Standardization: an Excellent Career Path for Senior Engineers
Globecom 2014 Industry Program Austin, TX
December 10, 2014
2:00 – 3:45PM
Ken Krechmer (Organizer)
Palo Alto, CA 94303 USA
krechmer at csrstds dot com
Panelists:
Donggeun Choi, PhD, Korea Standards Association
Periklis Chatzimisios, PhD, Alexander TEI of Thessaloniki
Alexander D. Gelman, PhD, IEEE
Karen Pieper, Tabula
Too many good, mid-career engineers are un- or under-employed. One way to address this is to help engineers recognize standardization as a very desirable mid-career path.
Many engineers find themselves burned out by their late 40s-50s through keeping up with the continuous changes in technology, having had a number of different employers and through salary pressure from younger or off-shore engineers capable of doing what they are tasked with, for less.
Technical education, especially in the US, does not address the importance of standardization, the technical challenges and standardization career possibilities. Perhaps as a result, many working engineers look down on standardization, seeing only a time-consuming political process. With this background it is not surprising that most senior engineers don’t recognize standardization as an intellectually and financially rewarding career. This is unfortunate, as native English speaking senior engineers have the best background to be successful standardization engineers.
This Industry Panel addresses standardization as a mid-career choice in three parts:
- The large and rapidly growing need for communications standardization engineers is created by the thousands of different communications standardization committees and sub-committees world wide. A panel of five communications standardization experts, each familiar with different areas of communications standardization, explain how the need for world-wide coordination of communications systems is creating new employment opportunities.
- Why communications standardization is technically challenging. Presented by Ken Krechmer. An overview of isology (the science of standards) focusing on the more rigorous aspects of the field. (see isology.com for supporting papers).
- What a standardization engineer does and potential employers. Each panelist presents their experience in standardization and takes questions.
Closing discussions with audience and panel.