy proving people wrong about racial and gender related preconceptions. I live in Canada, and have only heard some people complain about racism. I am not white, and I haven't faced racism in my 20 years here. I love it here, and that is why I stay. I'm sure there are unfortunate circumstances that some people from minority groups do encounter. And I hope I never encounter those.

But sadly, that has not been the case with gender disparity in the Engineering profession. My encounter with this came late in my career.

17 years ago, When I got into engineering school, I couldn't have given two hoots about who my classmates were. Statistics were meaningless to me. I wanted an engineering degree and that's all that mattered to me. When I graduated, I noticed that out of the 40 graduates, 3 were girls. That didn't make any difference to me.

When I was started working as a junior engineer, I found people to be very encouraging. I had the good fortune of having two good mentors who were willing to give me advice and correct my errors. Later in my career, these same ex-mentors were happy to hear my expertise on certain subjects that I had (somewhat) mastered. (Keep in mind, I've only been doing this for 13 years - not 30.)

However, when it came time to promote me to senior engineer level, I was passed over year after year. (I have mentioned this before.) I would have kept my rose coloured glasses on for a few more years had my manager not told me - in a career review meeting - that I had hit a 'glass ceiling' and that I would have to "live with it" because my manager would do nothing about it. This was unconscionable. I casually mentioned this to HR (because I know the golden rule that HR will always side with management) and was told, "Hmm.... yes. I can see why you were told that." An inappropriate response, to say the least.

However, despite being passed over for a promotion year after year, (while 3 of my male counterparts were rewarded and promoted on time), my work load and my project responsibilities kept increasing. I was leading small and big projects, dealing with clients daily, doing all the site inspections and site commissioning for my department, and burning out as a result of the overwork. I was being given little gift cards in appreciation of my slavery. But no promotion. It was a very confusing and frustrating time in my life.

The Machiavellian nature of this 'glass ceiling notification' experience was because of my manager's gender: She was a woman. If upper management had told her to convey the 'glass ceiling' blow to me, it would have been a stroke of genius. I would never be able to make a case (to any authority outside my company). But I don't think it was that sophisticated. My manager was lazy, crass and aggressive: a Brute. So why did she bother telling me anything? I think it may have been as simple as not wanting to give me a raise that year. Remember that she was a brute, after all. She swung an axe when slight tap would do. (In less than 3 years, 20% of our department had resigned because of her.) (June 2016 update: this lady has now been forced to step down from her position as department head and also been forced to take a leave of absence.)

Definition: 
 noun: glass ceiling; plural noun: glass ceilings

    an unofficially acknowledged barrier to advancement in a profession, especially affecting women and members of minorities.



In response to the misogyny, I just found a different job with a better title in a different company.

Unfortunately, I found out that the entire engineering industry is burdened with very limiting notions about women.

At my new employers, I was the lead electrical engineer on a $500 million dollar project, and I had to fight for 3 months to be taken seriously. A man my age would not have had to do it for that long. One week would have been enough.

After those 3 months were over, and I successfully conveyed that I knew what I was talking about, people relied on me heavily. And life went on.

But today, I had a very interesting conversation that opened my eyes to a more dismal reality. I had hoped that this gender disparity was only a problem in male-dominated professions like engineering. Sadly, this is not true. Apparently, this is a problem in medicine and accounting as well.... professions that I thought had a higher representation of women.

I have to say that on one hand, I was a bit relieved to hear it, because the resistance to women experts is present in all facets of professional life. But on the other hand, I am completely heart-broken.

If I had read this post 5 years ago, I would have laughed in disbelief.
To see the situation from this side of the veil, I had to graduate to the level of 'Senior Engineer', a technical lead, in order to experience this sad truth. I read the book Lean In. I thought it was a well-written joke. (A dull book, but a well-crafted joke.) Telling management my career goals and promotion expectations in clear, concrete terms did fucking zero. I have all the printed documents that are worth as much today as they were 5 years ago: Absolutely Nothing.

As a caveat, I have to say that some sorts of women did get promoted in Engineering: The Non-Technical types. They all had children. (Not having children was actually held against me.) And they all performed some perfunctory, managerial, paper-pushing role. Most of them were extremely timid. But I got the one brute for a manager.

I am grateful, however, to the exceptional men I have encountered in my field. I am always humbled when an electrician calls and says he only trusts me, and won't speak to anyone else in my company. I am infinitely grateful to my senior mentor who has 40-45 years of engineering experience, and treats me with kindness and respect and conveys hope to me in all possible ways. I am grateful to have worked with people who knew what they are doing and took pride in it. It felt good to be recognized for my work regardless of my ability to grow facial hair. I am always filled with gratitude when my technically competent (read snob) co-workers said they liked my work because "at least there's one person who knows what they are doing".

I am infinitely grateful to my parents for raising me with no knowledge of these obtuse gender differences in society. My mother is a strong woman, and my father was always utterly clueless that women ought to be unequal to men - maybe because he had a very strong and very intelligent mother. Their genuine belief that men and women are equal came across in their actions. Both my brother and I went to karate class. And both my brother and I cooked meals with my dad.

And nobody liked to do the dishes.

Engineering Is A Highly Vulnerable Profession

....or rather, Engineers will almost always find traditional engineering jobs in volatile or vulnerable industries.

How do I have the confidence to say this?

Because if you look at most of the industry collapses in the last 50 years, you'll notice a trend. Although people from all walks of life are affected when an industry takes a hit, the ones that take the 'hardest' hit are the ones that trained specifically for that industry. And Engineers do just that.

Aerospace engineering takes periodic hits all the time. Even wonder what happens to people in the industry? It's not exactly an up-and-coming field. People who have the experience and manage to hold on to their jobs during the downturns are lucky. Those that accumulate, say, 10 years of experience and then sadly lose their jobs... what do they do? Wait around till the industry returns? Fat chance of that happening in a predicable fashion.

Nuclear engineering. There are 'n' number of people working in this industry. It's a non-growth industry. After Fukushima, this field became extremely unpopular, and many people lost their jobs. Let's follow that thought to completion - many people - mostly engineers - lost their jobs permanently. So now, after 4-5 years of education and highly specific nuclear-engineering training and experience, these people are left without a job and without any foreseeable job prospects. What a sham. I sound disappointed because some part of me was convinced when my University implied that after I get my degree, I'll be employed in my field for as long as I was going to work. What an utter lie. These lies are especially true for highly specific areas of expertise. Nuclear engineering is not an easy program to get into, nor is it an easy program to complete.

Electrical Engineering: Let's take this broad field as an example. People that get a job in a utility company after graduating end up staying in the field of utility and power transmission all their lives - if they don't get laid off. Can they transition into another area, like say, Oil and Gas? The truth is NO they can't. If a person with 6 years of Utility and Power transmission experience applies to the Oil and Gas industry, they will be rejected due to lack of relevant experience. I tried to make a transition from the Municipal industry to the Power transmission industry. 3 interviews later, I gave up. Despite their 'need' for people and my extensive knowledge and experience in the relevant field of Industrial applications, they did not want me. And that was during a boom. There is no way, NO WAY people can make a transition from say Oil and Gas to say Municipal during an economic downturn. I used to listen to my boss' conversations when they screened applicants. Utterly stupid things like this were said, "Although we're working our staff to the bone and we have the budget to get a couple more guys on the team to meet these deadlines, all the applicants are from the Oil and Gas sector. I don't want to hire them and then have to lay them off in 2 years." What a joke. They overworked their employees and didn't hire enough personnel because they included "Overtime Exempt" clauses into the contract. That's it. The bottom line is sweeter with one less employee on payroll. And for the guys working themselves to death, there's the Employee Assistance Program with psychologists to help you 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. So fuck off.

Anyway, my message is this: There are many, many, many other industries that are far more stable and versatile than engineering for the amount of effort that goes into becoming and engineer and for the luck that is needed to stay active as a practicing engineer. The medical industry is always flourishing. HR, Accounting, Marketing and BD are ever-versatile: You can piggy-back on any industry and not only save your career, but flourish in it.

If you don't LOVE engineering, don't get into it. If you do get a job after graduating, you are most probably going to lose that job in 5-10 years. Then, if you want to keep working in the field, you will have to move or retrain yourself. Or if you are like me, you will never want to return to the field again because you will be so burnt by it.

Economic Downturns I've Experienced and Witnessed

I got into Engineering school dewy-eyed about the promise of eternal employment and supernatural job satisfaction and fulfillment. That was in 1997.

I participated in the University's Cooperative Education Program that found me 4-months contract work after the completion of each 4-month study semester to get a taste of the employment market. I tasted the joy of making money and being a student who had minimal expenses, I was able to pay for my education and living expenses.

I had no trouble finding work between 1997 and the year 2000. But at the start of the year 2000, reality winked at me.  The technological giant Nortel Networks burped. It had acquired too many companies too fast and stock prices started sliding. In 8 months, the share price fell from roughly $125 to $10. I was shocked and thought - like many, many others - that it was a temporary event, and that Nortel would inevitably recover. This giant castle that was built in the clouds couldn't possibly come crashing down. But it did. And many were devastated. My devastation was only emotional and psychological. For others it was financial and professional. My personal banker lost her life savings because she didn't follow her own advice: Greedily, she put all her retirement money in tech stocks. All of it.
Closer to the epicenter, my ex-boss at Nortel who had only worked at Nortel all his working life (for 20+ years) was laid off, along with almost all the employees of Nortel.  I doubt he found another job in the same industry, if he did in fact decide to stay in the same city.

That calamity lasted for …. well, the hi-tech industry in Ottawa never recovered, actually. All that work migrated to India and China. All the classmates I graduated with, never had the chance to truly enter the industry because it collapsed before they could even get their first full-time job in it. Disastrous. And this disaster was completely Engineer-specific.

I moved Provinces to Oil & Gas country, but found work in the Municipal world which kept me safe from recessions. I still thought what had happened to me in Ottawa was a one-off, an exception rather than the rule. But I was wrong.

In 2004, round about the time my sibling graduated from his grueling engineering program at a prestigious university, the automotive industry in Ontario collapsed. Tens of thousands of people were without a job. For a second time, the hardest hit was taken by the engineers - because it was an engineer-centered industry. Suddenly I suspected there may be a pattern. People with automotive-specific skills were left utterly stranded. I didn't worry so much about the young and middle-aged people that had a chance to retrain themselves. What about the people nearing retirement, which included a huge baby-boomer population? They couldn't retrain, and they couldn't afford to retire. So what did they do? Move? Work at Walmart?


In 2008 the whole world sort-of collapsed. The souffle built by the lies of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve collapsed. Alberta went through a brief spell of mass unemployment and obscurity. Tens of thousands of people were laid off with no foreseeable hope in sight. But things did pick up eventually. All industries suffered: Housing, Financial and Engineering. Engineering was not immune.

And here we are in 2014, 2015. Oil prices have stayed steadily low for 2 years now. And there is no hope of any recovery in the oil and gas sector in Alberta. Russia predicts this spat of bad oil prices will last at least 7 years. So what do oil and gas industry people do? Retrain? Work at Starbucks for 7 years? Again, the downturn is Engineer-specific. Admin staff can work anywhere. HR can work anywhere. Marketing people can work anywhere. But Engineers are fucked. Proper fucked.

Still want to do engineering?

Don't Go Into Engineering!

 Consider This Before You Decide To Get Into Engineering

There is so much misinformation out there that it behooves me to lay these facts in front of you before you get into this field. This is written for those of you having second thoughts about engineering. If you're already in engineering school, then think a little harder before you muscle your way through to graduation. If you've already graduated and are struggling to find a job, consider skidaddling into another career.

I realize that reading one blog entry means nothing and you most likely will not change your mind because of it. But think about what I have to say. And if you hear more than one engineer or ex-engineer say the same thing, then there may be something to it.

(1) No use of MATH OR SCIENCE. You'll NEVER use any MATH or SCIENCE. If you're an Electrical Engineer, you're going to use V=IR and P=VI. So quit school after the first semester and save yourselves tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and years of useless education. Laplace Transforms? Triple Integrals? I think NOT. Try ADDITION and SUBTRACTION. I even went completely wild once and used DIVISION. I think I almost fractured the space-time continuum with that one overly-complex mathematical operation for a lowly electrical engineer.  Needless to say, picking engineering because of my interest and acumen for math was a BIG mistake.

Let me try to put this to you as gently as I can: your engineering job is about fitting as many square pegs in as many square holes as quickly as possible while management breathes down your neck. You will not be able to use your creativity or imagination with anything.

(2) Zero Complexity. Enjoy complexity? Well, sucks to be you. There will be NO COMPLEXITY in your engineering design. Whatever problem you figure out how to solve in the first year of your employment, you will continue to solve for the remaining 35 years. Sizing an MCC? Load flow calculation for your power distribution system? Sizing your power cables? Designing your switchgear? Everything you need to know you will learn in 1 year. After that your mind will waste away. So what did I do for the remaining 12 years? I went to site. I commissioned systems. I hung out with electricians. I tried to troubleshoot real problems. I participated in technical committees. I volunteered for learned societies. But this isn't why I went to school. It's great that I could do it. And I'm grateful that I traveled all over Alberta and British Columbia, but this isn't mentally stimulating and I don't want to do this till I'm 65.

(3) NO Industry Stability. When I graduated in 2002, the city I was in was the Hi-Tech capital of Canada. I and all my classmates had done all our coop jobs in hi-tech firms. The month we graduated, everything went up in flames. It took less than a month for the entire hi-tech world in eastern Canada to completely turn to ash. All of us stared in disbelief and foolishly believed things would go back to normal. It never did.  I moved to oil and gas country.
In 2008, North American monetary systems collapsed and a lot of people lost their homes and their jobs. I managed to hold on to my job because the industry I was in was funded by the Municipal government. But most of my industry contacts were either laid off or were afraid to get laid off.
It's now 2015, and oil and gas country is now in dire straits. Canada and USA are feeling the pains of low oil prices, and engineers are the first to get the boot. Over 15,000 people - mostly engineers - have lost their jobs in less than 1 year in my city alone.
When an industry suffers, the first people to get the chop are engineers.

(4) TOO MANY ENGINEERS! There are far too many engineering graduates each year and post graduation placement rates are dismal. The only years when graduates get jobs straight out of school are boom years. After that, new graduates struggle to get their foot in the door in any industry. Because of the way things turned out when I graduated, 90% of my classmates never even had a chance to pursue their trade. Some got another degree. Some went into their family business. Some just got non-degree jobs. All those articles you read about a huge gap between the availability of experienced engineers and industry needs are mythological and ideological concepts concocted by people with too much time on their hands.

(5) NO Job Stability. Let me repeat that. Your company will lay off whomever they damn well please when their bottom line sees the slightest quiver. It is far more important for the VPs to get their bonuses than it is to keep 3 engineers employed. And this only sucks if you cared about what you did (when you were employed) and made personal sacrifices in order to produce a good product. If you didn't give a rat's ass about the drawings you made or the client you were servicing, then you're okay. You can just lie on your resume and get another job when the economy returns. I personally know of several engineers who were critical team members, who spent over 35 years with the same company, were laid off in the last few months and security walked them out of the building. They were given no pension (despite their employment agreement and a robust pension plan they contributed to) and just a 4 week severance. They have since sued their companies. You owe your company nothing because your company sure as fuck doesn't think it owes you anything.

(6) Nepotism. Be prepared. Hard work, honesty and great communication skills will get you nowhere. However, kissing people's butt shamelessly will get you very, very far. If you're related to people in management, that's even better. Learn how to play golf and read the best selling book, "How to $||ck corporate ____!". Do I sound bitter? Well, you'll meet many soul-less ghostly apparitions floating around in engineering offices. These spirits were once hopeful engineers that have now given up any hope of recognition and appreciation.

(7) Verbal Abuse. Are you kidding me?
Get ready to be screamed at & Be prepared to scream at people. You know, in the 4 years of engineering school, no one told me that all this education would guarantee that I would be treated with basic human dignity. Because that doesn't happen. There are plenty of people in management with serious personality disorders that use verbal abuse as a way to intimidate and coerce their co-workers into doing their bidding. It's a daily thing and it's common place in the consulting world. I've managed to fight off most of them - peer or manager. But I did have to leave one job because my boss - who was a workplace bully - kept climbing the corporate ladder until she became invincible and far too powerful. My ex-coworkers still get verbally abused and publicly humiliated regularly. I still cannot believe this happens in a professional environment in a first world country.

(8) Murdering the good things in your life. Whatever you love doing will be beaten out of you. Despite realizing that engineering wasn't my passion, there are parts of my job that I find enjoyable. I enjoy following client standards to produce a compliant design. I enjoy completing a good design. I enjoy working with the contractor to build a working system. I like troubleshooting systems. Well, all of the above have been beaten out of me. I have been made to work so much unpaid overtime that the zest of life has been drained from me. What does an 80 hour work week look like? From Monday-Friday I work 12 hours a day leaving me no time to exercise, enjoy a dinner or pursue a hobby. I reach work at 9:00, leave at 9:00, barely have enough time to eat, shower and sleep. Then I work another 8-12 hours on a Saturday and/or Sunday leaving me barely enough time to get groceries and catch up on my sleep. This would be fine if it occurred once or twice a year. But I've been doing this for 4 months straight. Some people are cool with this. I'm not. It's a choice. I honestly believe life doesn't have to be like this. I've also read research that has found we suffer neurological damage when we work these unhealthy hours. Also look up the word "Karoshi".

(9) Acute and Chronic Stress. You will stress out 99% of the time and your health will suffer. Chronic stress will lower your immunity and raise your chances of getting heart disease, stroke and cancer. One of my mentors died of a heart attack six months after he retired early. Another mentor died of cancer within 3 months of retiring. Another friend's coworker is now in a coma due to a stroke he suffered during a long weekend. He is 57 or 58. I've injured my back 5 times in 3 years now. My last straw was me being able to feel my heart beat for 30 minutes during a particularly stressful client meeting. And in the next client meeting, I felt repeated sharp stabbing pains in my chest for 2 minutes straight. Did I call for help? Nope. I didn't want to upset the client.

(10) Overwork and Exploitation. Some of you will work 80 hours a week for at least half the year. Some of you will be okay with this. I am not. I don't want my tombstone to read, "I only wish I'd worked a little harder."

(11) Anonymity. You will never be appreciated. Never. Never. Never.

(12) Bad Decision. If you're Indian or Chinese, seriously reconsider getting into this field ESPECIALLY if your parents are pushing you into this field. I speak from experience. My society essentially told me that if I wasn't a doctor or engineer, I should fall into a sinkhole and get obliterated. If you are going into engineering for societal approval and status, be warned that when you work those long hours alone and feel completely ungratified with the work you're doing, no society will be by your side. When I injured my back and was unable to move for 15 days due to pain, no one helped me. No one sent me a 'get well soon' note. No one gave a shit. When I am unable to sleep for more than 2 hours (for months now) due to stress and anxiety, society does not empathize with me or help me out in any way. Your parents may get momentary kudos for your toil, but it means jack shit because you're not there to get patted on the back - they are. Think hard about how you'll feel sitting in that cubicle doing something you absolutely don't give a shit about. And why? Because your parents wanted you to? Do you want to spend your life with someone you hate? (I hope you're saying 'No' to this one.) Then why would you spend your life working at something you hate?

(13) Being Thrown To The Wolves. You will not get any mentoring. My father became an engineer in 1967. He had kind and knowledgeable mentors that took the time to teach him things. I did not have a mentor and neither did my sibling. We were thrown to the wolves and if we made it ... great. I saw people that did not make it. I watched them get eaten alive. Whatever you can figure out on your own, using your own resources, reading IEEE books, text books, talking to vendors and manufacturers, befriending electricians.... that's what you will get. The onus is on YOU to get the knowledge. Be prepared. I actually found this part fun. But it shouldn't be this way.

(14) Misogyny. Ladies: Be prepared for sexism. I really did not think this would happen. But it does. I know my shit. I can dominate a meeting. I'm not leaning in - I'm taking over the room. And it doesn't fucking matter. It's a boys club. This is probably one of the reasons why I stuck around in this piece of shit industry for so long. Swimming upstream is my thing. But this isn't a good enough reason to keep doing something that doesn't bring you joy. Yeah, I'm one of the best Electrical Engineers I know. So what? Who gives a shit? All that matters is that when I'm with myself, I am not spending time doing something that bring me joy.

Having said all of the above, there are some topsy-turvy things I'm very grateful for:

(1) Humans. I now value all human beings equally: I deeply respect just about anyone but stick-up-their-butts engineers who cannot spare a millisecond of their time to respect their fellow human beings.

(2) Life. Money means less to me now: I went into engineering for the job stability and the pay. All I can say is when the joy of life has been stripped of you, money means nothing. I can afford a lot, and I don't give a shit. What's the point of having a gorgeous apartment if you're never in it? What's the point of having enough money to afford a trip if you never get permission for vacation and you can't spare even a weekend?

(3) Health. I value my health: After suffering from multiple back injuries, severe anxiety and stress and physiological illnesses related to stress, I've looked around and realized how little anything means if you don't have your health and body. I have co-workers who have a stash of medication in their office cabinet. They look ill. They are ill. And they drag themselves to work at a job they hate. It's a choice. I know more than one person in engineering suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

(4) Family. I value my family: They have stuck with me through all these crappy times. They have been with me when I treated them with neglect. But my "family company" laid off critical team members on a whim with less than 30 minutes notice.

(5) Self. I value my intellect and my curiosity: I have discovered some interests that I did not know I had. I have found passions that this career crisis has uncovered. For this I am deeply grateful. When one door closes, another one opens.

(6) Time. I value my time: I don't know if there are multiple lives. But I can only relate to this life. So I've got to make the most of the remaining 35-45 years I've got left. I came alone. I'll be departing alone. I have to take responsibility for my life.

I hope that was depressing enough.

I'll finish off with a quote from my favourite person in modern history:

"Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." - Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning