MORE TECHNOLOGY MORE ENGINEERS

More Technology More Engineers



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More Technology More Engineers

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More Technology More Engineers

Managing engineering professionals is critical in high-tech corporations. Typically this leads to hiring a large pool of engineers to benefit from their varied technical skills and to buffer against environmental change. Intra-organizational mobility becomes a means both to develop engineers' skills and to manage careers in the lean organization era, with limited upward mobility opportunities. Corporate priorities may conflict with individual needs, however, although the former should include engineers' own career aspirations. This study of software engineers working in a large French electronics firm examines the impact of several individual variables on engineers' willingness to accept various internal mobility opportunities.

For corporations the benefits of such practices are tangible. They can “manage” and “handle” a larger pool of engineers without having to guarantee them traditional career paths. Engineers have to seek lateral career moves within the firm, demonstrating a willingness to adapt themselves to different fields and functions. This system can also be a solution to the career management of many aging engineers, whose promotion opportunities are virtually non-existent within the organization. However, the benefits for individual engineers are less obvious. Lateral mobility is still often perceived as a dead end and it seems difficult to change individual and societal value systems that associate social success with upward mobility. The match between company career management and individual career aspirations may thus be problematic.

The company included in this study is one of the major players in on-board automotive electronics in Europe. It is a subsidiary of a large international company and has about 2000 employees in France, including 800 engineers and executives. Its growth rate the year before our study was conducted was in the order of 15%. The company's progress is largely due to its success in new product development and export performance, which amounts to 45% of total sales. In a context of both strong demand growth for on-board software and pressures to reduce cost and delay, the company is planning to subcontract part of its activities in “low-cost” locations and to maintain within France only the “systems-oriented” and “customer-oriented” functions.

Such a policy would have a two-fold impact on the company's software engineers. Qualitatively, the company's business would have a more abstract dimension and would largely become oriented toward design and systems architecture; coding would be automated. Quantitatively, the new policy would require changing the employment balance between engineers and technicians. The company currently considers that it employs too many software engineers in positions that could as well be held by technicians—as admitted by the engineers themselves. Given the rapid technological change in the field, the company would like to articulate its human resource management policy around an increase in the internal mobility of its software engineers. Such mobility could entail various possibilities ranging from specialization changes to managerial career paths.

Both general management and the human resource department lack previous experience in anticipating this situation. The software engineer population in the company has ...