Engineer Guilt.
Put very simply, one of the reasons I left HP to come to Kazakhstan was to do good. I enjoyed making printers, but felt that there were problems that needed more urgent attention. So I came here and started teaching math in English to students who need English and new approaches to math which is unequivocally a good and necessasary thing. The irony is that Kazakhstan didn't supply me with a textbook, and I was only able to do my work because my school has...an HP printer. It's one that I helped devlop, no less.
I had a simplistic notion of what is useful. Most people at HP were making printers for the paycheck, but they've enabled me (and teachers all over Kazakhstan) to do our valuable jobs. The same goes for my homeys at Micron, Intel, and the University of Illionois. If you feel like you're selling out because you're only analyzing defects in memory chip manufacturing, don't be so hard on yourself - I need your memory chips to get the resource center's internet cafe going.
On the other hand, in _The World Is Flat_, Thomas Friedman has a story about HP that was supposed to be about the power of the profit motive to make positive differences. "HP is not an NGO," he began. "HP began with a simple question: What do poor people need most that we could sell to them?" He describes one part of HP's Global Village project, where HP gave a digital camera, photo printer, and solar powered generator to a group of village women in Africa. Sure enough, the women quickly learned the new technology and started a productive business. At the end of the project, HP asked for the technology back, but of course, the women wanted to negotiate a deal. According to Friedman, the deal they struck was to rent the equipment -- at nine dollars a month. How long do you suppose it will take before HP makes a profit off of that deal? Do you think they'd let me rent it for that rate?
Actually, even if they never make up the price of their training sessions and equipment, I'm sure they've already got their money back in advertising. HP did a good thing even though it wasn't profitable in the short run for the sake of their image. Similarly, there are still plenty of jobs that clearly need to be done that the market doesn't recognize adequately, like starting not-for-profit internet cafes is Siberia. Just like HP is willing to "lose money" on a deal for the sake of its reputation, people do these underpaid but necessary and good jobs because of pride, charity, or...guilt. Though there are many more engineering applicants at HP than there are spaces available, there are a shortage of talented volunteers.
My fellow engineering professionals, your work is needed. But if you've got it, don't set that guilt too far aside.
I had a simplistic notion of what is useful. Most people at HP were making printers for the paycheck, but they've enabled me (and teachers all over Kazakhstan) to do our valuable jobs. The same goes for my homeys at Micron, Intel, and the University of Illionois. If you feel like you're selling out because you're only analyzing defects in memory chip manufacturing, don't be so hard on yourself - I need your memory chips to get the resource center's internet cafe going.
On the other hand, in _The World Is Flat_, Thomas Friedman has a story about HP that was supposed to be about the power of the profit motive to make positive differences. "HP is not an NGO," he began. "HP began with a simple question: What do poor people need most that we could sell to them?" He describes one part of HP's Global Village project, where HP gave a digital camera, photo printer, and solar powered generator to a group of village women in Africa. Sure enough, the women quickly learned the new technology and started a productive business. At the end of the project, HP asked for the technology back, but of course, the women wanted to negotiate a deal. According to Friedman, the deal they struck was to rent the equipment -- at nine dollars a month. How long do you suppose it will take before HP makes a profit off of that deal? Do you think they'd let me rent it for that rate?
Actually, even if they never make up the price of their training sessions and equipment, I'm sure they've already got their money back in advertising. HP did a good thing even though it wasn't profitable in the short run for the sake of their image. Similarly, there are still plenty of jobs that clearly need to be done that the market doesn't recognize adequately, like starting not-for-profit internet cafes is Siberia. Just like HP is willing to "lose money" on a deal for the sake of its reputation, people do these underpaid but necessary and good jobs because of pride, charity, or...guilt. Though there are many more engineering applicants at HP than there are spaces available, there are a shortage of talented volunteers.
My fellow engineering professionals, your work is needed. But if you've got it, don't set that guilt too far aside.
2 Comments:
Thanks for that. It has been one of the things that has bothered me the 5 years I've worked here (how important can printers be in the grand scheme of things) and you put it into good perspective.
Any chance of your coming back sometime to 'contribute?' ;)
Bill tempted me with a job in Singapore, but I don't know whether or not it was tongue-in-cheek. Regardless, I'll be in grad school next fall - details to come.
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