Are current engineering graduates being treated as commodities by employers?

The employment scene for professionals of all sorts becomes more volatile with each decade. In engineering, graduates of past generations could reasonably look forward to a linear career trajectory characterized by upward mobility and advancement. A typical career back then might allow the graduate to move from strict technical work to creative design work, then on to technical management, and perhaps to general management—often within one firm. In contrast, today's engineering graduate is being told that a typical work pattern will probably involve six or eight or more major job changes during the working lifetime. What is not being said is that such job changes will often be lateral moves, not career progressions. The hiring of engineering graduates by non-traditional employers, seeking their problem-solving and analytical skills for resale to consulting clients, exacerbates the problem. This paper examines the causes of such changes in the engineering employment pattern, and offers suggestions for dealing with the troubling aspects of the current employment market-place.