Richard Borchelt, communications director for the Genetics and Public Policy Center of the Berman Bioethics Institute at Johns Hopkins University, has worked for years on professional issues among engineers. He was a research faculty member in engineering at Vanderbilt University and now serves on the engineering messaging panel of the National Academy of Engineering.

He recently spoke to contributor David Benjamin about issues that surfaced in the EE Times Annual Salary & Opinion Survey.

EE Times: Can you characterize the level of job satisfaction among electronics engineers relative to the satisfaction among engineers in other disciplines, as well as among professionals outside the field?

Richard Borchelt: There is no simple answer. For people who make a career decision because they have some level of identification with core values in the field--librarians and stewardship, for example, or college professors and the molding of young minds--there usually is a high degree of satisfaction, unless the job turns out to be not as advertised. Witness the many high school teachers who become disillusioned when their students turn out to be knife-wielding thugs. For engineers, if they go in because their parents insisted or they were driven solely by the lure of good salaries, job satisfaction seems to be low. In our desire to market engineering careers to students, we need to be careful not to overpromise--"You'll be building an artificial heart with a team of dedicated bright minds!" or "Engineering is fun!"

EE Times: Engineers are chronically worried about the impact of offshore outsourcing of labor in technical fields on their careers--and their society. How serious is this issue going to be in the next five to 10 years?

Borchelt: It depends on what part of the knowledge economy you're coming from. I think the U.S. is redefining itself as the knowledge part of the equation--and parts of the engineering workforce clearly match that--rather than the labor part, which is most likely to be outsourced.

To the extent that engineers are seen as technicians, they should be worried. As a society, it's a difficult position to contribute only brainpower if that brainpower can be reproduced elsewhere and more cheaply.

EE Times: One common complaint we've encountered in this survey is a growing contempt for the quality of management at technology companies. Is this getting worse, or is it just the standard on-the-job bellyaching?

Borchelt: One thing that has come up more generally is how thinly stretched many scientific and technical professionals are as they try to straddle academia and the corporate world.

For instance, we've seen very little recruitment of young scientists and engineers into "civil science"--serving as officers of professional organizations, editing journals, participating in membership associations at a meaningful level--because the time they used to have for this is now spent in entrepreneurial activity (for which their scientific training does not qualify them to be managers).

EE Times: What is the biggest underrated challenge facing technology professionals in the coming years?

Borchelt: Far and away, [the] decline in public trust in the scientific enterprise. In the focus groups we've been conducting on genetics issues at the center, we see increasing numbers of folks who believe scientists--and I would include engineers--are motivated by greed, will cut ethical corners to make money, only care about their next grant or publication, and are not at all responsive to public uneasiness about science. [This sentiment has] grown so quickly that it outstrips our deliberative processes to craft sound policy that protects the public.

 Environmental science: the liberal side of engineering
Engineers have a self-described tendency toward conservatism, but in at least one respect they lean ''left.'' U.S. engineers came out clearly in favor of environmentally friendly technology trends in this year's survey, and they were optimistic about green technology's growth potential.
For the survey category that listed six statements with which respondents might agree or disagree, the top finisher in the ''strongly agree'' column was: '' 'Green' or environmental science presents promising opportunities for engineers.'' A total of 441 respondents, or 29.3 percent, strongly agreed with that statement. When the top two responses--''strongly agree'' and ''somewhat agree''--are combined, the consensus on the potential of green technology is 82.4 percent.

 High-pay track veers away from hands-on engineering
A rule of thumb in engineering, according to our survey results, might be that if you're in it for the money, you should do as little actual engineering as possible.
Among the three top-earning total compensation categories on the 2007 survey, only one, component and chip design, involves real hands-on engineering. R&D managed to crack the top five. In all, six categories in our survey exceeded the mean compensation among engineers of $108,800.