Sunday, April 24, 2011

Engineers and politics

Here is another interesting article on engineers and politics from EETimes:

…The 112th Congress has 541 members. The average age in the Senate is 62.2 years, in the House 56.7 years.
The top four occupations are business, public service, law and education. There are five engineers (chart below). None in the Senate. This meager representation is ridiculous for a profession that is crucial to the economy. But then we know that.

I often asked myself if I would ever consider running for office.  The answer was always “Hell, NO”.  I would imagine many other engineers would feel the same way.  Why?  Well, because politics often requires saying a lot without much substance, something engineers are not very good at.  Those who would like to stick to engineering, like me, would not want to change careers.  I don’t even want to be a manager.  High level managers, on the other hand, are not much different from regular politicians.  So, a high level manager in office would represent only marginal improvement over a career politician.  Still, an engineer in a high political office is a nice dream to have.

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